Include adding kernel level anti cheat to that. This should just give us an option to get a full refund.

I think I have a simple function in my .zshrc file that updates flatpaks and runs dnf or zypper depending on what the system uses. This file is synced between machines as part of my dotfiles sync so I don’t have to install anything separate. The interface of most package managers is stable, so I didn’t have to touch the function.

This way I don’t have to deal with a package that’s on a different version in different software repositories (depending on distribution) or manually install and update it.

But that’s just me, I tend to keep it as simple as possible for maximum portability. I also avoid having too many abstraction layers.

That’s mostly down to Teams though (being the bloated web app that it is), and not the underlying operating system.

When talking about the kernel, Windows actually skipped 3 major versions iirc from the top of my head. Windows 8 was Windows (NT) 6.2, and Windows 10 skipped that version number to, well, 10.

Why when a simple alias will do?

I also experienced less “hiccups” since switching to Linux with KDE but I’d like to know on what combination of hardware and Windows you experienced anywhere close to an average of 1s response time to “any input”.

iFixit rates it “Difficult” for the Steam Deck OLED and says the time required is 2-3 hours:

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Steam+Deck+OLED+Battery+Replacement/168676

This is a slight improvement from the original Deck’s estimated 2-4 hours:

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Steam+Deck+Battery+Replacement/149070

It requires removing quite a few parts but the most annoying part is getting rid of the adhesive. It doesn’t have easy-to-access pull tabs or whatever.

They can certainly improve this. Either add pull tabs to the adhesive strips, or better yet use the mechanism from the iPhone 16 where you apply voltage to the adhesive to make dissolve/no longer stick. Or even better make it a screw-in battery without any glue whatsoever. Then update the routing of several cables so they aren’t in the way of removing the battery.

Understandable.

What I will say though is that I personally wouldn’t mind regular spec bumps at all. The Deck isn’t exactly a cheap device and to get the “latest and greatest” for your “investment” at any given point of purchase would help longevity.

But as I said, in this case it makes a lot of sense (for Valve). SteamOS is still under heavy development, even more basic stuff such as the update mechanism and also power management is something they’re still working to improve.

They also use a custom APU designed in collaboration with AMD, and these designs cost a lot of money. It’s not just a rebranded 7840U like the Z1 Extreme for example. This custom design makes a lot of sense in terms of focusing on gaming performance and efficiency, and it clearly shows in (very) power limited scenarios.

Either way, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a new Steam Deck based on Zen 5 and RDNA 4 with another custom designed APU sometime in 2025 or early 2026. Zen 2 is really starting to show its age and Zen 5 is a solid leap even over Zen 4 (not talking about desktop CPUs here, but Ryzen AI 300). RDNA 4 will likely improve quite a bit over RDNA 3(.5) (with the current Deck having RDNA 2) and include some type of hardware-accelerated machine learning upscaling with FSR4, which could make a lot of sense on the Deck as long as enough games support it.

I’d also like to see a few other improvements. The OLED display is great in many aspects, but VRR would be a great feature to have. Internally I’d like to see an easier way to swap the battery, maybe using similar tech to what Apple does with the iPhone 16’s battery. Currently, swapping the battery is one of the most complex repairs on the Deck, but it’ll also be the most common a few years down the line when all these batteries really start to show their age.

I think we’ll get at least one more x86 Steam Deck generation before it moves to ARM (if it moves to ARM at all).

The Snapdragon X isn’t anything to write home about when it comes to efficiency under load, with the newest CPUs (with iGPUs) from AMD and Intel keeping up or maybe even exceeding it.

Bitwarden keeps working just fine.

I’m no expert here, but I’m pretty sure branch prediction logic is not part of the instruction set, so I don’t see how RISC alone would “fix” these types of issues.

I think you have to go back 20-30 years to get CPUs without branch prediction logic. And VSCodium is quite the resource hog (as is the modern web), so good luck with that.

Sorry, I don’t know of a guide for other distributions.

Nvidia might be selling the shovels to the customer during this gold rush, but TSMC is making them.

Not really, just some wording…?

It’s kind of in the word distribution, no? Distros package and … distribute software.

Larger distros usually do a quite a bit of kernel work as well, and they often include bugfixes or other changes in their kernel that isn’t in mainline or stable. Enterprise-grade distributions often backport hardware support from newer kernels into their older kernels. But even distros with close-to-latest kernels like Tumbleweed or Fedora do this to a certain extent. This isn’t limited to the kernel and often extends to many other packages.

They also do a lot of (automated) testing, just look at openQA for example. That’s a big part of the reason why Tumbleweed (relatively) rarely breaks. If all they did was collect an up-to-date version of every package they want to ship, it’d probably be permanently broken.

Also, saying they “just” update the desktop environment doesn’t do it justice. DEs like KDE and GNOME are a lot more than just something that draws application windows on your screen. They come with userspace applications and frameworks. They introduce features like vastly improved HDR support (KDE 6.2, usually along with updates to Wayland etc.).

Some of the rolling (Tumbleweed) or more regular (Fedora) releases also push for more technical changes. Fedora dropped X11 by default on their KDE spin with v40, and will likely drop X11 with their default GNOME distro as well, now that GNOME no longer requires it even when running Wayland. Tumbleweed is actively pushing for great systemd-boot support, and while it’s still experimental it’s already in a decent state (not ready for prime time yet though).

Then, distros also integrate packages to work together. A good example of this is the built-in enabled-by-default snapshot system of Tumbleweed (you might’ve figured out that I’m a Tumbleweed user by now): it uses snapper to create btrfs snapshots on every zypper (package manager) system update, and not only can you rollback a running system, you can boot older snapshots directly from the grub2 or systemd-boot bootloader. You can replicate this on pretty much any distro (btrfs support is in the kernel, snapper is made by an openSUSE member but available for other distros etc.), but it’s all integrated and ready to go out of the box. You don’t have to configure your package manager to automatically create snapshots with snapper, the btrfs subvolume layout is already setup for you in a way that makes sense, you don’t have to think about how you want to add these snapshots to your bootloader, etc.

So distros or their authors do a lot and their releases can be exciting in a way, but maybe not all of that excitement is directly user-facing.

What do you mean by “option for remote”?

Passed openQA in Tumbleweed, so should be available with 20241007.

Exactly, and I’d rather devs focus their time on making sure their Windows version works well via Proton than using that same time for a half-assed native Linux version.

In my experience, even when a game has a native Linux version, the Windows version run via Proton can often be the better choice.

In Tabletop Simulator, I wasn’t able to join my friends’ multiplayer sessions with the native Linux version. No problem with the Windows version via Proton.

The Linux version of Human Fall Flat isn’t feature complete/outdated.

There are better examples though. Valheim runs fantastic aside from a bug that it picks the first instead of the default audio device for sound output on startup. It even supports mods and r2modman supports Linux as well.

Didn’t have any problems with Spiritfarer either.

This is the way.