Porting games to a different architecture is normally quite a bit more involved than just recompiling them, especially when architecture-agnostic code wasn’t a design goal of the original game code. No, Valve couldn’t release all their games natively running on ARM tomorrow, the process would take more time.

But even if Valve were to recompile all their games for ARM, many other studios wouldn’t just because a few gaming handhelds would benefit from it. The market share of these devices wouldn’t be big enough to justify the cost. Very few of the games that run on Steam Deck are actually native Linux versions, studios just rarely bother porting their games over.

I’m not saying ARM chips can’t be faster or otherwise better (more efficient) at running games, but it just doesn’t make sense to release an ARM-based handheld intended for “PC” gaming in the current landscape of games.

Apple can comparatively easily force an architecture transition because they control fhe software and hardware. If Apple decides to only sell RISC-V based Macs tomorrow and abandon ARM, developers for the platform would have to release RISC-V builds of their software because at some point nobody could run their software natively anymore because current Macs would be replaced by RISC-V Macs as time passed by. Valve does not control the full hard- and software stack of the PC market so they’d have a very hard time to try and force such a move. If Valve released an ARM-based gaming handheld, other manufacturers would still continue offering x86-based handhelds with newer and newer CPUs (new x86 hardware is still being developed for the foreseeable future) and instead of Valve forcing developers to port their games to native ARM, they’d probably lose market share to these other handhelds as people would naturally buy the device that runs current games best right now.

In a “perfect world” where all games would natively support ARM right now an ARM-based handheld for PC gaming could obviously work. That simply isn’t the world we live in right now though. Sure we could ramble on about “if this and that”, it’s just not the reality.

As you said yourself, it’s not the same thing. Proton can occasionally beat Windows because Vulkan might be more efficient doing certain things compared to DirectX (same with other APIs getting translated to other API calls). This is all way more abstract compared to CPU instruction sets.

If Qualcomm actually managed to somehow accurately (!) run x86 code faster on their ARM hardware compared to native x86 CPUs on the same process node and around the same release date, it would mean they are insanely far ahead (or, depending on how you look at it, Intel/AMD insanely far behind).

And as I said, any efficiency gains in idle won’t matter for gaming scenarios, as neither the CPU nor the GPU idle at any point during gameplay.

With all that being said: I think Qualcomm did a great job and ARM on laptops (outside of Apple) might finally be here to stay. But they won’t replace x86 laptops anytime soon, and it’ll take even longer to make a dent in the PC gaming market because DIY suddenly becomes very relevant. So I don’t think (“PC”) gaming handhelds should move to ARM anytime soon.

No, that’s not at all what I said. Translating between CPU architectures and translating API calls isn’t even close to the same thing.

If they want to keep the Deck’s reputation of being able to run “most” PC games, they’ll have to make a new model sooner rather than later. I’m guessing they’re waiting for AMDs beefier RDNA 3.5 iGPUs. Pair that with more and faster memory and they should be good to go.

Yeah, it’s also not “just” if it’s one of what feels like hundreds of steps now to make the OS somewhat usable.

If both AMD/Intel and Qualcomm do a good job with their core design and the same process node is used, I don’t see how a translation layer can be any faster than a CPU natively supporting the architecture. Any efficiency advantages ARM supposedly has over x86 architecturally will vanish in such a scenario.

I actually think the efficiency of these new Snapdragon chips is a bit overhyped, especially under sustained load scenarios (like gaming). Efficiency cores won’t do much for gaming, and their iGPU doesn’t seem like anything special.

We need a lot more testing with proper test setups. Currently, reviewers mostly test these chips and compare them against other chips in completely different devices with a different thermal solution and at different levels of power draw (TDP won’t help you much as it basically never matches actual power draw). Keep in mind the Snapdragon X Elite can be configured for up to “80W TDP”.

Burst performance from a Cinebench run doesn’t tell the real story and comparing runtimes for watching YouTube videos on supposedly similar laptops doesn’t even come close to representing battery life in a gaming scenario.

Give it a few years/generations and then maybe, but currently I’m pretty sure the 7840U comfortably stomps the X Elite in gaming scenarios with both being configured to a similar level of actual power draw. And the 7840U/8840U is AMD’s outgoing generation, their new (horribly named) chips should improve performance/watt by quite a bit.

Not sure why you’d want an ARM-based handheld to play PC games at this point in time. Pretty much all PC games are available in x86 only, and any efficiency gains these fancy new ARM chips supposedly have will be lost when translating x86 to ARM.

RIP and thank you for your contributions!

Ping your own VPS?

True. Might be easier to just drop a bunch of torrents to the website though.

That’s not what this is. You can download a supposedly dead torrent, add more trackers that might have peers available for that torrent to it, and re-add the modified torrent to your client.

I highly doubt most do, just that the percentage of Linux users may be higher than on many other platforms.

The most used platform for Lemmy is likely still Windows or a mobile OS.

Well it still technically does give them a list, it’s just that even with the list there are a lot of combinations.

I think their services are generally pretty good, yes.

But their frontends really aren’t. Their web apps are serviceable for desktop use. The Proton Mail desktop app is essentially the web app in an Electron or CEF wrapper. But on the desktop you can at least use Proton Bridge to then use whatever IMAP mail client you want.

On mobile, you can’t. You have to use their services with the corresponding app they provide on Android and iOS. I moved from iCloud Mail to Proton just a few weeks ago (and I also had Proton a few years ago), which meant I had to switch from the default iOS “Mail” app to the Proton Mail app, as Proton doesn’t support IMAP without a bridge (naturally, as IMAP doesn’t support end-to-end encryption).

Unfortunately the Proton Mail app is not a fully native app but instead it must be using React Native or something similar. It’s a low effort port of the web app, meaning very few integrations with iOS were actually done. For example, Apple Mail can show the email content in the notification, Proton Mail doesn’t. At least you can mark mails as read in the notification, but you can only see the subject line without opening the app. Offline functionality is very limited as mail contents aren’t cached on device, which can also make opening specific mails very slow (comparatively at least), and overall the app just feels less responsive compared to a native Swift UI app. UI animations aren’t “attached to your finger”, instead they just fully play once triggered no matter what. Calendar attachments just show up as an .ics file that you then have to download and open to add them to your calendar instead of just having a simple “Add to calendar” button.

But the worst part is that the iPad version is basically just the iPhone version blown up to fill the screen. It doesn’t have a multi-column layout with your inbox on the left and the selected mail on the right. Nope, just like on the phone app, you open a single mail, it takes over the whole screen and you have to go back to your inbox again.

For that reason I didn’t even bother with their calendar service.

The VPN app is fine. The iPad app is the same blown up iPhone app as well, but you don’t actively use the app for more than a few seconds to pick and connect to a server, so I don’t care.

Proton Pass is a little bit better (it’s also newer I think), it does have a separate iPad layout. It also integrates well with their email alias service (SimpleLogin, although the SimpleLogin service standalone is a bit different still). I still use 1Password though because of the SSH Agent integration on desktop and it also comes with a Safari iOS browser extension for additional convenience features over just the native OS integration for password managers.

I actually use SimpleLogin and while it’s technically not an OG Proton service, you do get their Premium service included with your Proton subscription (Proton owns SimpleLogin now). Very good service and hey, it has a pretty solid iOS app.

I didn’t really use Proton Drive yet, but I’ll probably use it for archiving some stuff by just uploading it through the web interface. Last time I checked they didn’t have a native Linux client yet (for Dropbox-like folder sync), but somebody hacked support into rclone I think, although the API isn’t documented on Proton’s part, so it’s probably not super-reliable.

That’s it, right? Apparently Proton might acquire Simple Notes, and I’d sure take that included in my subscription, although I feel like Proton should focus on vastly improving their existing services first before they broaden their portfolio.

Oh yeah, looking forward to hopefully many years of platform support. They’ll obviously have to switch to different memory modules (as an example) at some point (CAMM should be next), but I hope they keep the board compatible with the case, modules, I/O and display for as long as anyhow possible.

I’m coming from a ThinkPad T490 and if that would’ve been a Framework which I could just upgrade from the i7 8565u to a Core Ultra or Ryzen 7000, I wouldn’t need/want a new notebook and could simply upgrade.

This will be my first Framework, already preordered a few weeks ago.

They finally offer a 120 Hz display, and while it has slightly rounded corners which isn’t ideal, but I’ll take the 120 Hz with VRR and higher resolution over perfect corners. They explained they had to use a panel that was already on the market because they don’t have enough volume that they can afford to order a custom display and with the Framework 13 using a 3:2 aspect ratio options were apparently very limited.

They also offer a keyboard with the Super key having a neutral label (not a Windows logo) now.

The new webcam is apparently quite a lot better, but I don’t care too much about that.

I went for the i5 125H model, I think the difference of almost 400,-€ to the i7 155H isn’t worth it for most use cases, as you only get 2 more P cores (with all other core clusters being identical, I think 4+8+2 vs. 6+8+2) and 8 instead of 7 GPU CUs. I feel the difference will be negligible for my use case as soon as it hits power/thermal limits anyway. This also seems to be the stop-gap generation of CPUs, with both AMD and Intel appearing to make noticeable steps forward in the generation.

There’s also the AMD model which is great and got most upgrades the Ultra model did (new display, webcam and keyboard options), only missing out on a slightly improved cooling system. Between the i7 and R7 I probably would’ve gone for the Ryzen 7, but I feel the i5 is the better choice compared to the Ryzen 5, primarily because the iGPU is stripped quite a bit compared to the R7. Intel is also less restrictive on which expansion slot supports what, with every port supporting full USB 4 including DisplayPort. Not a big deal as there are still enough fully-featured slots on the AMD model, but it’s a bit more convenient to just plug in any card anywhere and it works.

Yup, good point!

Android users would use RCS for communicating with each other via the default messaging app on Android.

MMS has a hard size limit depending on the carrier the sender uses, that’s independent of the sender using an Android phone or an iPhone. This limit can be as high as “more than 1 MB”, but also as low as 300 KB or even less. Compressing an image down to 300 KB will naturally incur a quality penalty.

About “Security theater”: you can enable what’s called “Advanced Data Protection” so the encryption keys are only stored on-device for most types of data including photos, backups and also notes for example. Mail and calendar is one exception that comes to mind, but you could also always use a different mail and calendar service. This is a fairly recent feature, so you may have missed it. Sure, it’s not your fully self-hosted “cloud” on which you can audit every single line of code and whatnot, but it might actually be the best “compromise” of ease-of-use vs. privacy for many people outside the tech bubble we’re in in this community.

About “Proprietary App Store”: the store itself and many apps on there are proprietary, but there are a lot of open source apps on the App Store as well. The bigger problem is the fact that the App Store is the only (hassle-free) way to install apps to the iPhone and only recently the EU seems to change that with alternative storefronts now emerging, but Apple is limiting the use of them to the EU, so they’re essentially doing the bare minimum to comply with EU law.

About “Gaslighting their customers”: I’d like to see hard proof on that. I think what you’re talking about is the fact that messages sent to Android users using the default “Messages” app are sent as MMS, which is an ancient technology and as such only support tiny, low-quality images. Android doesn’t support iMessage and Apple seems to like to keep it that way as it’s apparently selling a lot of iPhones this way in the US (and sure, I agree that’s a bad thing). It does get better with the just-announced RCS support (a supposedly open protocol which Google added so many proprietary extensions to you can’t really call it open anymore) so pictures can be send in full quality to Android users using the Messages app. Also, you could always use a third-party messenger like Signal or WhatsApp and send full-quality pictures just fine.

I’m not saying there aren’t any concerns, but some of the information you provided is at least out of date.

If by backup notebook you mean a notebook that you use in case your main notebook breaks or something similar, I’d install the same OS and software on it.

If by backup notebook you mean that you want to use it as a server where you store backups on, I’d use either Debian or AlmaLinux.