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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 25th, 2023

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  • In addition to aforementioned current pricing problems, the steam machine also comes with a small form factor (which is difficult to build to work well, might need specially made parts to fit it) and a preinstalled easy to use console-like OS for gaming, presumably with support.

    If you don’t care for those, then sure, not the target market. I’m not planning on buying one, but if I ever want a small form factor PC, this is going to be a serious contender - even if I end up putting a different distro on it, there’s real value in the form factor and presumably having hardware that’ll work well on Linux.





  • I would have to learn […] what packages I need, what are the ups and downs of the various packages

    I consider that important knowledge for just using and troubleshooting your system, and one of the great reasons to go through the installation process - knowing what you’re using and why means when you want to change the behavior of something or figure out why it broke, you’ll know what software to look for.

    Not just something to do for fun, or to have precisely the right things, but so you understand what it is you truly do have. This isn’t to say your approach is invalid, but for me it’s a reason to recommend Arch for people who want to go through the learning process.


  • Also someone sent me a two hour long video on exploiting goomba behavior in Super Mario 64 for glitches

    Pancake man strikes again! I think part of what makes pannenkoek’s videos so enthralling is how they all build together towards the ABC - it’s not just random bugs in an old game, it’s bugs that are being found for a cause by a community of enthusiasts.




  • I use Arch personally, and as mentioned you should restart every update - but you can just not update everyday (updates don’t even come at a scheduled time, it’s just packages getting new versions whenever, so by the time you finish updating there could be another updated package for you)

    I think updating weekly and as necessary is a good schedule, though if you don’t update frequently and try to install something new, the version pacman will try to install will be based on your local repository information, matched to your other packages, and might no longer be available in mirrors. And you shouldn’t install an updated version of just one package, because if it pulls in the wrong updated dependencies you could break your install.




  • People looking up alternatives doesn’t mean they actually want to use them. Switching to an alternative necessarily means some pains, in terms of changed interface, functionality, and community. You can’t just magically switch between platforms and have all the people follow you there, and that’s a dealbreaker for many.

    As far as I know, the fediverse is growing, just not explosively. We can hope that at some point it reaches a threshold that convinces a lot of people to move over, cementing it as a “proper” platform.



  • I don’t remember what the shell and terminal emulator situation looked like, but I do remember that the installer specifically asks you to choose how you want to partition, so it seems unfair to me to complain about it being the “default”.

    I put it on my laptop, which I barely use, and just had it still running Win10 until the SSD died. It seems really nice for that purpose, to just get a quick and easy install for a secondary device, while keeping access to everything else I like about Arch.






  • We never needed more.

    I might be wrong, but I think that’s too early for me - I’d like 120fps at 1440p in a game like Portal 2 as a regular mid-to-high end experience, and I’d like to have room for funky stuff (portals will already have some funky cost).

    The issue to me is that it’s a nonsensical competition for better graphics, without considering the actual experience, and instead of solving the root causes people are treating performance as the issue to attack by reducing fidelity, framerate and resolution, and filling in the gaps.

    It’s funny, thinking about it. Back when hardware was weak game developers figured out they can keep textures at low resolution and layer them with differently scaled textures, or straight up noise, to make them look more detailed up close. Now we’re basically doing the equivalent of that on the whole screen, cutting down on the image and filling in the gaps, and it’s become a competition of who can do it better.