Steam Client: any reason to shut itself off offline?

[battlezoby]

Seriously. Been told that it will, but regardless, is there any excuse for that whatsoever? (*)

All the B.S, about problems with staying with Windows-7 no longer apply as long as you stay offline.

1) No "Security Threat"

2) No support.

3) No nothing.

Am I missing somthing?

I'm pretty sure without the sort of monopoly or near-monopoly leverage Steam enjoys they wouldn't do something that pointless to the customers.

Responses welcome. Am I missing something here? (Like billions of dollars a year of profit isn't enough money to think it through or care about their customers for example.)

* - But I don't know firsthand that it will- yet. Tell me if I'm wrong about it already being programmed to check the clock and do so.

[_I_]

during busy times it can show offline, games will still work, but any games that use steam servers will not
https://store.steampowered.com/stats/content/

[battlezoby]

Publicado originalmente por PopinFRESH:

Publicado originalmente por battlezoby:

Absolutely hilarious!
The #1 person making the most replies to any Win-7 thread I post says that!

Come on buddy, stop the sell-denial, and start talking about why you care about this sooo much. You'll feel better about it.

It should go without saying that if you really didn't care, you'd just ignore it and not reply so much.

But why aren't you using the OS idea you invented that good 'ole ♥♥♥♥ Stallman calls gnu?

I don't use Linux because I use Unix. Linux is a Unix ripoff that caught on while Unix was held up with a frivolious lawsuit.(*)

But Steam and Microsoft seem to have grabbed like 90%+ of the PC market for games, so I use barfaricifc MS for PC gaming.

I used to play a several good 3D games on Unix, Sauerbraten, Assault Cube, Glob 2, but there seems to be less and less of those.

People say Proton helps Linux, but I disagree. It seems to only lessen Linux-Native developement, and I think most of the good Unix games were Linux-Native's that got ported to Unix, and/or Unix's Linux-compatibility mode. But I hate MS so much, I'm not going contaminate another OS with MS-compatibility and/or MS-emulation.

* - The only result of which is that you can't give the University of Berkley credit for stuff under Unix that they weren't involved with.... as if too much credit was a real problem.

UPDATE: See below

[battlezoby]

UPDATE: I totally forgot I was using Linux. I have a laptop running an X-server for Unix, which basically means it's a terminal for Unix, since the words "client" and "server" are used unintuitively "reversed" when it comes to X-Windows. But I don't run anything else on it, and it doesn't even have direct access to the internet or vice-versa.

[King of Yugoslavia]

Publicado originalmente por battlezoby:

Publicado originalmente por PopinFRESH:

But why aren't you using the OS idea you invented that good 'ole ♥♥♥♥ Stallman calls gnu?

I don't use Linux because I use Unix. Linux is a Unix ripoff that caught on while Unix was held up with a frivolious lawsuit.(*)

But Steam and Microsoft seem to have grabbed like 90%+ of the PC market for games, so I use barfaricifc MS for PC gaming.

I used to play a several good 3D games on Unix, Sauerbraten, Assault Cube, Glob 2, but there seems to be less and less of those.

People say Proton helps Linux, but I disagree. It seems to only lessen Linux-Native developement, and I think most of the good Unix games were Linux-Native's that got ported to Unix, and/or Unix's Linux-compatibility mode. But I hate MS so much, I'm not going contaminate another OS with MS-compatibility and/or MS-emulation.

* - The only result of which is that you can't give the University of Berkley credit for stuff under Unix that they weren't involved with.... as if too much credit was a real problem.

UPDATE: See below

native linux development is not that easy in terms of maintaining applications and games in working state.

in traditional linux software packaging with dependencies on system libraries it is hard, because libraries get updated frequently enough.

and in a year or two, or a couple releases later ABI starts to break and you need to update and recompile everything for new libraries to keep software running.

It is not a problem, when either software is open source, so you can just recompile, or there is some guy comes in and patches few lines of code for new libraries, or if ABI is stable.

in case of windows, ABI stability holds up to 15 years. In case of games, a lot of them are forever stuck as binary blobs, and you have not much of choice except developing wine/proton. or reverse engineering entire games, which is insane amount of work.

however, native linux development may mature soon, with adoption of flatpak, or really any packaging system that can manage and provide different versions of dependencies for different software, and in this way keep stable ABI for everyone and everything.

but for now, some native linux games work worse than windows games on proton, if developers aren't committed to continuously update their games for modern linux distributions.

[battlezoby]

Publicado originalmente por sega:

in traditional linux software packaging with dependencies on system libraries it is hard, because libraries get updated frequently enough.

and in a year or two, or a couple releases later ABI starts to break and you need to update and recompile everything for new libraries to keep software running.

Wow. Whatever you'r talking about, it is something I totally can not relate to.

For FreeBSD I'm running versions from the 2020's to help ensure compatible with my hardware and because "why not". I can run modern stuff in chroot'ed[en.wikipedia.org] copies of the main directory so that I don't break anything in the main install when running modern programs. (Or, to be more honest, not break much within the main install.)

But within the main install, I also have at least one copy of Version 6.x (2008) installed along with most of my work software and chroot or jail[en.wikipedia.org] shells into that to use it. Within the 6.x chroot/jail, I have the FreeBSD 4.x and 5.x Compatibility layers installed so that runs stuff from.... well... the old stuff I used back in 1998 up to, well, up to stuff I modifed last week. Latest version of Vim[en.wikipedia.org] also seems to run there just fine, or at least something close to the latest version.

Why are you taking updates that mess you up in an operating system you should have control over?

And, in FreeBSD they the have "ports" and "packages" for most subversions that match up with whateve you're running. "Ports" and "packages" are the same thing, except the packages are precompiled and the "ports" are all source-code.

I haven't hooked it again since moving, but I made a special internal server for PA messages / alerts[en.wikipedia.org] within my building(s), log phone calls, logs of other stuff, etc... Since that's not bloated, I'm running it on a $30,000 100-mhz server I bought for like $40 because of it's reliability and I'm running FreeBSD version 3.x on it. Obvioulsy not a problem when it's not connected to the outside world and not updated by anyone other than myself. Funny story about that server: although the main machine is really good, the boot drive on it died. So rather than putting in a new drive right away, I just left it running for 3+ years without a boot until I had a power failure that outlasted my UPS[en.wikipedia.org]. (I hadn't bothered to replace for $400-ish backup generator that got stolen a few years prior.]

[King of Yugoslavia]

Publicado originalmente por battlezoby:

Publicado originalmente por sega:

in traditional linux software packaging with dependencies on system libraries it is hard, because libraries get updated frequently enough.

and in a year or two, or a couple releases later ABI starts to break and you need to update and recompile everything for new libraries to keep software running.

Wow. Whatever you'r talking about, it is something I totally can not relate to.

For FreeBSD I'm running versions from the 2020's to help ensure compatible with my hardware and because "why not". I can run modern stuff in chroot'ed[en.wikipedia.org] copies of the main directory so that I don't break anything in the main install when running modern programs. (Or, to be more honest, not break much within the main install.)

But within the main install, I also have at least one copy of Version 6.x (2008) installed along with most of my work software and chroot or jail[en.wikipedia.org] shells into that to use it. Within the 6.x chroot/jail, I have the FreeBSD 4.x and 5.x Compatibility layers installed so that runs stuff from.... well... the old stuff I used back in 1998 up to, well, up to stuff I modifed last week. Latest version of Vim[en.wikipedia.org] also seems to run there just fine, or at least something close to the latest version.

Why are you taking updates that mess you up in an operating system you should have control over?

And, in FreeBSD they the have "ports" and "packages" for most subversions that match up with whateve you're running. "Ports" and "packages" are the same thing, except the packages are precompiled and the "ports" are all source-code.

I haven't hooked it again since moving, but I made a special internal server for PA messages / alerts[en.wikipedia.org] within my building(s), log phone calls, logs of other stuff, etc... Since that's not bloated, I'm running it on a $30,000 100-mhz server I bought for like $40 because of it's reliability and I'm running FreeBSD version 3.x on it. Obvioulsy not a problem when it's not connected to the outside world and not updated by anyone other than myself. Funny story about that server: although the main machine is really good, the boot drive on it died. So rather than putting in a new drive right away, I just left it running for 3+ years without a boot until I had a power failure that outlasted my UPS[en.wikipedia.org]. (I hadn't bothered to replace for $400-ish backup generator that got stolen a few years prior.]

what were you trying to say?

[battlezoby]

Publicado originalmente por sega:

what were you trying to say?

Short version: I don't understand why you seem to be implying that you or anyone else might have to update Linux (non-OS) programs if they might not want to.

Probably belongs in a different thread, but I thought Linux programs, like Unix, mostly ship or automatically load with the specific versions of all their dependencies and refer to them as such.

For example, if a program wants to use libstdc++.so.2.7.2.8 it loads "libstdc++.so.2.7.2.8" and if something else pushes any and all newer versions of libstdc++ or any other library, it doesn't really matter because it'll keep using the version it was distributed for.

[Shaggin'Wagon]

Publicado originalmente por PopinFRESH:

Publicado originalmente por Komarimaru:

Offline only works for so long. Most games on Steam use the Steamworks DRM. Meaning at some point, you'll have to be online to validate the games authenticity….

This isn’t true, see the first reply. CEG doesn’t require a “phone home” or online check to work. It just requires an authenticated Steam session. When you switch to offline mode this is maintained with a session file and should be indefinite; as long as nothing breaks the session file checks.

What they wrote IS true. If we set steam to offline mode it will eventually invalidate it's self and make us sign on again. Modifying the files to disable updates won't fix it. There is no way to avoid it. At some point in time (usually 4-6 months) of being offline the steam client WILL force us to login again and re-validate our files again.

We can not remain in offline mode forever.

[King of Yugoslavia]

Publicado originalmente por battlezoby:

Publicado originalmente por sega:

what were you trying to say?

Short version: I don't understand why you seem to be implying that you or anyone else might have to update Linux (non-OS) programs if they might not want to.

Probably belongs in a different thread, but I thought Linux programs, like Unix, mostly ship or automatically load with the specific versions of all their dependencies and refer to them as such.

For example, if a program wants to use libstdc++.so.2.7.2.8 it loads "libstdc++.so.2.7.2.8" and if something else pushes any and all newer versions of libstdc++ or any other library, it doesn't really matter because it'll keep using the version it was distributed for.

because you have to update it, as long as desktop linux and linux gaming is being improved at rapid rate.
new drivers, new api features, new libraries and frameworks. even my bluetooth headphones finally show battery charge in kde bluetooth widget. desktop linux is not a web server that can survive 10 years with nothing, but security updates

Publicado originalmente por battlezoby:

Publicado originalmente por sega:

ship or automatically load with the specific versions of all their dependencies and refer to them as such.

For example, if a program wants to use libstdc++.so.2.7.2.8 it loads "libstdc++.so.2.7.2.8" and if something else pushes any and all newer versions of libstdc++ or any other library, it doesn't really matter because it'll keep using the version it was distributed for.

this is what flatpak is doing, and other container systems, like docker

[battlezoby]

Publicado originalmente por lakar:

as long as desktop linux and linux gaming [...]

Sigh. It's great to take the first step in switching from Microsoft (blech!) to Linux, but I guess I'm overestimatng the extent to which people might be stepping away from the "desktop [icons]" and using mostly shells, the way Unix (and I assume Linux) was intended.

At any rate, I think we cleared that up; if not, remind me to fork this into another thread. IMO, it's more Linux than the original topic.