Normal person sad. Temporary sad. A-few-manageable-aspects sad.
Not that the sad bit is even the deciding factor here when we’re talking about an expensive face brick that would probably give me motion sickness in games.
Tell us without telling us
Still using a 1050Ti, non-fiber internet, not buying stuff, and not even the right kind of sad for that.
Mark Zuckerburg sniping me for sport is a more likely scenario.
To me it seems like the VR market might have a high-end foothold but otherwise seems like a “try again in 30 years” for the general market (so, slightly better than 3D TV’s fate). Which isn’t really Valve-specific.
Though I’d also say <top level comment> is uncharitable way to frame it, the headline reminds me of the free PC codes for Portal 2 with Co-op crossplay early on in the Steam days. Though I’m sure AI-market-induced cost increase is a big part of it so apology actually isn’t a bad way to put it, without ‘failure’ factoring in.
I don’t use Gnome3 because I dislike CSD, also Gnomes should be sending me to the Nordic mythology realm known as “the Hidden World” NOT removing features from my file manager.
Neat. Nearly watchable. I tried kitty/sixel options but those are too high-res and cause even more frame-drops (at least on the older hardware I tested it on, no drops playing with normal mpv), with a 360p video it’s isn’t scaled up.
Then again, I guess it’s a whole lot more watchable than the blinkenlights (Starwars) thing via telnet.
The Void install was relatively easy, though maybe because I used the XFCE edition as I wanted that anyway.
That said, I’ve used Arch for 7+ years and am still using it on my main machine just can’t update. Give me a Polaris-or-better GPU and some faster internet and yeah it probably wouldn’t be an issue. I probably still would prefer slower+more stable updates (and ideally not just a specific time-window) though.
The last time I tried to use Flatpak for Krita, it had to download the Flatpak-specific nVidia driver which is my issue when it comes to internet speed again.
For me the legacy nVidia driver put on the AUR is a no-go. Even before that, non-fiber internet added friction to updating especially when I forgot about it for a while (or when manual intervention is needed).
I installed Void Linux on an old machine, I think updating might be more forgiving but the packaging system isn’t quite as good* and for some things I’d have to rely on appimages (I don’t want redundancy from Flatpak etc).
Tumbleweed/Slowroll might be a better answer if I didn’t hate Patterns.
* after adding some applications, already had to manually install missing dependencies, optional dependencies is also not handled
OOP after shooting L1T Wendell: “What? It was obvious! He’s the red commie. Watch, he’ll turn red any second now! …Aaaaaaany second now. See, red! No-wait, that’s blood.”
I almost got void fully installed and working
I just wanted my new replacement laptop up
I gave up 🥹
Did you use the XFCE version? I did so (XFCE musl*) on an old machine, had a bit of trouble with the partitioning at first (had to try the live image a second time because new changes weren’t working) but ultimately worked fine. Seems to run fine, then again I wanted XFCE anyway. Install octoxbps and you can use that for installing/updating software as well.
Though post-install I did notice some dependencies being missing when installing some software, and packaging seems weak (like no optional dependencies like Arch has). So I haven’t committed to it on my main machine**, though I guess I can test it to see Void’s long-term updating experience (though the live image being from ~6-months ago probably says enough).
* because I am actually interested in this for compilation, and it actually is a use-case for an old machine
** outdated Arch… a bit of friction with my non-fiber internet, legacy GPU (1050Ti) drivers on AUR is a no-go for me
I’ve used my current install for at least that long (going back further with Antergos) and you’re correct about non-rolling options… I definitely would’ve had more pain with system upgrades and PPAs etc in those years.
That said, I think the Tamagotchi comparison probably makes sense in a way if it “dies” you probably did something “wrong” as on-paper it’s also not difficult to maintain a digital pet either.
I’m using an outdated system, it’s on three strikes:
Slow, shared internet for me. This adds friction to updates, and when I don’t update as frequently as Arch expects this is the breakage you won’t see.
I hate that updating today vs days-from-now might yield drastically different results. Admittedly the actual problem with my last few updates is that the reason-I-updated issues persisted.
The AUR is the biggest reason to use Arch. But use the AUR very carefully and not for system dependencies! Your graphics card is now legacy, so we put the driver on the AUR* ;)
Though I don’t think these sort of problems are unfixable**, and other rolling distros probably do fix some of them but may also not have as good of a packaging system as Arch.
For instance I’m trying Void Linux on an old machine and have already ran into 2 (non-default) applications missing dependencies (which might be an issue with package maintainers, but also Void doesn’t seem to track optional dependencies).
Tumbleweed/Slowroll would probably be a better fit for me, if not for Patterns.
* also if you update without switching, blank screen for you
** internet+GPU are also material problems as well, but those cannot get fixed today and probably will not be fixed next month either
Been using it for 5+ years, not the best internet so it has happened to me a few times typically a minor annoyance like the other user said. What were the exact steps again? Makes the updating process even more tedious.
It’s worse when you’ve got to do manual intervention and that’s why I’m not updating now, legacy nvidia driver moved to the AUR (which I didn’t always update). If I could get a cheap AMD card it really would help here, especially as legacy and proprietary are also potential issues with installing a new distro too.
My system is mostly usable now despite being pretty out-of-date by Arch standards, I probably need to move to something else but being outdated (and not prepared) means I can’t just spin up a VM to try stuff out either.
Not sure if you’re counting PC hardware cost or needed accessories, but the base pricing seems comparable especially Bigscreen being smaller+lighter+microOLED.
EDIT: Seeing now that the Bigscreen doesn’t include controllers, and the Valve Index controller setup recommended (Knuckles+multi-base-station) is a significant cost. I guess technically you could still do a lot with just
head-trackingand other peripherals (and maybe even other VR controllers?) but I see the point especially at this cost level.No camera either so head tracking is still an issue and passthrough doesn’t seem to be a possibility. So I guess without having anything else, it’d basically be a fancy monitor with eye-tracking. I’d say maybe one benefit would be ability to lie down, but this might be a quick way to get motion sickness depending on the content.