FOSS Fun Friday 1 – An Eclectic Batch of News

FFF 1.1 – Steam Deck News
A) Steam Deck to Cross 3 Million Units Sold This Year
This should not come as a terrible surprise, as the FOSS community has really banded around the ‘Deck. It is a niche product which has great potential, but most normie-con gamers are still quite happy with their Windows PCs, XBoxes and PlayStations, thank you very much. Still, that looks like quite the coup for Steam and Valve as a whole. Sure, that doesn’t make the eye-popping numbers from the big boys, where they sell that many in a bad month, but everything in context, this is cool.
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/04/report-steam-deck-to-pass-3-million-sales-during-2023/
#steam #valve #steamdeck #FOSSNews #Linuxgaming #TechFreedom #FFF
B) GE-Proton 7-55 Released
Quick note, this is not a huge update, but it makes it easier to work around and with Easy Anti-Cheat titles. so here’s what’s new in this hotfix update:
· This is a hotfix for EAC. In 7-53 the star citizen hotfix broke EAC compatibility for other games, this has been fixed now.
o wine updated to latest bleeding edge.
o dxvk updated to git.
o vkd3d-proton updated to git.
o nvapi enabled for final fantasy stranger of paradise.
o legacy xactengine winetricks protonfix removed as it's finally no longer needed.
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/04/ge-proton-7-55-released-essential-fix-for-easy-anti-cheat-steam-deck/
#FFF #Steam #Linuxgaming #geproton #hotfix #easyanticheat #FOSSNews #TechFreedom
C) Halo MasterChief Collection Now On Steamdeck
Cool tidbit, here, boys and girls. That’s right, Microsoft’s juggernaut of a series now works better on the ‘deck. However, there are still growing pains. So, what’s new here?
· When launching Halo: The Master Chief Collection on Steam Deck, selecting one of the available Anti-Cheat launch options will result in the game launching with the opposite launch option. For example, selecting “Anti-Cheat Disabled” will result in MCC launching with Anti-Cheat enabled.
o Until this issue is resolved in a future update, players on Steam Deck must select the “Anti-Cheat Disabled” launch option to access multiplayer matchmaking and the Custom Game Browser.
· Shortly after being removed from or leaving a party with other players via the Roster menu, players on Steam Deck may experience Halo: The Master Chief Collection freezing or crashing.
o Players on Steam Deck are unable to play Campaign Co-op or Spartan Ops with players on PC or Xbox consoles. Attempting to do so may result in players accessing gameplay, however, all sessions will eventually experience a “Connection Interrupted” error or a similar disconnection.
· Campaign Co-op and Spartan Ops will function as expected if all players in the group are playing on Steam Deck.
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/04/halo-the-master-chief-collection-gets-steam-deck-support/
#FFF #halo #steamdeck #easyanticheat #Linuxgaming #FOSSNews #TechFreedom

FFF 1.2 – AMD Drivers Out Now... Good Stuff
So lots of changes to boost performance in AMD GFX for Linux. I alluded to some of these features a couple of weeks ago when I covered the new update for DOTA 2. This one should make some significant changes for anyone who doesn’t like Team Green with their pedo-inspired logo... But I digress. What’s new here? Well, GPL will be enabled by default, which should remove jitters from titles which do not have shader caches. Also due to a re-implementation of that shader cache structure, those cache files should be FAR smaller, which means that your hardware won’t have to work as hard and you get smoother performance. This is excellent. The changes in cache file size have been on the order of a 60% reduction in size for single-file situations, however, in multi-file situations, it has been observed to increase the overall cache size by 2%, due to overhead changes. Sounds like good stuff, even if we won’t necessarily get to see these benefits realized until potentially the next major update for Linux.
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/04/driver-updates-for-amd-radv-to-give-nice-boost-for-linux-and-steam-deck/
#FFF #AMD #RADV #Linux #drivers #MESA #performance #FOSSNews #TechFreedom
Freed Computer

https://techfreedom.pro/freed-computer/

#freedcomputer #linux #nospying #safe #TechFreedom #Truth

FFF 1.3 - Not Strictly Gaming, But KDE Connect Got Some Big Love

The KDE Connect team got a big grant which will allow the development team to focus on it full time. This means that this handy piece of software will get new features and updates that much more frequently. What are they working on next?
· adding in a mDNS backend to improve device discovery and connections
o This is a big deal because it can be a bit finicky at times, so this getting improved makes me very happy
· Rolling out improvements and updates to encryption by dropping the older protocols for old Android
· Security patches and updates
· They’re also looking to improve the UI in terms of accessibility
All good, here. Hopefully that mDNS shift will make those connection issues that I have had go away.
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/04/kde-connect-is-getting-some-upgrades-for-easy-file-transfers/
#FFF #Linux #KDEConnect #GSConnect #security #stability #better #FOSSNews #TechFreedom

FFF 1.4 – Minetest 5.7 Released
If you’re thinking that the name of this game sounds allot like an uber-popular title from Mojang, you’d be right. This is a FOSS game that is very similar to Minecraft. It is an open-world, pixelart, sandbox game which allows you to build just about anything. This version adds a huge performance boost: long-distance horizon drawing used to absolutely crawl, at ~10 FPS, now that same scene practically flies at 53 FPS. That is huge, as 10 FPS is not even remotely playable, where 53 FPS is almost buttery. They’ve added some effects, such as bloom and dynamic exposure, along with occlusion culling, so that it no longer renders things that are outside the frame, and they’ve added better multi-threading support, as well as some goodies for modders. I don’t play these sorts of games at this stage in my life, but I know that many do.
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/04/minetest-570-out-now-with-graphics-improvements-performance-upgrades/
#FFF #minetest #minecraft #updates #performance #goodstuff #FOSSgames #Linuxgaming #FOSSNews #TechFreedom