This is NOT going Well… Linux Gaming Challenge Pt.2

[Ultraforce]

6 hours ago, 05032-Mendicant-Bias said:

Github

Github is meant for developers. No need to add noob proof buttons. The more advanced features like actions, projects and more are very good for what they are, I use them even for my hobby projects. The way github is meant to be used is:

1. copy the snippet of code you need and use a text editor
2. download a zip of the whole repo (even if you need just a file)
3. use git to clone the repo

Github being clunky for noob is on Microsoft (not really, it's very functional for developers) Requiring scripts stored on github for basic Linux functionality is on Linux.

I think it could be argued that while the majority of Github functions are meant for developers there some elements that aren't. Which is why releases are a thing and that after the LTT a release was made. I know some mods which are very much part of playing certain video games where to get certain mods working you need to use github, and they use a release file.

[Cyberspirit]

44 minutes ago, Sho2048 said:

Funnily enough I recently upgraded to Windows 11 and my user suddenly only logged to the terminal instead of explorer.exe. Most solutions on the web were wrong or unhelpful (restore the system or reinstall Windows or recreate the user); turns out there's an obscure key in the registry for the current user to set whether to login to a console or explorer. Had it been Linux I would've gone straight to the config files and everything would've been in plain "dev" text, lol.

That's wild, I didn't even know that was a thing.  Seems like Win 11 has a looot of issues with upgrades as opposed to clean installs.

[Bramimond]

30 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

And Windows problems have the advantage of so many people having them that they're pretty well documented and able to be worked around, and there's a couple of Windows versions, not 50 different distros each with its own set of problems that often aren't shared between them.

Mostly, this documentation is just a polite version of "you want to do that, well screw you, you can't". Or you have to touch the registry or install untrusted third party software. I remember that I just gave up on changing the color of the Outlook icon back to yellow on my company computer. The amount of hoops I would have had to jump through were just ridiculous. 

 

Like I previously mentioned, nobody would even think to run the Playstation 5 games they bought with their Windows machine. It just won't work and there's nothing you can do about it. Linux on the other hand? Well, Windows games don't run on Linux? Let's see if we can fix that! 

 

When was the last time you saw developers paid for their time trying to figure out how to make Windows read current gen console discs and play them?

[Sho2048]

3 minutes ago, Ultraforce said:

I think it could be argued that while the majority of Github functions are meant for developers there some elements that aren't. Which is why releases are a thing and that after the LTT a release was made. I know some mods which are very much part of playing certain video games where to get certain mods working you need to use github, and they use a release file.

I think they should highlight releases even over the code browser yes, at least if maintainers can't be arsed to include a download link in the README to the correct file. The code browser is not there to show files available to download and the releases are in an awful corner

 

In fact if you're including artifacts in your repository you're already quite ignorant of git..

 

 

 

On a general note, while it's a pipe dream, I do agree that the best shot for Linux to go on desktops (or at least laptops) is to have Valve back it, fork it, garden wall it with certifications and still allow power users to unlock power features. Then the gaming hardware or streaming appliances might come with some sticker on it saying that Valve tested them for SteamOS, game developers can target it, and there's some sort of interest going. In this era of prebuilts being the only source of PC hardware, valve might even bank on Steam Machines

 

Except with Valve I always feel like that everything that is not the store is just an hobby project.

[Cyberspirit]

23 minutes ago, Bramimond said:

Like I previously mentioned, nobody would even think to run the Playstation 5 games they bought with their Windows machine. It just won't work and there's nothing you can do about it. Linux on the other hand? Well, Windows games don't run on Linux? Let's see if we can fix that! 

 

When was the last time you saw developers paid for their time trying to figure out how to make Windows read current gen console discs and play them?

Plenty of people would love to have PS 5, or even PS 4 emulation on Windows and people are working on it. I believe PS 3 is mostly alright and maybe PS 4 is in the first steps.

 

There are a bunch of emulators out there for all kinds of consoles that do work pretty well but it takes time. You cannot honestly expect anyone on either Linux or Windows to figure out and reverse engineer an entire new console so close to release. At best it will take years. And honestly, even if there was one like a week after release the team would be sued to hell and back by Sony.

 

There's no reason to hate either Linux and Windows or any other OS. It's all about preference.

[Guest willies leg]

1 hour ago, J-from-Nucleon said:

Well, it isn't all that weird. Android and ChromeOS aren't Linux per se, but rather Forks of them and as such have their own things and ofc, Google to pour in UX and UI development teams. Server is a whole other can of worms, most Server distros are CLi only. Therefore, Desktop Linux is actually rather different. You can't expect people to really care about what running beneath or how it runs. Much less, for poeple using completely different implementations of the Linux kernel to find their way around an unfamiliar DE or the like

 

They're all forks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_distributions

 

 

[Bramimond]

32 minutes ago, Cyberspirit said:

There are a bunch of emulators out there for all kinds of consoles that do work pretty well but it takes time. You cannot honestly expect anyone on either Linux or Windows to figure out and reverse engineer an entire new console so close to release. At best it will take years. And honestly, even if there was one like a week after release the team would be sued to hell and back by Sony.

No, not emulation. Having them run through some compatibility layers, like what Linus and Luke were doing in this video with Linux. I mean that is the expectation they have of Linux: to just be able to run some recent Windows games on Linux. It even kind of works. 

 

I'm just calling out the hypocrisy for showcasing Linux to not be able to properly run Windows games, but giving Windows a free pass for not being able to run Playstation 5 or 4 discs. Also, if some game does not run properly on Windows, like Cyberpunk, it's the devs that get heat. If it doesn't run properly on Linux, it is Linux that gets heat.

 

Sony sued someone back during the PSX days for doing exactly this. It was a software that enabled you to put your PSX discs inside of your Windows PC and have the games be playable. It was emulation, though. Sony lost. They have no leg to stand on to sue for that ever again. Nobody has, which is why emulation is a thing that developers do not get sued over anymore.

[Cyberspirit]

4 minutes ago, Bramimond said:

I'm just calling out the hypocrisy for showcasing Linux to not be able to properly run Windows games, but giving Windows a free pass for not being able to run Playstation 5 or 4 discs.

They have demonstrated in other videos before that Linux is pretty impressive with gaming nowadays but the thing is, those videos were put together by people like Anthony who knew how to set things up. This series is about people with very limited experience and while I'd say Linus should have done some more research and put more effort in, his behavior does represent a lot of casual gamers.

 

Now, I don't know anything about this side of things so if anyone is a dev or something similar please correct me but, to me Linux running Windows things seem very very different than having to get a console working on either OS.

[Bramimond]

4 minutes ago, Cyberspirit said:

Now, I don't know anything about this side of things so if anyone is a dev or something similar please correct me but, to me Linux running Windows things seem very very different than having to get a console working on either OS.

It's the same concept: running games on a platform that they weren't intended for. It might have been a different beast back in the days, but now that consoles are only locked down PCs down to the hardware, it isn't anymore. But it plain doesn't work, so there's no expectation and therefore no disappointment over it not working. 

 

Even if they were different concepts, to paraphrase Linus, why should the consumer care? The fact remains that Playstation games do not play on Windows and you have to get a Playstation to play the new games. Same with Windows and Linux. If you want Windows games, you have get Windows or deal with uncharted territory. But on Linux you have the option to make it maybe work. No such thing for Windows and games from different platforms. It just straight up won't work. Not even a little bit.

[Lightwreather]

33 minutes ago, willies leg said:

 

They're all forks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_distributions

 

 

I think I mentioned that.

[tkitch]

16 hours ago, HSF3232 said:

I think he's pushing that angle a little too hard. Like, there are some things I think a normal user wouldn't do that Linus did, or Linus didn't do that a normal user would.

You clearly don't work I.T. and watch what "normal users" do on a regular fucking basis.

 

Normal users are god damned morons.  Phishing works because users are more than happy to give away private information on a regular basis.  This includes "intelligent" people who use computers every single day for their day job.  

[Cyberspirit]

7 minutes ago, Bramimond said:

No such thing for Windows and games from different platforms. It just straight up won't work. Not even a little bit.

Again, emulators are a thing and you can play a lot of games that weren't meant for Windows or PC in general. Even though it might not be the same thing as a compatibility layer, you can't say that Windows cannot run anything that wasn't meant for it specifically because that's just not true.

[Guest Linux-Is-Best]

7 hours ago, Spindel said:

Just a question to you linux folk in here.

 

As I’ve stated elsewhere I used to daily drive linux for a couple of years some 15 years ago. What I remembered was that there was a lot of stuff both drivers and some software that you compiled for your set up instead of relying on prepackaged stuff. I want to remember that I did this with both ATI and Nvidia drivers for example. This was a thing for RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu that where the distros I tried and Ubuntu being the one I settled on in the end for being the least user unfriendly.

 

This method worked best back then, is this not a thing any more in Linux because it seems that both Linus and Luke has not done this.

Gone are the days when you needed to compile everything manually. You can, if you want to do so, but you no longer have to do so. In OpenSUSE, for example, there is a user interface called YAST, which amounts to your Windows Control Panel and your classic Windows Update. You can change settings, including adding hardware, installing drivers, and software using your mouse, just like you do in Windows. You can even add, edit, and remove repositories using that user interface.

Yes, there is, of course, the Linux gatekeeper, the hardcore user who will insist everyone learn the terminal, and I think that's still a good idea. But the reality is, you almost do not have to do so. Linux has matured enough that we have plug-in-play now and an easy hot-swap surrounding hardware. I can install Steam or the latest Nivida drivers by checking a little check box and hitting "OK." I can configure my network, set up a printer, and plug in a gaming controller without ever touching the terminal. -- Granted, I still think it's a good idea to learn how to use it, but you can arguably get away without doing so. The same is true for Windows, you can use the OS without ever touching their terminal, but it does not hurt to learn it.

 

Linus, however, I believe, picked the distros he knew still required more of an effort. Not to forget, he also picked the ones that are not known for stability. A lot has happened in 15 years, and it infuriates me that he picked distros that are not targeting usability. -- So I will say again, Linus picked distros that are not looking to make everything simple. And when I say "simple," I mean they do not have the "dumb user" in mind.

 

 

[finest feck fips]

  

11 hours ago, Sho2048 said:

What I am seeing is some big confusion on what they’re really doing here. Linus is not acting as a “inexperienced user” but more like someone who doesn’t want to learn, doesn’t want to think about what he’s doing, and comes off as condescending Dunning-Kruger.

It's weird, because Linus' prescriptions are mostly accurate (if not especially interesting). If part of the purpose of the series is to have something to point to when more naive users say things like “all gamers should just use Linux’, then I guess the series is doing its job.

I think it's probably real, though. I've done things like Linus is doing on macOS before, when I first got started using it. Disabled SIP and then made some changes that started causing some apps to crash on startup. It's what happens when you bring unfounded expectations of how things should work to a new OS, and start fucking around with it like you know what you're doing.
 

11 hours ago, Sho2048 said:

And even then, that can happen to someone once, no big deal; but no, he proceeds to tell us that how Windows does it must be the one true way and everything else is bad. Like he thinks “new users” actually know what file extensions are?

Right! Linus repeatedly shows some awkward, half-awareness of this. Like at one point he says (in the series or on the WAN show about it, idr) something like

 

Quote

And most users aren't even aware of things like file extensions! Imagine how hard this would be for someone at that that level!

seemingly unaware that in many cases including that one, unburdened by his expectations, less advanced users would experience less trouble.

At other times he shows at least some awareness of the concept of ‘knowing enough to be dangerous’.

 

11 hours ago, Sho2048 said:

Please don’t turn everything into childproof software for the masses.

I don't think there's any real risk of that, is there? And it would be okay if there were a distro like that.

But I gotta admit that if the community of a distro I used faced an influx of users acting like Linus (snotty whenever surprised, doing very little due diligence, insisting on running things they don't understand), I'd be tempted to either just abandon the community or try to quarantine the most disruptive users to a part of the community I could avoid. There's a minimum signal to noise ratio I want in communities I participate in. There's nothing wrong with making mistakes or being lost, but there's a difference between being either of those things and being careless and demanding.

I'm willing to do support work for free for projects that I care about, but you cross a line when your attitude is ‘you owe explanations to me, but I'm also too good to read the explanations already written for me (a.k.a. the manuals).

[Stahlmann]

58 minutes ago, willies leg said:

They're all forks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_distributions

Lol, THIS should be more than enough to scare most people away from Linux.

[Guest Linux-Is-Best]

3 minutes ago, Stahlmann said:

Lol, THIS should be more than enough to scale most people away from Linux.

I'd like to point out that SUSE Linux is the clean one on your list.

[Stahlmann]

14 minutes ago, Linux-Is-Best said:

Yes, there is, of course, the Linux gatekeeper, the hardcore user who will insist everyone learn the terminal, and I think that's still a good idea. But the reality is, you almost do not have to do so. Linux has matured enough that we have plug-in-play now and an easy hot-swap surrounding hardware. I can install Steam or the latest Nivida drivers by checking a little check box and hitting "OK." I can configure my network, set up a printer, and plug in a gaming controller without ever touching the terminal. -- Granted, I still think it's a good idea to learn how to use it, but you can arguably get away without doing so. The same is true for Windows, you can use the OS without ever touching their terminal, but it does not hurt to learn it.

I gotta say after all the discussion on these 2 videos i'm very tempted to try Linux out just to see how far i can get it to fully function as my main computer before i HAVE to pull out the command line and follow some guide where i don't even understand what i'm doing.

[finest feck fips]

@Ashley MLP Fangirlif you wanna get some first-hand experience with Windows bootable media, Microsoft's documentation is actually quite good, and there are PowerShell interfaces for most of it. Much of it has to be done from a Windows installation, but it works fine in a VM.

These are the top-level docs you can use to extract Windows disk images from a Windows install DVD and start customizing them: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/dism---deployment-image-servicing-and-management-technical-reference-for-windows?view=windows-11

 

This is the docs for the Sysprep utility, which you might also use: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/sysprep--generalize--a-windows-installation?view=windows-11

 

These are the docs on WinPE, which is used both for recovery media and the Windows installer DVDs: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/winpe-intro?view=windows-11

 

this is a native Linux tool for dealing with Windows images whose functionality overlaps with Microsoft's DISM tools: https://wimlib.net/

 

you don't have to bother, of course. I'd just rather direct people to the tools than only leave others with second-hand opinions

[finest feck fips]

1 hour ago, willies leg said:

 

They're all forks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_distributions

 

 

There's a sense in which ChromeOS and Android are forks but, say, Ubuntu is not: desktop Linux distributions typically run mainline kernels. Until very recently, the Android kernel has always been maintained as a separate fork, with changes going upstream only long after the corresponding Android release

[Guest Linux-Is-Best]

24 minutes ago, Stahlmann said:

I gotta say after all the discussion on these 2 videos i'm very tempted to try Linux out just to see how far i can get it to function fully as my everyday computer before i HAVE to pull out the command line.

I fixed your mistype.

 

If you're going to try Linux, may I suggest Gecko Linux ( https://geckolinux.github.io/ ). It is OpenSUSE with most of the non-free firmware and media codecs already included. If you want to build it up yourself, you can, of course, still, go directly to OpenSUSE. But in either case (Gecko or OpenSUSE directly), I would suggest Tumbleweed since it is their rolling release and will give you the latest drivers and fixes. If you have Nivida, here are the instructions on how to install them without using the terminal ( https://opensuse.github.io/openSUSE-docs-revamped-temp/install_proprietary/ ). The terminal instructions are included, too, if you want to do that.

 

XFCE is what I would suggest for a newbie. It uses the fewest resources, has virtually no dependencies, and will look closely like a Windows classic start menu and desktop. XFCE may not be the fancier user interface such as KDE, but it gets the job done, and if you're new, you should start simple (in my opinion). 

[finest feck fips]

56 minutes ago, Stahlmann said:

I gotta say after all the discussion on these 2 videos i'm very tempted to try Linux out just to see how far i can get it to fully function as my main computer before i HAVE to pull out the command line and follow some guide where i don't even understand what i'm doing.

One thing that's likely to confound such an experiment is that writing and maintaining guides for using GUIs is a huge burden compared to writing and maintaining guides for CLIs, so you're likely to run into guides that describe how to do something only using the CLI even when one or more GUI methods exist. This is because

• GUIs change frequently (every year or less), but CLIs tend to remain stable for decades once esablished
• preparing graphical guides is way more work, because
  • using GUIs is slower
  • describing GUIs is slow
  • taking screenshots requires markup (cropping, highlighting, blurring, etc.) while for CLI guides you can copy and paste text unmodified
  • GUIs are much more difficult to automate, so GUI guides have to show each step separately
    • in contrast, using the CLI is basically the same amount of effort as automating the CLI, so in CLI guides, many steps can be condensed into one or two
• there are many GUIs, but 99% of the CLI is identical across Linux installations, even of different distros

It takes many times as much time (hours vs minutes) to prepare a guide that uses GUI tools than it does to prepare a guide that uses CLI tools. And it takes several times as much manpower to maintain a GUI guide (keeping it up to date as things change) as well.

So you're probably going to run into a situation where the guides you find all involve the CLI, even though you don't strictly need it, long before you come across one where you actually need the CLI in a strict sense.

[Bramimond]

46 minutes ago, Cyberspirit said:

Again, emulators are a thing and you can play a lot of games that weren't meant for Windows or PC in general. Even though it might not be the same thing as a compatibility layer, you can't say that Windows cannot run anything that wasn't meant for it specifically because that's just not true.

You can't emulate PS5 on Windows today. We were talking about recent games, like the ones shown in the video.

You can play Cyberpunk 2077 on Linux. You can't play Final Fantasy VII Remake on Windows.

 

Emulators for old games also work for Linux. 

[Guest Linux-Is-Best]

30 minutes ago, finest feck fips said:

One thing that's likely to confound such an experiment is that writing and maintaining guides for using GUIs is a huge burden compared to writing and maintaining guides for CLIs, so you're likely to run into guides that describe how to do something only using the CLI even when one or more GUI methods exist. This is because

• GUIs change frequently (every year or less), but CLIs tend to remain stable for decades once esablished
• preparing graphical guides is way more work, because
  • using GUIs is slower
  • describing GUIs is slow
  • taking screenshots requires markup (cropping, highlighting, blurring, etc.) while for CLI guides you can copy and paste text unmodified
  • GUIs are much more difficult to automate
• there are many GUIs, but 99% of the CLI is identical across Linux installations, even of different distros

It takes many times as much time (hours vs minutes) to prepare a guide that uses GUI tools than it does to prepare a guide that uses CLI tools. And it takes several times as much manpower to maintain a GUI guide (keeping it up to date as things change) as well.

So you're probably going to run into a situation where the guides you find all involve the CLI, even though you don't strictly need it, long before you come across one where you actually need the CLI in a strict sense.

Ironically, that is why the YaST user interface has not changed in 10+ years because they want people to rely on muscle memory. They want their users to be able to learn something once and not have to keep relearning things over and over. In recent years, Microsoft Windows has lost that advantage. The desktop and start menu alone has confused " simple-minded " users starting from Windows 8.

 

That said, most guides do not cover the user interface because most people making those guides tend to be power users who rely on the terminal. In SUSE Linux, the user interface has been solid for over a decade. -- There is that disconnect concerning guides. But the last time Yast was updated, it has become nearly self-explanatory; that provided you read (because it's all labeled), you shouldn't have so much of a problem figuring things out.

 

Sadly, I do know more than enough people who do not read when using a computer. I cannot tell you how often I have worked tech support, and some random user claimed to have seen a window and clicked "OK" without reading the window. LOL

[finest feck fips]

52 minutes ago, tkitch said:

Normal users are god damned morons.  Phishing works because users are more than happy to give away private information on a regular basis.  This includes "intelligent" people who use computers every single day for their day job.

This is a good example of an actually elitist view: gotta keep your expectations at the ocean floor because users are ‘god damned morons’.

I've watched people who are genuinely a bit dim master tools that we've watched Linus use to shoot himself in the foot in this series. They got past the point he's at because they came to Linux with a better attitude and participated in the community in good faith.

Users are ‘morons’ if you encourage them to be by treating them like dumb babies whose hopeless level of understanding puts them on a fundamentally different level than you.

The contradiction of simultaneously calling Linux users condescending while demanding that Linux users literally condescend to Windows users by treating them as incapable of rising to modest challenges (like reading a manual or heeding warnings) is impressive.

Windows geek culture is holding such utter contempt for ignorant users that nothing can be asked of them. Linux geek culture is having enough respect for new users that they are treated as active participants in a process of mastery, rather than as helpless patients.

[Stahlmann]

1 hour ago, finest feck fips said:

One thing that's likely to confound such an experiment is that writing and maintaining guides for using GUIs is a huge burden compared to writing and maintaining guides for CLIs, so you're likely to run into guides that describe how to do something only using the CLI even when one or more GUI methods exist. This is because

• GUIs change frequently (every year or less), but CLIs tend to remain stable for decades once esablished
• preparing graphical guides is way more work, because
  • using GUIs is slower
  • describing GUIs is slow
  • taking screenshots requires markup (cropping, highlighting, blurring, etc.) while for CLI guides you can copy and paste text unmodified
  • GUIs are much more difficult to automate, so GUI guides have to show each step separately
    • in contrast, using the CLI is basically the same amount of effort as automating the CLI, so in CLI guides, many steps can be condensed into one or two
• there are many GUIs, but 99% of the CLI is identical across Linux installations, even of different distros

It takes many times as much time (hours vs minutes) to prepare a guide that uses GUI tools than it does to prepare a guide that uses CLI tools. And it takes several times as much manpower to maintain a GUI guide (keeping it up to date as things change) as well.

So you're probably going to run into a situation where the guides you find all involve the CLI, even though you don't strictly need it, long before you come across one where you actually need the CLI in a strict sense.

I understand your point. But my main point was that i'd try to see if you could run Linux without using CLI at all or if it would become mandatory at some point, regardless of the "ease of creating guides".