JSON output support for various commands, making it easier to parse flatpak command output programmatically

Nice. Instead manually parsing the stdout data, now there is a “proper API” to get information.

The thing is, Valve wouldn’t even need to open source the client. If there was an official programming interface as an API to connect to (with online checks to verify off course), then people could build their own clients. The cool thing would be, only features they want to have and with the GUI toolkits and interface the way they want it could be possible. Totally open source too, at least on the client part. Maybe the official API and client could only do some stuff, not everything; in example selling or trading items or buying games would be not possible, but stuff like starting a game. This alone would be awesome.

Proton builds and is based on bunch of Open Source software such as WINE. Valve cannot, even if they wanted to, make it closed source. The Steam client itself is closed source, so this is a decision Valve can make.

While I wish there was an Open Source client, I can only imagine why Valve does not want that. First, it would help fakers and scammers too. Steam has a Scammer problem. Secondly, it could help the competition. At least an official API would go a long way, to enable the community to write their own Open Source client based on the API.

or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, Linux + Rust.

I have on my old phone still a custom Android /e/OS. It’s a “deGoogled” variant of Android 12 on my S7 Edge. And if I ever buy a new phone again, it will be a direct Linux operating system (I know that Android technically uses Linux as its Kernel) or again an ungoogled custom Android. But as someone who doesn’t do much with the phone anymore, I probably won’t.

It’s got an awful, hard-to-remember command interface

Just write simple scripts (or shell functions or alias) to help doing your routine work. Then you don’t need to remember the commands quirks and only have to remember your own solutions quirks.^^ I wrote such a complex script to help me with youtube-dl / yt-dlp and need to do this with ffmpeg too.

I wonder how much storage I’m going to save converting my mp3 library to opus

Depend on the source and output quality you have. Also do not forget conversion from lossy into lossy format will degrade quality too, even if its most of the time not noticeable. If you have them all in constant 320 kbit/s, then you could probably get a good chunk of space without sacrificing quality much.

As for the software recommendation, it would be good to know what operating system you are on. Windows, Android, iOS, Linux PC?