I think overall that piracy is good.
It returns control over media, instead of being bound to specific platforms or stores.
It allows you to test things on your hardware, before committing to a purchase.
It makes it possible to recover old media that you physically lost.
It makes your media portable, able to copy it to a new device or hardware without being locked out.
It makes things sharable, able to give a copy to a friend to have them try it out.
But one thing I find difficult is just the sheer amount of things that exist nowadays.
I don’t know how you guys manage it, but I have more media on just my laptop (external drives and such excluded) than I could really enjoy in my lifetime. How to even make choice of what to watch, play, read, next?
I know, very much a first-world problem. But still, it boggles my mind.
“Unsanctioned copying” gives me a big pile to choose from, but in reality I still have nothing. For example I like computer games, but I use Linux, so 2/3 of titles are unplayable. 90% of rest are things that are completely not interesting to me. I am lucky if I can find something playable once or twice per month.
I really don’t feel your problem.
In all the years I’ve been using Linux, there’s been maybe 2 games I couldn’t play, and that was because the developers deliberately blocked Linux users from starting the game, not for any inherent technical reason.
2/3 is a little low. Around 90% of Windows games are playable on Linux using Proton.
Nah. Do you really believe in that? Yes, Unity and Unreal based games are mostly(!) runnable. Anything else is very problematic. Where did you even get that 90% number? From Proton advertisements?
Tom’s hardware, last year. https://www.tomshardware.com/software/linux/nearly-90-percent-of-windows-games-now-run-on-linux-latest-data-shows-as-windows-10-dies-gaming-on-linux-is-more-viable-than-ever
Could be more by now!
Personally anecdote, but i got a game that was made for windows vista that doesnt work without patches for anything newer than windows 7. But it works out of the box with proton. /shrug
Yeah, Windows managed to break that only really cool characteristic it had: back compatibility. Well, their loss.
It’s undoubtedly higher than 90%
As a Linux user, I definitely live a reality of ~70-80% success with Proton, a bit more if I’m willing to do technical finegling.
Probably depends heavily on what sort of games you tend to play (and your setup). I play a lot of old or indie games, I’m not so big on the latest AAAs or online games.
Yes, may take some tinkering, but playable.
My 14 year old is now doing the tinkering himself after being on Bazzite, then Fedora, for a few years.
I’m also on Linux, but haven’t found a game from my collection yet that doesn’t play (only destiny, but I’m happy I didn’t spend more time on it)
I’ve tried being a bit more strict with my own choices, like limiting to games I already have in my collection or downloaded. Or games that don’t have too much grind or dark patterns.
But it still leaves me with a huge choice.