[HN Gopher] Valve Releases Proton 8.0-1c
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Valve Releases Proton 8.0-1c
        
       Author : rc00
       Score  : 106 points
       Date   : 2023-04-17 19:06 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | Thaxll wrote:
       | I'm confused, who works on Proton is it Valve or CodeWeavers?
       | 
       | I don't see valve employees in there:
       | https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/graphs/contributors
        
         | bartvk wrote:
         | It could also be that Valve subcontracts the CodeWeavers
         | people.
        
         | haunter wrote:
         | >... Griffais says the company is also directly paying more
         | than 100 open-source developers to work on the Proton
         | compatibility layer, the Mesa graphics driver, and Vulkan,
         | among other tasks like Steam for Linux and Chromebooks.
         | 
         | https://www.theverge.com/23499215/valve-steam-deck-interview...
        
         | sho_hn wrote:
         | Valve is a relatively small company. They have absolutely
         | fantastic in-house talent (gamescope, for example, is a Valve
         | development and an important innovation of modern SteamOS), but
         | they also have quite a few contractors and projects/teams they
         | support.
         | 
         | (Disclaimer: I worked at a contractor on the Steam Deck for a
         | while, working on the desktop mode.)
        
           | Sunspark wrote:
           | Out of curiosity, why didn't desktop mode include things like
           | language support or CUPS printing support?
        
             | sho_hn wrote:
             | Not sure! My particular team was working on features
             | upstream in the KDE Plasma desktop. The packaging / Arch-
             | based distro was done elsewhere. I also left the
             | contracting company before the shipping year, though (while
             | still involved with KDE otherwise today); it's possible
             | there was more intra-team comm later on.
             | 
             | All I can offer you is speculation: Maybe just something no
             | one's gotten around to yet? Also, I think desktop mode and
             | its use cases are probably a lot more popular than anyone
             | expected.
        
             | agilob wrote:
             | I wouldn't put CUPS on Steam deck because too many people
             | have HP printers. People trying their HP printer or scanner
             | and not having it working would put Deck in bad light
             | really.
        
           | k4ch0w wrote:
           | Thank you for making it dope! I love my deck.
        
         | meibo wrote:
         | CodeWeavers is contracted to work on Proton for Valve, and they
         | are the main driving force behind it. I believe Valve only does
         | triage for them. They're also contracting various other devs
         | throughout the Linux desktop community to work on things like
         | Mesa.
        
       | vulkansdk2 wrote:
       | Vulkan is okay.
       | 
       | Proton has the energy of open source clones of video games.
       | 
       | There's a reason games aren't made for Vulkan, even on platforms
       | like Android.
       | 
       | It's not just because there is a lack of market share.
       | 
       | Valve's immense resources would be better spent on making Source
       | Engine work for more game genres; itself support Vulkan better,
       | or even default to Vulkan on Windows; make it fully free. If they
       | really felt strongly about this.
        
         | ozarker wrote:
         | Vulkan isnt perfect but it's the only open source step in the
         | right direction and is enabling things like proton to exist.
        
         | ElectricalUnion wrote:
         | > Valve's immense resources would be better spent on making
         | Source Engine work for more game genres; itself support Vulkan
         | better
         | 
         | Source Engine Vulkan support uses DXVK, and the main driver for
         | DXVK development is Proton. So in a roundabout way, they are
         | supporting Vulkan better.
         | 
         | > or even default to Vulkan on Windows
         | 
         | Is said Vulkan on Windows default better?
         | 
         | Most pretty naive direct DirectX-to-Vulkan conversions (running
         | DXVK under Windows) have sightly worse performance that just
         | using DirectX directly, and the proprietary Radeon Windows and
         | Nvidia Windows drivers hide a lot of implementation-specific
         | optimizations and workarounds for common game and application
         | bugs.
        
         | ChikkaChiChi wrote:
         | Despite not being public, Valve still operates under capitalist
         | pretenses. This means that their time is "best spent" on what
         | generates revenue. Predictably, this means getting their
         | commerce platform on as many devices as possible. That's made
         | possible by Proton.
         | 
         | The side benefit is that the abstraction layer they are
         | building will introduce near-parity between GPU APIs, which
         | renders the whole thing moot.
        
         | globalreset wrote:
         | Better spent? Proton is what enables tons of Linux users play
         | tons of otherwise Windows-only games. Plus it's not exclusive
         | in the first place. In combination with Steam Deck it's console
         | killer.
        
           | unpopularopp wrote:
           | >In combination with Steam Deck it's console killer
           | 
           | Are you saying that Proton + Linux seriously threatening,
           | killing, the market of PS5/Xbox Series/Nintendo Switch?
        
             | asadlionpk wrote:
             | Steam Deck is kinda on some path there.
        
               | arp242 wrote:
               | Steam Deck sold about 3 million units; Playstation 5
               | about 30 million, X-Box about 20 million, Nintendo Switch
               | about 130 million. Steam has about 120 million active
               | accounts.
               | 
               | I mean, it's successful I guess, but also not exactly
               | taking over the world.
        
               | asadlionpk wrote:
               | Well it's v1.0. Lot's of rough edges too! I see 3 million
               | as a big number for an open/linux gaming console.
        
               | arp242 wrote:
               | Well, the first Playstation sold about 100 million units;
               | the NES about 60 million. Of course they had longer to
               | sell those units, this is offset by the lower population,
               | lower cost, and a smaller market (less Chinese people
               | were able to afford a NES or even Playstation 1). Even
               | the Dreamcast sold about 9 million units, which wasn't
               | enough to keep Sega afloat. To get to numbers of the same
               | magnitude we need to get to the Sega CD with about 2.2
               | million units sold, and that's widely considered to be a
               | huge failure.
        
             | justinclift wrote:
             | The Steam Deck is regarded as a competitor to the Nintendo
             | Switch yeah?
        
         | danr4 wrote:
         | If there's a company that can increase market share and
         | adoption for Vulkan it's Valve
        
         | thefz wrote:
         | > Proton has the energy of open source clones of video games.
         | 
         | Sorry, what?
        
         | darkteflon wrote:
         | > Proton has the energy of open source clones of video games
         | 
         | Given what it's capable of, that's one of the most uncharitable
         | takes I've ever seen on Proton.
        
         | pitaj wrote:
         | What's wrong with Vulkan? I was under the impression that it's
         | pretty similar to DX12, and a big improvement over OpenGL.
        
       | TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
       | I'm amused by the subtitles of some of the Atelier games showing
       | up as strikethroughs because of the Japanese practice of writing
       | subtitles ~like this~.
        
         | sho_hn wrote:
         | Off-topic, but perhaps someone might appreciate this factoid in
         | a hacker spirit sense (or it makes them check their code at
         | work): Randomly reminds me of a relatively common CJK bug in
         | Qt-based software.
         | 
         | Qt comes with its own string class that supports substitution
         | like this: QString("%1 %2").arg(foo).arg(bar)
         | 
         | This is often naively used by devs to e.g. build filesystem
         | paths (the framework has better APIs for this). With CJK, it
         | often happens that HTML-style percent encoding ends up in
         | strings and filenames somewhere (think %20 for space, etc; a
         | lot of CJK ends up percent-encoded), and then arg() substitutes
         | into the wrong thing and everything breaks.
         | 
         | I've fixed this at least twice in Qt-based music players
         | dealing with song metadata, thanks to a Korean-language music
         | collection and Korean radio/podcast streams.
        
           | soulofmischief wrote:
           | A factoid is something which seems true but isn't. Perhaps
           | you mean fact. If you must stress the insignificant nature of
           | the fact, there is also factlet, trivia etc.
        
             | sho_hn wrote:
             | I appreciate this :-) I thought a factoid is a "small, not-
             | so-important fact".
        
       | warning26 wrote:
       | Truly impressive stuff -- with Windows 11 being kind of terrible,
       | I wonder if we'll soon reach an inflection point where Linux is
       | the OS-of-choice for PC gaming.
        
         | bentcorner wrote:
         | Personally, Linux would need to be many times better than
         | Windows for me to use it to replace Windows for gaming.
         | Currently W11 does the job with minimal fuss. I don't need to
         | worry about anticheat, compatibility issues or driver problems.
         | 
         | Windows isn't without fault but at least for gaming I don't
         | really have any complaints. I'm unconvinced that there's any
         | upside to switching to Linux.
        
           | unixhero wrote:
           | It already is. You don't seem to have done actual testing.
        
             | penjelly wrote:
             | what? protondb shows 44% aggregate game coverage, meaning
             | 56% of games are not verified to be playable on linux
             | systems. In what world is that "better".
             | 
             | my daily driver is PopOS and use proton for my games, i
             | love it, but its not better, and the games do not play
             | better on average in my experience. Nor is it fun having to
             | do tinker steps when all i want to do is jump into the game
        
               | arp242 wrote:
               | The database isn't perfect, for example Kingpin
               | (https://www.protondb.com/app/38430) is listed as
               | "unplayable" but it _does_ work with the latest patch
               | without problems, at least in Wine and presumably with
               | Proton too. I don 't know how common this is though -
               | this is just something I encountered last week - but
               | there's a long tail of older and sometimes obscure games,
               | quite a few of which also don't run well on Windows any
               | more without mucking about; I wouldn't necessarily put
               | _that_ much stock in that number.
               | 
               | There's also a native Linux version of Kingpin by the
               | way; the instructions start with "must run as root" so
               | never mind... The 90s were wild.
        
               | eldaisfish wrote:
               | Something to keep in mind - how many of the games that
               | work have been played to completion? Too often, "working"
               | means the initial areas in the game work.
        
               | arp242 wrote:
               | In my experience if works then it works; I can't recall
               | any specific instance in almost 20 years of wine usage
               | where it works fine for the first hour and then stops
               | working at some specific point, although I'm sure there
               | are instances where this is the case. I don't think it's
               | a significant factor, especially because there are often
               | multiple reports.
        
             | Karunamon wrote:
             | Proton DB makes that case handily, no personal testing
             | required.
             | 
             | I wish people were a bit more sanguine and a bit less
             | thinking wishfully about the real world performance of
             | Proton. It is absolutely impressive, but "Playable" is not
             | good enough of a rating; it's not even table stakes. There
             | are bugs and manual interventions required on "playable"
             | titles on proton DB that would lead to mass outrage and
             | refunds if they behaved that way on their native platform.
             | 
             | "It can literally be played" is such a low bar.
        
             | bentcorner wrote:
             | Let's get some concrete facts out then - how is it better?
             | A (selfish) practical example for myself - I play a lot of
             | Overwatch. It works just fine in windows. I get low load
             | times and usually maintain 177fps at full resolution. I
             | have no complaints but I am open to switching. Am I
             | guaranteed of seeing no issues in Linux?
        
               | smoldesu wrote:
               | I play Overwatch on Linux. After you compile shaders
               | (takes 2-3 minutes on a good CPU) it runs fine. Almost
               | unnoticeable from a performance standpoint: I was getting
               | ~120-130 frames at 1440p on my GTX 1050ti. On my new
               | 3070ti it's so fast I don't even think about it.
               | 
               | This is an old benchmark, but still shows how good DXVK
               | is for this title: https://youtu.be/voXc1nCD4IA
               | 
               | And yes, it still works with Overwatch 2. Did from Day 1,
               | Blizzard must have had a Steam Deck dev kit or something.
        
               | bentcorner wrote:
               | Thanks! Were there any useful resources you used to make
               | sure everything was configured correctly? I'm a relative
               | Linux noob - I've used it here and there but never as my
               | main home desktop, and most certainly never for gaming.
        
               | smoldesu wrote:
               | There's a well-maintained Lutris script[0] that's
               | probably your most painless option. It's also possible to
               | run it with Proton/Steam if you put in enough elbow
               | grease, but... you've probably got better things to do.
               | My only other advice would be to put in the work for
               | getting Wayland to run so your framerate is as smooth as
               | your GPU says it is.
               | 
               | I hope my last comment didn't come off as too hostile,
               | it's a great time to experiment with Linux gaming now
               | that the Deck is moving units! :)
               | 
               | [0] https://lutris.net/games/overwatch-2/
        
               | darkteflon wrote:
               | I suspect you already know this, but for anyone curious:
               | for many of the big live service games, Linux/Proton is
               | usually no substitute for Windows - anti-cheat renders
               | them unplayable. MW2, Fortnite, Tarkov, Hunt, PUBG, Day Z
               | and Cycle are some examples. By contrast, Apex and Halo
               | work fine.
               | 
               | I do quite a lot of my gaming on the Steam Deck these
               | days, but have to keep a windows box around for this
               | reason.
               | 
               | Sort of relatedly: does anyone know how well the Unreal
               | Engine 5 editor works on Linux?
        
               | ElegantBeef wrote:
               | Hunt, Dayz(as does Arma3 and Reforger), and The Cycle all
               | work on Linux.
        
               | Mike_12345 wrote:
               | No. Overwatch is not on Steam. So you would need to mess
               | around with Wine or Proton separately. Maybe it works,
               | but it's not a single click installation.
        
           | Mike_12345 wrote:
           | For me it's the opposite experience. Easier to get Linux
           | installed, no driver issues, no messing around, and my games
           | Just Work on Steam/Proton without any tricks. Windows has
           | more hassle with downloading/installing drivers and disabling
           | crapware and forced ads in the OS before I can begin to use
           | it.
        
             | happymellon wrote:
             | My wife is struggling with constant crashes in the new
             | Harry Potter adventure game on the Deck.
             | 
             | That's the only thing I have encountered though.
        
               | 3836293648 wrote:
               | There's a fix for that. Unfortunately it needs to be
               | reapplied on every reboot:
               | 
               | sudo sh -c "echo 1000000 > /proc/sys/vm/max_map_count"
        
             | Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
             | > disabling crapware and forced ads in the OS
             | 
             | Using the Pro version of Windows seems to have solved most
             | of that. I'm on Win10 Pro, and when people talk about ads,
             | I have no idea what they're talking about.
        
               | mrguyorama wrote:
               | Same thing. I bought 10 pro, used a local account (that
               | is now harder to do), turned off every switch on the next
               | setup page (no cortana etc), and I had to right click ->
               | banish the dumb tiles on the start menu, one of which was
               | candy crush, and now it just looks like a normal Windows
               | start menu from the bad old days.
               | 
               | None of that should have been forced on me, and I don't
               | like it, but it's not incessant like everyone seems to
               | say.
        
         | jjcm wrote:
         | "with Windows 11 being kind of terrible"
         | 
         | Curious what you dislike about it - I've felt the UX is a big
         | improvement over 10 personally. Feels like they've adopted some
         | patterns from OSX for the better. I use it less and less these
         | days, but it works great for me as a gaming OS.
        
           | Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
           | > I've felt the UX is a big improvement over 10 personally
           | 
           | Meanwhile, I feel like every step since 7 has been been a
           | downgrade.
           | 
           | > Feels like they've adopted some patterns from OSX for the
           | better.
           | 
           | IMO, adopting patterns from OSX is a critical-severity bug,
           | not a feature. Everything about the OSX UI is the worst thing
           | I've ever used.
           | 
           | Microsoft is abandoning a large userbase that chooses to use
           | Windows _because it 's not MacOS_.
           | 
           | I _hate_ having multiple windows from one program being
           | collapsed into a single entry on the taskbar. I _hate_
           | programs on the taskbar only showing their icon and not the
           | window titlebar text. I _hate_ how flat everything looks.
           | 
           | Screens are bigger and DPIs are higher, giving us more screen
           | real estate than ever before, so why are we filling it with
           | whitespace and hiding functionality?
           | 
           | I'm still on Win10, and I use WindowBlinds to make it look
           | like Win7 Classic. When I eventually am forced to upgrade to
           | Win11 when I upgrade my CPU, I'll be using WindowBlinds11 and
           | Start11 to continue to keep Windows looking sane.
        
             | mschuster91 wrote:
             | > I hate having multiple windows from one program being
             | collapsed into a single entry on the taskbar.
             | 
             | Hyperswitch solves that for good.
             | 
             | > I hate programs on the taskbar only showing their icon
             | and not the window titlebar text.
             | 
             | Not sure yet if I agree with that, given that HyperSwitch
             | is giving me the best of both worlds - a window preview
             | _and_ window titles.
             | 
             | > I hate how flat everything looks.
             | 
             | Windows is honestly worse. The new Settings "app" is...
             | blargh.
        
           | ztnktl wrote:
           | > Feels like they've adopted some patterns from OSX for the
           | better.
           | 
           | No, Windows 11 is a cargo cult. It imitates the look of an OS
           | X dock (centered icons, no window titles, large icons etc)
           | but not the parts that makes it properly functional. Have you
           | tried to drag and drop an app to make a shortcut there? It
           | doesn't work. For that matter, many modern windows 11 things
           | do not understand the very notion of drag and drop.
           | 
           | By the way, the windows 11 taskbar has no quicklaunch.
           | Without quicklaunch, you can't pin documents or folders to
           | your taskbar.
           | 
           | Mac OS X allows you to drag anything to the dock. App,
           | folders, documents. In the case of folders, clicking them
           | will even show you the last modified files in a quick preview
           | list. The dock can't do everything a windows taskbar can do,
           | but it has its own advantages.
           | 
           | Windows 11's taskbar is, on the other hand, a dock with no
           | advantages. There's nothing it does that makes it an
           | improvement over what Windows 7 could already do (I cite
           | windows 7 because it was the one that added most of the
           | features that can make the taskbar feel more like OS X's
           | dock, but those features, like grouped windows, were purely
           | optional). You can't even have it on the sides of the screen
           | anymore too. It was rewritten.. just for the sake of being
           | rewritten. Developer churn at MS with no improvement on the
           | user's side. Why?
           | 
           | I, as a person who has dealt for many reasons regularly with
           | all the major desktop OSes, hate Windows 11 the most for how
           | arbitrary the loss of features has felt. I hate it almost as
           | much as I hate Gnome 3, but one advantage Gnome 3 has is
           | that... you don't have to use it, Linux has a lot of real
           | desktops. KDE, XFCE, LXDE, customized tilers..
        
             | henriquez wrote:
             | Hate is such a strong word... I personally prefer Windows
             | 11 to the jumbled mess that MacOS has recently become.
             | Windows Subsystem for Linux is a major improvement over the
             | BSD junk running on Macs. The tabloid headlines and Edge
             | are annoying but it's easy enough to turn that stuff off.
        
           | darzu wrote:
           | Tabloids being forced upon you:
           | https://www.tomshardware.com/news/windows-keeps-feeding-
           | tabl...
           | 
           | Microsoft account horribleness eg:
           | https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2023/my-daughters-
           | school-t...
           | 
           | Win key being unbindable for app specific shortcuts.
           | 
           | Windows update undoing all user preferences https://twitter.c
           | om/rygorous/status/1504572255665201154?s=46...
           | 
           | Janky crashes: https://twitter.com/litherum/status/1279164544
           | 544157696?s=46...
           | 
           | Forced internet accounts: https://twitter.com/rianflo/status/
           | 1589346472335937536?s=46&...
           | 
           | I could go on. A lot of these i found just searching "windows
           | update" amongst people i follow on twitter.
        
             | tapoxi wrote:
             | And then you go into the Linux world where fractional
             | scaling doesn't work properly yet, your XWayland apps
             | interact differently than your Wayland apps, Chrome doesn't
             | support hardware accelerated video decoding, and using
             | Nvidia still requires you compile a kernel module and hope
             | for the best. Oh, and you can't play most shooters since
             | anti-cheats won't trust Linux.
             | 
             | The grass isn't always greener. I just treat my PC as a
             | dedicated gaming machine. Though these days the PS5 is
             | becoming the more appealing option.
        
               | Krssst wrote:
               | At least those are not intentional, just lack of
               | development time/resources. Knowing that somewhat brings
               | me peace of mind. (and for the kernel module thing, the
               | distro usually does it for you when the kernel is
               | updated)
        
               | the_gipsy wrote:
               | Yea but it's not a company shoving hostile features down
               | paying user's throats.
        
               | rektide wrote:
               | > _fractional scaling doesn 't work yet_
               | 
               | Sway/wlroots and KDE support the fractional scaling
               | extension. Seems to be an experimental setting in Gnome
               | for now.
               | 
               | > _your XWayland apps interact differently than your
               | Wayland apps_
               | 
               | How I can't wait for old legacy X stuff to no longer be a
               | question. I feel like it's mostly Zoom & other randos
               | holding me back from never seeing X again.
               | https://arewewaylandyet.com/ is looking generally pretty
               | excellent.
               | 
               | > _Chrome doesn 't support hardware accelerated video
               | decoding, and using Nvidia still requires you compile a
               | kernel module_
               | 
               | Vendors gonna do what a vendors gonna do. Chromium does
               | have fine support. ChromeOS has been slowly ticking along
               | adding their own support, which hopefully rolls-forward.
               | https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/ozone-
               | reviews/c/y...
               | 
               | Nvidia people say things have gotten better but also you
               | bought a card from a company that has forever been
               | adversarial.
        
               | bavell wrote:
               | Good points but YMMV:
               | 
               | - fraction scaling: I don't need it
               | 
               | - Wayland: still using X
               | 
               | - hardware accel: I think that's true for chromium but
               | IIRC there's a package with it and widevine (google-
               | chrome-stablevon Arch AUR)
               | 
               | - nvidia: the AMD drivers are great and well supported
               | (I've even been using ROCm to play with stable diffusion
               | on my 6750XT)
               | 
               | - shooters: I mostly play strategy, puzzle, sim and 2D
               | games. Haven't run into multiplayer issues yet but I'm
               | sure there are some in the FPS genre with heavy DRM
               | 
               | Not for everyone but when I got my AMD card I stopped
               | using my qemu virt-io VM w/ GPU passthrough and started
               | using native steam with proton - much better experience
               | all around and haven't booted windows ever since
        
               | pizza234 wrote:
               | > using Nvidia still requires you compile a kernel module
               | and hope for the best
               | 
               | There's nothing inherently wrong with having an out-of-
               | tree kernel module; a lot of software has, including
               | software that is open source but has an incompatible
               | license.
               | 
               | As far as I remember (I'm not on Nvidia anymore, but I've
               | been for many years), the Nvidia module was one or two
               | minor versions behind the latest release kernel, which is
               | very reasonable support - for example, stable distros
               | like Ubuntu LTS, or OpenZFS, are always a bit behind as
               | well. I've actually changed filesystem because of this,
               | but I certainly don't blame the OpenZFS devs.
        
           | warning26 wrote:
           | The built-in ads that are intentionally made difficult to
           | disable is the major problem. That alone disqualifies it from
           | being good, in my view.
        
           | doublerabbit wrote:
           | Advertising in start bar, Hidden lock-ins, difficulty with
           | creating local accounts, features requiring internet 24/7.
           | Dark UI patterns, forced applications just to name a few.
        
           | Firmwarrior wrote:
           | The only UX things they changed from Windows 10 to Windows 11
           | were downgrades, so far as I can tell
           | 
           | - You can't move the taskbar to the sides of the screen any
           | more
           | 
           | - The start menu is laggy now
           | 
           | - There are more ads and forced tracking integrated into the
           | OS
           | 
           | I'm sure there's a lot of great stuff under the hood that got
           | co-opted by whatever shortsighted idiot is in charge, but
           | whatever it is, I'm not about to drop MacOS and linux to
           | experience it
        
             | skeaker wrote:
             | Not to mention what is possibly the most asinine change
             | I've ever seen in any UI revision of any software: Making
             | the right click menu show you half the available options
             | and requiring another click to view them all. Why?! It
             | completely defeats the purpose of the right click menu as a
             | convenient quick options menu. Nobody has ever said, "Man,
             | right clicking is nice and all, but I wish I had to right
             | click then left click on a More Options button then left
             | click again." Just completely ridiculous.
        
               | sho_hn wrote:
               | This is not the first time Microsoft has done it, either.
               | 
               | In one of the MS Office generations, perhaps Office 2000,
               | they introduced "Personalized Menus" as a major
               | innovation in attempt to make the software less
               | overwhelming. The idea was that the menubar menus would
               | only show the most-used menu items by default, and hide
               | the rest behind a "More items" at the bottom. It would
               | then learn usage patterns and adjust the menu contents
               | over time.
               | 
               | The result: Menu options disappearing seemingly randomly.
               | Stuff you used rarely but relied on sometimes would
               | suddenly not be where you found it last time.
               | 
               | The Ribbon later was kind of a "it's not working, back to
               | the drawing board" reaction to that.
               | 
               | It's an interesting lesson in how "pseudo-intelligent"
               | software can come at the cost of predictability. I once
               | had to design tab nickname completion in a chat app, and
               | remembering the MS Office anecdote I made it so that
               | prefix<tab> would complete to the most recently active
               | user matching the prefix, but that subsequent <tab>
               | presses would go through the rest alphabetically instead,
               | which also made a lot more sense to the testers.
        
             | darknavi wrote:
             | > - You can't move the taskbar to the sides of the screen
             | any more
             | 
             | Assuming this is what you meant, you can re-align the
             | taskbar icons from center back to left in Settings.
             | 
             | https://i.imgur.com/zmulgwG.png
        
               | wtallis wrote:
               | No, what they took away entirely is the ability to have
               | the taskbar entirely on the side of the screen, with a
               | vertical orientation. Now that they've settled on having
               | just app icons in the taskbar rather than full window
               | titles in wide buttons, a vertical taskbar at the side of
               | the screen is a much better use of space on today's wide
               | screens where vertical space is in short supply.
        
               | theodric wrote:
               | You used to be able to drag the taskbar to the sides
               | (~like NeXTStep/BeOS) or the top (~like Mac OS). I assume
               | GP means that functionality has departed to the great bit
               | bucket in the sky now.
        
             | Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
             | The windows ten start menu is also laggy. I've also
             | disabled and uninstalled as much crap as possible.
        
           | hammyhavoc wrote:
           | Can you quantify how the UX is an improvement?
           | 
           | For me, the death of having a vertical taskbar makes an
           | ultrawide display annoying. The centred-by-default icons of
           | the taskbar kill muscle memory because opening applications
           | moves icons along. Just seems an absurd thing. I could go on.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | boston_clone wrote:
           | Have to add my ick as a question: what time is it, to the
           | second?
           | 
           | This information is not available in any desktop or system
           | clock configuration. You must either find the old analog
           | clock buried in settings, or procure the information via
           | command line. Maybe I'm wrong and they fixed it, but I
           | haven't noticed any change.
        
         | ed25519FUUU wrote:
         | Been asking this question out loud for 20 years.
        
           | warning26 wrote:
           | Hah! Could this truly be the Year of the Linux Desktop(tm)?
        
         | tadfisher wrote:
         | Probably not while Ring-0 anticheat remains a thing. But we did
         | get EAC ported, at least.
        
           | vintermann wrote:
           | I find that I can do just fine without all those
           | rootkit-"anti cheat" games. I just don't see what they have
           | that's worth that sort of corporate condescension and abuse.
        
           | nerdponx wrote:
           | The main issue for me is performance. Dota 2, which is "CPU-
           | heavy" and has historically been very forgiving of low-spec
           | hardware, ran poorly under Linux but runs flawlessly at max
           | settings under Windows on the same machine.
        
         | pjmlp wrote:
         | Nope, as proven by OS/2 better Windows support.
        
         | gs17 wrote:
         | Game Pass is honestly the only thing keeping Windows installed
         | on my gaming computer. If there was a way to use it on Linux,
         | even if it was a bit hacky (or, say, didn't allow multiplayer),
         | I would switch immediately.
        
         | nine_k wrote:
         | AFAICT so far "FreeBSD" is the Unix of choice for gaming, since
         | it powers Playstation 4 and (apparently) 5. too.
         | 
         | In quotes because the userland is, of course, heavily modified
         | and proprietry.
        
           | meibo wrote:
           | That effectively doesn't matter, they could have also gone
           | for Linux or written their own microkernel and it probably
           | would be transparent to the user. They did choose FreeBSD
           | because it's very safe, which the PS4's security track record
           | has shown to be effective.
           | 
           | Xbox now runs Windows NT, there hasn't been a great interest
           | in hacking them due to low adoption and them allowing
           | homebrew by default.
        
             | nine_k wrote:
             | They also chose BSD, I suppose, because it does not requite
             | to upstream any special changes to it, which they likely
             | made.
        
         | ActorNightly wrote:
         | Graphics drivers are still somewhat of a mess in Linux,
         | especially with Nvidia. Also, compatibility of games is all
         | over the place. Some games have platinum rating, and they run
         | fine, but every one in a while you get a stuttering that you
         | don't get on windows.
         | 
         | Until all games start releasing native ports (which could
         | happen given Steam Decks success), Win is going to stick
         | around.
         | 
         | Also Win 11 isn't that bad. I have the pro and you can turn off
         | a lot of intrusive settings. All of my dev stuff lives in WSL2,
         | including anything graphical since WSL2 now includes an X
         | server that can render linux graphical apps), and it works
         | perfectly even with ML.
        
           | iamerroragent wrote:
           | This raises a question I have about Win 11. Are the problems
           | people are attributing to 11 because they use the Home
           | edition or are these problems also found in the Pro edition?
           | 
           | Seems like worldly different experiences.
           | 
           | Regardless getting a Linux system up and running is still
           | infinitely more pleasant (assuming hardware compatibility is
           | already taken into account).
           | 
           | Right now I'm deciding on getting a second drive since
           | Windows doesn't like to play nice with duel booting from what
           | I can tell. Also Microsoft fucked up the sound for Oblivion
           | and Morrowind.
        
             | theodric wrote:
             | That's a HUGE assumption. I'm not some idiot neophyte who
             | just migrated from a dumb phone yesterday; I've been
             | running Linux since 1995. Debian 12 does not function on my
             | Ryzen 7 5700G + Biostar B550M + RTX A2000 system-- it's
             | nothing exotic! Neither does the stock Arch kernel, nor
             | linux-rt, but linux-amd and my custom kernels do. I got it
             | going, and I got VFIO passthrough working as well, but it
             | took effort as well as knowledge normal users can't
             | reasonably be expected to possess. Expecting people to buy
             | based on an HCL is not reasonable, and that's half of why
             | it will never be the year of Linux on the desktop. (The
             | other half is the desktop being a dying breed, sadly.)
        
               | iamerroragent wrote:
               | Okay but insert Linux USB drive; boot; install; system
               | works. That's literally been my experience and for many
               | others.
               | 
               | A Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) is completely
               | reasonable in my opinion for building your own machine
               | and it's well known that Nvidia and Linux don't play
               | nice. Recently built a new system and went with AMD for
               | that reason. Considered Intel but they're a little new to
               | GPUs and were a little too mid range for what I wanted.
               | 
               | Frankly it sounds more like you had issue with the Nvidia
               | card than the rest of your components.
               | 
               | Also have to consider are you trying to use completely
               | free open source software or are you okay with
               | proprietary blobs and drivers.
               | 
               | For example Ubtuntu makes it easy for end user to
               | activate those proprietary software blobs on
               | installation.
        
               | vkazanov wrote:
               | As somebody who never even had a windows machine back in
               | late 90s (my father was also a massive linux enthusiast)
               | I can totally see your point. Ah, compiling the kernel...
               | 
               | Anyways, there are some decent oem options these days.
               | Even if you dislike preinstalled distros, hardware
               | compatibility is guaranteed to be there.
               | 
               | It just can't work any other way. Either vendors solve
               | those compatibility problems for you, or you do it. I
               | don't have much time so I went with the easier option of
               | just getting dells or lenovos or simething from the
               | numerous smaller sellers.
               | 
               | Both my wife and my daughter are fine with my older
               | hardware, btw.
        
           | smoldesu wrote:
           | > especially with Nvidia.
           | 
           | How so? I'm using Plasma's Wayland session on a 3070ti and
           | have very few complaints. The only issues I've seen are some
           | weird Java GUI apps and that GTK4 text rendering issue that
           | just won't go away. None of the "stuttering that you don't
           | get on windows" that you're citing, I can count the number of
           | dropped frames in most titles on one hand. Did you ever give
           | Wayland a proper try?
           | 
           | > Until all games start releasing native ports
           | 
           | Why? Win32 is covered reasonably well with Wine, I see no
           | reason in my experience why a completely-native runtime is
           | required. It's certainly not needed to get the vast majority
           | of Windows games running on Linux.
        
           | Mike_12345 wrote:
           | > Until all games start releasing native ports
           | 
           | More realistically, game devs can target Proton as a
           | platform, making sure it works on that.
        
           | ElectricalUnion wrote:
           | > Until all games start releasing native ports
           | 
           | Games on Steam don't run "native" most of the time to begin
           | with; you can more or less always expect some random mix of
           | "steam runtime" + "pressure vessel" + "environment provided"
           | of containerization + i686 shared libraries on your (usual)
           | "native" amd64 system.
           | 
           | I don't see how that is different from running stuff under
           | Proton.
        
         | k4ch0w wrote:
         | I can't wait for this day. The day I can run any new release on
         | Linux, I will be off windows forever.
        
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