I'm an avid Humble Bundler and I've been a Linux Gamer since my only real option was Quake, Unreal, and whatever Loki ported.
There is a HUGE and awesome selection of Linux compatible games on Steam.
Fine, not every AAA title you want is there, in fact being a AAA title tends to reduce the likelihood that it will be available on Linux AKA Steam OS, but the "shotgun buying" approach of the Humble Bundle has gotten me to try a bunch of titles I probably wouldn't have looked at otherwise and I've loved some of them.
I have got 716 games in my Steam Library - most of which were straight from the Humble Bundle, probably 690ish or so. Of that - I'm not at home so my counts not exact, 415 or so work on Linux, some of those are AAA titles, both Portals, some Star Wars games, Tomb Raider (the remake), Goat Simulator....
Among the 300 or so titles are the ones that annoy me the most. Among those that are in my Steam Library are a couple of games that work great on Linux, but aren't available for Linux on Steam. The original Bittrip Runner for example (we won't talk about how the Bitrip guys completely ignore Steam control settings and do their own thing making anything but an XBOX control useless without 3rd party software), Unreal Tournament 2004, Quake 3 - which I bought the metal tin Linux version of, Unreal Tournament 2004, all work on Linux by means other than Steam but not with Steam. I know Unreal shouldn't be difficult, one of the games I have that works on everything is Brütal Legend, which uses the Unreal Engine.
The ones that annoy me most are emulator/engine based games. Among the games I have that work on everything are a bunch of kids games, Freddy The Fish, Pajama Sam, that sort of thing for my kids, along with Gabriel Knight, Broken Sword and Tex Murphy games that run Scumm or something akin to it. I have Pajama Sam games that work on the the Play Station, Mac OS X, Mac OS 9 and some previous, Win 3.11, Linux, Windows NT platforms, you name it. They work because of the engine underneath. I have the Mortal Kombat arcade collection. I can play the Arcade ROMs on any OS I want if I want to be a pirate, but I bought the games instead. I have to play them on Windows because I bought them. THIS IS WHY PEOPLE PIRATE. You can't tell me that a AAA company doesn't have the budget to make arcade ROMs that already work on just about any OS or type of processor I want using questionable means legal on three different OS's that's pretty close to being just 2 since BSD and Linux are so similar while Freddy the Fish can work on anything I want it to - including Android. (granted the Android version didn't come from Steam - but that should be the next area Valve looks at)
No, some motivation is what is needed, I think Microsoft repeating the "IE Only" style mistake with video games would be a good start.
I'm happy to report some games that I've acquired at earlier dates as part of a bundle eventually became compatible with Steam OS/Linux. I think one or both of the Torchlight games and at least two Star Wars games had this happen. (Still not Giana Sisters despite the promise)
I've been waiting for SteamOS to seriously take off.
For SteamOS to seriously take off DEVELOPERS HAVE TO EMBRACE LINUX.
For that to happen they need a good kick in the ass. Microsoft pissing them off would be a good kick in the ass. I haven't had a Windows machine since Win 2000 was still new up until about a month ago. I got tired of waiting for the promised Linux port of Giana Sisters Twisted Dreams, not to mention I'm really looking forward to South Park the Fractured But Whole, both of which are Windows only. I built a Wintendo with a monitor emulator plug so it just sits there and runs steam for Steam Casting to my Linux machine and the Steam Link I picked up for $20.
There's a shortage of below minimum wage labor within our borders.
Call centers tend to be run as sweat shops to squeeze as much tech work out of as minimally qualified people as possible for a little pay as they can offer to get them to show up to work. India was the solution to pay even less to get equally unqualified work.
The problem with tech isn't the lack of people willing to work tech, there's thousands of reasonably good techs that are jobless in every major city. It's the way companies view tech. Bean counters see tech as a pure expense since I.T. rarely brings money into the company directly. The job of I.T. is to enable everyone else in the company to bring money in. Sadly I.T. is seen as the equivalent to cleaning staff or the electrician that had a job to do but never left by many organizations. This view of I.T. is part of why so many companies that shun tech are often caught without good backups and easily fall prey to ransomware. At least ransomware makers are profiting from the mindset.
The man is a genius. Anyone who can come up with a new stock market (carbon credits) put themselves at the top and actually get people to buy into it isn't a buffoon. Greedy, huxster, sell out, puppet bitch-boy of global interest, sure, but he pulled off a shenanigan on a global level that has given him tons of profit and still has people arguing and fighting about it.
He only lost the election against Bush because he got out-cheated. They both had plenty of people in place stuffing ballot boxes and rigging the vote, Bush just had better connections.
I've bought them on Amazon too. I was hoping for a used copy but got a knock-off instead - worked great, the cases are a bit brittle and don't last in a backpack like the real ones do.
I never intentionally bought them counterfeit. I approve of this "certified real" program, but I'm guessing the certified as real guys are still going to be a little higher priced in the end. It's worth it to me.
Did I mention I rip my movies too? Kodi is awesome, I can play those back on my phone (at home) my PS3, my desktop, the TV it's plugged into.....
Not exactly the same deal - I do use Netflix (and to a lesser degree Amazon etc...).
The difference is with Netflix I plop my butt on the couch at home and watch something with a mostly (but my ISP still sucks a little) dependable wired connection to the Netflix servers.
On the music side of things I'm in the car, at my desk at work, on my bicycle. When I'm using my phone to stream and I'm not tethered to WiFi I have to pay $10 a GB. Sure I can put my hopes into the generosity of every place I want to listen to music being generous with WiFi, many places have it, I just have to count on them having reasonable back haul that isn't over saturated, getting a password, and that their router doesn't suck unlike that one restaurant I used to eat at that kept it in the kitchen visible on top of a warming rack so it needed rebooting every hour or two due to overheating.
No - not the same thing at all. I am the I.T. guy. When I can't get on WiFi away from home or work I usually can't bitch at anyone else and really expect results. On the other hand if it's at a relatives or in-laws house I'm usually welcome to upgrade them.
It's a matter of mindset and responsibility. When you carry your own music you're saying "I've got this", when you stream music outside of your own domain you're saying "serve me".
Maybe it's my work, etc... History but I just can't comprehend the streaming obsession. I'm a sysadmin, and nearly every damned user I have is on Spotify constantly. My wife is on Pandora constantly.
I have a pile of a couple of hundred CD's I've bought over the years I've turned into Oggs and I have digital albums I've bought online and put on my phone, my desktop at home, my desktop at works and everywhere I want my music.
My music works when the Internet is out (which is part of the history I spoke of, I've lived in a seaside shack that lost DSL every time it rained in the past. My music works when I driving in the middle of New Mexico where the FM auto seek just goes in circles and I have 0 bars. My music worked when I worked at the Johnson Space Center in a building that was intentionally shielded in a huge Faraday cage literally built into the outer wall during the cold war to keep Soviet bugs from broadcasting.
I had at least one user who bitched every time time Spotify quit working. I have users that will bitch to upper management if stuff like that doesn't work often enough upper management will tell us to fix it even though it's not company software, not officially authorized to be installed, and has zero to do with getting the job done.
There is nothing preventing these users from bringing music in on their phones and playing it at their desk, nor is there a policy or security apparatus that keeps them from copying a huge load of music files onto their machines.
Why would you leave your music - especially when it's these people who obviously care about it enough to bitch to management - to the whims of bandwidth when you can have it on your own storage that will work even when the powers out as long as your battery holds up?
Probably because we have our phones over here and our computers over there and face it - as nice as our phones are they aren't full fledged desktops that run Steam.....
I don't think my first smart phone could have. I had a Motorola Q - I had a very bad battery heat up incident of its own and lacked any way that I knew of to get video out of it.
with my Pixel - it has USB C, that's all that's really required. I've put mice and keyboards on my phones all the way back to my HTC EVO, which had an HDMI port BTW making this sort of thing much easier.
I think I probably could have done it with my HTC One M8 with USB OTG.
Fortunately being a small town there was a computer at the library but no one who actually knew how to manage the thing back in the mid 90's. I screwed that thing up and fixed more times than I can count messing with DOS and Windows 3.1 on it. It's how I dug myself out of the shit-hole town and launched myself into the computer field when I couldn't even afford an out of date used computer in that isolated desert shit-hole.
You know I'm a Libertarian with an actual elected position right?
I was sort of a libertarian leaning conservative, but a bit wishy washy until I became the victim of sexist courts and punitive sentencing for non-criminal conflict resolution, after that people who say crap like you just did I both pitty and see as the enemy.
I've never bothered to actually get a dedicated tv.
You sound young.
First of all - I have a wife and kids, I have a hard enough time using my own computer as it is, I have to target times when they're less likely to be around demanding my full attention - which is pretty much any time anyone plus me is home - except for my oldest who can fend for herself. (the wife and toddler both want lots of attention)
Second - I do have a nice 27" 2560x1440 monitor, and I have watched high def content on it. Were it the only screen in the house I would have a hard time taking either Cookie Monster from my toddler or the Gilmore girls from my wife to reply on Slashdot, I get the stink eye for not not focusing attention on them for any amount of time as it is.
I'm Gen-X, I'm guessing anyone Gen-Y or older probably has a TV that predated the easy to do everything on one screen era, which didn't truly start until the introduction of HDMI in 2006. Sure, I hooked a TV into an ATI Rage card back in 1997 and I built my first MythTV system back in 2003 using a Haphaug card.
If I were 22 and living in my parents basement there's a pretty good chance I wouldn't bother with a TV either. Really - my plans for an office is to get ~50" 4K TV, mount to a wall over a desk, put a couch against the opposite wall. That way I'll have a good gaming setup and a good computer monitor in my own space, but I'll still going to have something else in the living room - you know, because I don't want to rule over my family on a throne while they live like servants.
As for game consoles - I go back a ways. Sure I'm emulating a bunch of old consoles, and I guess I could part with any console that has a good enough emulator, and probably should, I just have a hard time actually doing it.
You can get a hot-air popper for less than $20 that will last for years.
I don't care if you buy store brand or 'expensive" kernels you get a LOT more popcorn per dollar, with less chance of burning the popcorn (which smells horrible BTW).
Also - I don't even have a microwave and sort of prefer it that way.
If you eat "one bag" of popcorn per day you'll break even within a month and have save a lot by the end of a year.
I'm poor. I still have a CRT TV, my latest game console is a used PS3.
I've actually noticed "moderation" as the top reason for losing points lately in many of my posts. Not troll, not flamebait, not overrated. What does that mean? Management modding?
My favorite posts in the past have been when I get a "+5 Troll" - THAT is artwork.
>>but don't mention anything to do with George Soros or middle eastern donations to the Clinton campaign you're playing partisan politics.
>So let me get this straight -- what you're saying is that it's nothing more than a partisan attack if allegations about *both* Republicans and Democrats aren't made at the same time, and given equal weight, correct? Because you realize that doesn't make any sense... the allegations here decidedly aren't equivalent, and your attempt to impose some sort of false equivalency between them makes you look rather partisan yourself.
Well, if you don't want to read what I said five hours before you said I didn't say it no one can force you.
The fact ONLY partisan sources are talking about the Soros stuff which is proven with real, public paper trails proves my point, not the other way around.
1. Agreed 2. No it is not silly - he is a foreign national funding protest organizations within our borders. No different than Russia. 3. So you basically agree with me. 4. So when do we talk about the contents and why do we deny their relevance to the election process?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm an avid Humble Bundler and I've been a Linux Gamer since my only real option was Quake, Unreal, and whatever Loki ported.
There is a HUGE and awesome selection of Linux compatible games on Steam.
Fine, not every AAA title you want is there, in fact being a AAA title tends to reduce the likelihood that it will be available on Linux AKA Steam OS, but the "shotgun buying" approach of the Humble Bundle has gotten me to try a bunch of titles I probably wouldn't have looked at otherwise and I've loved some of them.
I have got 716 games in my Steam Library - most of which were straight from the Humble Bundle, probably 690ish or so. Of that - I'm not at home so my counts not exact, 415 or so work on Linux, some of those are AAA titles, both Portals, some Star Wars games, Tomb Raider (the remake), Goat Simulator....
Among the 300 or so titles are the ones that annoy me the most. Among those that are in my Steam Library are a couple of games that work great on Linux, but aren't available for Linux on Steam. The original Bittrip Runner for example (we won't talk about how the Bitrip guys completely ignore Steam control settings and do their own thing making anything but an XBOX control useless without 3rd party software), Unreal Tournament 2004, Quake 3 - which I bought the metal tin Linux version of, Unreal Tournament 2004, all work on Linux by means other than Steam but not with Steam. I know Unreal shouldn't be difficult, one of the games I have that works on everything is Brütal Legend, which uses the Unreal Engine.
The ones that annoy me most are emulator/engine based games. Among the games I have that work on everything are a bunch of kids games, Freddy The Fish, Pajama Sam, that sort of thing for my kids, along with Gabriel Knight, Broken Sword and Tex Murphy games that run Scumm or something akin to it. I have Pajama Sam games that work on the the Play Station, Mac OS X, Mac OS 9 and some previous, Win 3.11, Linux, Windows NT platforms, you name it. They work because of the engine underneath. I have the Mortal Kombat arcade collection. I can play the Arcade ROMs on any OS I want if I want to be a pirate, but I bought the games instead. I have to play them on Windows because I bought them. THIS IS WHY PEOPLE PIRATE. You can't tell me that a AAA company doesn't have the budget to make arcade ROMs that already work on just about any OS or type of processor I want using questionable means legal on three different OS's that's pretty close to being just 2 since BSD and Linux are so similar while Freddy the Fish can work on anything I want it to - including Android. (granted the Android version didn't come from Steam - but that should be the next area Valve looks at)
No, some motivation is what is needed, I think Microsoft repeating the "IE Only" style mistake with video games would be a good start.
I'm happy to report some games that I've acquired at earlier dates as part of a bundle eventually became compatible with Steam OS/Linux. I think one or both of the Torchlight games and at least two Star Wars games had this happen. (Still not Giana Sisters despite the promise)
I've been waiting for SteamOS to seriously take off.
For SteamOS to seriously take off DEVELOPERS HAVE TO EMBRACE LINUX.
For that to happen they need a good kick in the ass. Microsoft pissing them off would be a good kick in the ass. I haven't had a Windows machine since Win 2000 was still new up until about a month ago. I got tired of waiting for the promised Linux port of Giana Sisters Twisted Dreams, not to mention I'm really looking forward to South Park the Fractured But Whole, both of which are Windows only. I built a Wintendo with a monitor emulator plug so it just sits there and runs steam for Steam Casting to my Linux machine and the Steam Link I picked up for $20.
There's a shortage of below minimum wage labor within our borders.
Call centers tend to be run as sweat shops to squeeze as much tech work out of as minimally qualified people as possible for a little pay as they can offer to get them to show up to work. India was the solution to pay even less to get equally unqualified work.
The problem with tech isn't the lack of people willing to work tech, there's thousands of reasonably good techs that are jobless in every major city. It's the way companies view tech. Bean counters see tech as a pure expense since I.T. rarely brings money into the company directly. The job of I.T. is to enable everyone else in the company to bring money in. Sadly I.T. is seen as the equivalent to cleaning staff or the electrician that had a job to do but never left by many organizations. This view of I.T. is part of why so many companies that shun tech are often caught without good backups and easily fall prey to ransomware. At least ransomware makers are profiting from the mindset.
I'm no fan of Al Gore.
The man is a genius. Anyone who can come up with a new stock market (carbon credits) put themselves at the top and actually get people to buy into it isn't a buffoon. Greedy, huxster, sell out, puppet bitch-boy of global interest, sure, but he pulled off a shenanigan on a global level that has given him tons of profit and still has people arguing and fighting about it.
He only lost the election against Bush because he got out-cheated. They both had plenty of people in place stuffing ballot boxes and rigging the vote, Bush just had better connections.
I've noticed that putting a clown in the vice president position seems to be the standard M.O. of modern presidents to defend against assassination.
I'm not fans of either but Gore and Bush Senior were the only non-buffoons in that position in my lifetime.
I've bought them on Amazon too. I was hoping for a used copy but got a knock-off instead - worked great, the cases are a bit brittle and don't last in a backpack like the real ones do.
I never intentionally bought them counterfeit. I approve of this "certified real" program, but I'm guessing the certified as real guys are still going to be a little higher priced in the end. It's worth it to me.
But once it's cached it's not really streaming anymore, at least after the first play.
If you don't use Clementine it's your own fault.
Did I mention I rip my movies too? Kodi is awesome, I can play those back on my phone (at home) my PS3, my desktop, the TV it's plugged into.....
Not exactly the same deal - I do use Netflix (and to a lesser degree Amazon etc...).
The difference is with Netflix I plop my butt on the couch at home and watch something with a mostly (but my ISP still sucks a little) dependable wired connection to the Netflix servers.
On the music side of things I'm in the car, at my desk at work, on my bicycle. When I'm using my phone to stream and I'm not tethered to WiFi I have to pay $10 a GB. Sure I can put my hopes into the generosity of every place I want to listen to music being generous with WiFi, many places have it, I just have to count on them having reasonable back haul that isn't over saturated, getting a password, and that their router doesn't suck unlike that one restaurant I used to eat at that kept it in the kitchen visible on top of a warming rack so it needed rebooting every hour or two due to overheating.
No - not the same thing at all. I am the I.T. guy. When I can't get on WiFi away from home or work I usually can't bitch at anyone else and really expect results. On the other hand if it's at a relatives or in-laws house I'm usually welcome to upgrade them.
It's a matter of mindset and responsibility. When you carry your own music you're saying "I've got this", when you stream music outside of your own domain you're saying "serve me".
They still do that too.
Mostly they just pay attention to what channel your mandatory cable box is tuned to. Why do you think we don't use QAM?
Maybe it's my work, etc... History but I just can't comprehend the streaming obsession. I'm a sysadmin, and nearly every damned user I have is on Spotify constantly. My wife is on Pandora constantly.
I have a pile of a couple of hundred CD's I've bought over the years I've turned into Oggs and I have digital albums I've bought online and put on my phone, my desktop at home, my desktop at works and everywhere I want my music.
My music works when the Internet is out (which is part of the history I spoke of, I've lived in a seaside shack that lost DSL every time it rained in the past. My music works when I driving in the middle of New Mexico where the FM auto seek just goes in circles and I have 0 bars. My music worked when I worked at the Johnson Space Center in a building that was intentionally shielded in a huge Faraday cage literally built into the outer wall during the cold war to keep Soviet bugs from broadcasting.
I had at least one user who bitched every time time Spotify quit working. I have users that will bitch to upper management if stuff like that doesn't work often enough upper management will tell us to fix it even though it's not company software, not officially authorized to be installed, and has zero to do with getting the job done.
There is nothing preventing these users from bringing music in on their phones and playing it at their desk, nor is there a policy or security apparatus that keeps them from copying a huge load of music files onto their machines.
Why would you leave your music - especially when it's these people who obviously care about it enough to bitch to management - to the whims of bandwidth when you can have it on your own storage that will work even when the powers out as long as your battery holds up?
Probably because we have our phones over here and our computers over there and face it - as nice as our phones are they aren't full fledged desktops that run Steam.....
I don't think my first smart phone could have. I had a Motorola Q - I had a very bad battery heat up incident of its own and lacked any way that I knew of to get video out of it.
with my Pixel - it has USB C, that's all that's really required. I've put mice and keyboards on my phones all the way back to my HTC EVO, which had an HDMI port BTW making this sort of thing much easier.
I think I probably could have done it with my HTC One M8 with USB OTG.
Yeast? That's a new one to me.
I use Coconut oil - it helps the white cheddar or ranch flavor stick better, since that stuff won't stick to clean, regular popcorn.
I learned on a library PC.
Fortunately being a small town there was a computer at the library but no one who actually knew how to manage the thing back in the mid 90's. I screwed that thing up and fixed more times than I can count messing with DOS and Windows 3.1 on it. It's how I dug myself out of the shit-hole town and launched myself into the computer field when I couldn't even afford an out of date used computer in that isolated desert shit-hole.
Don't knock the library!
You know I'm a Libertarian with an actual elected position right?
I was sort of a libertarian leaning conservative, but a bit wishy washy until I became the victim of sexist courts and punitive sentencing for non-criminal conflict resolution, after that people who say crap like you just did I both pitty and see as the enemy.
I've never bothered to actually get a dedicated tv.
You sound young.
First of all - I have a wife and kids, I have a hard enough time using my own computer as it is, I have to target times when they're less likely to be around demanding my full attention - which is pretty much any time anyone plus me is home - except for my oldest who can fend for herself. (the wife and toddler both want lots of attention)
Second - I do have a nice 27" 2560x1440 monitor, and I have watched high def content on it. Were it the only screen in the house I would have a hard time taking either Cookie Monster from my toddler or the Gilmore girls from my wife to reply on Slashdot, I get the stink eye for not not focusing attention on them for any amount of time as it is.
I'm Gen-X, I'm guessing anyone Gen-Y or older probably has a TV that predated the easy to do everything on one screen era, which didn't truly start until the introduction of HDMI in 2006. Sure, I hooked a TV into an ATI Rage card back in 1997 and I built my first MythTV system back in 2003 using a Haphaug card.
If I were 22 and living in my parents basement there's a pretty good chance I wouldn't bother with a TV either. Really - my plans for an office is to get ~50" 4K TV, mount to a wall over a desk, put a couch against the opposite wall. That way I'll have a good gaming setup and a good computer monitor in my own space, but I'll still going to have something else in the living room - you know, because I don't want to rule over my family on a throne while they live like servants.
As for game consoles - I go back a ways. Sure I'm emulating a bunch of old consoles, and I guess I could part with any console that has a good enough emulator, and probably should, I just have a hard time actually doing it.
Telethon? I make good money but I don't get to keep it. What I really need is a few unfair laws fixed, it will help me and many others.
You can get a hot-air popper for less than $20 that will last for years.
I don't care if you buy store brand or 'expensive" kernels you get a LOT more popcorn per dollar, with less chance of burning the popcorn (which smells horrible BTW).
Also - I don't even have a microwave and sort of prefer it that way.
If you eat "one bag" of popcorn per day you'll break even within a month and have save a lot by the end of a year.
I'm poor. I still have a CRT TV, my latest game console is a used PS3.
You sir, are an idiot.
Microwave popcorn = BAD!
loads of chemicals
I'm firing up my hot-air popper.
I've actually noticed "moderation" as the top reason for losing points lately in many of my posts. Not troll, not flamebait, not overrated. What does that mean? Management modding?
My favorite posts in the past have been when I get a "+5 Troll" - THAT is artwork.
>>but don't mention anything to do with George Soros or middle eastern donations to the Clinton campaign you're playing partisan politics.
>So let me get this straight -- what you're saying is that it's nothing more than a partisan attack if allegations about *both* Republicans and Democrats aren't made at the same time, and given equal weight, correct? Because you realize that doesn't make any sense... the allegations here decidedly aren't equivalent, and your attempt to impose some sort of false equivalency between them makes you look rather partisan yourself.
Well, if you don't want to read what I said five hours before you said I didn't say it no one can force you.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
The fact ONLY partisan sources are talking about the Soros stuff which is proven with real, public paper trails proves my point, not the other way around.
1. Agreed
2. No it is not silly - he is a foreign national funding protest organizations within our borders. No different than Russia.
3. So you basically agree with me.
4. So when do we talk about the contents and why do we deny their relevance to the election process?
Sure I agree it's big enough news.
Where are all the mainstream articles covering the things I mentioned which are just as relevant and just as factual?
You don't have to address both in the same article, but both need to be addressed. All I'm seeing is what looks like shilling.