MentalEdge

This isn't even something you should be doing for your devs just because being nice to them is nice.

So many indies on their second and third games are showing that once you get the ball rolling on institutional knowledge (skills and tools developed during the making of a game, contributing to the next) you can SERIOUSLY up your game. And for a lot less cost than it would have been to go that big from the start.

Meanwhile big studios are dumping staff and therefore expertise like it's no big deal. Switching to a revolving door of subcontractors who can't possibly get to intimately know the games they work on.

They mean other platforms like GOG or Epic, not stuff like consoles.

Steam games mostly work, with some exceptions. You can check out ProtonDB to see more precisely what games work, which ones straight up don't, and which ones need a fix. ProtonDB will usually also tell you what that fix is, which is handy.

But most of the time, you can just hit play and not worry about it.

A note on dualbooting. Linux uses different filesystems from windows. It can access windows NTFS partitions, but it's not a smooth experience.

A common pitfall is trying use your game library while it is still on a windows filesystem, from linux. Since you can see the folders, and even add them in steam, it'll seem like it should work. But you'll run into issues actually running the games. It's technically possible, but not worth the hassle.

Generally you really want to either format your storage and redownload your games, or if you have the space, copy them over to a fully supported file system.

What I do, is have a minimize keybind.

When I want to quickly do something with a window below the one on top, I hit that minimize keybind, do my thing, then alt-tab.

Unless I interacted with a third window, the one I minimized comes right back.

Or are you looking for something more like picture in picture? A pinned window you never interact with, only look at?

Edit: what if you flip this the other way around?

Make the windows you want to be interacting with transparent, and keep them on top. You'll always see the window you want to see, through them.

Some of it, yeah.

All a distro is, really, is a preset. It comes with some package manager or other, along with a collection of pre-installed packages.

The reason one chooses one distro over another, is because it's closer to what you need. I could install arch, and spend a day setting it up exactly the way I like. Or, I could start with Endeavour, and get to essentially the same state in an hour.

I'm familiar enough with linux that I could strong-arm any install into doing whatever I need, but at times, to get from preset A to preset B, it's faster to just start over from a known preset that's closest to what I want.

Rolling releases typically mean the software available is recent, but that's only one aspect of what your starting point could look like.

"Gaming" distros are going to be a preset that contains a bunch of configurations, defaults and software, that gamers typically care about. That steam is usually already installed, is an example of one such thing. The same way my mention of GPU and CPU support is only an example.

Maybe instead of "They tend to make sure stuff that gamers care about are up to date and working" I should have phrased it "They tend to make sure things that gamers care about are easy to set up and supported, if not even ready to go, out of the box".

This looks fine.

I have a massive library of various games, and three years in I haven't really come across any cases where I want to tear my hair out.

If ProtonDB says a game doesn't work, you're not gonna tweak your way to having it run. If it says it does, and it didn't run right away with no problems, you can usually just apply the fixes other users have found, and be off playing your game.

In fact things are often simpler than on windows, because all the fixes have been gathered on protondb. While on windows you have to google-fu your way to finding someone on reddit or the steam forums who has the exact same problem, and also figured out and posted the fix.

Sometimes.

They tend to make sure stuff that gamers care about are up to date and working.

You'll likely need the newest kernels and software packages if you're running the latest gen of GPU and/or CPU, to get the most out of them, or even get them to work at all.

My first one to switch did so recently. Gave him an open offer to help get going if he ever got interested, then proceeded to just go about using my linux system for our multiplayer gaming and couch gaming hangouts.

It took a little less than three years from when I first switched for him to follow.

My sister is also on linux, has been since she took my gaming laptop as her own, and she never felt a need to switch it back to windows.

You can use VLC if you get the stream url via a web browser, first. MPV can do the same.

The problem is VLC/MPV don't have a built-in way to browse and pick what you want to play.

Completely missed the point. Less "general public" is the entire idea of offroading in remote locations with no cell service or anything else. It takes actual skills to get up there, and the more-skilled people tend to be more respectful of the lands. But I digress.

Exactly.

I'm pointing out that your low volume scenario has literally zero equivalence with high volume transit, and you shouldn't have brought it up.

Ok, cool. But I don't think your experience would still be very good if you were joined by an additional trainload of people riding 4x4s right alongside you. It'd be time to pave over that canyon so that the people visiting it can park.

And trains aren't mutually exclusive with cars. I might take the train to visit my parents a few cities over, but that didn't mean there wasn't a highway for the moving truck to drive along when I had to get my stuff over to where I live now.

No-one is saying no-one should drive a car. Rather, that the right tool for the right job should be used. In the US, cars are used for a lot more than what they're best at. That you are using them effectively for personal use, is not a reason to also have them used where they aren't as effective (in this case in comparison to trains, large volume transit of people who are mainly transporting themselves between hubs of human activity).

In Tokyo, Shinjuku train station routes 3.8 million people to where they are going, EVERY, DAY.

Interstate 5 in the US, the busiest in the country, does a pathetic 0.75 million a day on its busiest strip. And the cost-effectiveness of trains beats out cars waaay before you hit capacity on such a highway.

They don't.

That's why Hasbro can't just make another BG game, Larian isn't willing.

So now they're looking to make it anyway. Without Larian, or even the people at Hasbro that Larian worked with.

Yup.

Unless they just take the IP, and assets they've made, and use that to make something else, Marathon is likely DOA.

If by the time it comes out it even whiffs of a live service long-term nickle-and-diming, people will dismiss it.