Deconceptualist

What happened? Did they kick your dog or something?

What’s better? KDE? Or GNOME?

Cinnamon.

Nah just kidding. What happens is that you use enough different OSes and DEs for enough time and you start to see through the matrix. You realize they’re all just visual wrappers for the underlying systems that do the real work, and the DEs don’t really matter. All the major ones are good enough. And when they don’t work, that’s when you use command line. Then eventually, after doing that enough times, you say “fuck it all, get this GUI out of my way” and just start using CLI for everything.

Just tried it on Ubuntu LTS (as a flatpak) and my first impression wasn’t great.

The sign-in experience was nice with a QR code and verification code. But then the first thing on the video browse list was as ad, and the first video I played started with the same ad. There’s no icon you can click to go fullscreen, but I have a wireless keyboard and eventually figured out F11 is a shortcut (F and Enter do nothing). But then about 3 minutes into the video, the whole app window went gray. Nothing clickable, just 100% gray. I was able to exit fullscreen and close out the app, but it was pretty obviously a Ui crash of some sort.

This was just the first impression so I’ll keep it installed and see if it improves with updates. Or maybe try it on Deck or my Endeavor machine.

Yep, I’ve read a few of the others too. Excellent stuff!

You’re amazing. Format is great. I just scroll past the stuff that doesn’t interest me, but more often than not something catches my eye and I end up reading stuff I wouldn’t have clicked on (let alone waded through ads for) on a regular gaming site. That’s such a good feeling, and yeah, reminds me of the old days of flipping through gaming mags.

Hollow Knight isn’t exactly over when you finish the story. There are more fights, especially Godhome. If you can beat all that you’re an incredible player.

You probably know this but just wanted to make sure you’re not unintentionally missing out.

Another confirmation that Endeavour is great with Steam. However I did have to follow the Arch wiki to install the correct Mesa drivers on my new PC (Radeon RX 7800 XT), as without those the GPU performance was crap.

Ugh I still run Ubuntu LTS on my living room HTPC, and generally it’s fine. But on the occasion I need to fix something, I swear every seemingly relevant forum post is from 2015 or earlier. It’s maddening.

I really love URLCheck, available on F-Droid. It intercepts URL requests, gives you some info, and prompts you to choose a browser whenever you click a link from another app.

If you want to give KDE a shot, you don’t need to buy a Deck. Just grab a live installer image from a Linux distro you like, tons of them let you boot and try it out from RAM without actually installing to your hard disk.

I’m pretty UI agnostic (many years with Windows, Mac, ChromeOS, Unity, a few with xfce, and a bit with Cinnamon). I almost picked Gnome on a recent update to my primary home machine for its clean Mac-ish feel, but SteamOS convinced me that modern KDE is actually rather nice.

Yep, I’ve been using the same basic feature on stock Android for years as well, with Magisk and Advanced Charging Controller (ACC).

I don’t disagree with you. But don’t you think there’s a component of it that’s like, “Hey I want to both 1) release a game and 2) put food on table”? Since 99% of players are on Windows, actually doing both kind of necessitates building for Windows first.

As Linux gamers I think we should keep going in the direction we’ve been and making it easier and easier for devs to port to Linux or run their games through Proton and so forth. It’s been amazing and my time as a player has been so good in the last couple years. If we keep showing that, more players will come over and the userbase will grow. I’ve heard from plenty of others who have ditched Windows, because gaming was their last holdout.

The big AAA publishers aren’t struggling for basic needs. We can make demands of them. But the small inside devs? Help 'em out where you can.

Still haven’t brought back the 3.5 mm headphone jack? And is that big battery replaceable (i.e. without anything stupid like ungluing it from the delicate touchscreen)?

Any coverage that omits these things is garbage IMO.

Steam page says Denuvo :(

Also $70 for the base game, ouch.

A surprising number of plastic/rubber components used in cheap electronics accessories will offgas. You notice an odd smell, that’s literally petrochemicals entering your nostrils by the millions. Some of them can mimic biomolecules like hormones. I’m not saying they’re necessarily all harmful but there needs to be a lot more research.

For SR3, just do it, it’s a really well-made game and runs great and you don’t need any prior knowledge except to know that it’s kind of a GTA parody. I don’t think SR1 was even ported to PC, and SR2 is pretty buggy and unstable on modern machines (though fun aside from that). SR4 supposed to be pretty great (same engine as 3 I think) but I haven’t played it.

FH4 has a healthy playerbase and I’m pretty confident it’ll still be worth playing over the next year. However beyond that as the community slowly dwindles it will eventually become less fun with fewer people doing Forzathons or seasonal co-ops or using the auctions, even if the servers are still running.

KSP has what players call “the Kraken” where the game engine sometimes bugs out and causes your vehicle to spin out of control and/or explode for no apparent reason. It happens more with really big vessels and complex missions. But yeah it’s not bug-free and you’ll want to quicksave often so you don’t lose hours of work.

If you like the cheesy story, Saints Row the Third is wacky awesome fun. It’s not 100 hours so you’d have to replay it, but you could do that co-op with a couple of friends. There’s nothing quite like bailing out of your fighter jet wearing a hotdog costume and then blowing up half a city block with your rocket launcher on the way down.

Vampire Survivors is a good candidate too, regularly introducing new characters and weapon combos and weird secrets for pretty non-stop dopamine. Maybe you could get 100 hours with the expansions but that seems like a stretch.

Honorable mention to Forza Horizon 4, it’s everything Burnout Paradise wished it could be and had a smile on my face nearly the entire time. Although there were a few spots where I set the difficulty too high and/or didn’t tune up my car and lost races, so that was less fun, but kind of my own fault. Well over 100 hours on this one, but the base game has only come down to $12 and won’t be sold after today!

Kerbal Space Program’, do I need to say more ?

I love KSP, but no way, it’s full of challenges that require deliberate planning, patience, persistence and more. e.g. Your first Mun landing, or making a vehicle that can successfully return from Eve. Those are not adrenaline-fueled non-stop thrills, but rather careful exercises in engineering and discipline occasionally punctuated with excitement.

No, the last game that got me hooked for hundreds of hours is modded Cyberpunk 2077, but I don’t know if it can be found for 10 bucks.

Nope, historical low is still like $25.

Oh damn, you’re right. I just tried it with Steam Play turned off and it wouldn’t even launch.

I swear it was already playable via Proton though. I even installed it on Steam Deck just for shits & giggles a couple months ago and it worked, albeit not a great experience on a 7" screen. Still, any improvements are good.