- cross-posted to:
- games@sh.itjust.works
- cross-posted to:
- games@sh.itjust.works
Really, this is the games’ fault, at least if they were released in the last ten years. That’s how long Documents has been a subdirectory of OneDrive by default. If you’ve built software that can’t handle that gracefully and released it since, that’s just negligent. It’s not like the windows documentation doesn’t tell you places that wouldn’t have this problem where you can store machine-specific data.
I hate it when games save in my documents folder. I use my documents folder for important stuff like my documents. Shove it in appdata or steamapps or somewhere reasonable.
I’ve been complaining about this for years now. Windows even has a library for saved games and some games even used that but for some braindead reason, they just don’t anymore (and not many did). My documents folder is useless for documents, which is one of the many reasons I stopped using Windows for anything but gaming.
What’s almost as annoying though are games that save to appdata. I have lost so many gamesaves that were hidden in the depths of appdata to windows reinstallations while my documents (and “my games” folder) sits securely on a secondary HDD.
I hate games that use the base Documents directory. So many new subfolders in there. We need a <Username>/<Machine name>/Games folder instead of <Username>/Documents/My Games or whatever it is called nowadays. At least it isn’t <Username>/My Documents anymore. That damn space was a problem causer.
They use Documents because it’s an easy way to ensure saves don’t persist between users. If you and a sibling both play on the same computer, you don’t necessarily want to be sharing game saves. Since the Documents folder is on a per-user basis, the saves are per-user as well. If they simply saved the games in the Program Files folder, saves would potentially persist across users. And anyone who has had a younger sibling accidentally erase all of their saves knows what a bad idea that is.
It also allows them to persist after a reinstall of the game or of Windows itself, as the Documents and media folders are (optionally) not wiped when reformatting via a Windows install. For games that for whatever reason (fuckin’ Dark Souls 3) don’t have cloud saving this is a boon.
Make it a new personal folder called “Games”.
Not the first time MS fiddled with those settings lately.
Uninstall it then. 🤷🏻♂️
I’ve uninstalled it dozens of times. Uninstalling Windows is the real tip.
But gaming…
I’m a pretty heavy PC gamer. I’ve been full time Linux for a decade and it’s never been better for it. There’s like two games my friends play that won’t run due to anticheat, but lucky for me I don’t play those anyway. 🤷♂️
2 years since I’ve built my gaming rig. I’ve booted Windows on it once, and at this point I don’t even have a Windows partition anymore.
I’m someone that happily advocates Linux for daily use but for gaming… Some games run great on Linux Steam but there are more than a few that either won’t run at all or for some reason (gpu drivers maybe?) run slow as hell when on Windows they run just fine. I 100% prefer to run on Linux but until there’s a solution for that I’m stuck dual booting.
The games I play on my hardware tend to perform the same or a little better on Linux.
I’m not saying this is true generally but it is for my relatively small sample.
For reference, I have a recent Radeon GPU. Games like Cyberpunk 2077, Baldur’s Gate 3 and even Starfield (which I haven’t played in a while because 🥱) all fit this experience.
The open source driver for Nvidia seems to be catching up lately, so hopefully everyone will soon have a prime time on Linux!
Anecdotal: first game I really felt a difference in a bad way (it was worse on linux), was with battlebit Remastered… it’s still very playable but I had weird frame drops on the same hardware. Normally it’s the same or better though, so whatever :-)
I’m currently in the process of (finally) migrating my gaming PC to Linux and through that eradicating the last bit of Windows in my private life.
However, I happen to have a Nvidia card in my PC (GTX 1650 was the only sensible choice since I’m limited to a 250W PSU and it was almost half the price of an RX 6400) and Linux (nobara in my case) isn’t exactly making it easy for me, especially since I’d like to have gamescope / the steam deck interface.
I made steam start in Big picture mode on my linux mint HTPC to achieve that interface. Does that not work for you bc of the Nvidia card?
The regular old af Big Picture mode should work fine but it’s ugly and clunky imo. The new steamdeck specific big picture mode (or rather session) doesn’t work. I just get a black screen. That might be fixable but I haven’t dug into that yet. It should be able to work with current drivers. Wouldn’t be as complicated with AMD graphics and I’m looking if I find someone to trade my 1650 with an RX 6400…
Yeah I don’t think that’s gonna work. It uses Wayland which AFAIK is not supported by the proprietary Nvidia driver. No idea about the open source one but I don’t think that’s ready for prime time yet anyway.
I’ve had the same machine since 2018 and I’ve only ever had to uninstall OneDrive once. 🤨
Using 10 or 11?
If you’re using Office365 it tends to auto update and happily forget you don’t want to have OneDrive on your machine, so it reinstalls it.
It kinda annoying because OneDrive is a piece of shit in general, but saving directly to SharePoint from Office apps is useful. As with many Microsoft services, OneDrive is just SharePoint in disguise. But I really would like the SharePoint bit without the OneDrive bit.
I also don’t like the whole cloud first thing, pushing everything to Microsoft services. But I understand why they did it, for regular dumb users storing shit on a cloud service is probably better than on the computer. I’ve had multiple co-workers send me Word docs with a list of linked documents (why is this a feature and why do people use it?), which all linked to the local Documents folder. They said they checked all the links before mailing the Word docs, so it must be me who is mistaken.
I set up a Windows PC for a friend, and he insisted on using his M$ account (bad decision). That caused the Desktop folder (not Downloads, not Documents, just the Desktop) to be stored in OneDrive. So as I tried to load his old PC’s Software hive, to extract the windows key, it crashed the PC. No problem, the original hive was still exported on the Desktop. I just rebooted into the boot stick and tried to load the hive there. After searching for the Desktop folder for 30 minutes, I finally located it in the OneDrive folder. And despite it being there, and taking up space, according to dir, it couldn’t be accessed, like wtf?
- Who wants to share the desktop, but not Downloads etc? In contrast to the other user folders, the desktop is filled with program links that won’t even work anywhere else.
- And why not make it accessible in a live boot? Like, it was obviously accessible to some degree, but not readable somehow? Wtf?
Your mistake was trying to do literally anything yourself. Just sit down and let daddy Microsoft take care of everything for you.
In contrast to the other user folders, the desktop is filled with program links that won’t even work anywhere else.
As someone who used to work in IT I wish that was the case. The desktop is a catch-all for basically anything that might momentarily enter a user’s field of vision.
Application shortcuts, URL shortcuts, broken application and URL shortcuts, PDFs, images, a copy of their child’s baby album, a folder that’s just called “stuff” where all their actual work is saved, seven different copies of the same recipe for homemade pasta sauce, six empty files named “New Text Document”, and a recycle bin full of things too important to delete.
But you can’t put anything anywhere else, because they “have a system.”
I feel attacked. Only i do clear my recycle bin frequently
With the digital realm becoming increasingly important and approaching the physical realm in terms of importance and familiarity, I now consider people who use their desktop for everything to literally be hoarders. It’s mental illness. I forgive it in old people but if you grew up on computers and you live like this, this is a clinically significant unwillingness to clean up one’s personal space.
I agree with most of this, but honestly take it a step further. On my Windows machine I don’t put anything on my desktop at all, and turn desktop icons off entirely. It’s literally the worst possible place to put things that you frequently need because it’s covered up by anything you’re doing. You need at least one interaction to get there regardless, so just use the start menu.
I can understand how this might be annoying but I’m pretty sure it’s convenient for OneDrive users. Why doesn’t he just disable syncing on that folder? How many times is he changing PC?
Bought a Win 11 laptop recently (it’s now a linux device), and on first boot up there was no way to gracefully decline using a Microsoft account to sign in. Luckily, I was in a hotel and couldn’t connect to the wifi without going through a login page, so the lack of internet connection allowed me to set up a local account. In any case, if you’re forced to log in with an MS account, OneDrive starts syncing right away. You can disable it, but maybe not before it’s already done some damage.
In addition to what the other user said, you can force it to make a local account by entering a “bad” email address. When I was regularly doing end user reinstalls, id regularly use “fuck@you.com” as my email, and for some reason, that account wasn’t usable so it just had me setup a local account.
Will definitely file these methods away for the future. Microsoft just keeps getting skeezier and they didn’t do this shit the last time I had to install Windows. This new laptop is the start of a transition to as close to 100% Linux as I can get.
You can skip the MS account during install, just select the domain join and then don’t actually join a domain. You wind up with a single local user that way.
You can decline using OneDrive during installation. And after installation you can uninstall it or just disable the service.
That’s it.
Article writer: “I can’t write an article on that. I know, I’ll pretend I’ve never used a computer before instead!”
When you set up a new PC, OneDrive automatically starts syncing files based on the Microsoft account you sign in with.
I wish that Microsoft’s cloud storage service was opt-in instead of opt-out.
I set up dozens of Windows machines for users every month. There is literally a page during the out of box experience that prompts the user as to whether or not they want their Desktop, Documents, and Pictures mapped to OneDrive.
The person writing the article and anyone else complaining about this are mashing “next” without paying attention and then complaining it wasn’t set up the way they want.
I actually do use OneDrive for those locations, even going so far as to symlink AppData game save locations over to OneDrive so that everything is the same between my laptop and desktop.
I haven’t had the issue the author describes with AC Valhalla or with Rockstar Games Launcher.
After you set up a new device, OneDrive doesn’t automatically download the entirety of its contents. Files are downloaded “on demand” when the system tries to access them, and I bet that’s what caused the stall the author described.
The only inconvenience I’ve ever suffered from having game saves in OneDrive was with Call Of Duty’s Modern Warfare reboot. The settings config file lives in the Documents folder, so each time I launched the game on my Desktop or Laptop I would have to edit the settings to suit that device.
Regardless of the OOBE setup: You can just create a local account and also not have the issue.
Anything you do after that is done by your own actions.I always have issues with The Sims. Apparently EA uses the Documents folder for a lot of temp files. So every time I play The Sims, I get warnings from OneDrive that thousands of files were recently deleted. Because it’s creating and deleting temp files the entire time you’re playing, which are all automatically trying to sync to OneDrive.
Given, that’s mostly an issue on EA’s side; Whatever programmer thought the Documents folder was a good spot for temp files should be dragged out back and flogged.
You know what! Linux would fix that.
Ironically, needing dependable OneDrive (and the latest Microsoft Office) for work is the only thing preventing me from making the switch to Linux.
Thats because people are ok with Microsoft purposefully not supporting Linux and destroying most projects to do it independently.
Or just turn off OneDrive.
Installing Linux does that for you.
Because changing the computers entire structure makes so much more sense than just turning one program off…
Yes.
Grow up
In difference to Windows people i did.
They’d probably have less of an impression that Linux is only for people they wouldn’t want to associate with, as that’s the impression you’re giving.
This is why the Linux community has a bad rep, you know. Mock the OS, not the users.
Mock the OS, not the users.
You’re right. It’s not Linux users who are idiots - after all they make their best of a bad world - it’s Linux itself. Or, more broadly, GNU+Linux. I mean, what unholy hybrid of an ungulate with an aquatic bird did anyone think was going to help anyone?! I just don’t understand how it succeeded like it has. Must be marketing. That Ian guy, and - whatshername - they’re probably to blame.
There’s an X in “Linux”, and everyone’s telling me that X is the coolest thing. Do you see anything like that in Windows?
There’s a + in my windows, and that means more!
Also I heard Linux is bored of x and they’re going to rename it to Linuwayland, which sounds like Linoleum so it should be simple but easy to clean.
Bah, what is a + but an X with a stick up its arse!
Linuwayland is all about removing unnecessary bloat like window icons, absolute positioning, global hotkeys, a unified randr solution, color profiles, and nvidia support altogether – the average PC user shouldn’t see a difference.
Where did i attack anyone by saying Linux turns one drive off for you?
You specifically said installing Linux would do that. After already mentioning Linux in your parent comment. We all know what you meant by it. Trying to play it off now makes it seem even less genuine.
Uhh… Is Linux a insult to you Windows people?
Wow imagine the fragility…
And there’s the outward insulting. Are you proud of yourself? Do you feel better now?
“I have cancer”
“Just install Linux”
sudo pacman -Rs cancer
Unfortunately it has metastasized to the initramfs image. It’s terminal.
But like which terminal dude because
kitty
uses GPU rendering dude and it would be wild if you’re still using a different terminal but also yeahfish
is cool and all and it’s not fully compatible with bash but like did you know shebangs can fix most of that or like dude even better there are so many ohmyzsh extensions forzsh
its crazy. Are you on Arch, btw? I’m on Arch, btw./s
I’m also on Arch btw, I use zsh for CLI but exclusively bash for shell scripts, and my terminal of choice is kitty because I use lf and kitty is the only terminal I’ve seen so far that can reliably display images
By not having the feature? 👌👍
By not trying to sneak it onto your system over and over.
About ten years ago, I was using a third-party OneDrive client to sync it on an Ubuntu install. It was working brilliantly until daylight savings started our stopped, then it got confused about file times not matching so tried resyncing everything, and then saw the times still didn’t match, so made a new file for each file with an added numeric suffix, then tried doing the same for the new files, and kept going until my disk was full. That was a mess to tidy up, and once it was sorted, I had to start the sync program in GMT to stop it happening again.
I mean less tracking. You can still use the online version or have a own data server like a normal person.
Lololol “normal person”
The nerd on lemmy running their own server shit is calling that what a normal person would do 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Who doesn’t have at least a small server for data? Like wtf even my Grandma has one.
My Grandma doesn’t. She insists on using Gentoo so it never works!! I keep telling her to use Windows instead… smh
Imagine pressuring a grandma that settled for a Distro into using windows…
Only on the home server. It would play nicer with the Microsoft-brand ip-over-ham-radio.
Her gaming rig runs netBSD, obviously.
🙄
I’m not even sure how to stress this. That’s not the average household.
Yeah shure. Tell me any sane person that doesn’t have a server at home.
Look, Linux is great and all, and with the ammount of effort VALVE puts into proton, gaming does work very well with it. But unfortunately, particularly when it comes to multiplayer games, Linux/Proton can often not be a viable alternative to Windows. A lot of game developers are working against proton compatibility by using anti cheat software that either doesn’t support proton or actively detects and prevents using proton.
gaming does work very well with it.
…is worth mentioning that gaming on LInux doesn’t work very well because middle ware (anticheat and stuff) do expect weird things designed by Microsoft. See this in the case of ACPI:
It seems unfortunate if we do this work and get our partners to do the work and the result is that Linux works great without having to do the work. Maybe there is no way to avoid this problem but it does bother me. Maybe we could define the APIs so that they work well with NT and not the others even if they are open. Or maybe we could patent something related to this. Bill Gates quote
No it’s not worth mentioning. At all.
I don’t care. Gamers don’t care. Nobody but people defending the honor of Linux care. They just want it to work.
Pro tip: I couldn’t give a fuck that Nvidia doesn’t work either.
You give off that vibe of “I got mine so fuck everyone else”
Maybe 🤷♂️
But it represents the reality and a huge barrier to entry.
Dont play shitty games whose devs(or rather the companys behind) purposefully fuck up to not let it run on Linux, you should be mad at them not searching for the fault at valve or Linux.
Dont play shitty games whose devs(or rather the companys behind) purposefully fuck up to not let it run on Linux
I don’t. Most games I play are single player indie titles that run perfectly fine on the steam deck. I’m merely pointing out that people also like to play multiplayer games, and particularly in the competitive games, anti cheat software is often used to thwart cheaters and unfortunately that anti cheat software is often incompatible with linux/proton, either by lack of consideration or on purpose.
you should be mad at them not searching for the fault at valve or Linux.
At no point did I blame valve or linux for these issues, feel free to point out where I did that. I was clearly blaming the game developers that implement such “features” to the detriment of linux users.
All I was saying that your “solution” to “just install linux” is, unfortunately, not something that universally works for everyone.
Doesn’t sound like he’s blaming Linux at all. Only stating that your answer to everything doesn’t work for everyone.
Or just use Windows.
Ew.
It works 🤷♂️
More than Linux can say.
No. Actually most things besides MSOffice don’t run on windows without problems.
Thats currently the only thing that keeps windows afloat.
👌👍 whatever you say
“Most shit doesn’t run on Windows without problems”. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
You have absolutely no idea what you’re even saying anymore, do you? Just sitting there vomiting up sentences irregardless of what they mean.
Not once Ubuntu installs OneDrive in a wine-Snap. Then it’ll mess up your games and increase memory use with duplicated libraries.
Really, in the end, Linux makes everything worse. Acornsoft is the only way. And Repton 2 and Elite are drop-in replacements for Elden Ring and Starfield.
Lmao. You just cant use a computer normally.
Life would be so much more dull if I could.