DukenukemX
Supreme [H]ardness
- Joined
- Jan 30, 2005
- Messages
- 7,985
Minecraft is probably the one thing Microsoft bought that they didn't fuck up. Everyone expected that they would put micro-transactions and DLC's but they didn't. Everyone expect the game to be exclusive to Xbox, but they didn't. The fact that Minecraft is where it is has nothing to do with Microsoft, but shows that Minecraft is such a big game that it exceeds even Xbox itself. Microsoft would love to dump the Java Edition but that would create a lot of angry unhappy Minecraft users. There will be a day when Minecraft will dump the Java Edition and won't have a port of their "BedRock" edition for Linux. The reason why Minecraft is even for Linux was because it was an indie game because lots of indie games port for Linux, and they do that because fans have requested it.For instance, it would be a nice gesture if they released Minecraft's "Bedrock" edition for Linux natively when most of the official development is happening for Bedrock, as opposed to the ostensibly cross platform Java edition (which survives primarily thanks to its long history of modders, but its obvious MS would love to ditch the Java version) .
No chat program rules forever. For a while it was Skype and then we had Ventrilo and now we have Discord. Privacy is another matter, but what does matter is that these applications continue to be available to multiple platforms like Linux. We don't want another Rocket League where it had perfectly fine Linux support until a big name company bought them out like Epic who doesn't have any support for Linux. Do you see Xbox games on Linux? Do you see the Xbox Game Pass on Linux? It doesn't even work with Wine thanks to UWP. The Windows Store is Windows exclusive... forever, including at some point Minecraft. I don't want to play a game and can't talk to other players because I'm using Linux. Discords Privacy only matters when it starts to cost money to users, which at that point the community will switch again as they've done before.While I see the allure of Discord, much like Twitter and Facebook there are many issues with privacy, security, and discourse being usurped by a single centralized for profit entity with a proprietary client - even if I can give them some credit for offering a Linux version (albeit I do wish it wasn't an Electron bundled application). I'd encourage anyone to get away from Discord the same way I do major social media platforms and similar services like YouTube or Twitch (if you want me to go more in depth on alternatives let me know). While there are many messenger programs now, even a few of them being open source/FOSS/libre the one that I think is the best alternative to Discord is likely the Matrix network ( https://matrix.org/ ) and specifically the Element client ( https://element.io/ ) which has a similar UI and feature set to Discord. It may not be all the way perfect yet, but its open source and federated, end to end encrypted, yet has a bunch of those Discord style quality of life features many enjoy. It can even bridge to other services like IRC , Slack, and even Discord itself with proper plug-ins, provided the service doesn't break these kind of bridges until they are updated yet again. In any case, its a better alternative to Discord no matter what may happen and though it may take quite some time to get people to move over unless Discord totally messes things up, its worth trying to leverage Matrix / Element as a preferable alternative.