It's important to point out that AMD isn't perfect either (I don't know about Intel), since it requires you to install proprietary firmware. But it's obviously a huge improvement, since it doesn't require proprietary drivers. If we forced Nvidia to do what AMD does, we would be in a much better position. So if you care about freedom, Nvidia is the last company you should choose.
lemmeee
joined 10 months ago
CUDA + Machine Learning applications
AMD has HIP or Rocm, which unlike CUDA is free software. Any program that uses proprietary CUDA libraries is proprietary.
Updating either the kernel or ROCm has a 50-50 chance of completely breaking Cycles
That sucks, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't work. I'm on Debian stable and it works fine for me, except for weird crashes from time to time.
Windows and other proprietary software is unethical, because it gives developers power over users. People can't easily see what such software does on their device and they can't change it. So they can't control those programs and as a result they have no control over their own devices. It's also very easy for developers to abuse those users with spyware, DRM and other malicious features. In case of Windows we know for a fact that it does those things. But even if it didn't, people deserve to be able to control their computers, so it's unethical to take that right away from them.
Free software gives you the 4 essential freedoms. Any programmer in the world can audit what such program does and change it. So it's very hard for a developer to abuse their users. If they add some malicious feature, any programmer can remove it and share the modified version with others. So with free software, it's the users who are in control (as long as there is at least one programmer among them that can make the changes they want).
Right? What's the point of using GNU/Linux if you are gonna run proprietary software on it? Obviously, more freedom is better, but those people don't understand that their goal should be to have complete freedom. So they get trapped in Valve's ecosystem, just like with Microsoft/Apple/Google. The most bizarre part is not that it happens, but that they are unable to recognize it even when pointed out to them.
I don’t think you realise how this “little change” drastically affect linux gaming.
You seem to think we didn't use Wine to play Steam games before 2018. Hilarious.
You are right that it looks pretty bad. It's a shame, since they don't have much competition.
As I said, in this case you could have both convenience and freedom. You just don't care enough to try to change your situation. Most gamers do the same and that's why the game industry is so bad.
You should add to your microtnx bullet that they literally invented the Battle Pass. They also recently abandoned it for Dota 2, but that’s probs because nobody wants to work on it.
Woah, you are right! There is even a Wikipedia article about it.
I don’t know of any actions they are taking to stop people putting a better OS on their hardware.
Microsoft doesn't prevent me from using another operating system on my PC either (you are right that it would be way worse if they did, though). But they developed Windows - an operating system that takes away user's freedom. Valve does the same with SteamOS. Most software they make is proprietary, but Valve fans get distracted with things like Proton, which is just a fork of Wine.
I wouldn’t criticize some company for sticking Windows on a machine, if the machine is meant to work out of the box, and the chosen OS is Windows.
If Windows is an unethical operating system and some company makes money distributing it, isn't that unethical?
Valve mainly makes proprietary software. Proton doesn't do anything new. It just contains some fixes for Steam games. Nobody cares about it other than Steam users. You are acting like they invented something here. They didn't. They just want to lock you in their platform.
Actually you can't, since most PC games contain Valve's DRM, even if you buy a physical copy :). So best you can do is sell your Steam account and risk getting banned.
Edit:
People have told me that you can do that now. But once you update, I doubt that you can go back to the previous version if the new one turns out to be worse. Devs can literally remove features from their games. Most patches are useful though, so if your only options are getting all updates or not getting any, it sucks.