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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 8th, 2023

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  • Not answering your comment directly, and I don’t even use Linux, BUT…

    One reason a lot of us don’t use Linux even if we really want to us because it’s biggest strength is also one of its biggest weaknesses, that being it’s modularity.

    There isn’t a single packaging system, window manager, file system, shell, etc etc.

    This makes it hard for companies (and devs in general) to target Linux for releases. For example you want to release something for Windows, you build a single exe, apple is a dmg (I think) etc so you just build for one single platform with a consistent API.

    When you want to build for Linux there can’t be just one build/package. This has actively been cited as reasons why some commercial software doesn’t support Linux, as it takes far more effort to support all major permutations of platform and package management.

    So back to your question, why is Valve’s Steam OS going to help? Because it’s going to be a single platform with a single way of doing things. You can always go and replace the bits like any Linux distro but out the box it will be easy enough for vendors to support, it will hopefully also get more adoption because it has commercial support.

    Look at Android as an example (I know it’s not entirely the same), but that is just a customised version of Linux, but as it’s consistent and has a single way to manage packages it’s widely adopted.

    I am pretty sure Linus himself said how one of the reasons why Linux desktop doesn’t have mass adoption is because no one can agree on how things should be done, so we have hundreds of libs all doing the same thing in a different way. Valve will pick what they think is best (even if it isn’t technically the best) and through that we all have a singular point of effort and adoption to centralise on.



  • I love SteamOS for gaming and I think going forward that may get more and more adoption, but a lot of day to day apps or dev tools I use either don’t have Linux releases (and can’t be run via wine/Proton). I would love to jump over on host rather than dabbling with it via vms/steamdeck but it’s just not productive enough.

    One especially painful thing is when certain libs I’m developing with need different versions of glibc or gtk to the ones installed by default on OS, and then I die inside.


  • I just wish we could have less ways to do things in Linux.

    I get that’s one of the main benefits of the eco system, but it adds too much of a burden on developers and users. A developer can release something for Windows easily, same for Mac, but for Linux is it a flatpak, a deb, snap etc?

    Also given how many shells and pluggable infrastructure there is it’s not like troubleshooting on windows or mac, where you can Google something and others will have exact same problem. On Linux some may have same problem but most of the time it’s a slight variation and there are less users in the pool to begin with.

    So a lot of stuff is stacked against you, I would love for it to become more mainstream but to do so I feel it needs to be a bit more like android where we just have a singular way to build/install packages, try and get more people onto a common shell/infrastructure so there are more people in same setup to help each other. Even if it’s not technically the best possible setup, if its consistent and easy to build for its going to speed up adoption.

    I don’t think it’s realistically possible but it would greatly help adoption from consumers and developers imo.






  • It sounds like it may build some playlists like what I would want but depends on how it builds the metadata, as sensme worked off tempo and beats etc to classify music into moods etc.

    Also for me personally it seems like plexamp would be more geared for people who’s devices are always online, which is another reason the mp3 player is great as I don’t need the Internet to access all my music etc.


  • I still have a Sony Walkman with sensme. I loved being able to set a mood and set it going.

    These days you can no longer get sensme in any way, there are no android/ios music players with that functionality and cloud based music services offer a sort of skewed version of it but it isn’t really constrained in what music YOU like and tbh most of my local stuff is a mix of game/tv/film music and chip tune stuff which you don’t really get on cloud music services anyway.

    I really wish there was an android app that did same thing as nothing fills that niche and I’ve tried making complex playlists etc but it’s a massive pita when you have gigs and gigs of music.