> Does anyone else have the feeling they run into this sort of thing more often of late? Simple pages with just text on it that take gigabytes (AWS), or pages that look simple but it takes your browser everything it has to render it at what looks like 22 fps?
It is to do with websites essentially baking in their own browser written in javascript to track as much user behavior as possible.
> At QuakeCon 2007, Carmack told LinuxGames that he would integrate as little proprietary software as possible into id Tech 5, as "eventually id Tech 5 is going to be open source also. This is still the law of the land at id, that the policy is that we’re not going to integrate stuff that’s going to make it impossible for us to do an eventual open source release." Carmack resigned from id in 2013, and no source code release followed the launch of id Tech 6 in 2016.
Cool Hand Luke, which I prefer, has its protagonist sentenced to a work camp for an absurd crime.
A more recent prison movie which made me feel similarly to Cool Hand Luke and Shawshank Redemption while watching it is "I Love You Phillip Morris" (starring Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor).
> I started programming over 40 years ago because it felt like computers were magic. They feel more magic today than ever before. We're literally living in the 1980s fantasy where you could talk to your computer and it had a personality. I can't believe it's actually happening, and I've never had more fun computing.
No, it packages open source game data (which can't be distributed because it is copyrighted) so that it can be installed and will work with the games that already have debian packages.
So in the case of quake (for example) it makes a .deb file, which when installed will create the directory structure in the correct place and put the .pak files, config files, etc. where debian's quake engine package(s)[0] will look for them. This .deb file for the quake game data won't do anything on its own. You need to also install a quake engine, which debian includes.
You can create the game data packages from the installation CD, from a working install directory, or from a Good Old Games installer.
> If native software was routinely available, launchers might not feel necessary.
> But I sure as hell don't want to invest howevermany weekend days figuring out how to make games from other platforms as easy to play as Steam games on SteamOS.
For games that are licensed under terms that allow it, Debian's Game Data Packager has already automated that work. And- as your comment suggests- a native port is much better than running on a wine shim, which will always be second-rate.
On the other hand, those who find contemporary game development trends distasteful might find much to like about the fruits of the Debian Games Team's work on game-data-packager.
The games on that list have native ports that can be integrated into the Debian environment just by installing packages, and the game data packages can be automatically generated from each game's official install media.
I trust you understand that some readers may not find (to paraphrase) "I don't like it either but it is what it is." a compelling reason to fix something that is not broken.
> since it's so easy to scroll, you can always just do a little two finger scroll wiggle to have it appear
That changes the effort required to show useful information from zero to more than zero. Which, while it not be a great quantitative change, is an enormous qualitative change.
Like Chesterton's Fence, it was there for a reason.
"At last (and at least) we have reclaimed that narrow vertical strip of screen real estate on the screens eastern-most vestige! Now to find a good use for it!"
The true annoyance is that in many cases explicitly enabling them does not restore the original functionality.
#/media/File:PlayStation-SCPH-1000-with-Controller.png){kind=link}
Would you rather the game have the coolest load screen in the universe or no load screens at all?