One of my favorite websites to read is GamingOnLinux, and recently they had an article about MangoHUD. I compiled it to try today, and I have to say it’s pretty nifty.
MangoHUD lets you view your CPU/GPU stats on the fly, and it also reports what API your game is currently using.
This could come in handy for benchmarking purposes. There are more ways to configure it, including an optional GUI you can install separately called goverlay..
I might look into doing some comparison videos on Windows vs Linux performance as I continue to perfect my Linux Gaming studio. Given that I can record Vulkan (under certain conditions) things are looking on the up and up.
I normally like ending the year with games that I’ve finished; But this year is a little different because we’re not just going into a new year. I wanted to recollect moments that made gaming even cooler for me over the last decade.
Gaming Under Linux
When I first caught wind of Left 4 Dead 2 being able to run under Linux I thought it was pretty cool. I’ve grown up playing with Linux since I was a kid, and at the time I was running (and still am) dedicated servers. The very idea of being able to install a free open source alternative to Windows seemed like a good direction. I was invited to the beta second wave, and I remember installing Ubuntu, figuring out how to install the proprietary AMD drivers and wanting to strangle someone whenever I borked the OS. But I got it all figured out and got Steam to run. The library was really small back then. Only a few GoldSrc titles like Half Life and Counter Strike were available to play. But eventually Left 4 Dead 2 was released to everyone in the beta, and eventually more games were ported over, Wine started improving, OBS became available outside Windows, and now thanks the birth of the Vulkan API and Steam’s version of Wine called “Proton” the gaming library under Linux is much more vast than it was earlier in the decade. I definately use Linux much more than I used to, and I’m happy to say at the end of the decade I’m using Linux more than I use Windows. I earned my TF2 Tux fair and square!
Preordering The Steam Controller
There are rare occasions where I will preorder a game, and in one particular case this controller. I remember reading early announcements about it and looking at prototype models they would tease, and the idea of having a fully programmable controller tickled my brain, and the built in gyroscope immediately sold me on the idea. Like with most of my preorder purchases I made a good gamble. See, when I was growing up I wanted the comfort of playing full PC games on the couch, and not just platformers and sidescrollers, but FPS’s and anything that felt more comfortable with a manual aim that I could never achieve with a Dualshock or XBox type controller. The Steam Controller enabled me to basically use an air mouse with the additional buttons and layout of a controller. It’s unfortunate that Steam is no longer making these versatile controllers, it seems too many people couldn’t grasp the concept of fully modifying their controller. They just wanted the plug and play console experience with a game working perfectly out of the box… sorry but if tweaking a config a bit is too much then you really need to re-evaluate why you bought the controller; You’re probably better suited for a console. I haven’t had any issues with mine, and even ordered another three during their last call to purchase them. I hope we see even cooler controllers in the future, and that possibly Steam will release their 2nd revision of the Steam Controller that was leaked awhile back. One can dream anyway.
The Birth Of Adobe Alternatives
I’ve always liked making and editing videos of one kind or another. I first played with Premiere Pro CS2 during my early years of YouTubing, and later on moved onto CS4, then eventually CS6. When Adobe announced that their newer version would be subscription based I pretty much signed off CS5 as my final Adobe Suite. I wasn’t going to pay a monthly fee for something I don’t have the time to do everyday. One day I ran into an audio issue that couldn’t be taken care of in CS6. After trying a few alternatives I finally settled on Shotcut; an Open Source free alternative that has a lot of cool editing features and is always being updated, and can also run under Linux (meaning all of my video creation can be done under there from start to finish). I’ve been editing with Shotcut for a couple of years now, and now my Adobe suites have collected cobwebs.
Open Source Game Recordings
In the beginning there was only FRAPS for recording your desktop, but over the years there were other pay softwares that cropped up, and eventually NVidia and AMD made their own recording and streaming software for their GPU’s, and then eventually we had OBS and later on OBS Studio. OBS was once recommended to me by a friend on Steam when I was having issues with FRAPS after upgrading to an R9 290. I didn’t use it too much in the beginning other than for recordings. Later on when OBS Studio came out and they added a plugin to record directly from your GPU and stream using the CPU simultaneously I was quite happy with the results. Unlike FRAPS there are a bunch of optional plugins you can install, and if some of them become popular enough they will eventually be introduced into a newer version. I’ve tried AMD’s recorder, and I played a bit with PlayClaw and Shadowplay, and OBS Studio is always there for me. Now if they could add Vulkan support I can die happy.
When Source Filmmaker Was Made Public
I always liked the idea of making my own videos, and have always been interested in animation since an early age. When I heard that Valve was officially releasing their tool, which has been used for every Valve title like Half Life 2, Team Fortress 2, Portal 2, the Left 4 Deads etc I was pretty stoked to finally get my hands on professional free software. I’ve dicked with it on and off over the years and finally was inspired to change up my video format a bit and create these abominations, as referenced in the most recent video:
Before Source Filmmaker was officially released back in 2012 I used Garry’s Mod for animating, and while that was fun I wanted something that could produce something semi-serious with a cartoonish edge and better animation tools for a better story telling experience, after all this software was designed by people who used to work at Pixar. I’m still finding surprises in this old software. In the future I can use it to render in 4K plus I found out recently that I can use a command line function to render using more than one thread on my CPU; Meaning I can export even faster. More on that another time though.
Playing With Friends Near And Far
This was a more recent feature to pop up over the decade and I imagine it will get better and better assuming broadband companies don’t gauge people to the point of online gaming being impossible. Sometimes you want to play a game with a friend, but it doesn’t have an online option, or they don’t own the game. Now as long as its supported you can invite a friend from anywhere in the world to play with you, as if they have their controller plugged into your system!
I would list games over the last decade but I think the list is long and wordy to the point that only two or three people may read it before venturing off to the next shiny thing. If anyone would like to share memories of the last decade, be it tech, games or whatever I’d like to see it below.
Happy New Year, and many decades and melons to come. :melon:
I have an Elgato Streamdeck that I use for my livestreams, and for what I use it for it can be quite useful. Unfortunately I mostly use linux now, and devices like this don’t really have much support, that is until now.
Linux Compatible: Enables usage of all Stream Deck devices on Linux without needing to code.
Multi-device: Enables connecting and configuring multiple Stream Deck devices on one computer.
Brightness Control: Supports controlling the brightness from both the configuration UI and buttons on the device itself.
Configurable Button Display: Icons + Text, Icon Only, and Text Only configurable per button on the Stream Deck.
Multi-Action Support: Run commands, write text and press hotkey combinations at the press of a single button on your Stream Deck.
Button Pages: streamdeck_ui supports multiple pages of buttons and dynamically setting up buttons to switch between those pages.
Auto Reconnect: Automatically and gracefully reconnects, in the case the device is unplugged and replugged in.
Import/Export: Supports saving and restoring Stream Deck configuration.
Even the features are friggen stellar. Between this and vaapi making it possible to record directly from my GPU in OBS I’ll have to look into doing some linux livestreams. I’ve been waiting for something like this to materialize for quite awhile now, and it’ll be nice to have programmable macro device under Linux again.
I’m almost done sorting through the Broforce footage. I have about another half hour’s worth to sort through and then I can move onto tearing up the Crash Bandicoot Trilogy footage. I’m stopping myself now because I know that once I continue I’ll be up later than I should be. :v:
On the subject of my own productions I’ve done some more testing,and I’m pretty much ready to start my next set of SFM animations under Linux. I’ll probably complete the Linux setup of it after I move my install over to a new SSD. I’ve been planning it for awhile now, but since I’ve been spending more time under Linux I wanted to get it off of a mechanical drive and onto something faster. I love Linux on my NVMe, and while Mint boots up pretty quickly on my 7200rpm drive, it is beginning to show it’s old age. I’ll probably do a clean reinstall when the drive arrives then move everything over to it at my leisure… gotta love hot-swap.
It’s kinda funny… All these years I’ve been wanting to move my editing suite to Linux, and after all these years of people telling me that it wouldn’t happen I’m almost right where I want to be. Now if I could just ween myself off of Ye Olde Photoshoppe things would be cherry. All my audio and video work is done under Linux now, and now thanks to Proton Source Filmmaker too… just so long as I don’t run into any graphical glitches during rendering. I did a test image sequence earlier and it imported just as fast as it did under Windows, and from what I can tell it’s about as stable as it is under Windows too. If this works out I’ll have one large and one less reason not to use Windows anymore…
Oh don’t worry Microsoft, you’re still somewhat useful; it’s just that your list of useful properties shrinks a little more as time passes each day.
Today, we’re excited to announce that we are open sourcing Windows Calculator on GitHub under the MIT License. This includes the source code, build system, unit tests, and product roadmap. Our goal is to build an even better user experience in partnership with the community. We are encouraging your fresh perspectives and increased participation to help define the future of Calculator.
You know… I was actually thinking the other day that there just isn’t enough calculator in anyone’s life. I mean, my decade old mp3 player I bought two years ago has one, my computers have one on each operating system, my calculators have calculators, and my kindle has a fucking calculator! I’m almost tempted to turn on my PS3 to see if that even has a calculator! if not I could see about homebrewing Windows Calculator. :v: That seems to be the only logical point where one might consider the option…
Ever have that feeling where you wake up from a nap, or from a good night’s sleep and feel like you entered another dimension? I think I can add this to my top 10 WTF did I wake up to moments.
For the past few years, Microsoft has meaningfully increased participation in the open source software (OSS) community, becoming one of the world’s largest supporters of OSS projects. Today we’re announcing that we intend to adopt the Chromium open source project in the development of Microsoft Edge on the desktop to create better web compatibility for our customers and less fragmentation of the web for all web developers.
Translation: Our browser has sucked since the day of its conception, fuck it let’s go open source!
As part of this, we intend to become a significant contributor to the Chromium project, in a way that can make not just Microsoft Edge — but other browsers as well — better on both PCs and other devices.
Extend, Embrace, Extinguish, EXTERMINATE!
Working with open source is not new for Microsoft Edge. Our mobile browser has been based on open source from its beginnings over a year ago.
Shorter Microsoft: We’ve been lazy longer than you think.
Ultimately, we want to make the web experience better for many different audiences. People using Microsoft Edge (and potentially other browsers) will experience improved compatibility with all web sites,
Shorter Microsoft: Our browser will offer you the greatest things that you’re already able to do on almost any browser that isn’t currently ours. INNOVATIVE!
Ever since the release of Nintendo’s NES Classic we’ve been seeing more mini consoles/computers pop up, such as the C64 Mini, and the Playstation Classic. An interesting detail was noted about the latter device, apparently it runs on the PCSX emulator:
The PlayStation Classic uses an open source emulator, PCSX. Lesser educated people might see this as a cause of frustration, but here's the reality: it's an acknowledgement that an "amateur" emulator can be just as valid as an "official" one (and they're usually better!). pic.twitter.com/zJztoiYiwT
Nice to see that Sony has learned their lesson after the bleem incident. (Bonus points to anyone who knows what I’m referencing.) 😛 I shouldn’t be too surprised considering other consoles are pretty much the same internally with a tiny shell to give us warm fuzzies of a long gone era, but at the same time the idea of casting out $100 for a tiny computer with a built in emulator configured to play only 20 games doesn’t seem worth the dough (though I could say similar for the others). Unlike Sony though, I have to give props to Nintendo for at least selecting more memorable games. The list of games for the PSClassic are quite lackluster with the exception of a few titles. I remember the PS1 era for Metal Gear Solid, Tomb Raider, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro The Dragon, Twisted Metal and a few others. I’m going to guess there’s a possibility that at the very least Activision might have something to do with the lack of Crash and Spyro. But I figured since one of the Final Fantasy titles would have appeared on the Classic that Square Enix would have parted with at least the original Tomb Raider?
I still expect people to go forth and purchase these things for nostalgia sake… but I’ll just hold onto my original, the PS3, and my emulators. I don’t need to spend a large chunk of my paycheck on something I could build, configure and install myself. :v:
We had a surprise heatwave today, too hot for me to even want to take a nap. I ended up taking my laptop outside and play tested Prey on my Linux install, and surprisingly it works quite decently.
Speaking of Linux gaming I finished my first Linux related video. I’m not sure when I’ll release it, but it will probably be at the beginning of November at the very latest, with others hopefully following suit. I had to do a reinstall of Shotcut, the version I installed via my package manager decided that it didn’t want to launch anymore for whatever reason, so I tested with their portable version and that runs like a peach. It even has all of the same codecs I have under the Windows version… I’m wondering if I had an older version installed? Which is strange because it did report back the same version as Windows… Ponderous. If that’s the case I may start doing more of my video editing under Linux instead of keeping Linux and Windows recordings separate, and using Windows Shotcut to edit Windows video and Linux Shotcut for… well you get the idea. It’s kind of funny though when I think about it; Years ago when I first installed Linux to participate in the Steam Linux beta I couldn’t find any decent software to edit videos and always had to rely on Premiere Pro, among other programs that always had me going back to Windows (like game recording software for example). Fast forward to now, and we have several robust video editors to choose from, there are a couple options for game recording, and more and more everyday software being available to use. It’s amazing how much of this has grown since my early adventures of using Linux as a regular day to day desktop. Now here I am editing audio/video without having to rely as much or at all on Windows or Adobe for it. It feels good, real good.
As I’ve stated before though I’m nowhere near ready to completely ditch Windows yet, but the less time I spend under it the happier I am. I like having options.
I realize there are workarounds to all of these issues, and that most of Microsoft’s very intrusive privacy defaults can be disabled. But something just put me over the edge recently, and I craved an operating system that was lightweight, distraction-free, devoid of bloat and stayed out of my way.
If I were to wager a guess he’s running on a basic version of Windows 10, or if he’s running Windows 10 Professional he doesn’t have it configured accordingly. Despite that though he does have a valid point; Linux distros for the most part are pretty easy to setup compared to Windows. Many programs that we use under Windows can be used under Linux as well, and finding them can be pretty easy if you stick with simplistic debian flavored varieties if you’re not the type to tinker. There are even nice alternatives to Windows and Mac only programs such as Krita and Shotcut instead of Adobe’s Photoshop and Premiere.
Oh, and unlike Windows 10 you can update your OS at your leisure, in fact under Linux it’s best to not run updates instantly. Of course under Windows it’s a good idea to not run updates instantly, but… you know. :trollface: Both OS’s will of course have their pluses and minuses, but at this point Linux only seems to get better while Microsoft keeps finding newer and better ways to piss off their captive audience as a whole.
That said, I now have Mint 18.3 installed, for whenever I have that not so fresh Windows 10 feeling. :v:
I’ve been contemplating a Linux reinstall for quite some time, but wasn’t sure if I wanted to run it in a VM or as a dualboot. I’ve decided on the latter as I want to see how it performs. Linux ran awesomely on my old Xeon setup, crummy AMD GPU drivers aside. But now with Vega and Ryzen, and better drivers under Linux I want to see how things perform from general use to gaming. Most of the software I use under Windows is Open Source or able to run under Linux (how far we’ve come) and this includes my recording and video editing software. 😀 Perhaps I’ll do some side by side comparisons once I get established, and maybe even some videos. I wonder if they have the AMF H.264 codec running under the Linux version of OBS? That would make recording soooooo much nicer, it was one of the reasons why I pretty much did all my work in Windows instead… well there was that and the fact I couldn’t find any video editing software that could compare to Premiere, but with Shotcut I don’t see that as a problem.
So far my transferable list of programs consists of: OBS Studio, Shotcut, Krita, Audacity, VLC, Waterfox, and I recently reinstalled Pidgin (got fed up with Chatzilla). Then of course there’s Steam. :v: It will be great to go between OS’s again. Should be easier now too that I’m using the same audio equipment between both now, my old audio setup had crap Linux support which was why I had to purchase a Digital Analog Converter to get full support for my Shure SM58.
I’m not sure when I’ll start on it, but I’ve already downloaded the latest ISO for CentOS; Now I just need to pick a day to do the deed. :zorak:
