@bruce965@lemmy.ml avatar

bruce965

@[email protected]

Professional C# .NET developer, React and TypeScript hobbyist, proud Linux user, Godot enthusiast!

blog.fabioiotti.com
github.com/bruce965

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bruce965 ,
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I have to partially disagree on this point. Take the first generation of Raspberry Pi as an example.

The first Raspberry Pis came with hardware to decode certain video codecs, but this feature was protected by royalties (not by the Raspberry Pi foundation, but a third-party I don't remember the name of). They decided to sell you the base hardware for cheap, and if you wanted to enable hardware decoding you could later purchase a license key for your specific device, which could then be used to flip a switch in the firmware.

In my opinion it makes sense: I would rather pay 35€ + optionally 5€ for that feature, rather than 40€ mandatory.

bruce965 ,
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This was actually probably an efuse, so not really just firmware, but hardware. In any case we are not talking about a software/firmware feature to decode videos, we are talking a section in the silicon that stays dormant unless you activate it with a valid license key.

Imho it makes sense from an economical perspective: they develop, test and fabricate a single silicon that does everything, then they allow you to specialize it on demand for a fee.

In any case, we can agree to disagree.

bruce965 ,
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I just shared my opinion. I didn't need those keys because I was not interested in using their proprietary codecs.

For what it matters, if Broadcom decided to license the IP for some hardware accelerator I don't have anything against it. As long as they don't make me pay for it when I don't need it.

Dedicating a small portion of the silicon to optional features is cheaper than designing two separate silicons one with and one without such features.

bruce965 , (edited )
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I think the idea is that the cost of producing standardized hardware is lower than the cost of producing a custom version without that codec just for the Raspberry Pi Foundation. The Raspberry Pi Foundation was not interested in that codec, so they didn't buy a license. Separately, as a special agreement, they then allowed the few interested users to get a personal license directly from the IP owner. Sounds like a great solution to me.

Not sure if the same reasoning applies to BMW, though.

bruce965 ,
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I use microG on my main phone. I had to set them up myself, and I was told that I could just install them as any regular app through FDroid, but that was not entirely correct.

You can install them through FDroid, open the app, follow instructions, and both location services and notifications will work once all checkboxes in the "Self Test" page will be ticked.

Except that the "microG Services Framework installed" checkbox will never tick no matter what you do. Everything will still work no problem, except that microG will not be able to run privileged actions, in particular it won't be able to immediately awake sleeping apps when they receive a push notification. This will cause delays with instant messaging apps and other time-sensitive notifications.

I solved all of this by installing through this unofficial installer. The downside is that this will also install some (FOSS) bloatware which you can't uninstall. But you can disable all the stuff you don't need, and you will also need to disable it from auto-updating from FDroid otherwise it will re-enable automatically.

You might also be able to find a ROM with microG already installed. If it exists perhaps I would recommend doing that instead.

You might still have some issues with integrity checks unless you install other mods. This might cause issues with some banking apps. You won't find any official guides to bypass these checks though, as this is a gray area.

bruce965 ,
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If it's the official one, yes, that's what I would recommend anyone to go for.

But keep in mind that integrity checks will still fail even if you go that way.

bruce965 ,
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The gamescope micro compositor does make games run better. You can obviously run that on others distros as well, but on SteamOS it's out-of-the-box.

Is SteamOS immutable though? I thought that was just Bazzite.

bruce965 OP ,
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Unfortunately GitHub is the most popular, but if GitHub bothers you I understand, so here's a copy hosted on my self-hosted forge.

https://git.fabioiotti.com/bruce965/awesome-foss-games

bruce965 OP ,
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You might have a point... I didn't post on Reddit because it doesn't feel like a place where I belong, Lemmy does.

Unfortunately GitHub still feels like a place where I belong, as that's where most of the FOSS devs publish, despite its proprietary nature.

I do realize the irony. Perhaps when Forgejo federation will be fully implemented and enabled on Codeberg I will stop hosting on GitHub and hopefully other devs will too. But for now I think that's what makes the most sense.

bruce965 OP ,
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Hi! So nice to see you here!

I hope you don't mind, I would prefer to only keep finished games on this list. There already are lots of awesome curated lists which include pre-release FOSS games.

bruce965 OP ,
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Fair enough, in that case let's add it. But if you don't mind me sharing my opinion: you say everywhere that it's a pre-release software, and the 0.x.x version supports this hypothesis. If you think it's ready to be considered a completed project (but not necessarily also finished) you might want to be more explicit about it.

bruce965 OP ,
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Thank you very much, I will have a thorough browse and filter the games that match my requisites. If you have any one you like in particular, feel free to share.

bruce965 OP ,
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Thanks a lot. This seems to be a very complete list, I will have a look and see which ones match my criteria. If you have any one you like in particular, feel free to share.

bruce965 OP ,
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Thank you for this recommendation, but although the code is GPL-2.0, some of the assets for BAR are proprietary.

bruce965 OP ,
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Hi! Although the engine is free, the game assets seem to be proprietary. Still thanks for sharing the suggestion.

bruce965 OP ,
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Thank you a lot, this also seems to be a great list. And it comes with list of lists as well! I will have a deep look and see which games match my criteria.

bruce965 OP ,
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They seem to be a bit more lenient than me. Their list also includes games which depend on non-free assets, as long as the source code is free. Still, I will add this list to the list of lists in the post. Thanks!

bruce965 OP ,
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Hi! Thanks for the suggestion. I can't quite understand if this project is mature and if it depends on non-free assets. My first question emerges from the fact that they use a 0.x.x version identifier, and the second one from what is says on this page.

Content repository for OA3 is not yet available.

bruce965 OP ,
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SS14 is still in early-access, but fair enough, it's so popular that it deserves at least to be in the honorable mentions. Thanks for your suggestion!

bruce965 OP ,
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Added, thanks for the suggestion! They tricked me with the 0.x.x version identifier, but it seems to be a mature/completed project.

bruce965 OP ,
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Hi! Although OpenRA's source code is free, it depends on proprietary assets, so unfortunately it doesn't qualify for this list. Still, thanks for the suggestion, CnC and RA were both amazing games!

bruce965 OP ,
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Ah, that's a shame, I never really thought about it, but it does make very much sense. I'll demote but keep the CC BY-NC games in a separate section in this list for now, but I will probably remove them in the future once the list grows enough. Thanks for the pointer!

bruce965 OP ,
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Hi, thanks for the suggestions. Unfortunately 0 A.D. is still in beta, so it wouldn't qualify for this list yet. It's definitely popular enough to deserve to be in the honorable mentions though, so I will add it.

As for D-Day:Normandy I assume you mean this? I can't seem to find a license (nor source code actually, but maybe there is no source code as all scripts might have been written manually). I could add it if it's actually FOSS, but I'd need help about the license and where to find sources.

bruce965 OP ,
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Sorry for being pedantic. I might be dumb, but I don't see any assets (sprites/models/sounds) in this repository. I think the license you linked might just be referring to the code.

The lack of recent releases isn't a discriminator for this list. And active development is certainly a plus.

bruce965 ,
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If I may add my opinion: I come from Google Calendar, and in my opinion Fossify Calendar is not perfect. But I've tried a few, I switched back and forth multiple times, but in the end Fossify is imho the most polished and simple calendar available. I don't know Samsung Calendar, but if it's as good as Google Calendar I'd say you might miss it a bit initially, but stay strong and you will learn to appreciate the simplicity.

bruce965 ,
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I have a feeling that this human step might be at the end of a chain of automated filters.

bruce965 ,
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Personally I tried Bazzite because it was the recommended distro for a gaming device, and I liked it so much that it quickly became my main.

Bazzite may present a bit more friction if you want to do something "advanced" that would otherwise be trivial on other distros perhaps with just a couple terminal commands, but it makes all the "simple" things super-duper easy, and the system is almost impossible to break.

I would say this model makes sense for "ordinary" users that just need a computer to read email, view cat videos, open office documents, and in the specific case of Bazzite also gaming. In my specific case I also needed to write code (I use VSCode + Godot), besides the initial friction of learning to work with containers and SELinux, Bazzite seems to be fit for coding.

Thus, I hope immutable distros will stay and thrive. I hope that one day someone will make a distro that you can just set and forget on your grandma's laptop, and I think this distro should be immutable, like Bazzite.

bruce965 ,
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I installed Pop!_OS on a pendrive-shaped SSD for my girlfriend. Then I gave it a nice desktop wallpaper and installed Steam + Heroic Launcher. She ended up not using it, though.

If I had to do it again, I would replicate the same setup, but with Linux Mint instead of Pop!_OS.

bruce965 ,
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The reason why I'd prefer Mint to Pop!_OS? Because Mint is more "standard". Less surprises between upgrades.

I would say if your friend doesn't know Linux or doesn't need to do anything strange, Mint is a sensible choice, even though it's not immutable as Bazzite.

I like KDE too, but if Bazzite doesn't work and you want something as stable as Bazzite, I would go with Mint.

Self hosted Onedrive alternative

I'm looking to finally ditch Onedrive with a self hosted alternative, but I'm not sure what to go with. I want something with all of the files on a central server, with an Android client with the option to sync individual files for offline access as needed. Preferably the files should also be stored in plain format on the server ...

bruce965 ,
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You are invited to join the CopyParty! This has a web UI accessible from the browser, also from mobile, files are stored directly on the filesystem (not encrypted or on a database) and you can mount it as a network drive on Windows and Linux. But it doesn't let you sync files for offline use, at least not without the help of some auxiliary tools.

You won't find anything simpler to install and configure than this.

bruce965 ,
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No, only the local FS. But they have recommendations in their README for integrating with S3 with the help of other tools.

Is the FOSS world in danger of a corporate takeover, thanks to pushover licenses?

I ask this because I think of the recent switch of Ubuntu to the Rust recode of the GNU core utils, which use an MIT license. There are many Rust recodes of GPL software that re-license it as a pushover MIT or Apache licenses. I worry these relicensing efforts this will significantly harm the FOSS ecosystem. Is this reason to ...

bruce965 ,
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I would say AGPL is the "safest" license still approved by the OSI. Could you share your opinion?

bruce965 ,
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Thanks for sharing your opinion and expanding.

In the past I used to think the same. Or rather, probably naïvely, I considered the GPL to be a bit of a nuisance, and preferred LGPL or MIT software.

Now I've changed my mind and started preferring AGPL for all my code. If a big company likes your MIT or LGPL code, they can legally steal it. If it's GPL at least you get some safeguards, but they can still take it and put it on a server without the need to release the source code. That's why I started to believe AGPL is the only "safe" license approved by the OSI, at least at the moment.

Of course I agree that MIT and GPL or LGPL make sense in some cases, but I would say in general they don't protect users' freedom anymore in today's cloud-first world.

bruce965 ,
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Well... I assume that might be illegal. Or maybe these rules would only apply to public software? For sure it wouldn't be enforceable, and it would still allow criminals to use it to communicate privately between each other, but it would make it harder to exploit mainstream public apps (e.g.: WhatsApp) to scam or exploit weaker individuals.

bruce965 ,
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I am not OP, but that would be the ideal solution for me. Unfortunately, KPXC does not support communication with the GPG agent and the team is not interested in adding this feature due to it being «[…] far more complicated than ssh-key management. There are already excellent tools for this, Kleopatra being the best».

bruce965 ,
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If you prefer video tutorials, all the tutorials from the Godotneers YouTube channel are imho easy to understand and quite clean (i.e.: everything is done the right way and explained properly).

If you prefer text tutorials, the official documentation is actually much simpler and complete than you might expect from previous experiences with other engines.

Also, if the only reason for you to dismiss C# is to not have to download .NET, I would recommend reconsidering. .NET is almost entirely open source, and it's just a few hundred MB to download. That being said, I would still recommend trying GDScript first, as it's easier and leaner than C# imho (which makes sense, since it's a DSL).

bruce965 ,
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You will have to transfer your containers before you can see them.

From Docker to Podman: full migration to rootless

bruce965 ,
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Would you mind to share how to copy your setup? In particular how to mirror all your GitHub repos, do you have to manually add them to Gitea one by one?

bruce965 , (edited )
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Why would I want to spend my time with a game full of AI generation, when I could play one that had real actual people craft the work.

Because people have different skill sets, and I'd argue that for someone who has no skills in drawing, using AI as a tool to help add a little polish is not worse than pulling a generic already-seen asset pack from [your favourite game engine]'s marketplace. It all depends on how much, and how, AI is used.

Of course this only applies to indie developers and small studios. Big studios can afford to and should hire artists and designers.

bruce965 ,
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Perhaps a bit unconventional, but CloudFlare R2 gives 10GB of free storage accessible as S3 with rclone.

bruce965 ,
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If your goal is to host services, I would recommend looking into Docker, and eventually Podman. Containerization lets you keep the configuration wherever you want, personally I use a dedicated a directory for each service.

Also, please note that a container is not a VM. It's just a way to keep everything in one place.

bruce965 ,
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Ah I see... I keep container configs in a specific directory, which contains one directory per-service, which contain all the config files + a compose.yml file to place them in the correct path in the container. I could commit everything to Git if I wanted to.

Regarding network and firewall, you could make a symlink to a versioned file and keep your config with the containers. Same for firewall rules.

I'm not sure what you mean by file sharing permissions. With containers you could give a different user to each service.

If you are worried about memory and disk usage, another option I've been exploring recently is using OverlayFS, which, among other things, allows you to inject a directory at a specific path. Again, this would let you keep all your configs where you fancy the best. I use it through Bubblewrap.

Anyways I realize that what I just described is far from standard... hopefully other users will suggest something less custom.

bruce965 , (edited )
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Here's my config for reference, which works for me:

name: forgejo
services:
  forgejo:
    image: codeberg.org/forgejo/forgejo:12
    environment:
      - USER_UID=1000
      - USER_GID=1000
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - ./data:/data
      - /etc/timezone:/etc/timezone:ro
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
    ports:
      #- 80:3000
      - 2222:22
    networks:
      - nginx
networks:
  nginx:
    name: nginx
    external: true

If you can share your error message we might be able to better pinpoint the issue.

EDIT: I searched a bit and now I understand better what you are trying to do. I didn't know about this "SSH shim" idea. This is not what I have done on my setup, sorry.

bruce965 , (edited )
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It's possible, it just works. I used to dual boot for years and I kept the Firefox profile on a shared drive. The only issue is that every time you switch OS it will not load extensions on the first run. You can fix that by launching the browser, closing it, then launching it again. I haven't had any other issues, and I would say that's just a minor inconvenience.

That been said, I haven't used Windows for a few months, so things might have changed.

Otherwise, if you don't mind using Mozilla Sync you can sync between different OS. Some extensions require you to explicitly enable cloud sync though, and some extensions do not support it at all. You will have to manually copy settings for such extensions.

bruce965 ,
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Not FOSS, but OneShot: World Machine Edition is a great game based on this idea.

bruce965 , (edited )
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If port-forwarding is an issue, you can always use a free VPN to reach your self-hosted services. Or if you want to make them public, you can set up yourself a relay on AWS LightSail for less than 5$/month. Or if you want to save as much as possible you can use TailScale or CloudFlare's Zero Trust network to self-host for free using their server as a relay.