Is there a good way to figure out what games do and don’t work on Linux beyond just playing them?

I finally bought a SteamDeck to address this. Now I just use the “SteamDeck Verified” badge on Steam.

It is worth adding that I have found Valve to be very conservative with giving out “playable” and “verified” bages. (I have had to wait for a Nintendo Switch game to get a required emergency patch more times than I have had any issue with a “SteamDeck Verified” game on SteamDeck.)

With “Playable” your mileage may vary. A large number of “SteamDeck Playable” games would be fine on Linux Desktop, but are awkward on the SteamDeck smaller screen and need a hunch of controller mapping done.

But I happily play many games on my SteamDeck that are only badged as “playable”.

I guess my recommendation is what I did:

1. buy a SteamDeck
2. Try various games I care about on the SteamDeck
3. Satisfied, throw out my last copy of Windows
4. Mostly forget that desktop gaming is a thing, because I’m busy and my SteamDeck let’s me play on the go and from my recliner.
5. …?..
6. Declare this the year of the Linux Desktop Gaming to my friends.

I used to override that setting.

I…uh…learned some uses for it.

Markor is a handy fast Android note taking app with Markdown and todo.txt support.

Since everything it creates are text files, it pairs well with various file syncing apps recommend in this thread.

Breakout71

I could not believe I didn’t find this fun free gem sooner. I’ll let the description from F-Droid explain the details:

This is a roguelike twist on the original Breakout formula: The goal is to catch as many coins as possible during 7 levels. Coins appear when you break bricks. They fly around, bounce and roll, and you need to catch them with your paddle. At the end of the level, you get to pick upgrades. There are 50+ different upgrades that impact the gameplay in various ways. Many upgrades will impact your combo, that’s the number of coins spawned for each brick broken. Your “combo” is displayed on your paddle. Your score is displayed in the top right corner of the screen. Oh, and don’t miss the ball, you don’t have extra lives.

Dino (for desktop) pairs nicely with Conversations for Android (mobile).

For a few brief beautiful moments, I assumed you were talking about the firmware running on the Fisher Price toy.

As your answer included more details, my understanding became a delightful confusion and then realization.

Also, all three pictured devices are probably running Linux… Or at least could.

I do not have any RAM to share, sorry.

An economics simulation in Python needing 200+GB of RAM sounds preventable.

In your friend’s shoes, I might start asking for pointers over on the programming.dev Lemmy.

As others have said, a rewrite in a faster language like C or goLang could help - but my guess is there’s also ways to cut that memory need way down, while still using Python.

So…Date Everything…is a thing, I guess?

I was just thinking about this: more evidence of the Minecraft to Linux self hosting pipeline.

I wouldn’t be concerned.

We’re at a point in portable technology where increased performance means decreased battery life and makes the system need to be larger and less comfortable to hold (makes it release more heat, which has to go somewhere).

I do not believe there is enough demand to expect a larger, hotter, SteamDeck with poorer battery life to be released soon, or maybe ever.

I’m tempted to commit to pretending that “Tribes” is a Linux distro that we’re all worried will gain too much popularity and hurt the ecosystem…

Joking aside, we welcome everyone here:

• Linux users
• Future Linux users
• The Linux curious

For all we know…

This isn’t something we need to speculate about. The vulnerability histories of popular closed and open source tools are both part of public data sets.

Looking into that data, the thing that stands out is that certain proprietary software vendors have terrible security track records, and open source tools from very small teams may be a mixed bag.

I’m aware of some, but recommendations are always welcome!

I’m saying that even just incincerely signaling they’re on the right side of history will determine my future shopping habits.

No corporation is good, but pretending to be decent is part of the bare minimum to get my money.

And few enough are even pretending to be decent, today, that I have money I could send to those that do. It’s hard to find places to shop that are easy to feel good about.

As for anyone deciding whether I’m doing too little: They don’t know my gender, what else I am dealing with in my life, or where and how much I donate, or protest.

My point is that Target’s CEO lost massive money (more than I will ever see) for siding with the bigots, and we can make others hurt for it too.

Edit: Policing my own tone, to stay helpful and uplifting.

I wonder too.

Having just weaned myself off of Target for their being too chickenshit to stand up for what is right (they pre-complied with reduced DEI).

I now have money saved up to throw at whover leans in hard to any topic that pisses off the billionaire authoritarian complex.

Crickets is pretty clever. Appropriate response to anti-trans posturing.

I’ve been there. I’m 100% sure my PC is now a brick, but I run across a post by some random person online:

"Press these keys, then type this exactly and hit “Enter”

And roughly five minutes later my PC is stable, purring happily, and two minor annoyances have gone away thanks to package updates.

Thank you all, kind Internet Linux guru strangers.

Edit: More like 25 minutes, really. 20 minutes of my reading docs to verify why this solution can work, and then 5 minutes for it to work.

Gnome also has a plugin(s) for this.

I use both, Fancy Zones and Gnome, but I like (one of) the gnome version(s) better.

Mainly, the Gnome version puts a quick toggle on screen for switching layouts with the mouse, and it makes better choices about what windows to display when shifting between windows with Alt+Tab.