amlib

Do you want the indisputable advantage of Wayland? No dropped frames in the desktop, even at high framerates. Back in 2023 when I was still using X11 dropping frames was par for the curse, no matter the machine, the configuration or the DE. You could only hope to get a fluid presentation when using a full screen program that used DRI unredirection (or DRM or whatever it was called) because... it eschewed X completely. Now, it used to be even worse if you go back many years from that, so there was progress, but there were always these tiny drops impacting fluidity. It also got worse the more loaded the machine was, any task in the background consuming 40% of the machine could make it feel like you were using a 30hz monitor. Or, if you dared to use 120hz it felt more like a stuttery 70hz, even at idle.

That same year I decided to give Wayland my third shot and what you know... it not only was perfectly smooth all the time but it had finally reached a point where I could use it on my HTPC. Less than a year later and it was finally usable on my desktop and laptop, and since then I haven't really looked back.

I think the main difference is that there aren't really any deal-breaker kind of bugs any more, and as far as features there are none missing that users care about compared to X11. It's mostly just annoying bugs and the usual "third party" (including KDE) apps looking off in GNOME because the devs can't reach an agreement on some things, users be dammed.

Grayscale displays have no subpixels (or just one, depends how you view it) which should allow for more light from the backlight to pass through compared to a color display, thus reducing energy needs for a given brightness.

>My read is that this makes pseudo-HDR rendering techniques possible on the N64.

It is already possible, modern n64 techniques and microcode are scarily good:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XP8g2ngHftY (Tiny3D - HDR & Bloom / Post-Processing [N64 Homebrew])

They have limitations, specially when driven to the limits of the specifications.

When doing 4k@120fps 4:4:4 chroma you might have to deal with longer handshakes and sometimes even no handshake at all. Or random dropouts. Or HDR not activating properly.

That is a problem of any operating system switch, you need to figure out what software is compatible or weather there are suitable replacements. It's the same even if you switch between iOS and Android.

That said, Linux used to be a tough cookie because there were so little support for software people wanted to run and the alternatives didn't do it any favours, plus the barrage of problems you used to get installing it on a random machine was discouraging, at best. Nowadays your chances of running it well on a random machine is pretty damn good and getting the software you need is lot more feasible. But don't go YOLOing a linux install, see if meets your use cases. There is nothing wrong with waiting until it's good enough.

Maybe they were trying to make a pun on "Via Voice", the cursed IBM STT from the 90s?

do not anthropomorphize the Sam Mower...

Firefox has had support for h265 for a few months by now, they finally relented.

Back in the 90s doing substring match was probably deemed way too expensive and so just calling the executable name directly was as optimized as it got... and it's beautiful :)

I've been using it for a long time and I can't use a new computer or a work computer without it for long before I feel like my eyes are going bad. I specially like the bold version, seems to do well with my astigmatism, specially in reverse video/"dark mode".

I never knew there was a TTF variant, might be a good fit on software that stubbornly blurs it when rendering in hi-dpi.

Might as well have asked a bottomless pit to do the same and get a better result from all the reverberations inside your empty head.

I find it fascinating that it turns into a "descent like" (6dof fps) when using the ability to "peek" the 4th dimension.

Does that means that every n64 game that uses fog (which I guess is.. most of them?) are relying on an almost fully broken feature? Or was there alternatives that didn't rely on the fixed function hardware?

Having a key reserved for OS level actions means you can create your own shortcuts and macros based on it without fear of it conflicting with each app shortcuts.

Since operating systems also don't change often nowadays there is also seldomly any conflicts when a new system shortcut is added.

I also love good old Meta + left click/right click drag for moving and resizing windows in linux.

There is virtually no consequences or accountability when big-tech companies share private data. For crying out loud, they were caught red handed sharing private data from their EU endeavors.

If even sovereign states with clear laws forbidding such behavior can't keep those companies in check, no enterprise/b2b can.

Not prosecuting people trying to reverse engineer any kind of software would be a great start...

AFAIK the location lock is an nvidia driver issue... or more precisely the pitiful state of the open source nvidia drivers.

Yes the hardware you chose or is given will heavily influence your linux experience. I kinda wished the community was more proactive making lists of "certified" hardware that is likely to cause the least amount of problems...

Users will also need to drink a Monster™ verification can every time they launch the start menu if they do not have a Premium AI PRO Ultra MAX account. Users may chose to skip verification process if they agree to the new EULA where it is stipulated that they must meet a weekly quota of Big Macs™ stamps. Failing that your Copilot™ Account will enter lock-down mode where a full document, body and facial scan must be "performed" to recover it.

Couldn't you use a video player like mpv to achieve a similar effect? Not sure if you can cover a specific part of the image but you sure can crop the video however you want and bind the commands/script to a key.

There is always the option of force pausing the game to all clients until the joining client is fully in sync. Age of Empires 2 does something like this when a player that was dropped later rejoins the game. You can even have a screen showing how synced each player is and an ETA based on their download speed, with the ability to chat and even kick a player...

Obviously that won't scale if you intend to have dozens of players constantly joining a server rather than a "friends only" (or whatever more constrained scenario) where players only occasionally join mid game.

How else are you going to improve the linux gene pool? Breeding linux distros ain't gonna cut it :)

After thoroughly reading your explanation I've decided to buy a new Xbox One!

Weirdly it only has 8GB of internal storage...

The ironic thing is that each subscriber now has a dedicated computer many times more powerful than what ISPs had back in the day for hosting ALL those websites sitting in the most privileged part of their network, being online 24h and begging to be used for small hosting tasks like this: their ISP provided router. It even serves it's configuration panel through html and a webserver for crying out loud!

Unfortunately reality is such that those are closed systems with historically abhorrent security and ISPs usually forbids the user from properly providing their own choice of router.

The upstream bandwidth sure improved but ISPs are still hostile to self-hosting by limiting ports, resetting connections every x days and not providing an ipv4 for a reasonable charge.

If he learns vim... gasp ...he will be cursed with having to install vim in every machine he touches for the rest of his life! :)

> In GoldSrc lightmaps cannot get more intricate though, they're tied to the texture scale so you cannot get a finer lightmap unless you also make larger textures and scale them down, and these two combined will wreck your "AllocBlock" budget in which all your textures and lightmaps must fit.

AFAIK some of the improvements include much better light bouncing techniques, transmission of surface colors like source does, more accurate lights, spotlights that emulate what source spotlights does and faster compilation (computers also got faster and MT support helps a lot). That alone allows level designers to be more ambitious by taking advantage of faster iteration and place even more lights.

I do agree that there are likely dozens if not hundreds of reasons why maps can and usually do look way better today than what could be done in the past. Hell, even level designer proficiency with the tools as time goes is also surely a reason.

AFAIK hl1 maps needs to be open in hammer, tweaked a bit and then recompiled to function in hl2. You also better have those originals .rmfs rather than a .map or a even worse, a .bsp :)

I think the litmus test is weather they are backwards compatible with old maps/campaigns from the original engine/game.

Half-Life 2 sure won't play quake maps nor will it play hl1 maps.

And Viktor Antonov (rip) art style.

edit: there is also the fact that map compilers for gold source games have advanced far beyond what they could do back in 1999. The lightmaps and light sources alone can be far more intricate nowadays than what you would get from the official valve ones in 1999.