I take my shitposts very seriously.

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 24th, 2023

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  • The market share is never a precise number because not everybody is asked to do the hardware survey, and not everybody who is asked does. But the Linux userbase is small enough that “~3%” is in the ballpark.

    Version control of dependencies is not as difficult as it seems. Unix systems can easily implement bundled dependencies like Windows does, even without sandboxed or monolithic packaging formats. The important thing is to tell the dynamic linker (ld.so in Linux’s case) where to look for the library files, similar to how PATH is used to locate executables. This is similar to how containerization works to a lesser extent, and the Steam client actually does this by loading its own .so files from ~/.local/share/Steam/.... I’m sure there are additional challenges, my knowledge is superficial and approximate at best.

    But the point still stands: in most cases, Linux-native ports are simply not worth the effort, either because of limited resources in small teams, or because of profits in large studios. BG3 and Factorio are definite outliers.



  • From the sole developer responsible for Factorio’s Linux-native port: https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-408

    “Why don’t most games support macOS and Linux?” is a sentiment I often see echoed across the internet. Supporting a new platform is a lot more than just changing some flags and hitting compile. Windows, macOS, Linux, and the Nintendo Switch all use different compilers, different implementations of the C++ standard library, and have different implementation quirks, bugs, and features. You need to set up CI for the new platform, expand your build system to support the new compiler(s) and architecture(s), and have at least one person on the team that cares enough about the platform to actively maintain it. If you are a video game, you will likely need to add support for another graphics backend (Vulkan or OpenGL) as well, since DirectX is Windows-exclusive.

    Many developers will take one look at the Windows market share and decide that it is not worth the trouble to support other platforms. Also, with the meteoric rise of the Steam Deck and Proton, it is easier than ever for game developers to ignore Linux support because Valve does some black magic that lets their game run anyway.

    The list of Linux-first games is so short it’s not even a factor. It’s very difficult to justify the additional effort of implementing a platform that serves exclusively the playerbase with a ~3% market share, especially when a different method exists to serve that same playerbase that works just as well and also serves the 90%+ with no additional effort.

    The article I linked also contains an explanation as to why GNOME’s decision to drop server-side decorations is fucking stupid.


  • Very important! When mounting an NTFS filesystem that is also used by Windows, always specify the windows_names option, both in /etc/fstab and when using mount.ntfs.

    Windows is not fully compliant with the NTFS specs, which is a bloody genius move on Microsoft’s part. NTFS allows file names and paths to contain characters that are illegal in Windows, like the : character. If you create a file with such a name, it will make the volume unmountable. Ask me how I know. The windows_names option prevents that.















  • I finally got my ISP to enable bridge mode on my modem.

    I also learned that I didn’t lose port forwarding and related services because I had been moved behind CGNAT or transitioned to IPv6 – they simply no longer offer port forwarding to residential customers. Ruminate on the implications of that statement so I’m not the only one with blood pressure in the high hundreds.


  • Even in the open source community, the libre-ness of a product is just one of many factors. The fitness for a purpose, the initial difficulty of the setup, the continuous difficulty of operation and maintenance, the pace of development (if applicable), the professional or community support structure, the projected longevity of the product or service, and the general insanity of the people involved are all important factors that can, and often do outweigh the importance of open software.



  • I’ve never used Linkwarden, but the /data folder is often used by Docker containers to store the application’s data, so it’s likely an internal path. You’ll have to create a volume that exposes the internal /data path to the host filesystem, then whatever is written into that directory will be made available to both the container and the host system. Any file or directory in the container can be exposed this way.

    I usually put my data volumes in /srv (where my large RAID array is mounted) and config volumes in /config, into a subdirectory named after the service, and with the minimal necessary privileges to run the container and the service. You could, for example, create volumes like this:

    /srv/linkwarden/postgres_data:/var/lib/postgresql/data
    /srv/linkwarden/linkwarden_data:/data/data
    /srv/linkwarden/meili_data:/meili_data
    

    The volume path (left side of the colon) can be anything. The right side is where the services expect their files to appear inside the container.