I want to play <Manor Lords> when it comes out nex...

# random

[Sam]

I want to play Manor Lords when it comes out next week. But I'm currently driving an M1 Mac, since I use my computer mainly for work and usually prefer to game on console. Like most games, Manor Lords won't run on Mac, at least not at launch. Anyone got any suggested solutions? I've heard DX12 won't work on Arm even if I can get some form of Windows running on the Mac. So the only other thing I can think of is buying a PC, which is... probably overkill for one game, no matter how good it looks.

[Frank Bouwens]

I bought a SteamDeck, it runs Linux, but runs most Windows-games perfectly fine.
Sometimes better to keep work and games separate 😅

[Sam]

It's impressive that they managed to get so many games running well on Linux! Must have been a big engineering effort

[Sam]

I doubt it would be so easy on Apple silicon 😬 I was having a quick look at Crossover, and it looks hit-and-miss at best

[Sam]

I don't mind the idea of having separate machines for work and games but it's hard to stomach the extra cost after shelling out for a Mac 😂 😭

[Sam]

I guess I only have myself to blame for that

[andylamax]

Speaking of games. Has any one managed to run Mortal Kombat 1 on linux? Sorry for hijacking your thread @Sam

[Sam]

No worries, seems like my quest is a lost cause anyway 😞

[Sam]

I was looking into how Steam Deck works and it seems like they have their own compatibility layer (based on Wine, just like Crossover) that's open source

[Sam]

So at least in theory, if a game works on Steam Deck, it should be possible to install the same stuff Steam Deck uses and run it on any Linux

[Frank Bouwens]

So your plan is to dual-boot your MacBook? Could work, but…

You probably could install Linux on your M1 MacBook, but keep in mind that not all packages will support the M1 ‘Apple Silicon’. Some packages will only be compiled for x86/x64.

The SteamDeck runs an x86 chip, not an ARM chip.
So the Windows compatibility stuff (Wine/Proton) might not have ARM versions.

[Sam]

Yeah, I don't think it will work on the Mac. My musing about Proton/Steam was more aimed at @andylamax's question 👍

[Sam]

I'm not even sure if modern Macs can do dual booting

[Frank Bouwens]

Oh that’s a good one. Don’t know. Last time I dual-boot-ed a MacBook, it was an Intel-Mac. 😅

[Frank Bouwens]

Oh about Mortal Kombat 1:

The Steam page says it’s verified compatible with SteamDeck ✅
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1971870/Mortal_Kombat_1/

So yes that should work on Linux with the right Wine/Proton setup 😉

[Sam]

This is all bringing back bad memories of when work started issuing Apple Silicon to devs and there was about a year of horrible crossover period where Docker for Mac couldn't really deal with Intel containers, but our build servers couldn't really deal with building/serving ARM images 😬

[Sam]

it's like the world got so used to everything being Intel for a few years that we got complacent and forgot other architectures exist

[Sam]

Then Apple made Rosetta work in VMs and everything worked fine again and all the hard work we did on multiplatform containers was a waste of time

[Sam]

👌👍

[Frank Bouwens]

😬 Yeah… I think we all got some similar stories 😂
I can laugh about it now, funny in hindsight, not so funny at the moment it happend.

[Frank Bouwens]

Okay got an Android related story;

So we have this app, and we wanted it to support day and night mode;

It’s like 2017, so Android 8 (API 27) doesn’t support this natively.
App devs create a system that changes app to dark mode when the sun is down. Based on time / light sensor value.

Android 10 (api 29) arrives in 2019, the OS now supports switching to dark mode. But keep in mind… Pre-Android 10 devices are still around.

So now we have to support both our own Dark mode system on older devices, and the newer system on the Android 10+ devices.
Of course, AndroidX/AppCompat/Support libs will try to make sure the new code works on older devices. But that won’t nicely integrate with the solution the app devs came up with 2 years prior. 😕

This story happens every year when a new Android version arrives 😂 ; Just think of Notifications (Notification Channels), new Runtime permissions, Compose Material design 3, etc…

[Sam]

Has anyone ever tried to make a "corejs for Android"?

[Sam]

Ideally it would need to be maintained by a solo developer with zero recognition, and would rapidly become vital to the entire Android ecosystem

[Sam]

That way we could have all the new features in the old versions! With massive app bundles 👌

[Frank Bouwens]

Well… That’s basically what AndroidX/AppCompat/Support libs is;
And so is Compose. Compose is also a lib in your app, not in the OS.
And that’s also what Google is doing with Google Play Services (GMS)