parents should be put in charge of their own kids,

So convenient that governments and their corporate masters take such a keen interest in watching our kids, after making all their parents spend most of their lives at miserable jobs.

On your feet, comrade. This is no place to die.

That’s AWESOME. I hope Nextcloud gets better at this soon. So far I’ve been needing to spend some time renaming the files from 64 character CDN hash names to tags like

"Monkey,gibbon,spin,woop,reaction.gif"

It’s worked somewhat well so far if I try to keep it as simple and obvious as possible.

Ah I see what you’re saying.

Thanks for taking the time for the clarification! I’m sure this would clear it up for some other folks as well.

I also know they’re a fraction of the size of those giants who can probably field staff specifically for FOSS contribution, but that’s still a bit disheartening. I hope things improve.

Every time they’ve seemed like a good option I find myself balking at the price though lol.

Yeah, there’s billions, maybe trillions or beyond, of dollars’ worth of investment put into making sure everyone "Really needs this job." which can be ripped away from them in an instant, so they won’t be inclined to risk any “insubordination.”

I don’t blame you. I’m even tempted to get a Quest-something unit secondhand or something, if only because I’m pretty sure they’ve cracked it a bit better on the Linux side.

They’re making some progress on WMR’s controllers right now but they’re the most troublesome. Hand tracking works now! But a lot of games expect button input.

Seriously, we just need a good code leak or something so that hobbyist VR peripherals become more commonplace. Right now everything is focused on establishing lock-in to walled gardens instead of interoperability.

VR hardware should be just like getting a monitor / keyboard / mouse / flight stick / whatever, but they want to make it closer to a smart TV / phone so they can push you to throw it out and buy a new one every 6 months.

Often, when it grows past that, it can become… unsavory.

Exactly! Like the Internet, Linux is for anybody! . . .but not necessarily everybody.

Because I mainly game in VR and that’s still so far behind on LInux :(

This is a major sticking point for me too. I’ve got a dusty Win10 partition I haven’t booted in ages, and I was keeping it around mainly for VR, but then Microsoft had to go and just extinguish that too.

Monado is making impressive progress but it’s a huge pain because they have to reverse engineer stuff with zero help from the manufacturers, instead of simply interfacing with the hardware.

I refuse to let Meta have any of my money though. I hope a good affordable VR kit comes out that isn’t another hyper-proprietary blackbox.

Ah, you’re right!

Although now I think we’re seeing something interesting (hopefully?) where Windows has gotten so irritating that more “average users” are wanting to take the leap to install Linux.

They’d probably follow video tutorials or quick guides online while understanding just enough to be dangerous, but once they’re set up, probably aren’t as keen on going around tweaking and editing and getting their hands dirty. Probably just like “Can I set my wallpaper and do my Steam games work?” Lol

I just hope they’re still willing to understand even if they don’t care about tweaking it to perfection. Nothing bugs me more than the “everything should just work without me thinking, like Windows/Mac!” crowd. X_X

The best news is that most distros would be good for those kinds of tasks! :D

I can’t personally speak to Zorin, although it looks fine! People say it comes with lots of stuff out of the box. Worth trying out!

Mint is really user friendly with an excellent forum and tons of support. The Cinnamon desktop environment is very Windows-esque in a usability way, and it tends to be slow to adopt new features that could break things, so by the time you update, most things should be fixed.

It doesn’t require terminal usage at all, but I started to enjoy using it because it makes “computing” feel really fun. :)

For a home media server that’d be running all the time that can be a little bit of a hobby…(But a rewarding one!)

Sorry for the long reply!

I’m so confused at what I just read in context and why I’m still laughing. XD

Is there a /c/lostlemmings yet? Lol

KDE connect is such an under appreciated killer app it’s not even funny.

When I go to house sit for a friend I just hook my laptop to their HDMI, pull out KDE Connect, and bam I’m kicking back 10 feet away watching my streaming stuff on my system with adblock running and everything, and the media controls just work.

I’m strongly considering using a Pi 3b+ as a TV machine where KDE Connect is the primary interface. It just works so well.

I also love getting text alerts or low battery notifications on my desktop without having to keep looking at my phone. It’s just amazing.

Always a good move. Doesn’t matter the software, there will always be some time when a “routine update” turns into a forum hunt and troubleshoot mission.

That being said, snapshots are amazing. The BTRFS file system supports them, and TimeShift also integrates with it.

If you don’t want to bother with another file system though (it requires basically a reinstall if you didn’t choose it at first), at least get TimeShift and another large drive or partition to save restore points to! It’ll basically just copy backups of all the files instead of lighter snapshots, but being able to roll back after a funky update is lovely.

But either way, don’t sweat all that too much, just make sure your essential data is on

3 copies. 2 different media. 1 offsite.

blasphemy in this church.

Indeed tis spoken oft as heresy in the Cathedral…

…But perhaps opinions are more diverse in the Bazarr?

Username checks out? LOL

Looks fun enough to spin up in a VM at least. :)

I would dare say the “average person”, as in, Windows refugee, probably doesn’t want to tinker, they do want things to just kinda work as expected and just want freedom and options.

I don’t see why Zorin couldn’t be a valid jumping off point for new users to get their feet wet. As much as I love more tinkery distros, I will usually onboard somebody with something like Mint because it’s just familiar enough but still lets you explore the how and why, without requiring it.

Oh that’s a lovely game! We really enjoyed that one too! The voice acting was sublime and the characters were so loveable. It was so endearingly quirky without going way over the top.

Exciting to hear that there’s a sequel coming!!

X-COM 2: War of the Chosen:

I’ve played this game off and on for years. Fondly wishing I could get back to it and just not having the time. Then I caught strep throat and literally couldn’t do anything but just play games.

Honestly? Finally. I felt like crap, but I was so happy to have an excuse to just enjoy myself instead of being obsessed with what I “had” to do.

The game changed a lot since I last played so I had to start a new save, and I’m having a blast. I love this game so much even with some of its flaws. Do your squaddies miss a 90% shot sometimes? Yes. Infuriating.

But when they make that hail-Mary hit that saves a teammate, or you sneak through a compound to break out an imprisoned comrade and exfil, it’s ADDICTING.

Also, not gonna lie…the game hits a little different in 2025, seeing as it’s about being resistance fighters waging insurgency and a propaganda war against an alien occupying authoritarian regime that is kidnapping people and hauling them to blacksites. Man, that uh, is a little uncomfortably close. (But it’s only a game…The aliens are actually competent.)

The custom voice packs are incredible too. (My sniper with a Bob Ross voice calmly saying “Let’s do a little painting today.” Or “Let’s get a little crazy.” When setting up a shot from across the map never gets old.

This game’s complete version I’ve seen on Steam for like $5 before. This is one of the best tactical experiences there is, and at first I hated the “pressure” this game puts on you, but I’ve come to enjoy the urgency and being forced to weigh difficult decisions rather than just sending my “A-Team” of snowflake OCs to clear every single mission at a leisurely pace haha.

And the soundtrack. Oh man. Once that “Ready for Battle” track hits where you select everybody’s loadout, you really feel the weight of assembling the right squad when you never know 100% what you’re about to send them into.

From the trailers it honestly looked really cool, but then I saw and heard about the all draconian user-disrespecting stuff like the online-even-for-campaign requirement and highly invasive kernel level anticheat that requires TPM 2.0?! That part felt bonkers to me.

Like is that gonna be a thing now? “This game demands to register a cryptographic key with your bootloader to make sure you’re not up to funnybusiness.” (I’m not 100% sure how it works, so my ignorance is filled in with LOTS of suspicion…)

Also EA just got bought by like…Saudi private equity? That’s pretty spook to me, too.

I dunno. I just wanna play Titans on Battlefield 2142 again. And BF 3 and 4 were nice too…

Also a Linux gamer. (Shrug)

Don’t wanna be a downer or scare you off too much! Just things to consider, because £60 certainly ain’t chump change! :)

Oo I hope it can be paused for when a customer shows up. Looks fantastic for a slow day!

(I considered MUDs but lots of people talk about how obvious the traffic is, it’d freak out I.T, blah blah blah…)