Yep, I received my invite 4 or 5 days ago, when I mentioned I was running Debian testing/Wheezy.

Just a note about the steam deb package. It contains dependencies that Debian doesn't have, like libc6 2.15, and libjpeg-turbo8, or something like that. You'll have to open up the deb file, and alter the control file to change the dependencies. You'll also have to download a copy of the ubuntu libc6, and throw it into the user steam directory where it stores its dynamic loadable files. Also, steam is a 32 bit package. If you're running 64 bit, you'll have to enable multiarch support by adding the i386 architecture to the dpkg system. You can then do a dpkg -i / apt-get -f install combo to install the (modified) steam deb and all dependent i386 files. Oh, and if you're running proprietary drivers, make sure to install the i386 version of the glx drivers.

So, in summary, it takes a bit of fiddling, but I'm running steam fine on Debian. Works quite nicely, in fact. TF2 is very smooth.

Well, the Windows group has always been the lowest average in Humble Bundles. The Linux group, and to a lesser extent, the Mac group, have always pushed the bundle average up. So, the results aren't much of a surprise.

I can't imagine the effort of porting all those games to other platforms. Give 'em a year, and it could probably be done. I'm sure THQ couldn't wait that long, though.

Your anger is somewhat justifiable. This sets a precedent. Now, other game publishers, who may want to use Humble Bundle, will not feel the need to put in an effort to make their games cross-platform.

Having said that, I'm grateful to Humble Bundle for pushing their cross-platform philosophy as much as they did. It's efforts like that which provide the initial step in generating a flood of games supporting Linux. I'll keep on supporting them, in future bundles, when they once more release cross platform bundles. I genuinely believe they've pushed Linux gaming to the next level, and have greatly influenced developers on the potential of Linux gaming. This will bear fruit soon.

According to the general comments with the article, the book has a creative commons license. The author commented that she will release a copy soon, when she fixes the website to go with it.

Over the years I've been running Linux, the only time I've ever had driver availability issues with Linux has been with one brand new wireless card. It now works fine. Otherwise, driver availability has been perfect in my experience.

  An anecdote: one time, one of the FreeBSD guys here at work gave up in frustration trying to get FreeBSD working on an IBM server. He was having scsi card driver issues. He had to install Linux instead. It just worked under Linux.

  Usually when people talk about shitty driver support in Linux, they're referring to graphics drivers. I wish they'd just say "graphics drivers", instead of implying that the whole Linux driver system is abysmal. Linux drivers are top notch. The graphics drivers are not even part of the kernel. They're part of the Xwindows system. They're still excellent, except when it comes to 3D acceleration and power saving, and then, only with ATI and Nvidia. The proprietary drivers still have the edge there.

*shrug* And yet, despite having a shitty driver subsystem, Linux drivers work, and work very well.

For someone who ignores trolls, as indicated in your sig, I can only conclude you haven't paid much attention to what you wrote.

I hear ya. I responded with Debian to the distro question, which I was hopeful was close enough to Ubuntu that they'd sneak me in.

The funny thing is, according to the beta announcement, "An overwhelming majority of beta applicants have reported they’re running the Ubuntu distro of Linux". I have to wonder how many of those people are actually running other distributions and said Ubuntu, and how many didn't even bother signing up, because it was widely known that Valve were targeting Ubuntu for the beta.

First impression of the error: you're missing a library file.

I did a google search, and came up with this bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/samba4/+bug/887537

Maybe that will help?

That was quite the stream-of-consciousness post. Nice work. I think I even understood most of it.

By the way, to change your theme, download a new theme file, copy it to ~/.e/e/themes/, go to Settings->Theme and select it. Theme change is instant.

I'm running E17, on Debian Testing (proper). With a new theme. I'm happy with it.

If E is mostly masturbation, then I have been masturbating for the last four or five years. Daily. At work and at home. In front of friends and family.

Even more, if you count E16, although I only switched to using E17 at work around four or five years ago.

Third party software. For the most part, I administer everything via the command line. There are some third party systems that use an X GUI for configuration. Thus I need network transparency.

That ... is awesome news! Thanks for that information. I hadn't heard anything about it.

The X compatibility layer will still be useful regardless, but I'm very glad to hear that Wayland will likely have network transparency as well. The more I hear about this system, the more I'm liking it.

I agree that we need to come up with a brand new system to handle today's graphics systems. That's what Wayland is for, and why it's such an interesting project. It is not legacy baggage, but a ground up designed system. You have heard of it, haven't you? Seems like every Linux user and their dog knows about it these days.

Also, I'm very glad that Wayland is implementing an X compatibility layer. I'm one of those fraction of a percent that use and enjoy network transparency. It would annoy the hell out of me if I had to run a full graphic system on the servers I manage, and then use VNC to connect to them. It's just so much nicer to ssh into the machine, run the program, and have it appear directly on my screen. Never mind that I like keeping a minimal amount of packages installed on the servers. I try to keep it simple.

By the way, if we have the memory, computational power, and bandwidth, why are you so worried about X overhead and latency? Surely they become marginal with more resources.

Well, Enlightenment is not entirely a good argument. It's coming up for release very soon (E17), and the next version is already being talked about as having compositing a _requirement_.

Install Debian testing, and have the best of both worlds.