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Nibodhika

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Nibodhika ,

Steam also enforce a strict key price parity.

No it doesn’t. The price parity thing is only if you are selling the game on Steam platform, i.e. selling a steam key, it’s essentially a way to allow publishers to sell the game on their own website, without paying the 30% to steam, but don’t allow them to undercut steam entirely while still taking advantage of their platform.

Games on GoG, itch, Epic store, etc, can have any price they want, as long as they don’t give away a steam key valve doesn’t care what price you sell your game elsewhere.

This is one of the most annoying fake news out there, Valve are going above and beyond what any other store is doing, and they get bad rep from people who have never read their policy, published a game there, or talked to anyone who has.

Nibodhika ,

Yes, if Valve limited the price games could have in other stores that would be anti-competitive, but that’s not the case. Their price parity clause is just for selling steam keys.

Nibodhika ,

They don’t. The thing most people who have never published a game on steam don’t know is that valve gives you infinite steam keys (for free) that you can give or sell as you wish. This is to allow studios/publishers to give keys to whoever they want, and also allows them to sell those keys on their own or third-party websites. This is a HUGE deal, Valve is letting studios/publishers sell games on a separate site without charging anything while hosting the game themselves. The only condition to those keys is that they can’t be sold cheaper than on Steam.

That’s a completely different thing from what you’re claiming. This means that games can be cheaper on GoG, Epic, etc as long as they don’t give you a steam key together (which they could, for free).

Nibodhika ,

They are very different things. If all of the places where you want to access the data have storage large enough to accommodate all of it syncthing is probably easier. If however you also want to access the data from your phone, then syncthing won’t work, because it will sync the entire folder to your phone, there’s no way to use it like you would Nextcloud, i.e. only downloading things as you need them.

Nibodhika ,

ProtonGE has fixes that Proton can’t have for legal reasons, so it’s good to use it.

Nibodhika ,

Proprietary codecs for example, which is why some cutscenes in Proton are shown as a color test screen, those are fixed on GE.

Nibodhika ,

I’ve used LineageOS in the past, and have nothing to complain about it, but realistically I only root and change the OS of my phones after warranty is over and I could potentially lose it without being a problem.

Nibodhika ,

You can’t be this stupid, Wayland also uses a config file, you just have a GUI button to copy the configs from inside your session to the login screen. Or do you think the button recompiles the login screen with a different configuration?

Nibodhika ,

Because you vote that the government shouldn’t help the poor. Whatever you do on your own personal scale is meaningless compared to the impact that could be caused if you voted to have the government do the helping.

As to why you hold such contradictions in your mind, I don’t know, maybe you feel guilty about depriving the poor of healthcare and education that you try to make out for it? Maybe you are a good person with good intentions who never really thought that whatever help a single person can give is meaningless on the large scheme of what the government could give so you think you are helping by serving soup to the people you deny healthcare, or maybe you’re just an egoistic bastard who likes to see people in misery to feel better so you vote for them to be miserable and you do volunteer work to be near them. I don’t know, I’m not in your head, but your political views directly contradict your thoughts, if you think people deserve help when they’re vulnerable you’re left leaning.

Nibodhika ,

Don’t do this. If you have a 1TB drive with only 10GB being occupied, your image will be 1TB, and you will need a >1TB drive to store it, and another to restore it.

If you only backup the data you could do it in a much smaller size drive and it will be a lot faster to perform backups (otherwise you will need hours every time you want to create a new image).

Nibodhika ,

Personally I have a USB drive with Ventou and have been using that for a long time.

But before that I just did a dd. Although I seem to remember someone doing a benchmark and realizing that piping the file was faster. Here’s what I mean by that:

In bash you have the echo command which prints text:


<span style="color:#62a35c;">echo </span><span style="color:#183691;">"Hello"
</span>

Will print Hello.

In bash you can send the output of a command to a file, so:


<span style="color:#62a35c;">echo </span><span style="color:#183691;">"Hello" </span><span style="font-weight:bold;color:#a71d5d;">></span><span style="color:#323232;"> hello.txt
</span>

Will write Hello in the hello.txt file.

In bash you can use the cat command to read files:


<span style="color:#323232;">cat hello.txt
</span>

Will print the Hello we wrote in that file earlier.

In Linux drives are files, so if your USB drive is in /dev/sdb (DON’T JUST BLINDLY COPY THIS) you can create an image of it like so:


<span style="color:#323232;">cat /dev/sdb </span><span style="font-weight:bold;color:#a71d5d;">></span><span style="color:#323232;"> usb.iso
</span>

But also the devices are writable, so you can flash an image to a disk by doing it the other way around:


<span style="color:#323232;">cat image.iso </span><span style="font-weight:bold;color:#a71d5d;">></span><span style="color:#323232;"> /dev/sdb 
</span>

How are you parsing JSON on the command line?

I want to extract and process the metadata from PNG images and the first line of .safetensors files for LLM’s and LoRA’s. I could spend ages farting around with sed or awk but formats of files are constantly changing. I’d like a faster way to see a summary of training and a few other details when they are available.

Nibodhika ,

A week ago I would have said jq, but just the other day I discovered nushell and have been loving it, if you deal with structured data often it’s way easier, just bear in mind it’s not POSIX compatible

Nibodhika ,

That’s a common mistake, an argument from authority is only a fallacy if the person is not an authority in the field. Quoting Neil deGrasse Tyson on political views is an argument from authority, quoting him on astrophysics is not.

Nibodhika ,

The thing is that facts are not as clear cut as you think, that’s a very childish vision of the world (to think that it is always possible to differentiate a fact, don’t believe me? What am I wearing now? There is a factual answer, but you have no way of knowing it)

Plus if Neil deGrasse Tyson claims something about astrophysics and you claim he’s wrong, you better have at least someone as knowledgeable as him in astrophysics to back that claim, otherwise I’m siding with the expert on the matter.

Plus all discussions rely on the backing of experts, otherwise any discussion is impossible, I could just claim your argument is wrong because some word you used means the opposite of what you meant, your only counter argument would be to point to a dictionary, which is by your own definition an appeal to authority fallacy.

Nibodhika ,

I’m not insulting you, but thinking that facts are always knowledgeable is a childish vision of the world.

You put quotes around expert because you know they weren’t, actual experts were saying vaccines did not cause autism. Let me ask you then, how do YOU know that vaccines don’t cause autism? Because to me the answer is simple, I’ve listened to the consensus of the experts, but to you that’s a fallacy.

Facts are not always knowledgeable, authority in a field gives one credibility over the facts they claim.

Nibodhika ,

I know the point of your answer was not to dwell on these things, but:

And what would a chair look like if our knees bent the other way?

Is actually very interesting, would’ve we designed it as a normal chair but we would rest our chests instead of backs? Or would they have a place to rest the legs instead of on the floor?

Is there any way to turn my Linux machine into a docking station?

The thing is like this: I have a windows laptop I use for work, and a Linux desktop machine. I have a single screen keyboard etc. and I switch between the two using a docking station. But, I wonder if there is a way for me to “cut the middle man” and just plug/unplug my linux machine....

Nibodhika ,

Not exactly what you’re asking but it could help.

Say you want to always use your desktop as the main device. You would plug everything onto the desktop, and have the laptop only plugged into the monitor (this is easier if you have two monitors so you can make one of them be forever desktop and the other forever laptop, so you don’t have to keep switching the monitor inputs).

You will install Barrier on both of them, then configure your desktop to be the server and the laptop to connect to it. So for example suppose you keep your laptop to the right of the main screen, if you configure this properly you will be able to move your mouse from your monitor (desktop) to the laptop screen and click and write there even though the mouse and keyboard are plugged onto the desktop.

From there it’s a quick jump to having both plugged onto the same monitor and switching the input and moving the mouse right until it shows up.

Now this is not perfect, but it lets you use both PCs without a KVM. But just so you know I used this for a couple of years and bought a KVM and have never looked back, so since you’re already using a KVM this might feel janky or slow, but give it a try.

Nibodhika ,

Someone without any Linux experience thinks it’s all the same.

Someone with minimal experience will tell you they’re completely different.

Someone with some experience will tell you only the package manager changes.

Someone with lots of experience will tell you it’s all the same, only philosophy matters.

Any distro can be made to be the same as any other, your choice should be on the path of least resistance for you, if you need every last frame something that updates the drivers more often is preferable, otherwise you would need to update your driver’s manually, bit it’s never impossible, it’s just more hassle.

Nibodhika ,

More like iam35andthisiscommonlogic but hey, if you think that’s deep, who am I to judge.

Nibodhika ,

Nope, Arch is not noob friendly, you have been using Linux for long enough that you forgot how everything was different when you started. Also Arch hasn’t changed much in 10 years (I should know, I have been using it for 15), if it wasn’t noob friendly before, it’s certainly less so now that it doesn’t has an installer and the wiki makes you jump from one page to another instead of having all of the steps for installation in a single place.

I agree that Ubuntu is not ideal, which is why my recommendation is Mint. I also agree that Arch is not hard. But if you give a new user who just wants things to work Arch you’re setting it up for disaster.

For users that are familiar enough with Linux that they feel comfortable on the terminal, yeah, Arch is a breeze to use, but you need to understand the difference between “power user friendly” (which is what Arch is, i.e. allows power users to have an easy time, by for example having a large user repository) vs “beginner friendly” (which is most definitely what Arch is not, i.e. give users an easy out of the box experience where they can figure things out without needing to read wiki pages). Most new users need a beginner friendly distro, and shoving Arch down their throats is not the way to do it.

Nibodhika , (edited )
  • Rolling release means no stable API which can result in incompatibilities.
  • Bleeding edge mean you’re essentially the guinea pig for most changes.
  • pacnew/pacsave files means you HAVE to use the terminal.
  • AUR packages become unmaintained or broken often.
  • It’s expected you read the news before updating your system.
  • It’s expected you update your system periodically.
  • Pacman doesn’t automatically enables services installed, meaning that you need to run systemctl commands after installing a new service.
  • It is expected you read the wiki.

None of these are actual problems, and for even intermediate users they’re well worth it since in turn you get bleeding edge packages, a gigantic user repository that normally just works, and an excellent wiki to get answers. But for someone who’s never used Linux before, each of these is a huge problem in and of themselves.

Edit: reading some of your other replies I remember some more:

  • Having to forcefully uninstall a package so it gets updated because of limitations with pacman, e.g. you have packages A, B and C, all installed on version 1, you do a system upgrade, A now requires B to be version 2, but it won’t get updated because C depends on B, you need to manually do pacman -Rdd B, then update, then pacman -S B (this last step is not usually needed since A would have pulled it as a dependency). This problem is so common that you eventually don’t even notice it anymore, you see the message and uninstall the offending package intuitively. Also worth noting that pacman -Rdd can easily break your system.
  • Pacman uses a file lock, if something made it crash the file lock remains and needs to be manually removed.
  • PGP signatures updates require you to update certain packages before others.
  • You can easily break your system by doing something naive like pacman -Sy <something>.
  • Package cache doesn’t get cleaned automatically.
Nibodhika ,

Read my other comment, if you don’t think those are issues you either are not as noob as you think, or you haven’t encountered any of those yet lemmy.world/comment/10431667

Nibodhika ,

forcing yes on dialogs (the “y” in -Sy)

That’s not what the y means, and that’s not the issue with that command. Please at the very least read the manual or the wiki of the distro you claim to know before replying to someone who just told you has been using it for 15 years.

Give someone an endeavorOS installer and a Linux Mint installer, will there be a noticable difference in ease of use?

Yes, all of the issues I mentioned are not issues with Mint.

I’m not claiming Arch will break if you don’t read the news, or spend a week without updating, but what you’re missing (possibly because you only recently started using Arch) is that all of these things do happen and are expected to happen, it’s part of the philosophy.

Whereas many GNU/Linux distributions attempt to be more user-friendly, Arch Linux has always been, and shall always remain user-centric. The distribution is intended to fill the needs of those contributing to it, rather than trying to appeal to as many users as possible. It is targeted at the proficient GNU/Linux user, or anyone with a do-it-yourself attitude who is willing to read the documentation, and solve their own problems.

In other words Arch is by definition NOT noob friendly on purpose.

Nibodhika , (edited )

Exactly, so if you run pacman -Sy something and that something has an important dependency that has also been updated, e.g. glibc, you have now updated glibc without updating all of the packages that depend on it, causing them to stop working. E.g. pacman depends on glibc, so doing pacman -Sy something when a new glibc version was released since last you updated essentially breaks your install.

This is because Arch assumes you know what you’re doing, and let’s you do it. Great for power users, dangerous for people who don’t know enough. All of the things I mentioned are similar things that look innocuous, but will cause you huge headaches if you don’t know what you’re doing. And they don’t happen on other distros, because the other distros purposefully try to stop you from doing them.

Edit: BTW, the speed in which you discovered what -Sy does tells me you’re far from an average noob user, for you Arch will likely be a breeze, but you need to understand that the average new user will not read manuals nor the wiki, when you recommend stuff to people wanting to migrate assume it’s your grandma, you wouldn’t expect her to read through technical manuals to use her system.

Nibodhika ,

Native speakers make mistakes when things sound similar, e.g. effect/affect, then/than, etc. For non-native speakers those are very different words because they have a very distinct meaning in our heads so it’s impossible for us to confuse them.

On the other hand Non-native speakers tend to use the wrong word order, for example using a lot of “of” (House of my friend/My friend’s house) or affirmations that are meant as questions (How you did that?/How did you do that?). This happens because in our native language that’s the way phrases are structured, and internalizing the structure of a language happens long after you have enough vocabulary to communicate.

Nibodhika ,

That’s the one I use exactly because of that. I know compose, not going to learn another program to do the same, just want something that gives me an easier way to edit them than sshing into my box and using an editor.

Are shrunken heads a rights violation?

If we consider post-mortem rights to matter morally, then something like necrophilia or defiling someone’s body after their death would be immoral even if they don’t experience it (obviously) and even if they don’t have any family or loved ones around to witness it or know that it happened. As an extension of themself,...

Nibodhika ,

You talked a lot about what the person would want, how do you know that the people who’ve had their heads shrunken didn’t want that? It seems just as strange as wanting to get embalmed and preserved inside a reinforced and padded wooden box below the earth, yet people choose this daily in most western cultures.

Nibodhika ,

Because they point out facts? Or do you really think there is an unrestricted right?

Nibodhika ,

Of course I believe in human rights, but I also think there are limits to it. And you didn’t answer my question, what right do you believe should be unrestricted?

Nibodhika ,

Freedom from religion.

You’re not entitled to be free from people practicing their religion near you, e.g. you don’t have the right to not have churches in your block

The right to clean food and water.

You can’t invade someone’s property to get food and water.

The right to self defense.

A juri needs to agree self defense was required, you can’t kill someone because you thought he was going to do something to you without evidence of it.

The right to attempt escape from imprisonment.

That’s not a right most countries even recognize, in fact it is a crime on most countries to attempt to escape imprisonment, even if you are wrongfully detained by the state.

The right to a fair trial.

Fair is very relative, people get injustly put away constantly, just as much as guilty people are not. Even if we had 100% certainty on the conviction, people would disagree on the penalty, to some it’s not fair that a person who killed others gets to keep living, while to others it’s unfair that someone should be sentenced to death regardless of their crime. While I believe that this is the hardest one to answer of your points it is so because the word fair is very subjective, what if my idea of a fair trial is so different from yours that we can never conciliate both? Whose idea of fair trial is the one that gets implemented? Certainly the other will believe the trial was not fair.

The right to life

Unless you try to kill someone and he defends himself

liberty

Unless you commit a crime

and security of person.

Again, unless you threaten someone

The right of the abolition of slavery in all forms.

That’s another wording for freedom, by several metrics, prisoners are slaves.

None of those are unrestricted, which is what the original person said.

How easy is it to switch back to windows?

I’m considering switching to linux but I’m not a computer savvy person, so I wanted to have the option to switch back to windows if unforeseen complications (I only have 1 pc). Is it just a download on usb and install? And what ways can I get the product key or “cleaner” debloated versions.

Nibodhika ,

Ok, so I’m assuming you have never installed Windows before. It’s not that complicated (especially nowadays that Windows finally learned how to automatically search for drivers, that used to be the most annoying part). First of all make a note of your current Windows CD Key, you will need it to reinstall and not every computer can retrieve it if you uninstall windows.

After that, you need a windows USB drive, just like the Linux one you’ll use to install Linux. You can get it from Microsoft website, but again I advise you to get it while on Windows (Microsoft hides the way to download the iso on Linux).

Finally I strongly recommend you DON’T uninstall windows, instead keep it and install Linus side by side. This is called dual booting, every time you turn on your computer it will ask you where to boot.

Nibodhika ,

Not really, the issue is that C/C++ is not memory safe, i.e. it allows you to access memory that has already been freed. Consider the following C++ code:


<span style="font-weight:bold;color:#a71d5d;">int* </span><span style="font-weight:bold;color:#795da3;">wrong</span><span style="color:#323232;">() {
</span><span style="color:#323232;">  </span><span style="font-weight:bold;color:#a71d5d;">int</span><span style="color:#323232;"> data  </span><span style="font-weight:bold;color:#a71d5d;">= </span><span style="color:#0086b3;">10</span><span style="color:#323232;">;
</span><span style="color:#323232;">  </span><span style="font-weight:bold;color:#a71d5d;">return &</span><span style="color:#323232;">data;
</span><span style="color:#323232;">}
</span>

If you try to use it it looks correct:


<span style="font-weight:bold;color:#a71d5d;">int*</span><span style="color:#323232;"> ptr </span><span style="font-weight:bold;color:#a71d5d;">= </span><span style="color:#323232;">wrong();
</span><span style="color:#323232;">std::cout </span><span style="font-weight:bold;color:#a71d5d;"><< *</span><span style="color:#323232;">ptr </span><span style="font-weight:bold;color:#a71d5d;"><<</span><span style="color:#323232;"> std::endl;
</span>

That will print 10, but the memory where data was defined has been freed, and is no longer in control of the program. Meaning that if something else allocated that memory they can control what my program does.

Consider that on that example above later in the program we do:


<span style="color:#323232;">user.access_level </span><span style="font-weight:bold;color:#a71d5d;">= *</span><span style="color:#323232;">ptr;
</span>

If someone manages to get control of that memory between when we freed it and we used it they can make the access_level of the user be whatever they want.

This is a problem with C/C++ allowing you to access memory that has been freed, which is why C/C++ programmers need to be extra careful.

Nibodhika ,

Why not use Journal from Silverbullet since you already have it silverbullet.md/Library/Journal

You can just copy those templates and edit them as you wish, for example I have one for Stand-ups at work

Any advice for a long-time Linux user, first-time Linux *desktop* user?

I’m a regular user of Linux systems but apart from a couple of test Ubuntu installs many years ago they’ve always been containers or VMs with no DE which I can throw away when I break them. The Steam Deck showcasing how far Wine/Proton has come combined with Windows being Windows has given me the push; I’ve made a Mint...

Nibodhika ,
  1. What do you recommend I do about disk partitions?

The basic is /home split from / that way you don’t lose your data should you need to reinstall.

I’m keeping a Windows install for the few things that demand it, does Windows still occasionally destroy Linux partitions?

Not asuch as before, but I think it still sometimes it does. I think the recommendation is to use UEFI and have a /boot sp ok it from the Windows EFI one, but I haven’t used Windows in a long time so better check this

Do I need separate partitions for data and OS?

You don’t need to, but it’s better for you if you do, since that allows you to not lose data should you want to switch distros or reinstall the system.

Is it straightforward to add additional distros as new partitions or is that asking for trouble?

Only time I tried that (many years ago) I fucked up everything, but in theory it should be doable.

  1. Is disk encryption straightforward? And is that likely to upset the Windows partition?

It’s straightforward (a checkbox on most distros installer) and Windows won’t care about it.

  1. Is cloud storage sync straightforward? It’s my off-site backup solution on Android and Windows (using Cryptomator with Dropbox, Google Drive, etc) but I don’t think that many providers have Linux clients. Is something like rclone recommended?

Drive doesn’t provide Linux client, Dropbox does. Like you mentioned there are other tools, such as rclone, for accessing drive if you want to.

  1. Should I just use apt to install software? I know there’s some kind of graphical package manager (synaptic?), does that use apt under the covers or is it separate? Is it recommended to install something like Flathub too?

The GUI (like usually on Linux) just uses the CLI tools, so yeah, the graphical package manager just uses apt under the hood. However it also uses snap/flathub as well. Should you care about those? Maybe, some software is only available there because the devs don’t want to maintain multiple distro packages. But I wouldn’t use snap/flathub as my default (especially not at the beginning) even if they are theoretically more secure (especially because they are more secure, meaning they need control access to other stuff, e.g. zoom unable to detect you have a camera, or Firefox not able to download things to the download folder because of bad permission configurations)

  1. Any other pearls of wisdom? How do I keep everything tidy? Any warnings about what not to do? Should I use a particular terminal emulator or Firefox fork?

Just a note on hardware compatibility, some cards are not very compatible. If you like to game (you did mention a steam deck) and you have an Nvidia you MUST use the proprietary driver. However the proprietary driver SUCKS on Wayland, so you’re stuck on X11 for the time being.

Besides that some wireless cards are not properly recognized, you will realize this quickly when you boot the live iso if that’s your case.

Finally I would recommend Mint instead of Ubuntu, they’re still on X11 and are not forcing Snaps down everyone’s throats.

Nibodhika ,

What do you mean with film emulation that Kdenlive can’t do?

Nibodhika ,

I don’t use Logseq, I use Silverbullet, and yes, it helps A LOT. I have lots of random notes on random pages on how to do things at work, or on my personal servers or whatever. You know that feeling of “I’ve already had to deal with this, how the hell did I do it?” It’s completely gone.

If you use a good organization system with a hierarchy that makes sense and tags you can easily find stuff, so you can turn off your brain from having to remember all of that and it can focus on the thing you need to actually solve now. Don’t know if you’re old enough to remember a time before cellphones, we had to remember our friends number, nowadays this is not a concern, because your phone will remember the number for you, it’s like that but for everything, very liberating.

Nibodhika ,

I think I didn’t expressed myself correctly, what do you mean with film emulation?

Nibodhika ,

As much as I would love that, don’t read too much into it, Valve has always pushed Linux fixes for all of their things (including VR)

Nibodhika ,

Your disk is like a file cabinet, there’s also an index folder where for example it says that “your file.txt” is in cabinet C7. You go there and there’s a sheet of paper written in pencil with the contents of your file. In this analogy here’s how several solutions work:

  • Delete the file: throw away the index folder. Now if you need to write to disk you might think C7 is free and when you go there to write something else you find the old paper, which you erase and write on top. But if someone gets to your cabinet before that and they open C7 your file Will be there in its entirety, there just isn’t an index telling you which cabinet to open.
  • Zero wipe: you go to C7, erase the file, and then throw away the index. Now if someone gets to your cabinet they might go to C7 but all they see is a white sheet of paper. However it’s technically possible with a white sheet of paper to see what was written before, so this is considered better but not perfect.
  • Random wipe: same as before, except you erase and write random stuff on the sheet of paper. So it becomes a lot more difficult to recover what was there.
  • Multiple passes: Same as before, but you do this several times, so after dozens of random writes your original data should be completely impossible to recover.
Nibodhika ,

I really miss Emily, hope she comes back soon, but I understand her wanting to be on her own for a while, but honestly her videos were the best ones always.

My friend didn't have a great experience with Linux

I have been daily driving Linux for over two years now and I have switched distros many times. So, when my friend bought a new laptop, I convinced him to install Linux Mint on it. I asked him if he wanted to dual boot, he said no because it would fill up all his storage. We installed Linux Mint. The other day, he wanted to play...

Nibodhika ,

First of all you should have asked what he wanted to do with the laptop, the moment he replied playing games that are not on Steam you should have let him use Windows. Secondly, a laptop with 256GB of disk is likely going to have very low amounts of RAM and an onboard GPU, performance is going to be shit on Windows as well, you should have let him use that before, I think it’s highly likely that Windows itself would run like shit on it, so after a year or two putting Linux on that laptop would have blown his socks off. But the problem is that he didn’t get to experience any of that before you touched the computer, now he will claim it’s your fault that games don’t run or Windows is slow. I’ve been there, a friend had issues with the laptop, I said I didn’t understand Windows and would only help if I could put Linux, at first everything worked great, but then the friend needed special software that wasn’t available so I had to reinstall Windows for them (and btw, you OBVIOUSLY should reinstall Windows for your friend), and then everything on that laptop was my fault, even the problems the person was having before were somewhat my fault because I had put Linux there.

Nibodhika ,

The only games I have installed outside of Steam are emulators. Even if the majority of people here tell you they have games outside of Steam, this is likely a skewed statistics because people who tinker with their deck are more likely to join a community about it. I would guess that 70/90% of people with decks have never even opened desktop mode.

To me $100 doesn’t seem that steep, if you’re making a $5 profit with your game you only need to sell 20 extra copies for it to pay itself. If your game is specifically done for the Deck your audience is by definition on the Steam store, only a few are also outside of it.

I’m someone who uses Linux daily, I like tweaking with my deck, but realistically I never even considered installing games outside of Steam because every game I want to play is on Steam, and I imagine that several other people who tweak with their Deck are also in the same boat.

Nibodhika ,

Yeah, in that case it makes sense not to put it on Steam.

Although in your shoes I would put it on Steam for something like $5 and free on itch. Afaik Steam doesn’t mind this as long as you don’t offer a steam key for free on itch, but if you charge the same value as on Steam you can offer a key there as well, so you could do free version on itch but a minimum of $5 to get a steam key, and sell it on steam for $5. Whatever you can sell on steam is likely to surpass the $100 margin. But I can see that as a hobbyist you might not care to setup accounts for payments etc, just want to get your game out there.

In any case I’m interested in what a game specifically designed for the Deck would look like, so please post a link when you have published it.

Nibodhika ,

Well, I also use a rolling release distro, my disk died last week so I had to reinstall, so technically FULL hardware update might require a reinstall (safer than copying the root folder from one disk to another since the old one was bad), but yeah, before that I’ve replaced almost every piece of that laptop without a reinstall, even switched from Nvidia to AMD.

Nibodhika ,

Brainfart, I said laptop meant desktop, obviously didn’t change the GPU on a laptop.

Nibodhika ,

An Nvidia 3070 costs 420 and benchmarks at 22,403 (benchmark point per dollar 53.34) An AMD 6800 costs 360 and benchmarks at 22,309 (benchmark point per dollar 61.97)

So you get a 0.4% drop in performance for a 14.3% drop in price. That is significantly more performance per dollar.

Or if you go with a 3070ti ($500 23,661 -> 47.32) vs a 7800 XT ($500 23,998 -> 47.97) you get a 1.4% performance increase for free (not really that significant I know, but still it’s free performance)

All of the numbers were taken from www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

Nibodhika ,

AMD no doubt. Back in 2017 AMD had recently open sourced their drivers I was in the market for a GPU, but you know the saying “fool me once shame on you”, AMD used to SUCK on Linux, people always seem to forget about it, so I chose an Nvidia. I don’t regret my choice, but over the years AMD proved that it had really changed, so my new GPU now is an AMD, and the experience is just so much better.

Today it might be a turning point, maybe Nvidia will change, maybe they’ll change their mind and fuck It up, they’ve done it in the past, so I wouldn’t buy an Nvidia just in case they do the right thing for once, AMD is already doing the right thing for years. Also if you go with Nvidia forget about Wayland, and every day more and more distros are going Wayland only, so if you go Nvidia you might find yourself holding a very expensive paperweight in a few years.

Nibodhika ,

If you need to ask for a distro the answer is Mint, if you didn’t need to ask the answer might be different, but then you wouldn’t be asking.

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