They can’t replace him with a suit. There should be a shaman council that speaks with his spirit to make further decisions for Valve after his passing or retirement (they can just speak directly in this case).

I mean the only good alternative to Steam is GOG but there you’re not dealing with DRM.

Yeah, well familiar with wine going back over 10 years of using Linux as primary OS with the occasional foray into getting my games running on Linux. Most of this time I have just kept a copy of Windows available for games though since it’s been way too much hassle getting things to run until the last couple of years.

For the games that natively run on Linux I don’t see any difference in how they’re preserved. Haven’t encountered anything that doesn’t run on modern systems.

With that said they could get an easy win by making a Linux version of Galaxy and borrowing Proton to run non-Linux titles.

Then reading the manual on the bus home or in the backseat of the car. 😊

I still go to the local GameStop sometimes and pick up a used Switch title I’d like to keep and play again in the future before they all dry up. Sadly they come with no manual.

I’m afraid I’m fooling myself though and that one day when I dig out the Switch after not using it for a couple of years it will be a swollen mess of a fire hazard (with mega stick drift) and all those physical copies will be worthless without cartridge-dumping hardware and emulators.

This is fair but I’m also worried about introducing a new dependency for a game that normally does not rely on Steam.

GOG is legit though. You can archive those offline installers and they’ll work forever (barring future OS incompatibilities etc). For the titles that support it I use the Linux installers otherwise I just run Galaxy through Steam for the time being since it reduces the amount of wineprefixes I have to configure with Steam.

Yeah, it’s been at least five years since I tried Lutris last time. It’s probably matured alongside Proton. Honestly I started moving all my non-Linux games over to Linux after getting a Steam deck and seeing how well the games worked without tinkering.

I don’t mind leaving my Steam games in Steam but I would like to run some of my Windows titles e.g. GOG titles, Guild Wars without relying on the Steam network being up. Is Heroic the way to go?

Yeah that’s kind of huge tbh. I honestly hadn’t read that much about Proton. Like that fact that it’s open source.

Just remember all the discussions from the early days of Steam on Linux where some were miffed about running non-free software. I then figured that it was a necessary evil to have games work with less hassle. The games themselves are largely closed source as well, so it’s kind of moot that Steam is also.

There is a valid argument against the DRM being that your ancient air-gapped system should be able to run the game still but can’t run the DRM due to the requirements changing after the point of purchase. Perhaps there is a discussion to be had about whether DRM should be removed once you change the system requirements drastically, but this feels like a rare circumstance.

The simple solution is to get DRM-free copies from GOG where possible. Archive the installers if you’re worried about future compatibility. That way you can have a nostalgic Windows 98 machine or whatever that only plays games and won’t bug you with random unprovoked changes and updates from day to day.

Heck I just run GOG Galaxy in Proton to not have to patch everything manually.

Oof, Windows 11 is really needy as far as an OS goes. I forget that the machine is supposed to serve me, not demand things me from the all the time.

The grass really is greener in the Linux world. Hope more people get to experience that soon.

This is me every flight. Got a Switch with lots of stuff, ebooks, music and whatnot. Always end up playing Slay the Spire on my phone.

/e/OS looks interesting too and can be delivered from Fairphone with it pre-installed. I’m kinda lost since there are so many privacy-focused OSes based on AOSP. They could probably achieve more by merging some projects, but I imagine there are different philosophies separating them like in most OSS.

In any case, lots of great info here. Cheers again for the insight.

Wow, thanks for sharing. I appreciate all the practical info. So you tried Calyx, Copperhead etc. too?

The biggest thing turning me off most of these security-oriented roms is having to buy a Pixel. I kind of don’t want to go from one American big tech phone to another.

Thanks this is very detailed! Don’t feel compelled to answer any follow-up questions (but you are welcome to!). Just wanna discuss with whoever has opinions and knowledge about it.

One question about lockdown mode on Android though. This means you can’t unlock using biometrics, so you can’t be forced to unlock? On iOS it means it won’t render a lot of scripts and images with tracking on websites, emails, SMS, apps etc. as to make it much harder to exploit anything remotely. I’m wondering if such a feature exists on Android too. I don’t care that lots of websites look janky, I just feel safer knowing most exploits won’t work.

I used LineageOS before my last phone crapped out on me. Ironically I needed to root my phone and use Magisk to hide root in order to make banking apps work. Because the bootloader had been unlocked it failed some google checks or something. Original software support was a pitiful 18 months, so kind of had to go custom rom too.

Not in the market to change phones now, but always considering options in case I urgently need to replace it due to catastrophic failure (and fear of making an uninformed choice due to urgency).

With that said, I have an iphone 11 right now with lockdown, stolen device protection, cloud encryption, and FIDO keys enrolled and it feels very secure whilst still letting me use banking apps normally etc. How does /e/OS compare to something like that and how vulnerable is it to being plugged in and downloaded or wormed by malicious actors, zero-click SMS attacks etc?

Same. Unless it stops getting security updates or has been dropped to the bottom of the sea, I’m holding on to the phone I have.

Oh so that’s what happens when you give the most talentless, bigoted imbeciles, that couldn’t dedicate two hours to learn a little image/video editing, the tools to generate content.

No, not downplaying the effort it takes to master these skills. This is just how long I imagine it takes a normal person to learn how to splice a few clips or make some memes/shops in gimp.

Replaying Dark Souls 1 because it feels like home.