4 ms·

> Most gamers don't give a shit about openness I don't think this is a given. I think most gamers so far haven't cared about openness because pragmatically, it

> Most gamers don't give a shit about openness I don't think this is a given. I think most gamers so far haven't cared about openness because pragmatically, it didn't matter for them. Now they're seeing the long-term effect of not caring about that though, which is why we're suddenly seeing a movement of gamers moving to Linux, and trying to get others to move with them, because they realize the importance now, as their desktops are slowly collapsing over Microsoft's decision to let AI do all the programming, and having zero QA before releasing stuff to the public.

ekianjo 9mo ago
> I don't think this is a given This is a given. They love Discord and shit like that.
- embedding-shape 9mo ago
  Right, but that proves nothing, is there something that is more open and better than Discord, for this group of people? Otherwise I'd say my argument applies in exactly the same way. Pragmatism wins, so why change unless there is a need?
  - ekianjo 9mo ago
    > is there something that is more open and better than Discord, for this group of people? Matrix, xmpp, and probably more. The options are not lacking
- tombert 9mo ago
  They don’t care about FOSS, but they care about “computer lets me do what I want”. Discord is obviously proprietary but it’s actually a very modular platform that gives a lot of nice controls. It’s easy to make your own “server”, it’s easy to add whatever bots you want, it’s easy to moderate. From a consumer perspective, it’s “open”. Also, I know that this wasn’t your point, but I do feel compelled to point out that Discord works fine on Linux.
  - ekianjo 9mo ago
    > From a consumer perspective, it’s “open”. As open as windows that tracks everything that you do
- drnick1 9mo ago
  Yes if gamers truly cared about openness and absence of corporate control, they would move to self-hosted Matrix channels.
  - darthcircuit 9mo ago
    I actually did selfhost my own matrix server to communicate with my friends while gaming. Works great on my steamdeck and I’ve got bazzite on my laptop. Most games I’m interested in work great on Linux and anything that doesn’t I just don’t play. There are so many games that do work great, but I can see people skipping Linux because of fomo.
wlesieutre 9mo ago
They don't care about it as an abstract idea, but they do notice that Windows 11 is worse than Windows 10 was worse than Windows 8 was worse than Windows 7. I'm not saying there have been zero useful improvements in later Windows releases, but 7 looked good and did what you told it to. "Openness" is a very abstract idea but "Only does what you tell it to" is a selling point for Linux. You know it's not going to upload all your documents to OneDrive and then erase them from the computer.
- pjmlp 9mo ago
  Yes, but when they go out creating that aquarium PC tower with rainbow lights, they will install W11 Pro as usual.
  - tombert 9mo ago
    Maybe the people who go hardcore like that, with the obnoxious PC cases, but there are lots of casual-to-less-casual gamers out there who will be happy enough with Bazzite. There’s a whole spectrum of PC gamers, and I think Linux+Proton can appeal to most of them. Let the people spending $10,000 on a glowing case make their own bad decisions.
    - hedora 9mo ago
      FWIW: I have a pile of old Intel / NVIDIA machines that no longer boot Windows. They're all > 2GHz, > 8GB DRAM, and have more than enough horsepower to run modern casual titles. Next to that pile, I have a pile of games that no longer run under Windows. I also have a glowing case PC. Out of the box, it's possible to change the fan light color patterns from Linux. I had one problem putting Devuan on it: If you plug the gaming keyboard 2.4GHz dongle into the monitor, the bios doesn't enumerate far enough down the USB tree to find it. So, you can't enter the bios and tell it to boot from USB. Then, the windows setup screen pops up. After a few force reboots (M$ removed the "shut down cleanly" button from the language chooser), Windows goes into deep diagnostics mode on each boot trying to figure out why it keeps crashing out during the install flow. So, each debug step of "why can't I get into the bios?" takes a few minutes. The solution was to plug the keyboard dongle directly into the box. The only time the fan has come on after boot (I think it likes to knock the dust off itself when it turns on) was when I told it to download my steam library all at once.
jama211 9mo ago
It is a given. HN is an outlier.

ekianjo 9mo ago

> I don't think this is a given This is a given. They love Discord and shit like that.

embedding-shape 9mo ago
Right, but that proves nothing, is there something that is more open and better than Discord, for this group of people? Otherwise I'd say my argument applies in exactly the same way. Pragmatism wins, so why change unless there is a need?
- ekianjo 9mo ago
  > is there something that is more open and better than Discord, for this group of people? Matrix, xmpp, and probably more. The options are not lacking
tombert 9mo ago
They don’t care about FOSS, but they care about “computer lets me do what I want”. Discord is obviously proprietary but it’s actually a very modular platform that gives a lot of nice controls. It’s easy to make your own “server”, it’s easy to add whatever bots you want, it’s easy to moderate. From a consumer perspective, it’s “open”. Also, I know that this wasn’t your point, but I do feel compelled to point out that Discord works fine on Linux.
- ekianjo 9mo ago
  > From a consumer perspective, it’s “open”. As open as windows that tracks everything that you do
drnick1 9mo ago
Yes if gamers truly cared about openness and absence of corporate control, they would move to self-hosted Matrix channels.
- darthcircuit 9mo ago
  I actually did selfhost my own matrix server to communicate with my friends while gaming. Works great on my steamdeck and I’ve got bazzite on my laptop. Most games I’m interested in work great on Linux and anything that doesn’t I just don’t play. There are so many games that do work great, but I can see people skipping Linux because of fomo.

wlesieutre 9mo ago

They don't care about it as an abstract idea, but they do notice that Windows 11 is worse than Windows 10 was worse than Windows 8 was worse than Windows 7. I'm not saying there have been zero useful improvements in later Windows releases, but 7 looked good and did what you told it to. "Openness" is a very abstract idea but "Only does what you tell it to" is a selling point for Linux. You know it's not going to upload all your documents to OneDrive and then erase them from the computer.

pjmlp 9mo ago
Yes, but when they go out creating that aquarium PC tower with rainbow lights, they will install W11 Pro as usual.
- tombert 9mo ago
  Maybe the people who go hardcore like that, with the obnoxious PC cases, but there are lots of casual-to-less-casual gamers out there who will be happy enough with Bazzite. There’s a whole spectrum of PC gamers, and I think Linux+Proton can appeal to most of them. Let the people spending $10,000 on a glowing case make their own bad decisions.
  - hedora 9mo ago
    FWIW: I have a pile of old Intel / NVIDIA machines that no longer boot Windows. They're all > 2GHz, > 8GB DRAM, and have more than enough horsepower to run modern casual titles. Next to that pile, I have a pile of games that no longer run under Windows. I also have a glowing case PC. Out of the box, it's possible to change the fan light color patterns from Linux. I had one problem putting Devuan on it: If you plug the gaming keyboard 2.4GHz dongle into the monitor, the bios doesn't enumerate far enough down the USB tree to find it. So, you can't enter the bios and tell it to boot from USB. Then, the windows setup screen pops up. After a few force reboots (M$ removed the "shut down cleanly" button from the language chooser), Windows goes into deep diagnostics mode on each boot trying to figure out why it keeps crashing out during the install flow. So, each debug step of "why can't I get into the bios?" takes a few minutes. The solution was to plug the keyboard dongle directly into the box. The only time the fan has come on after boot (I think it likes to knock the dust off itself when it turns on) was when I told it to download my steam library all at once.

jama211 9mo ago

It is a given. HN is an outlier.