There‘s a great video on that topic by Matt Parker (Standupmaths) which I‘d wholeheartedly recommend.
TLDW: No, terrain elevation isn‘t generally taken into account when calculating a country‘s surface area, though the actual method differs slightly from country to country. Switzerland would be around 7% bigger, if its mountains were to be taken into account.
I‘ve ordered an M8 to Germany last year, the import fees were 147.17€. The whole process was handled by DHL, so I just had to pay that fee online and got the package a day later or so.
I think we‘re in a very different situation right now. Proton has become so good that it‘s just not necessary for most developers to do anything to get their game running on Linux. When Macs peaked in the hardware survey, the compatibility tools were far less powerful and developers had to actually invest time and resources, if they wanted their game running on Mac.
I also think that the Steam Deck is absolutely being recognized by many developers. Even big publishers proudly announce their games being playable on it. And having games optimized for Deck often improves them on Linux in general.
So I really wouldn’t worry about developers not specifically targeting Linux. Even without that, gaming on Linux is in the best spot it has ever been and is steadily improving.
Am ehemaligen Chef des BND kann man ungefähr abschätzen, wie es um die technische Kompetenz derer steht, die allen Ernstes „Hackbacks“ fordern.
Although I'd love to see that happen more frequently, this is simply not realistically doable for most commercial games.
Almost all of them use licensed third-party libraries which are integrated deeply into the game's code base, but which can't legally be distributed as part of an open source project. So in order to be able to open source a modern commercial game, you'd have to put in quite a lot of work finding all of your code integrating with commercial libraries and either replacing or removing it. And if that's not enough, you'd probably have to have your (expensive) legal team check the entire code base for any infringements just to be on the safe side.
All that work for no monetary gain just isn't a very good business case. So, unfortunately, I wouldn't expect a lot of modern games to be open sourced any time soon.
While that‘s true right now, a big patch called „Economy 2.0“ is expected to drop this week (more on that here and here).
I really hope this will be a successful first step of making the game actually better than its predecessor. Unfortunately the economy simulation is only one of many issues which make me want to play something else after a few minutes of gameplay. I think it‘ll be at least another year until they‘re able to fix all these minor annoyances, which sum up to one very big annoyance. Like not being able to place stuff sometimes without any obvious reason. Or those ugly, steep pathways on lots, when the connecting street isn‘t completely flat. Or missing animations for firemen, which currently only have to drive up to a burning building in order to stop a fire.
Cities Skylines was a better Sim City (2013) and was justifiably loved for that. For now, Cities Skylines 2 is unfortunately just a worse Cities Skylines.
This is very speculative, but along the things they’ve learned for VR they‘re mentioning APUs and wireless streaming. This might hint towards a standalone device which can also be connected to a PC.
It‘s possible to use VR headsets with the Steam Deck. It‘s just far too weak for a pleasant experience.
It‘s worth noting though, that, according to this interview (37:30), Valve is probably working on a new VR HMD which will make use of the things they‘ve learned from developing the Deck. So I‘d guess there‘s a standalone headset coming from them at some point in the future.
Has their quality improved over the last few years? I remember buying a GPDWin 2 which constantly turned off due to overheating issues, couldn‘t be charged while using it and had one speaker wired incorrectly so its phase was inverted. It‘s been a few years since then, but GPD has really left a sour taste in my mouth.
They also always have a countdown on the top of the page, suggesting their unbelievable 80% off deal is about to end and you should buy it now or it‘ll be gone forever! Quick!
It‘s not ending. It never ends. It just resets at the end of the day. The guys running this site are dickheads.
I‘ve played GW2 a lot and pretty much exclusively on Linux for a few years now and it‘s been pretty smooth.
For the best experience, make sure your graphics driver is up to date (as of now it should start with 550, 555 or 560).
I‘d also recommend installing the game via Steam, as this makes the whole compatibility stuff far easier. The Steam version also works if you want to log in with an Arenanet-account. Just add this launch option (note the capitalization; it has to be exact) and you‘ll be able to log in with your existing account:
Just make sure not to buy anything via Steam as purchases won‘t be associated with the correct account.
You‘ll also want to make sure (although it‘s probably set as default by now) to use Proton 9.0 or above, as the game‘s launcher is really stuttery in previous versions.