Max-P
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I think the main reason is Google wants to provide a predictable environment for the developers where not too many things can be changed so it doesn’t visually break apps. Because for big corps really, really want their branding to be perfect, can’t be caught with a screenshot of their app in Comic Sans.
You used to be able to install some pretty sick theme packs but over time everyone started shipping apps with its own hardcoded themes and theme libraries such that it looks identical between devices, so now we’re stuck with whatever Google says is how it should look.
Back when I was a developer I had to turn off my theme for every demo because the clients would keep focusing on that and not their fucking app, and keep complaining it clashed so hard with their brand colors. Which I’m sure is part of why the stock theme now is so flat and neutral vs the Holo/Honeycomb days.
Anyone that’s used a custom ROM knows just how shitty your 48MP camera looks like without the processing lol. People go out of their way to make GCam work because it’s so bad.
It’s one of those bougie “nostalgia” app isn’t it? Like those shitty scamcorders that VWestlife covered not long ago.
You need an account to upload stuff. The Internet Archive isn’t just archiving websites, you can also upload book scans to them, rips of old floppies and discs for old software, even old TV shows and movies. For example, the entirety of the Computer Chronicles series is available for download there.
I would literally donate money directly to Valve if I could for all the good selfless work they’re doing.
Their work on sponsoring DXVK, and Proton’s development, their contributions to make the AMD drivers even more awesome, gamescope, they’ve been driving all the HDR and VR work on Linux, and now they’re also getting even more hands on with Wayland through frog-protocols.
Meanwhile the others are either doing nothing at all except selling the games, or actively sabotaging Linux gaming and furthering Microsoft’s monopoly like Epic Games is doing with their intrusive anti-cheat.
Being on Steam is being strongly pro-consumer and the first thing a developer not publishing on Steam does to me is make sure I’m very unlikely to buy their games because at least on Steam I know I won’t get ripped off.
Couldn’t care less about whiny developers complaining they make slightly less millions in sales for overpriced AAA games, and still impose their own launcher and shit because they only treat Steam like a store and nothing else. I pick what’s good for the players not the developers. If they’re unhappy there’s dozens of indie developers in line to pick up the slack willing to make games I’m willing to pay for.
EDIT: And a couple hours later, Valve delivers once again: https://lists.archlinux.org/archives/list/[email protected]/thread/RIZSKIBDSLY4S5J2E2STNP5DH4XZGJMR/?sort=date
Android 4.4 long predates the OEM unlock option in developer settings.
You’ll probably want to find a guide specific to that device to get to flashing TWRP, then it would be like most other devices/ROMs via TWRP. If you’re lucky it’ll be the classic couple fastboot commands to the bootloader and good to go.
Once in TWRP it’s just menu driven so it’s pretty easy.
And all that forever too. The developers don’t pay a dime after Steam’s cut to keep the game alive and downloadable and playable. Even Steam keys, you can sell as many as you want outside of Steam, for free.
The devs can just raise the price by 30% if they feel they really need the money. I’ll pay the extra to have it on Steam and just work out of the box in Proton. Unlike Apple, it’s not a monopoly, nothing stopping anyone from just distributing on their own.
Epic is anti-consumer and also anti-Linux, they don’t make any effort to support other platforms, the app is shit.
Meanwhile, Steam is
- Actively working with the FOSS community to help preserve old games
- Kernel improvements for better graphics performance
- Lots of VR and HDR work
- Many contributions to the open-source AMD drivers
- Has been supporting Linux gaming for a decade with no signs of backing down
- They have a portable Linux gaming console experience, and it’s intentionally left wide open for users to mess with
- They’ve taken several community features and built them into the OS
- Their DRM is weak and unintrusive
- Their anticheat is ununtrusive
- The sales are pretty good
- They have tons of features for users:
- Family sharing
- Remote Play Together
- Remote Play
- Streaming
- Community forums for every game
- Mod workshop
- Matchmaking
- Steam Chat / Voice Chat / Streaming
The only appealing thing for EGS is, EGS takes a lower cut from the developers who just pockets it and doesn’t even result in lower prices for users. As a Linux user, praise our Lord GabeN for all the good Valve has done for gamers. Even for the developers, most are quite happy with the services they get back from that 30% cut.
I’d say the dislike is mainly that for the users, EGS doesn’t bring in anything new or interesting or useful that Steam didn’t already do well, and goes directly against a lot of the good Steam has been doing. It’s just a store that makes big developers slightly more happy.
IMO that’s more of a problem with the industry not really caring to support lower specs, or generally not seeing the deck as a real console or platform to target. People still make Switch games and the damn thing was already outdated at launch and they even underclocked it for good measures.
At 800p you’ve got to start thinking, is most of the detail those games compute even actually visible the on screen? How many PCs does that make obsolete? If the deck can’t run it at 800p, even at 1080p you’re gonna need what, an RTX 2060 for the lowest settings on a PC?
Some of the example titles don’t even sound like they’re the kind of titles that are made to showcase what your 4090 can do, which logically you’d want as many people as possible to be able to play it.
What developers seem to forget is how much stuff they get in return from Valve:
- Valve invests heavily into Linux gaming, because they know it’s how you keep all those games working in the long run. (Proton)
- Valve takes care of download bandwidth forever.
- Built-in streaming and remote play together
- The Steam Deck and upcoming SteamOS for the console-like experience
- Forums
- The workshop and mods
- Chat and social networking features
- Steam Input, and my beloved Steam Controller
- Achievements
The Epic store is just, here’s the game files loaded with DRM, try to enjoy. Why even sell through a store and not provide a direct download at this point and get 100% of the sales?
I only buy on Steam because I want Valve to have their 30% cut, because they invest it in the community for everyone’s benefit, including Epic’s games and customers who want to play on Linux or the Steam Deck. Epic would be perfectly happy with the subbar Windows handheld experience because “it’s how PC gaming works”. Proton is amazing, it even eliminates variance that would exist on real Windows machines which results in more games just working right out of the box compared to Windows, esepcially very old ones.
Between Epic and Valve, I’ll pick the one that makes gaming better for everyone.
it’s only open in words, the android phone you purchase from oems contains plenty of proprietary stuff
The core of Android is completely open-source. But yes a typical device has a ton of proprietary drivers layered on top of it, along with a bunch of proprietary Google apps and frameworks.
That’s still way better than nothing: sure the drivers you can’t do much about them, but you can still build a fully functional de-Google ROM if you want. I see it kind of like installing the NVIDIA drivers on Linux: not ideal, but it doesn’t affect my ability to modify the Linux kernel or any other part of the operating system.
It’s not like PCs aren’t loaded with proprietary firmware either. We may have open-source kernel drivers, they still upload proprietary firmware to the device for your WiFi and GPU to work. Very few PCs can be corebooted.
in some cases like play integrity, an open alternative doesn’t exist on top of that
That’s not completely true. The APIs for it are completely open to any app, but apps that check Play Integrity specifically are also doing so specifically to check for Google-approved ROMs. Apps from the Samsung Store can use Knox instead to do a similar thing.
If you want to use the TEE and make sure your app only runs on official GrapheneOS or LineageOS builds, you can. It’s just, nobody does that because why would anyone do that. But if you have an application that wants it, idk you somehow have corporate devices that should run your custom AOSP build and prevent rooting or flashing to run your custom proprietary app, you totally can.
When Android started, I’m not even sure they wanted a centralized store to begin with. Android was going to replace flip phones and their super proprietary and hard to develop for operating systems. Being open-source was part of the appeal for manufacturers (they get to customize it but still be able to run most apps just fine). Being able to sideload apps was important then because the alternative was sending a premium SMS to some number and getting the app on your phone in return. It was a market where the carriers were controlling everything. Also, Android was originally designed to be a camera operating system and later on expanded to target about any portable devices, mainly phones but there were WiFi-only Android devices too.
Open platforms are very appealing to developers. One of the reason I’ll never own an iPhone is, I can’t even try out iOS development without buying a Mac and then buying an annual $200 license to Apple just to have the right to develop for the platform. Young teenage me was like, fuck that, I can just download Eclipse and develop for Android for completely free and even share my app for free!
Android was also very popular with the developers because you could easily build and flash your own builds of Android too, being open-source.
Now it’s too late to backtrack on that without major outrage and scrutiny by legislators. Same reason it’s way too late for Microsoft to attempt to stop sideloading and force everyone to the Microsoft Store.
In today’s world, I think it’s still valuable for Google to let people do all that. The Nexus line and now the Pixel line are the standard when it comes to unlocking your bootloader and flashing a custom ROM. Google encourages developers to do that because they get free beta testing for beta builds, but it also enables security researchers to study the operating system and discover flaws that Google can then fix. They’ve also taken several popular features from custom ROMs and implemented them directly in Android, so people basically design and test new features that Google can just take for free. Things we take for granted like quick settings in the notification tray, that originated in custom ROMs. They also poached a few developers, for example the guy that made Magisk now works at Google in the security department. And as others have pointed out, it shields Google from some legal challenges as they can just say “well if they don’t like the Play Store they can just sideload another one”.
Ultimately too few people even bother sideloading apps for them to really care or affect the Play Store revenue. 99.99% of people won’t ever download anything outside of the Play Store.
I’d stay clear from those “clients”. I had a quick look and holy shit, they have stores with ridiculously predatory prices for skins. That’s 100% exploiting kids and their parents. Fuck that. Nope nope nope.
Use Prism. It’s open source, has existed for a very long time, works well and has been the goto on Linux for a while, and is actually a real launcher.
A bit of an addendum: I think the limiting factor of a mobile keyboard is going to be that you have 1-2 fingers available for use rather than all 10.
A lot of those alternative keyboards seem to rely on some swiping gestures or drawing symbols. That’s good when you’re not looking at it as it’s very tolerant to misalignment, but if you already move fast and precisely, that feels like it would get in the way.
Looking at my fingers while I type, I’m already moving my thumbs as fast as I can without getting too sore: where it goes next doesn’t matter, it’s the same amount of time. Having to press and then move and release, in theory should only slow me down because by the time I finish the drag motion and lift the finger, I would have just moved my finger over the next key and pressed it. So that kind of layering is out of the window.
I can’t think of a way to type faster without involving mnemonics and chorded entry, but with two fingers you don’t gain that much.
Also I feel like the bottleneck there is how fast I can think of what to say next anyway.
I just Googled “typing test” and picked the first result which was typingtest.com. I don’t know if it’s good or accurate but it checks out for the score I expected.
My experience is it’s not worth it unless you’re looking for maybe a one-handed keyboard and want to type blindly (like, send a quick text while talking to someone without looking at your phone much).
Otherwise, I’m pretty happy with the default AOSP keyboard and Gboard. 70 WPM is more than good enough for texting, Slack, emails, and posting on social media.
Trying out new things is always good. Best case you find new software you like, worst case you learned something new.
Sometimes limitations can foster creativity and end up with an even better workflow in the end by forcing you to reevaluate how you do the thing. Sometimes it doesn’t work out and that’s fine too but at least you didn’t pass on a potential opportunity.
Mesa is more than just the fallback, it’s literally the entire userland graphics stack for all the open-source drivers. Intel, AMD, it’s also where the Apple Silicon drivers for Asahi lives and more.
It’s not slow at all, unless you end up with the CPU renderer (llvmpipe/lavapipe) due to an unsupported graphics card. That’s usually NVIDIA users because nouveau isn’t great. But even then, when NVK comes out, it’s also in mesa.
I can definitely see the improvement, even just between my desktop monitor (27in 1440p) and the same resolution at 16 inch on my laptop. Text is very nice and sharp. I’m definitely looking at 4K or even 5K next monitor upgrade cycke.
But the improvement is far from how much of an upgrade 480p to 1080p and moving away from CRTs to flat screens. 1080p was a huge thing when I was in highschool as CRT TVs were being phased out in favor of those new TVs.
For media I think 1080p is good enough. I’ve never gone “shit, I only downloaded the 1080p version”. I like 4K when I can have it like on YouTube and Netflix, but 1080p is still a quite respectable resolution otherwise. The main reason to go higher resolutions for me is text. I’m happy with FSR to upscale the games from 1080p to 1440p for slightly better FPS.
HDR is interesting and might be what convinces people to upgrade from 1080p. On a good TV it feels like more of an upgrade than 4K does.
Yeah if it was brand new, it might also have been defective, I’ve seen that happen. It’s just between jailbreak and manufacturing defect, which do we default to? Depends on the whole timeline really.
It’s not impossible it broke it, but anyway the Pixel is made for that so it’s a lot less sketchy to begin with. It’s the same risk as installing an OS on a PC really.
Google releases betas and developer previews for the Pixel, it’s made to survive buggy code.
I just replied to that in a dedicated comment. But for your Pixel it’s even better because it’s something that Google even officially endorses, it doesn’t even void your warranty.
I’ve been modding phones since the Android 2.2 days, and I’ve never had any major issues or anything that would make me want to go back to stock, and never had issues going back to stock. Even my S7 with a modded bootloader splash screen, it was gone when I flashed stock back on it.
As for the iPhone 3G, I think it was just software and an aging device. My iPod definitely got pretty laggy with multiple apps open on a device with 128MB of RAM in an OS that doesn’t even support running apps in the background. The more mods and plugins loaded the laggier naturally.
But even with a jailbreak, they didn’t mod drivers or anything that would make it different from a hardware perspective. They just sideload a store that can then install any apps. You can install bad apps but nothing that would survive a restore in iTunes.
What could have happened is she got an iOS update after the restore that also was a bit laggier and energy intensive. Or maybe the faster discharge and higher energy consumption is what finished an already aging battery. It’s very unlikely the jailbreak caused it, more likely triggered it or expedited an existing problem. Like formatting your mom’s PC whose hard drive is on death’s bed and the IO of reinstalling an OS makes it kick the bucket. Is it the OS’s fault? No. But did installing the OS cause the fault? Yes. People will still blame the OS, especially if it’s a different OS in case of a jailbreak or putting Linux on your mom’s laptop that’s still on XP or 7. The new thing, it broke the thing!
Pixel phones are basically the gold standard of Android phones for flashing custom ROMs. Google doesn’t lock anything down and provide everything necessary to not only build your own, but it even fully supports relocking the bootloader with your own keys and all the secure boot security features.
In most cases I think Google has an online tool you can run right from the browser to fully reflash the stock OS on it.
The only thing that won’t work is apps using Play Integrity which some bank apps and streaming apps use for DRM, including Google Pay/Wallet. There’s not much you can do about it especially in the longer term, as this is hardware-backed so unless some major exploit gets dropped, you can’t really fake the phone being stock to apps. Reverting to stock should bring back full functionality.
You really have to go out of your way to brick a Pixel and mess with overclocking to do permanent hardware damage.
Have fun!
They’re not for you. If you want to pump 500W into your CPU, AMD will gladly let you do so. But you did so with your own understanding of the risks.
Those specifications are for motherboard manufacturer defaults. Defaults should always be sane and safe. 14th gen Intel motherboards are shipping with no power limit and increased turbo boost durations out of the box. Those can work, but requires really good cooling that the motherboard have no way of knowing if their users will 100% of the time have watercooled PCs.
People have been “fixing” those Intel CPUs by underclocking them where they should always have been in the first place. That shouldn’t be underclocking, that should be the stock reference setting.
That’s precisely the problem, motherboard manufacturers hoping your CPU won the lottery and can do the +30%. The solution is to tune for the CPUs that’s maxed out of the box.
Reviewers have been complaining about this for years.
Intel publishes recommendations but lets the manufacturers do what they want because it makes their CPUs look more competitive with AMDs, while getting to blame the motherboards when it inevitably becomes a problem. AMD actually specifies maximums and minimums because they don’t want people to see their CPUs as unstable, especially when they are ahead of Intel with stock settings.
A motherboard should never overclock by default. Never. If the user wants overclock, they should enable it themselves. It’s an issue dating back two decades, there’s an Old New Thing blog post from Raymond Chen about it where he goes into how they were getting a lot of nonsense bug reports. Turns out some PC shops were shipping prebuilts running right at the edge of stability so once the chips degraded it started crashing random apps. Blog post
Not seeing this on LineageOS, it goes dark when disconnected from both networks.