Scarcity manufactured by the AI “boom”. When the AI bubble pops, expect a huge slump in hardware prices as companies try to offload huge stockpiles of worthless RAM, CPUs and GPUs.

Would just add, while you can change the permissions on NTFS drives in Linux, I’d generally recommend using a Linux dedicated partition (Ext4 for example) for games. It’s faster and also much less likely to cause unexpected issues.

The headline doesn’t quite reflect the situation, but it is difficult to capture in a headline.

Essentially add “for now”. Many of the issues are fixable but not necessarily by one laptop maker. As the article said by the time the issues were likely resolved the laptop would be obsolete as the version 2 of the chip would release.

Having said that, it’s not clear how fast the issues will resolve as without any devices there won’t be impetus to put fixes in to different parts of the ecosystem to get the full potential of the chipset.

The GPU sounds like the most serious problem and without manufacturer engagement may be the longest to get fixed.

Yes it’s fairly simple to do, essentially the user needs to download an image of a Linux install disc, flash it onto a USB stick (or a Dvd I guess), and then reboot their PC. They may need to press a key at boot to open the boot menu and select the USB (or the bios to change the boot order).

After that, most distros offer a very easy to follow installer which will install the new OS.

Most Linux installs can be done alongside windows (on the same hard drive or it’s own drive) but windows tends to break the boot loader with updates. It’s gernallt better to only dual boot if you’re good at fixing things - otherwise a full Linux install is better.

The most inportant thing is back up all your important data, and only do this if you genuinely want to leave windows. I’d make sure your windows license is digital before doing this too as that allows using windows again if you want to go back.

I’d say anyone can use Linux, it’s user friendly and robust. In terms of installing Linux, I’d only do it if you are sure you know what you’re doing - installing any OS - including windows - can involved trouble shooting problems.

I think the new device is good news. I can see what you’re saying - the benefit is if Steam Machines expand the PC games market with former console only players. But otherwise the threshold for PC development is already much lower than consoles; there are no dev kit fees, a wide choice of engines to target, relatively greater independence etc.

The steam machine may help somewhat in having a specific hardware profile to target, but the games are still on steam’s store so still have to be able to run widely on Windows or Linux. That’s always been the complexity of PC development - the steam machine doesn’t change that much. Although admittedly the Steam Verified benchmarks are useful for users to simplify understanding what their kit can actually run which will benefit indie devs.

For me it seems to be when you go through to download the windows binary, you get an iframe on the page containing another site. That has ads and serves up the download. So I’m guessing the ads are on the website that provides videolan with hosting for its binaries?

They are old fashioned intrusive ads pretending you need to click then to start your download. But the download starts already.

I think Nextcloud with the libreoffice plugins is the main Google docs self hosting alternative at this point.

• OS - - > Linux OpenSuSE with KDE

• YouTube - - > Freetube - opensource, private YouTube client for Linux, MacOS and Windows

• Downloading music/videos --> yt-dlp

• Downloading videos/images --> gallery-dl

• Email - - > Thunderbird (really moved forward in last few years)

• Notes - - > Joplin

Selfhosting (mine is on raspberry pi) :

• Streaming library - Jellyfin

• Photo library - imich

• Downloads - qbittorrent, prowlaar, radaar, sonaar, lazy librarian in a docker stack with VPN

• smart home - Homeassistant

• filesync - - > Syncthing (I don’t have problems with long file names - maybe a Windows issue or Linux FS? I use EXT4 on all my devices and don’t use Windows anymore)

Yeah, they did. Probably because OpenSuSE is better known than SuSE at this point. Yet it’ll stay the base for SuSE. It makes some sense I guess - Fedora is the base for RedHat for example. It is a bit confusing and complicated for an open source project to share branding with a commercial project; probably quite restricting for OpenSuSE. But a rebrand is also messy itself.

Yes there are, but haven’t heard when they plan to make the change.

The article names the game in the headline, not clear why your post needed to try to be click bait?

It’s about OpenMW, the open source game engine to play Morrowind on.

Any points and click adventure game, there are loads including old classics and modern good games.

Monkey Island remasters are fun and can be played with mouse. Broken Sword games are also good.

Rusty Lake games are great if you prefer more puzzle games than narrative ones. Still has a great somewhat surreal plot just not like a point and click narrative game.

Also If you havent played dwarf fortress now is the time to learn, the siege update came out this week. Mouse or keyboard, or both, but definitely can be done one handed.

Vampire Survivor that others have suggested is a good shout, one hand on the keyboard is enough and its very addictive.

Also separate from my long response, thanks for sharing that link. Very interesting read and the GNOME window decoration issue is rediculous.

For me, I’m sorry to say, GNOME is the epitome of asshole design. This one of many examples of its rigid design philosophy having negative consequences for users and devs. And devs are protecting GNOME from its own users bad experiences because the user blames the game for not conforming, not the DE for being rediculous.

Worth saying the 3% market share is very new, and previously the share has been way way below this. At 3% that is millions of users but even that is hard to justify a linux release; many games dont even get MacOS versions even now and it has higher desktop share.

The other problem for linux is version control - libraries are different across distros of different ages, and also constantly update. If you build software on a dependency and it changes in a few years, your game may break. As bad as windows is, when games are distributed a lot of the dependencies are distributed with the game as DLLs and installers for Microsoft tools. But for linux you previously could not guarentee the same version of the same dependency will be available on two distros still actively supported.

It can be surprisingly hard to get old Linux software to run on new Linux distros. People are not generally aware of this as generally its old windows and dos games that people try to get working (so wine or dosbox are used), not old Linux software like Open Office from 2005 or an old version of Firefox. Most linux software continually evolves or its niche and just stops working (unless youre willing to go back and compile from source, and that can get nightmarish if it doesnt compile)

Proton is part of the solution but developing “for” proton is not efficient long term. It is great for enabling windows games to work on linux, but linux native games would be more optimal. We’re just lucky we’re now in a time where there is a lot of CPU and GPU resource available to support the overhead and windows is also so bloated making linux + proton comparatively better.

I suspect Flatpak may be another part of the solution - Flatpak can essentially be a way of ensuring a game can have a fixed set of dependencies which install on any Linux and should just work. Its not that far off the windows model of packaging DLLs, but is much cleaner and contained.

Nix is another potential approach to this.

But developing for Linux wouldn’t take off until the market share is substantially higher. The SteamDeck and tge rumours Steam console may help with that, but for now I think devs relying on Proton makes sense.

In terms of KDE dependencies, you’re talking basically about QT. The amount of packages you download shouldnt be too much and likely used for other QT programs which are common.

However there is also GSconnect which is a Gnome extension and uses the KDE connect protocol.

I would say that your concerns regarding the KDE Connect dependencies should be balanced against the good Android and iOS support, and the wide use of KDE connect means it is well maintained, supported and responsive to security updates. These considerations may outweigh the installation of packages that you otherwise won’t be using? It may be better to go mainstream and accept the dependencies than hunt down a lesser supported alternative and deal woth the associated shortcomings.

GG.

I never delete anything, although I did forward all my emails from Gmail to Proton and delete them off Gmail.

Everything is marked as read too although tbh I do that in large batches of a few thousand in one go. I’m very bad at checking my emails.

I’m not really a data hoarder - I just can’t be arsed to go through them and delete them, plus very occasionally it’s been very helpful to find an random email from years ago. I’m also pretty good at not subscribing to marketing emails etc and unsubscribing if I do (eventually…)

I think your auto-correct has gone wrong; patients rather than patents 3 times.

Totally agree with your point though. I’d extend it to include copyright reform as well as patents; intellectual property rights are being abused globally and used as a way to abuse citizens.

The key is getting out at the right time, and that is weighed massively against small investors. The big investors and institions control the market and can move quickly while small investors cannot.

Tesla is not doing well - look at its falling sales. It’s a risky stock to hold. The AI companies are also highly risky stocks to hold.

That doesn’t mean don’t hold them - all anyone is saying really is that these are high risk investments, and at some point they are going to probably crash because it’s a bubble.

That doesn’t necessarily mean “don’t invest”. It does certainly mean be prepared to get out fast and also only use money you can afford to lose when investing with such high risk stocks.

Xwayland is an X11 server that runs under Wayland. It acts as a compatibility layer so that programs that are native X11 programs that don’t support Wayland can still be run. The system largely determines when to use Xwayland; it’s not generally something the user does.

Wine, and it’s derivative for gaming Proton are normally run as X11 applications. There is a Wayland driver for wine - it’s not perfect, and not widely used by default yet, but it does generally work. Still, at the moment usually wine and Proton are by default running with X11 (and so xwayland) even on Wayland.

When there are issues under Wayland it’s generally to do with Nvidia drivers rather than xwayland or x11. But the wine Wayland.drv can still give a performance boost. It can also causes its own issues so is best used on a case by case basis.

Some people do set wine or proton to use the Wayland drivers when using Wayland; for example with Steam and Proton-GE just add PROTON_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 into the games launch options and it’ll run directly under Wayland.

It may be a way for OP to switch to Wayland and see if they can get good gaming performance in wine/Proton. However it’s more likely the Nvidia drivers are the cause of the performance issues under Wayland.

So to be clear Wayland + Pantheon resolves the issue but with a performance hit in games? X11 + Pantheon has the issue but with otherwise good performance in games?

Presumably all the system packages and software is up to date. If not then do a update.

Starting with the basics, what kind of mouse and keyboard do you have? If they are wireless, how are they connecting to your device? Note some manufacturers don’t provide drivers for Linux so it’s worth seeing if your brand and device is supported (E.g. Logitech and it’s wireless dongle; you need Solaar to get basic support and switching to Bluetooth may be best if available).

If they are wired, have you tried plugging the keyboard and mouse into different ports on your PC? If they’re on the same USB Bus that could be contributing to the problem. Although that really shouldn’t be an issue at all with modern devicss, it might be enough to get round whatever the issue is if one of your devices is conflicting.

Presumably if there is a power profile in Pantheon, and if so you’ve set it to performance, not something like balanced? This ensures that everything is running at full capacity. There are rare polling issues with wine and some USB devices, and one solution is ensuring the CPU is in performance rather balanced power settings to prevent a bottleneck.

If the issue is still persisting then I would next install a different Desktop Environment to see if the issue persists. This may help check if it’s an issue with Pantheon itself. Install a lightweight desktop environment such as XFCE. Try out XFCE in both X11 and Wayland, and see if the problem persists. If it doesn’t then submit a bug report to the Pantheon makers and consider switching to another DE (such as KDE or Gnome). If not then it at least helps seemingly exclude pantheon as the cause. It can be messy installing another DE and difficult to remove cleanly so one method is create a backup of your system using Timeshift, and then restore it after trying XFCE to bring your system back to its original state.

If the issue persists you could also try switching to an older version of the Nvidia drivers or the open Noevaeu drivers. If it resolves it that helps narrow the problem although if it doesn’t resolve it you still can’t entirely exclude the graphics drivers as the cause.

I think assuming all the basics make no difference, the most telling test will be if switching from Pantheon to another DE helps - in X11 and Wayland. Pantheon is relatively niche and DEs are also important factors in themselves when it comes to performance and also bugs. If it persists beyond a DE test, then I’d be most suspicious it’s a driver issue either with the devices themselves or the graphics drivers.

Not much more I can think of beyond that at the moment sorry.