Appreciation Post
This blog post was released on the fifteenth of May 2026.
Appreciation
There are many things to appreciate. Or not. At least for me, there are some.
My blog is pretty tech-centered, so it's easier to give an example with some open-source projects. Do we appreciate them? Absolutely.
People doing something for the idea is a great concept. Sometimes, that idea is just solving an issue for yourself or pursuing scientific interest. It also helps make sure future generations can compute without having to pay gazillion moneys to access their daily-expenses spreadsheet in someone else's cloud (you cannot use your own computer because you need to think about children).
For example
Imagine not having Linux. Imagine having no Git, FFmpeg, or coreutils. No GNU, no copyleft licenses, and no hope. Probably, that's where the world was going if not for some events that gave us the best open-source projects of modern times.
FSR 4
I tried OptiScaler with FSR 4 injection in FSR 3 titles. It seems like it worked? Anyway, all the videos I watched showed me that FSR 4 is the real deal, like previous DLSS versions. The DLLs leaked, people found out there is an INT8 version that destroys FSR 3, and AMD decided not to release it. People got mad. I have a 7900 XTX. I don't care about upscaling, but I care about the horrible temporal artifacts I see in many different titles (mainly UE5, of course). FSR 4 is just good anti-aliasing, even if you don't need more FPS from upscaling.
Yesterday, AMD announced FSR 4 is coming to RDNA 3 and RDNA 2. A one-year delay for the older generation is probably acceptable.
That's what I appreciate. We won. AMD customers wanted to have something, and now they have it. The only problem...
TAA is garbage
TAA can be awesome. You just need to know where to use it. What's more, DLSS and FSR, based on machine learning techniques, are also cool but proprietary. That makes them a waste of extremely talented engineers' energy and effort.
Why do you need some third-party solution that locks you into a hardware ecosystem? Why would you, as an indie dev, for example, be inclined to use it? I won't. Many others probably won't either. Maybe I am delusional and every successful dev just uses UE5 without configuring graphics too much and calls it a day.
Even if you are okay with current DLSS and FSR, why would you support them? Why not support people who know how graphics work and can get as much juice from modern GPUs as possible? BTW, this doesn't mean avoiding upscaling entirely.
Imagine having an upscaler written in Vulkan that works on all platforms. It's open source and, of course, libre. It uses similar approaches to DLSS and FSR. Yes, it will probably require a lot of training. Let's just imagine it happened. Why would you use DLSS or FSR? Well, I don't think we would use them in that case. That's my point.
Windows shit talk
That is also why I don't use Windows: it's just worse than fucking Linux Mint. And I don't really like Linux Mint. Soon, Linux will become good enough for an average computer user, and MacBook Neos will also grab some percentage of Windows users.
No reason to use this crime against humanity unless your job, or whatever you need to do with your computer, requires special software that can run only on Windows. Old problem, nothing really to do about it other than switch to better alternatives. I know it's usually not possible, so it's not like I am trying to judge anyone for using it.
Linux as a desktop alternative is absolutely free and libre. For some people, it was enough to start using it years ago. Now, it's just more convenient, reliable, and stable than proprietary options like ШИНДОУС 11 (funny spelling of Windows 11 for minds unprepared for Cyrillic).
The most beautiful thought of this blog post (or maybe ever too)
We can see it's possible for open source to take over. Now, it's easier than ever due to many obvious and not-so-obvious reasons. I want to create a few successful examples like that myself. Why? Because I remember tech being fun and helpful, while now it feels like a Big Tech psyop where they trick you into watching ads or spending money with dirty tricks that should be illegal.