Dragnansia

What’s wrong with just downloading a patch and pointing it to the directory the game was installed in?

Nothing, but you can be sure that’s not how it’s going to work. A simple example with Steam and certain games: you have one launcher with Steam, but you have another launcher between the game and Steam, and I don’t see why that’s necessary.

But the way you want to do it requires a bit more work, but nothing too complicated, and more and more people want something simple and easy to use, which is not the case with your proposal because they have to do more steps to be able to play.

I don’t want Gog to change in order to have more games in its store. In fact, I have a lot of games on Steam because of the simplicity on Linux and I don’t want Gog to become like Steam, I want a DRM-free alternative.

Yes, but you can’t launch the game without Steam (I think some game can be start without Steam but I’m not sure). And i prefer to own my game, and the possibility to change how i launch the game (with or without the launcher).

As Blu Rays are read only, you obviously can’t apply the patch there. The patches were always downloaded and applied to the game parts you had on your hard drive. What was wrong with that?

You need a “launcher” just to download update, and it’s not the most ideal for me. I prefer to have nothing between the button play (or click on the executable), and the game launch.

At some point, steam will enshittify or shut down. That’s when we will realize that online only distribution might not have been such a great idea.

I agree with you, only online is totally stupid because the moment the service shutdown you lose everything. This is why GOG is good, because after buying a game, I can create backup on external disk. The only biggest problem for me is they don’t have a good Linux integration for GOG Galaxy 2.

This is not perfect, but it’s a better start than nothing. And it’s difficult to do this because of DRM on other store.

I see some problem with physical media :

• Storage: ~100Go (Blu-ray), ~5Go on DVD
  • For all the non opti game who take more than 100Go of space ? Multiple DVD/Blu-ray ?
• Update: actually if a game need a update how to do this ?
  • Download a zip file to apply the patch ? Possibility to directly write the patch on the DVD/Blu-ray for future install ?

If we use DVD/Blu-ray we need a player to install the game (I really prefer to have one on my computer/laptop than nothing, but it’s not how things work now 😭).

I totally prefer the physical media, but it’s not perfect. To have something easy for consumer, the game industry need to do some change like : opti the game size, find a good method to update the game, and no DRM on the physical media.

If like you say Steam is only garbage, make a list of good alternative.

• Epic Game (worst)

  • Launcher -> horrible and worst than Steam. Actually you can use heroic games launcher (less problems)
  • Store -> really bad
  • DRM
  • Need update to play game
  • Only Windows / Mac (i don’t care about mobile for the small amount of game)
  • Not version for Linux and Tim Sweeney not like Linux and say a big amount of stupidity.
  • Doesn’t have all the tools and feature for dev like Steam
  • No Workshop alternative

• Gog (need more game and feature)

  • Gog galaxy (latest test in 2022) -> good launcher but no Linux version
  • Games for Windows, Linux, Mac
  • Not all game can be found here because it’s only DRM free game
  • Doesn’t have all the tools and feature for dev like Steam
  • No Workshop alternative

From what i can see, Steam is not perfect but it’s better than Epic for sure, and have more feature and game than Gog. I don’t include itch because for me it’s not a gaming store.

If anyone have another store, or want to correct anything.

What I meant was that if he wants to try out Gnome, he should install only few extensions to have a vanilla experience. Then he can install the extensions he wants. I would have said the same thing for KDE or any DE.

“Try first without tweak and when it’s work and you like it, try modify” something like this.

I don’t really use KDE, and if I forgot some really crucial information thanks to correct me.
You can use the KDE spin version of Fedora with plasma 6, or if you love the rolling release of Arch you can try openSUSE Tumbleweed with KDE (you choose you desktop environment at installation).

And for what you going to loose if you go to GNOME :

• HDR (you can enable HDR experimental on mutter but not working for me).
• VRR (it’s experimental on GNOME and work for me).
• You need extensions to customize your desktop, its not really a problem but some people don’t want to many extensions (like me).
• Customization in KDE that you don’t find in gnome, even in extensions.
• For Krunner you can use meta button to open gnome overview and start typing to find app.

And if you want to try GNOME try to stay the most “vanilla” possible. Some extensions I use :

• Blur my Shell
• Just Perfection
• Rounded Window Corners (need to do some search for each gnome release to find the new version)