Elite Dangerous, because it can be as intense or chill as I want, it's a remarkably good space sim, and I can easily opt out of PvP while still affecting the state of the galaxy.
The recent trend of tariffs could have a silver lining.
Removing dirt-cheap goods from the market will make it more difficult to ignore the underlying problem: People are not being paid enough for their labor to afford the things they need at home. Instead, they are expected to depend on subsidized/sketchy foreign manufacturing, while corporations and the super-rich are being allowed to extract a disproportionate share of the world’s wealth from everyone else, hoard it, buy favorable legislation and policies, and avoid paying their fair share in taxes.
This is already unsustainable. I suspect tariffs will make it more obvious.
I hope it will lead to positive and long-overdue changes. Unfortunately, I think it’s likely to make things worse for a great many people before it makes things better.
Why create e-waste and spend money you don't have to when your existing retro hardware not only works fine but gives customers something to talk about?
Yeah, they stopped updating the legacy PC client, too. I suspect it's in the same game world as your console, still alive and playable, but with no new content.
The new client is free, but also more resource-hungry; I guess they didn't have the budget to get it working on consoles.
the two issues I had with Linux in the past was that it simply wouldn’t connect AT ALL.
Yeah, that's frustrating. It's usually result of buying network hardware whose manufacturer neither supports Linux nor releases the specs that would allow the community to do the work for them. (Another sad effect of Microsoft's market dominance.) Sometimes a working driver or firmware can be manually installed or enabled. Other times, the only sane fix is to buy/beg/borrow a better network card.
Next time you're hardware shopping, it might be worthwhile to pick something with a known-good network chip, or just buying from a vendor that offers Linux preinstalled.
And currently when I pull up the Linux box on the TV to exercise, I might as well go make a smoothie while I’m waiting for a video to load.
I hate waiting for machines, too. Slow boot can be caused by a number of things, but the most common one is probably just plain old slow storage media. If you're booting from a slow USB drive or SD card, you'll probably get better results by using a faster one. (I'm assuming the machine you built from cheap parts is capable of fast storage and not memory-starved.)
For what it's worth, my Linux systems are fast and have no network trouble, so it's definitely possible to achieve. (Even the Raspberry Pi that drives my TV.)
I'm a little disappointed not to see Elite Dangerous nominated for Labor of Love. The game is ten years old, and the developers have recently been bringing in new features like it was still new.
Thank you for linking directly to the relevant segment of the video. Steve and his team do good work; I just wish they would make more of their findings available in text format.
I do use my computer for a lot of [specific and diverse] things.
I just want to use it, I don’t want to tinker with it.
I do not wish to buy a new computer and I do not wish to be a Windows slave again.
I think you're going to have to pick two, at least for now.
Software ecosystems are large and complex, especially for users with needs as diverse as yours. Microsoft and Apple have managed to more-or-less tame them through decades of work by a great many employees, market dominance (compelling other companies to do much of the work for them), and an almost inconceivable amount of money.
Free software ecosystems are developed mostly by individuals solving their own problems in whatever unpaid time they can spare. We're very lucky to have them at all. They are steadily improving, are already impressive in some areas, and a few components are even sponsored these days, but I think it will be a while before these ecosystems cover as many different tasks as you're describing with as much polish as you demand.
Some of us accept this, and are willing to invest time and effort into becoming proficient with free tools and their quirks, in exchange for a computing experience without the tentacles of capitalism. Others don't have the time or patience for that, but are willing to make do with a smaller set of tools in exchange for that freedom. Either of these approaches can be a good trade-off, but they're not for everyone.
If you can't or won't budge, then it might be best put your Linux hopes aside for now, and see how the ecosystem looks in another 10 years.
Surfing the net. It needs to NOT lag or fail to connect.
If you have been lucky enough to avoid such things so far, then I salute you and hope your good luck continues. No computer or operating system is immune to problematic network connections or services.
No, it doesn't have to work that way, as we can see by the existence of messaging platforms with end-to-end encryption.
I suspect the person to whom I replied understands this, but their comment could have been misinterpreted as implying that Discord messages are private, so I wanted to clarify.
If you're looking for something inexpensive and aren't picky about the size of the analog stick dead zones, the Logitech F310 might be a good fit. Its D-pad works well in my experience.
Just in case anyone reading this gets the impression that direct messages sent on Discord are private from Discord itself, they aren't. If you were to send your face to a mod, or send anything to anyone there, then Discord would have it, too.
Elite Dangerous, because it can be as intense or chill as I want, it's a remarkably good space sim, and I can easily opt out of PvP while still affecting the state of the galaxy.