Totally worth it imho. It allowed me to go Full Linux
Storage for VMs is still primarily emulated rather than virtualized, but you can use VT-d to grant a VM exclusive access to a HBA or RAID card or NVMe SSD, because VT-d works for any type of PCIe device.
Video games are fun.
The interesting thing is that games are some of the most costly and closed source things in software today. Windows costs the price of two games or less.
Further, if you own a PlayStation, an XBox it's likely you have spent hundreds of dollars on closed source games. If you bought a fancy graphics card, would you expect that to be free as well?
I love FOSS software as much a as the next person, but people who write software do have to live. Like game developers, employees of NVIDIA, even the people who make the Arch Linux distribution.
I'm truly not picking on you or FOSS, I just find it hard to rationalize FOSS zealotry that is almost universally hypocritical to some degree. Even Linus gets $10m a year or something like that. I'm not even sure to be honest what FOSS software IS any more.
It's a serious question, because I'm really confused.
Hah! I wish. I've spent thousands on single SKUs - yet SASS and anything B2B can make that look like chump change.
Meanwhile, Steam sales discount high quality, high end titles significantly pretty quickly - to the point where a lot of gamers basically never pay full price.
To say nothing of mobile being flooded with $0.99 titles. To say nothing of the effectively free humble bundles. To say nothing of all the free web and indie games out there.
Although I guess the right freemium Skinner box can also cost thousands in DLC and micro-transactions? But you can get games so cheap these days that people don't even get around to playing everything in their Steam libraries.
> I just find it hard to rationalize FOSS zealotry that is almost universally hypocritical to some degree.
On the more practical side of things, games are entertainment and frequently rely heavily on obfuscation to avoid hacking to gain unfair advantages in multiplayer. It's all somewhat fungible - if you can't play game X, you can still have fun playing game Y - the only real downside being your emotional investment in game X. Vendor lock-in isn't much of a problem, and a number of games are mod friendly.
Having your business and personal data stuck in vendor lock-in and being legally prohibited from taking over where they fuck up, or try to escape from their clutches should they jack up their prices, etc. is a whole new level of potential downside. Entire businesses die when twitter changes their API terms.
Meanwhile, if WoW ever shut down, gold farmers would find another MMO to abuse the same day.
I was more thinking of zero day PC Games and especially console games in my comment but that should have been made clearer. I get that they do get heavily discounted though over time.
Totally agree with your penultimate paragraph, nobody likes it yet we still have our Netflix accounts AND our Amazon accounts.
To me it seems HN often picks on the little guys who are just trying to make a buck while actively supporting giant corporates and going Wheeee!
Nice post by the way
You might be right that there is some projection.
I've been working on a project for quite some time now, without any pay and it is close to completion, and I more and more frequently reflect on how it should be positioned, marketed and ultimately generate some revenue so that I can actually afford my own apartment.
When I read HN I see this tension. Something comes out and the comments will be. Oh that's cool but fuck you, it's not FOSS but at the same time I see yay, another gadget I will immediately go and buy.
You just can't win.
I develop on Linux mostly and Windows occasionally, and I've more than paid my dues to the community over the years, but at some point hard decisions have to be made. FOSS is great when you have enough cash stashed to not give a damn or you are just doing it as a hobby.
I feel like I'm staring down the barrel of a gun no matter which business model I choose sometimes, and it pains me to have to make a decision, and neither one looks pleasant.
Actually that somewhat hits the nail on the head regarding how a lot of us feel. We'd love to do it but the pragmatic reality is that we can't do that all the time.
He feels the pain, I feel the pain, and I'm sure a lot of other people do as well.
The fact remains if he or I play games, or I buy a tv or a washing machine. Well screw us both because on some level we are betraying open source. It's 50 shades of gray.
Anyway, it doesn't really matter. I'm no less confused.
I can slap a Linux distro on my PC in 30 minutes and be ready. Copy over your home folder and apt-get your software and you're ready to go. You can even install it on a USB drive. On the other hand, with Windows, I have to worry about licensing, version (will Windows 10 install home or professional?? It's the same image and it decides by itself...) and just a ton of other stuff. We're at the point where Windows has no advantage over Linux (except for games). A decade ago, you would always run into driver problems, packet manager bugs, configuration problems, etc. on Linux. Today it is rock solid. I am just choosing the better system here - who programmed it and how available the source is does not matter to me.
Although I use Linux 95% of the time, and I think Windows has lost its way a little. I would disagree that it isn't robust. The kernel at least is quite excellent. But that's another topic.
Sorry for raising this issue, it's the "I will pay $1000's of dollars for hardware, and games", but I can't spare change for an OS that got me started. Apologies.
