Ah, I missed that, my default human empathy response still generally doesn’t like seeing people shot for no good reason.

Apparently I forgot that stars were involved with astrology at all, so I slapped my forehead and searched YouTube.

LOL.

Astrology, ultimately etymylogically derives from… astron, meaning ‘star’ in Greek.

It literally means ‘study of the stars’.

hahahah!

But uh yeah, it is essentially impossible to ‘steel man’ astrology, because pretty much every practitioner of it has their own cust version of it, similar to… how one is supposed to use or read Tarot cards.

Then you’ve got a whole cottage industry of cranks, cranking out either 100% or 90% made up bullshit as their own spin on how astrology ‘works’.

Like, historically, you can trace various sort of family trees of actual astrological doctrines, but in the last 50 years, so many people have made up so much nonsense that you basically have to take any particular astrologer and ask them what they believe, because they won’t agree with another one, or they’ll just tell you that part of astrology is that it is a personal, mystical experience and practice, so there will be ‘reasonable variation of opinion’ amongst ‘experts’.

It is delusional narcissist nonsense that functions as an identity for people who have not otherwise managed to build or acquire one.

There are a lot of similarities between, and sometimes direct crossover with, actual literal cult leaders, and ‘very serious’ astrologers.

I mean, when I was learning statistics and econometrics, half of my professors stressed the limitations of various kinds of mathematical predictive models… by saying that we don’t want to go from professionals to turning into astrologers.

Of course, this doesn’t stop a lot of day trader dude bros and more recently crypto day trader dude bros from convincing themselves they’ve cracked the code…

But the point here is: Actual statisticians literally use ‘astrologer’ as a derisive slur.

And they are correct to do so, imo, lol.

I appreciate the info and analysis!

The reason I have no idea what the pricing will be… is that well, GPU prices are nonsense that stick nowhere near MSRP, we got tariffs, we got all game prices getting jacked up, we got massive layoffs at MSFT, they are hurting for money…

And unless this handheld significantly outperforms other existing handhelds… I just don’t think many would buy it at basically any price…

But I also think MSFT is delusional about that, and I don’t think they have the depth of coin in their pockets to try to do a loss leader approach, and I think they’re more likely to just price it the same way cars and houses and rent are ludicrously overpriced, a price based more on ‘we need to pay our debts’ than on ‘how do we have a sensible long term strategy in this market’.

She’s laughing it off because she is relatively young, in good shape, has media training… and is in all likelihood currently in shock, flooded with adrenaline.

Within 6 hours she will have a bruise the diameter of a soccer ball, and she almost certainly has a or multiple fractured bones, though they are likely hairline, fissure or impacted partial fractures, not complete breaks.

EDIT: Reporter must be made of steel you say?

Ok.

So, when people throw around the phrase ‘rubber bullet’… it tends to conjure in most people’s minds… a projectile, made of rubber, that is about the same size as a bullet.

They are not the same size as a bullet.

They are the same size as a grenade launcher round, between 30mm and 40mm, generally speaking… which is about 3x to 5x the size of most actual bullets from a pistol or rifle, albeit not travelling as fast as either of those.

They also tend to have a metal inner core.

So its more like a slug round from an 8 to 4 gauge shotgun, with rubber coating, were you to roughly extrapolate existing shotgun gauge size/naming conventions:

Also, the actual usage manuals for these things state that… you are not to fire them directly at someone closer than approximately 200-400 feet, what you are supposed to do is fire them at the ground at a shallow angle, such that they bounce or ricochet upward at a shallow angle…

… because there is so much energy in one of these rounds that they need to be dissapated by that bounce, otherwise they are quite likely to cause serious injury or even kill someone.

That is to say, ‘less than lethal’ means ‘potentially lethal’ when used improperly, and cops routinely use them improperly all the time.

This cop who fired that round, at that range (under 200 feet, under the minimum safe distance for any kind of firing)… not only was he too close to safely fire the thing at all, it looks like he just fired it directly at her, between her knees and hip, without a bounce.

When cops say, when people say cops ‘need better training’, the technical details I have just outlined are part of that better training… which, in practice, they disregard all the time.

Similar wild deviations exist between manufacturer suggested usage guidelines for tasers, and how they are routinely, actually used by cops.

Another example of intentional bullshit perversion of proper use procedures is the cop ‘at ease’ stance, where elbows are bent and each hand is roughly up at each pectoral… this is a common, general ‘idle’ stance… and it often is used to obscure the view of chest mounted body cams.

In conclusion: Yes, this absolutely was an intentional attempt to murder or grievously injure a journalist, basically 2nd degree attempted murder if this was done by not-a-cop.

Can be, yeah, but the point I’m going toward is the the ‘keeping up with the joneses’ effect often leads people to just lie about what they own vs owe.

I genuinely have no idea what either a cost-to-produce estimate would be, or what the fuck MSFT thinks their strategy is here.

I am flummoxed.

It basically uses the next version of the same kind of chips that are in the ROG Ally and ROG Ally X… no one has any idea what the actual performance of this thing will be, I’m seeing barely educated guess at … roughly 25% more powerful, basically?

All the other specs seem identical or near identical.

Then you’ve also got the insane tariff situation and MSFT being both based in the US, and I think they still have their largest share of Xbox users in the US, but I’m not sure.

I guess I also wonder if they will pretend this thing is a console when it comes to software mods, and just lock down the bootloader and brick itself if you try to install linux on it.

Because… if you can just flash like Bazzite or SteamOS onto it… you get a roughly 15% game performance boost.

And then at that point MSFT will just have basically developed a product that non morons will use effectively as a competitor’s platform, mainly in the Steam gaming ecosystem… not MSFTs.

I have a lot of questions about all of this.

I… think SystemD has been around for quite a while, I am not sure who developed it originally.

20+ years ago, Fedora emerged out of Red Hat EnterpriseLinux, basically as the not business oriented, general use version of Red Hat.

The details are complicated, but by now, Fedora has advanced so much that RHEL is actually based off of Fedora; they use the more mature parts of Fedora that have proved to be very stable.

Bazzite is based off of Fedora, specifally the system Fedora uses for Atomic versions of Fedora. Like I tried to describe earlier, the Atomic variants of Fedora take a different approach and try to section off the core OS, keep it safer and more stable, and provide different kinds of containers or boxes for the user to run apps in, or experiment around in.

Bazzite is not officially a Fedora Atomic distro, made by the Fedora project… but their whole Atomic system is open source, so the Bazzite team uses it as a basis for their even more gaming focused OS.

Sort of similar to how PikaOS or Devuan or Ubuntu or PopOS! are based off of Debian… or the modern SteamOS that steam deck’s natively run on is based off of Arch.

Oh dear god it is apparently serious.

https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2025/06/08/xbox-handheld-rog-ally-x-games-showcase/

Any guesses for MSRP?

$1200 for the X variant?

$600?

Will MSFT bet the farm, take the upfront loss on the unit, and try to convince everyone this is both their next handheld and their next mainline living room console at the same time?

https://docs.bazzite.gg/

What are these apps?

Well, you have things like EmuDeck, for emulating console games,

Lutris, for an alternative, non Steam way to run games via WINE or Proton,

Protontricks to help manage and configure WINE and Proton…

A whole bunch of other stuff that may or may not interest you.

Is this actually Linux?

Yes, it is, it is built off of the Fedora Atomic model.

So… the simple explanation is that the core operating system is read-only, unalterable, in most situations.

The core libraries of the OS are managed by the developers, who make the ‘recipe’ of all the core stuff, and update it and occasionally add to it… the user can override this and add in new core libraries, but it is highly advised against, and the terminal will yell at you that you are probably doing something stupid when you try.

That being said, if you do mess up the core libraries… you can use

rpm-ostree rollback

And that will revert you to the last, stable, bootable configuration, which it automatically keeps backups of, locally.

Then, almost all applications and software are run through flatpak, which keeps them self-contained, so if they break, it is only them that break, not your whole system.

If you want to do something that requires more control over a linux in a tradtional linux sense… Bazzite comes with DistroBox, which basically allows you to have multiple linux oss download their own libraries in their own box, and then you can do more advanced tinkering in there.

(technically it is quite complicated, as i understsnd it, distrobox is basically … customized, fancy docker images, if you are familiar with docker)

It’s too late 🙃

sigh

I tried.

I tried to warn you!

I also already doubt this 😟. And I’ve already cleaned that machine.

Welp.

No turning back.

It looks like you are prepared to go all the way.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-00uQzXyujI&t=152s

lol

I… I hope you do already know how to… flash an iso to a usb drive, and that you have not just wiped out your only means of downloading said iso.

Good luck!

See, this is how a stubborn insecure person acts.

You, just now:

You ever tried gaming on a non systemd OS?

I do. It works.

You, 3 months ago:

I have firsthand experience with videogames made for one flavor of Linux not working on my machine due to dependency hell.

You know exactly the problem I am describing that comes along with trying to game on a non systemd OS, because you have experienced it yourself.

You get stuck in dependency hell because all the supporting software that is required for modern gaming… is a large mismatch, by default os config, with what is actually compatible with and developed for non systemd systems, and it requires a massive amount of effort to get anything into a reasonably stable and reasonably working state.

I ask you to provide your experience directly, which could genuienly help this person, and you instead want to nitpick vocabulary in a sophomoric manner so that you can feel you are more correct by virtue of ‘well, ackshually’…

…and your approach to trying to solve the problem is robotic, run through standard error output log, identify error… theorize solution…

… even though you personally know that approach will be very time consuming and frustrating.

In conclusion; boy, you must be great at parties.

Solving a random non-systemd user’s issue is irrelevant, even if we knew a lot more about their setup.

Yep, here we are in a tech support thread for some person with some issue, I have provided a solution to that issue, you are arguing that solving the person’s issue is irrelevant.

Okie dokie!

… You say you’ve gotten gaming on a non systemd os to work.

If … it worked with Steam… and Proton… perhaps you could suggest that OS, and whatever custom config you used, to this person?

You know, as opposed to Devuan, which is apparently set up incorrectly, out of the box, for this user?

Howabout uh…

The ability to take a previously given set of knowledge, experiences and concepts, and combine or synthesize them in a consistent, non contradictory manner, to generate hitherto unrealized knowledge, or concepts, and then also be able to verify that those new knowledge and concepts are actually new, and actually valid, or at least be able to propose how one could test whether or not they are valid.

Arguably this is or involves meta-cognition, but that is what I would say… is the difference between what we typically think of as ‘machine reasoning’, and ‘human reasoning’.

Now I will grant you that a large amount of humans essentially cannot do this, they suck at introspecting and maintaining logical consistency, that they are just told ‘this is how things work’, and they never question that untill decades later and their lives force them to address, or dismiss their own internally inconsisten beliefs.

But I would also say that this means they are bad at ‘human reasoning’.

Basically, my definition of ‘human reasoning’ is perhaps more accurately described as ‘critical thinking’.

To bastardize a Winston Churchill quote:

SystemD is a flawed init system… but in the grand scheme of things, it is the least flawed init system that’s been developed thus far, for 99% of users.

If you are new to linux, and you want something that basically ‘just works’, I’d suggest you try Bazzite first.

It is much easier for a person with little linux experience to use.

Linux is kind of infamous for allowing the user to have the ability to customize and alter basically every aspect of the OS.

This is great for very experienced linux users, but it can often lead newer linux users to accidentally … basically destroying their OS.

Bazzite has good functionality, comes with pre configured tweaks to make gaming performance better, comes with apps gamers commonly use, much much easier… and, the way it is designed, it basically has a bunch of built in safety mechanisms to make it much more difficult to break the OS.

I have never actually used PikaOS… if you are considerably experienced with Debian based distros, I’d guess you could probably handle it…

But if you are brand new to linux, and mostly just want something that works for games, and other fairly common desktop apps?

I’d go with Bazzite.

If you do decide to switch OSs, please remember to make a backup copy of all your personal files on a seperate harddrive before you make the switch.

On the other hand… you could wait it out and see if other people in this thread can actually troubleshoot and solve your problem.

Personally, I am doubtful they will be able to, but I do not know everything, and I could be wrong, perhaps there is some fairly straightforward fix.

In my experience, providing the features expected is far more important than providing specifically the systemd API.

Which is why I said:

…will encounter many absurd and esoteric problems, all of which **ultimately stem from the fact ** that the vast majority of linux software is developed with systemd as the default, assumed, init system.

Your OS is software.

It is a gigantic maze for a non linux pro to try to figure out all of these alternate dependencies that are needed, need to be configured, and whether or not they even play nice with each other, whether or not they won’t throw you into dependency conflict hell.

Generally speaking, when a normal person, who isn’t a linux expert… installs an OS… they expect that it will more or less work out of the box at a fundamental level, that it will come pre-bundled with dependencies and configurations that allow them to use the software they want to use.

Hard disagree.I think the init system is more abstracted away from the developers of a game/typical user app than you are implying.

Ok, two responses to that:

You ever tried gaming on a non systemd OS?

Granted, its been a few years, but I have, and its a fucking nightmare along the lines I described… tons of insane, esoteric nonsense going wrong all over the place, that requires you to functionally develop a solid workaround schema for everything you are trying to do, that may as well qualify you as a developer of or contributor to the OS.

I don’t see anyone, anywhere, recommending a non systemd linux OS for gaming.

Second response: Okey dokey, then I’m sure you’ll be able to prove that by solving this person’s problem for them within Devuan.

Designed first by Americans, who took a Finnish round and tried to tweak it, who also tried to get the Finns to produce it, then the Americans basically ran out of money and gave up, then the Brits took over the development, and continued producing them all in Finland…

… I … think.

The story of how the Lapua came to be is a clusterfuck mess.

I truly wish there was some simple misconfiguration that you could change, or some reasonable hotfix that could easily be trouble shot by randos on lemmy…

But in all likelihood… yeah, you’d have to basically develop Devuan to support Proton, or develop Proton to support Devuan, or potentially both.

If you wanna do gaming on linux, right now I’d suggest Bazzite as probably the most user friendly, hard to break, runs games and most other software well alternative.

You could also just switch back to plain Debian, its not quitr as user friendly or gamer optimized, but it absolutely will work.

On the other hand, if you wanna jump into a different Debian based system… PikaOS is still somewhat experimental, but it is basically a stripped down and gamer-optimized version of Debian, its based on systemd so you won’t have these kinds of problems… and from recent benchmark tests I’ve seen, it actually outperforms Bazzite, Nobara, CentOS, many other common distros typically suggested for linux gaming… meaning, more FPS for the same game at the same settings on the same hardware.

They won’t.

All of their rhetoric is bullshit to obscure the fact that they hate brown people, queer people, people who aren’t their religion, just anyone they’re angry at, really.

It really is that simple.

They’ll believe, to some extent, what they are saying, they’ll tie themselves up in knots, but ultimately, they’ll default to anything that allows them to laugh when people they think they are better than are made to suffer.

The few that manage to resolve the cognitive dissonance and realize they are in fact hateful bigots, and that… that is bad?

At that moment, they are no longer right wing.