• 6 Posts
  • 27 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 8th, 2023

help-circle

  • Gotta go for ProtonMail. Have been running it for a year and I kinda like how it’s doing.

    An additional feature is SimpleLogin’s “Hide My E-mail” Aliases, which are “burner” e-mail addresses to use with pre-determined SimpleLogin domains (you can add your own domains as well to go around Proton’s custom domain limit). Those are included in the full suite and Family subscriptions. (10 a month when subscribing for a year)

    There’s also a cheaper variant for 3.50 a month but it lacks the SimpleLogin feature. You can get SimpleLogin seperately for 30 a year, however.














  • Hmm, I definitely should start planning one or two main games to beat on the Deck during commute. Definitely got some time to spare for playing something, would help knock down the backlog a peg or two.

    I’ve definitely switched away from my main machine (gaming laptop) as it just overheats and hampers performance because of that, sadly. And you could play a racing sim quite easily on the Deck to be honest. You’ll only need something to mount the Deck or dock it.






  • I think it speaks to accepting the reality of where they are with regards to hardware sales. Agreed, but I wouldn’t say the Xbox situation is as hopeless as he paints it out to be if they got XGS games to show for it. Especially with Sony’s exclusivity deals (which luckily are far less than before, looking at Street Fighter 6 for example). Phil’s philosophy of getting games on any platform (despite starting to Xbox/PC lock Bethesda games) definitely shows with third party developers nowadays.

    Sony set the bar low this time around, so I think it’ll be good. Last showcase with the Hi-Fi Rush shadow drop was a good format for them - quick, content-filled. If they stick with that type of format, I’m a happy guy.




  • I used to be optimistic for Microsoft since Phil Spencer got the Game Pass ball rolling, but I’m doubtful we’ll see a lot of concrete games. Especially with his recent speech that “even with games we won’t sell more Xboxes than PlayStations” (not that I care about the “console war”, but that’s definitely not a confident man speaking). If it’s a splash, it would’ve been bigger if the CMA and the FTC didn’t start stopping Microsoft from acquiring Activision-Blizzard-King.

    I’m still rooting for them, though! Sony got some banger games, Nintendo’s “set for the year” with TOTK and their other smaller games, now it’s Xbox’ turn to swing.



  • To add onto the comment from @imperator@sh.itjust.works:

    • Valve uses Arch Linux as a base, otherwise they pick open source packages and own stuff to make it as it is. Their own stuff involves Proton (which is a fork/derivative from Wine, which is used to run Windows applications onto Linux and macOS) and the “Game Mode” environment you’re used to see (the console-like UI from the Steam Deck).
    • Both Valve and CrossOver are responsible for Proton - a compatibility layer that essentially converts the calls Windows apps make to Windows-related functions (“API calls”, for graphics rendering like DirectX) into something Linux can understand. CrossOver made Wine, while Valve works together with them to create the more gaming-focused Proton.
      • Kernel-level anti-cheat solutions of Windows games (Easy Anti-Cheat, BattlEye etc.) do not work on those compatibility layers, but sometimes get exempted to let Linux players run the games just fine. That’s on a game-by-game basis.
      • There is a community fork named Proton-GE that accepts community fixes and workarounds for an increase in compatibility.

    Overall: Proton’s almost like magic with how many games run decent to amazing on it. There are community resources like ProtonDB to help out knowing what does work exactly and whether manual workarounds are needed.