steam-wrapper and Linux performance

Currently Steam for Linux is only officially supported on Ubuntu. This means that Valve is only obligated to really provide support for Ubuntu systems running some flavor of version 12.04. Of course, this has not stopped almost every distribution from adopting Steam into their repositories and adapting the install and other scripts to work on other distributions. The performance on these distributions however, can sometimes be questionable.

Steam provides a runtime which is used for compatability accross a wide range of distributions, using libraries that are standardized to stay in line with Ubuntu 12.04. This allows systems running older libraries like old Stable distributions, and bleeding edge distributions with newer library versions to all run Steam with a similar experience: standardized library versions.

On many systems however (Debian, ArchLinux) the Steam runtime links to a version of gcc that can be outdated or provides less than optimal performance. To remedy this, a couple of files can be removed from the Steam runtime to cause the system to fall back on the native built ins, which are reported to provide increased performance. Some users even choose to go so far as to disable to runtime completely using STEAM_RUNTIME=0, making Steam run entirely on native libraries.

steam-wrapper is a generic bash script which attempts to remove the stale or outdated gcc libraries and then passes relevant arguments to run Steam. It provides an easy way to set the runtime and other variables for Steam. And although it is purely made for convenience, because it may help those who were unaware of library issues or other conflicts, I have decided to post it on GitHub under the name pyamsoft/steam-wrapper. It may help you, it may not.

If for any reason you are experiencing problems with Steam and wish to restore the runtime to its default state and not have to reinstall all of steam and your games, you can launch Steam from the command line like this:

steam --reset

which will reset the runtime back to the default.

Woohoo!

========================
Follow pyamsoft around the Web for updates and announcements about the newest applications!
Like what I do?

Send me an email at: pyam.soft@gmail.com
Or find me online at: http://pyamsoft-official.blogspot.com/

Check out my Android Applications
Check out my Github Repositories
Check out my AUR packages

Follow my FaceBook Page
Follow my Google+ Page
=========================

Small Things

My attention span, for one.

But also, small updates pushed out today. Home Button and Power Manager. Tasty little animations added to both, lots of bugfixes in Power Manager, and a couple of refreshed visuals to top it all off. This should hopefully fix the issue with radios randomly turning off, as I've had mine running fine for a couple of weeks now. But like always, fingers crossed. It seems like every time a new feature is added onto Android, or a new device announced, new bugs appear in things that I always assumed would work. Oh well.

Hardcore SoftGlow work, as I've wanted to release for a while now but never could quite get it finished.

Also one big thing. pstate-frequency has been rewritten to use C++ cause I find it a bit easier to expand upon and handle new interfaces with.

And after that, perhaps a game.

Who knows.

Well.

I do, but. Still.

========================
Follow pyamsoft around the Web for updates and announcements about the newest applications!
Like what I do?

Send me an email at: pyam.soft@gmail.com
Or find me online at: http://pyamsoft-official.blogspot.com/

Check out my Android Applications
Check out my Github Repositories
Check out my AUR packages

Follow my FaceBook Page
Follow my Google+ Page
=========================

Cruft Cleanup

Got a lot of work done today on various things.

Power Manager

Added animations to transitions between fragments. Ooh. Ahh.
Visual correctness when transtioning between application states.
Thread safe code for manager interfaces.
Better handling of precision screen events down to millisecond accuracy.
Performance increases.
Memory usage improvement.
The color blue.

SoftGlow

Added extended screen options, ridiculous range for screen dim. To the point where things are starting to get too dark to be visible.
Floating Action Button because woohoo material design

Home Button

Added better handling of startup options. I know.
Couple other fixes.

pstate-frequency

Better handling of automatic power profiles. Smaller memory, lower number of allocations (significantly lower), reduced file accesses, reduced code depending on compile time options.

Woohoo


========================
Follow pyamsoft around the Web for updates and announcements about the newest applications!
Like what I do?

Send me an email at: pyam.soft@gmail.com
Or find me online at: http://pyamsoft-official.blogspot.com/

Check out my Android Applications
Check out my Github Repositories
Check out my AUR packages

Follow my FaceBook Page
Follow my Google+ Page
=========================

Happy Holidays!

I work hard for you all. I know some of you don't show your appreciation to me, but I appreciate all of you just the same. Because while we have our differences, at the end of the day I am just one person possessing enough knowledge to scrape together a set of free applications that others may want to use or may benefit from. I am nothing without the faithful set of followers who use my applications, people like you who have seen some way that their lives could be made easier by what I have to offer through my work. I just want to take this time to show my appreciation to each and every one of my users who have ever given me a chance.

Thank You, and Happy Holdiays to all.

pyamsoft

========================
Follow pyamsoft around the Web for updates and announcements about the newest applications!
Like what I do?

Send me an email at: pyam.soft@gmail.com
Or find me online at: http://pyamsoft-official.blogspot.com/

Check out my Android Applications
Check out my Github Repositories
Check out my AUR packages

Follow my FaceBook Page
Follow my Google+ Page
=========================

UI Responsiveness

Trying to get the feel of the applications to be smoother, more responsive. Fresh.

Power Manager is testing an experimental setting which may be able to work around the problem where radios occasionally are not properly managed. Hopefully the patch will bring more efficient, if not completely fixed management of radio states in all situations.

SoftGlow will be smoother and more responsive, and it currently consuming significantly less memory.

Home Button is working to also be less aggressive and hold a smaller memory footprint.

All fun things, but they will take some time.

========================
Follow pyamsoft around the Web for updates and announcements about the newest applications!
Like what I do?

Send me an email at: pyam.soft@gmail.com
Or find me online at: http://pyamsoft-official.blogspot.com/

Check out my Android Applications
Check out my Github Repositories
Check out my AUR packages

Follow my FaceBook Page
Follow my Google+ Page
=========================

Size shrinks, bugfixes, stuff and things

Just some general updates. Memory management is improved on Power Manager and Home Button, those will see updates when the time is right. SoftGlow is in the works and is coming along very nicely. The FAB is in, the notification is new and shiny, and the Navigation Drawer is also a thing. A cool thing. Neato.

Later gators.

========================
Follow pyamsoft around the Web for updates and announcements about the newest applications!
Like what I do?

Send me an email at: pyam.soft@gmail.com
Or find me online at: http://pyamsoft-official.blogspot.com/

Check out my Android Applications
Check out my Github Repositories
Check out my AUR packages

Follow my FaceBook Page
Follow my Google+ Page
=========================

Lots of little things

Over the past couple of days lots of small updates have been popping out the door. Power Manager was patched 3 times or so, and a new Home Button version just came out as well. pstate-frequency was also rewritten from scratch to be more extensible and perform cleaner. SoftGlow will be undergoing a major revision, with new features and bug fixing galore, but it will take a while to put out the finished product. I am debating releasing developmental snapshots, but at this time am generally against the idea.

========================
Follow pyamsoft around the Web for updates and announcements about the newest applications!
Like what I do?

Send me an email at: pyam.soft@gmail.com
Or find me online at: http://pyamsoft-official.blogspot.com/

Check out my Android Applications
Check out my Github Repositories
Check out my AUR packages

Follow my FaceBook Page
Follow my Google+ Page
=========================

Power Manager updated

Power Manager was updated which fixes a couple of bugs and primes the application for the addition of a couple new features in upcoming releases. One major feature is that a bug is fixed which caused Power Manager to arbitrarily turn off radios. Please update to the newest version, else you will at one point or annother experience this bug.

Am feeling kind of sick, so the progress may slow for the next couple of days.

========================
Follow pyamsoft around the Web for updates and announcements about the newest applications!
Like what I do?

Send me an email at: pyam.soft@gmail.com
Or find me online at: http://pyamsoft-official.blogspot.com/

Check out my Android Applications
Check out my Github Repositories
Check out my AUR packages

Follow my FaceBook Page
Follow my Google+ Page
=========================

The Update Cometh

Hopefully Power Manager will be updated in the next couple of days. This will be generally a stability update, which fixes a bug in the power management logic, causing some devices to inappropriately turn off radios when not activated.

Home Button will receive an update to Lollipop compatability and SoftGlow will receive a feature update.

More later.

========================
Follow pyamsoft around the Web for updates and announcements about the newest applications!
Like what I do?

Send me an email at: pyam.soft@gmail.com
Or find me online at: http://pyamsoft-official.blogspot.com/

Check out my Android Applications
Check out my Github Repositories
Check out my AUR packages

Follow my FaceBook Page
Follow my Google+ Page
=========================

Bug Tracking

There's a current bug in SoftGlow wh-


I KNOW. I'M SORRY. I'LL FIX IT.

There's a current bug in SoftGlow which sometimes causes it to believe that the overlay is active even when it is not. And inactive when it is. This causes many different overlays to all launch themselves over and over again, effectively making the screen bright red, and anything on it unreadable.

I'll fix it okay.

Power Manager will be receiving an update which gives it a more robust Notification settings page, Overlay settings page, Application settings page, as well as two new features added into it. One will be the ability to run (for the moment) basic power triggers, where the device will be able to automatically switch power plans on the fly when the battery charge reaches a certain percentage. Neato.

The other will be a more robust framework surrounding the ability to toggle the state of varous device features, which will increase app responsiveness. Also less ads.

Also new colors, as well as color theming on the fly, including 5 preset palettes (and hopefully the ability to define your own pallete in the near future).

NEW THINGS. ALL THEM.

Home Button will also be receiving an update.
I know. wow. It will add compatability for Android 21 and will update the visual themes.

NeoSynapse is coming along, but with the recent announcement to allow voice based searches from any application, I feel like its usefullness and its place in the Android ecosystem is becoming smaller. Perhaps it will not serve the functionality that I had once hoped.

The dream. Dream is dead.

========================
Follow pyamsoft around the Web for updates and announcements about the newest applications!
Like what I do?

Send me an email at: pyam.soft@gmail.com
Or find me online at: http://pyamsoft-official.blogspot.com/

Check out my Android Applications
Check out my Github Repositories
Check out my AUR packages

Follow my FaceBook Page
Follow my Google+ Page
=========================