I have considered looking into this. Building one’s own TV might be the move.

Have you done it, and if so, any tips?

I mean, they say both things.

My advice is never use a smart tv of any kind.

It is getting harder and harder to find a dumb TV though.

This is one effect of a general lack of real consequences for corporations and those that run them.

The company has already determined their likely fine after being caught doing something egregious. The profit from being early to market is significant, and so long as it is considerably higher than the likely fine, they go for it. The expected real earnings are the difference between the profit and the fine. It’s all made worse since so often the fine is absolutely nothing compared to the profit, since the numbers these companies are dealing with are so damn big.

This is why you won’t see real change until we stop slapping corporations with fines and start slapping executives with jail time. That is literally the only way to break the cycle.

Elden Ring does run quite nicely on Linux via Proton, though.

This has generally been my experience as well. The sole exception: Distant Worlds. I’ve never, ever gotten it to run with any version of Proton.

Yeah. It seems obvious when looked at from a design standpoint. They have shifted the product into a different space.

Windows 11?

I’ve seen them in the start menu, and in the bloat installed without consent, and in the emails to the mandatory Microsoft account.

Edit: not sure why the downvote, unless you have some evidence that MS doesn’t push ads via those channels.

It’s important to differentiate advertising from sharing information, generally. SponsorBlock is not a corporate product, so mentioning it is not an ad. If the idea is not to share information, then the entire internet should be avoided, but advertisements specifically are aimed at some party making money.

I do actively try and avoid ads wherever possible, mostly through the use of open-source approaches. I don’t have them on my phone because of heavy modification (except technically robocalls). I don’t have any on my desktop rigs because of a complete reliance on Linux. I get some on my work machine, which is a Mac, but I went with that because IT gave me two choices and Linux wasn’t one of them. I know I’d have more had I gone Windows.

I don’t watch traditional television, but there aren’t many ways to consume corporate content without also consuming ads. I think that is a thread that ties a lot of this together. Basically, if you want to consume corporate content, you have to concede to watching advertising in some capacity, and that is by design.

I would argue that we should be able to avoid it in life generally (e.g. billboards and such, which are a constant annoyance), but aside from that, I always see ads as a tradeoff that I have no option to avoid if I want to consume certain content.

Edit:

Basically, if you want to consume corporate content, you have to concede to watching advertising in some capacity

*if you want to consume corporate content legally

Shocked, I tell you.

I suspect that’s a growing pain. Same reason it happened on Lemmy, especially right after the reddit API changes.

Oof. Ok, thx for the context.

…so it’s DRM? Isn’t GOG explicitly no DRM?

What is the purpose of that DLL? I ask because the Steam version is also DRM free (can be run without Steam), but lacks that DLL.

I never use BPM but I’ll look into it, thx

This. I’d be all over GOG but as it stands, Steam QoL on Linux is superb compared to the other options.

Plus, Proton, supporting that development, etc.

What a cluster. I feel for devs who are in a bad spot here thanks to yet more corporate greed.

I hope that one positive that stems from this is less trust in corporate solutions, since ultimately they are always beholden to profit – unlike things like Godot, that now also hopefully get the support they deserve.

Low-cost entry point products (including low-cost airline tickets) will be at the forefront of corporate bullshittery and privacy concerns for a long time.

Thanks to OP for pointing this one out. The best we can do is hope for good awareness and changes coming from that (and obviously, for those with the means for bigger changes, please speak up).

That many businesses have equally shitty practices certainly doesn’t mean we should stop complaining about them and calling them out.

I noticed that VPN issue when I tried to buy event tickets a while back. Super scummy. They don’t need to know my home IP to sell me tickets. On the app, even if you have location services on, it just refuses you a connection via VPN.

It seems apt

May trigger some folks here by using apt. :)

I’ve been a linux user off-and-on for about ten years. In the last two years, I’ve worked to switch to it exclusively, with the last holdout being my gaming rig that has been Windows-free for 1-1.5 years. I rely on Arch, Debian, and Pop for my daily drivers, but I’m also always trying to suggest that distro doesn’t matter a whole lot, except to simplify setup for certain use cases.

But as to the crux of your question: for me, the appeal comes down to a few different factors.

Freedom

This is the one absolutely everyone says. It’s true in some senses, but not in others. For example, I do have more or less complete freedom over my own hardware if I am using a purely FOSS setup. There is a certain power in that, but moreover, it feels like a necessity – I paid for the hardware, and am wholly opposed to handing over usage rights to it to some software black box that could be doing things outside of my best interests. Is that tinfoil hat-ty? Yep. But I also do think it’s realistic.

Practicality

This might seem out of place given Linux’s history. It’s better known as a tinkerer’s OS with lesser known procedures and mechanisms than as an easy, practical OS. But Linux has changed by leaps and bounds since its earlier days. It’s no longer difficult to set up (unless you want some crazy shit, but that’s true on the Windows side too and thus can be factored out).

I measure practicality in a few different ways. Does the machine do what I need it to? Does it waste resources doing so? Does it do things I don’t want it to do? Is it hard to do the things I need to do on the machine?

In my own experience, Linux does what I need it to do. It does it without wasting as many resources as Windows (I was still on an i7 4790k until last week, because it was plenty – I only upgraded for gaming performance). It doesn’t do things I don’t ask it to, and even if it did, I could adjust it.

The common annoyance of Windows Update being constantly in your face is a thing. Ads in the start menu. Bloatware. All of those things I don’t want the hardware that I paid for to be doing. All of those things make Windows less practical for daily use.

But what about software support? What if I need something that only runs on Windows? First, these instances are fewer and fewer. Gaming was the biggest of elephants in the room, and frankly, I find Linux gaming superior to Windows now. I can run DX12 games and pre-cache the shaders, causing less stutter in general as a result. For AMD, the graphics drivers are in the Linux kernel – never do I need to worry about manual video driver installs again. Yes, some games do not perform as well through Proton – but some perform at parity and others run better than on Windows.

There are some clear examples of software with no real Linux alternative, e.g. Adobe suite: You could use GIMP instead of Photoshop for many tasks, but not all. You could opt for Inkscape instead of Illustrator, except it doesn’t support CMYK and some other features. Need Premiere? Then you probably actually need Premiere. There isn’t really a good way to run the Windows versions (unless they now work in WINE or even Proton – I haven’t looked into it in some time), so if you need them, you may be SOL. But many people do not need them, myself included, and the alternatives work great for the limited use cases I have elsewhere.

The new reliance on web apps for so many things has been an obvious boon for Linux. You can have the same browser experience but without the extra overhead in the back.

All of this adds up, in my view, to an experience that is superior on the Linux side, and thus I stick with it.

Community

Believe it or not, this is a big one. Stereotypes aside, the Linux community (and FOSS community) in general is amazing to be a part of. You usually don’t see people discussing the finer points of Windows outside of corporate events. But Linux still rides that line between hobby and necessity. The community is one of the things that keeps computing fun, but at this point Windows just feels like the soulless. corporate option. In contrast, for as stable and easy as modern Linux can be, it can also still be a tinkerer’s playground at heart.

All of these things taken together – the freedom, the practicality, keeping the fun in computing – make Linux an obvious choice in my opinion. I really have not looked back.

Yeah, that’s not necessarily the case. Did it kind of work? Sure, if you knew what you were doing. Was it at all the seamless experience that Proton is now? No.

That’s why we have /s

I did. It was fine and about what I expected.

It’s not a terribly well optimized game, but that was true on Windows too.

Edit: couple other deets, I’m on a 6600XT and didn’t have any visual issues or anything unexpected. Definitely some stutter and I don’t remember my settings but it was cranked pretty high. Certainly very playable. I think I used Proton Experimental.

You and OP are both right, IMHO.

The issue is that things like YouTube are so ubiquitous and have such a stranglehold that it seems like it should be a service in public control and without a corporate overlord with ulterior motives. That’s the strange thing about the internet right now and ultimately the stage of capitalism we’re in: there are a ton of tacit monopolies which are not being held to any standard about what they control. Some of them look a lot like utilities (e.g. ISPs) since they are so ubiquitous (and compare YouTube to public television 50 years ago – not a utility, but also not something that has traditionally been possible for any single corporation).

That said, ultimately these companies will continue to do whatever they want because they can (until real regulation returns, but I have my qualms it will ever happen at this point).

We are in the cyberpunk dystopia that used to seem so cool

Post title: “app”. The official app requires Chrome to be installed for login.

You can use the web version on whatever.

I guess Do No Harm is going really well

As others have mentioned, the way Linux mounts drives means that they are effectively no different (for these purposes) as local folders in the same volume.

That said, I think the clear answer to your overarching question is yes. I have a Linux gaming rig with a boot volume (from which I run no games), 2 gaming SSDs, and a few slow mechanical storage drives. Those SSDs are mounted to subdirectories in /home/myuser, and each houses a separate Steam library. From Steam’s standpoint, they’re ultimately two libraries on the same volume.

Agree with other folks that many distros “just work” at this point, but +1 for PopOS. Been using it for gaming for a year now, first with nvidia and then later with the (easier) AMD.

Doesn’t RDNA2 support ray tracing in general? I think it was just waiting for the Linux drivers to support it.

There was a way to do it with Valve’s Windows 10 drivers for the Deck more than a year ago.

It’s been wonderful. I’ve not worried about drivers for a year.

Tbh – any of the above. Linux on the desktop has progressed by leaps and bounds pretty recently, and there are good experiences being had with a lot of distros. The biggest issue might be realizing that distro doesn’t matter as much as it used to.