Soleil

I would argue that NixOS absolutely is the OS you get if your time is worthless, but not every distro is the same. I’d argue that if you need something that doesn’t have so many issues a stabler or easier to use distro (Debian, Ubuntu, Pop!_OS, Linux Mint, and even Fedora or openSUSE) is going to be a better option than trying to bend specifically NixOS to do what you want.

I personally use a mix of Pop, Debian, and Fedora, not because they’re particularly powerful, but because they tend to be more straightforward for what I want to do than NixOS, Gentoo, or Arch. I don’t mind tinkering, but for my main machines I don’t want to tinker much.

Edit: I should clarify that there are plenty of reasonable uses of Windows and I don’t fault anyone for using it especially if their familiarity is keeping them from understanding Linux as well as they want to. But I also would make the case that there are a lot of distros out there.

You and I would have been enemies in the 16-bit era, but I adore the Sega Genesis. (However, I’m also a sleepy bisexual, so I’m gonna say we’re probably nowhere close to enemies.)

It was an arcade monster and got a ton of amazing games from the arcades and purpose-built for the machine — many the SNES also got, but some exclusives that really took advantage of what the Genesis could do well. I’d argue that the gritty FM sound chip was better for certain types of game music as well, though that’s not to say that the SNES wasn’t largely superior on that front.

At the end of the day… yeah 16 bit stuff looks amazing

Tetris Worlds on PC was one of my favorites — A surreal, story-based Tetris with interesting twists on the gameplay, and the first Guideline Tetris game, setting in stone what “official” Tetris would look and act like even now. (Some love that, some hate it, I’m nowhere near a high enough level player to care either way and just like a cool looking Tetris game.)

This, 100%. While GB Tetris and NES Tetris were some of the first games I remember playing, Tetris DS was one of the first Tetris games I loved. And you’ve absolutely got a point that the original DS does best; the mushy D-pad on the DS Lite just plays it so much worse in my experience. (I feel good about it on my New 2DS XL though other than the either very soft image or very small image I get from it though)

I think their joke was that Thinkpad Arch users (at least online) have a strong correlation with trans women

I’ve also had this issue with both of my SN30 Pro+ controllers but haven’t really found a reliable fix. Sometimes it works if I connect it undocked, and then plug the Deck into the dock, but that doesn’t always work. It’s a shame because it used to work great!

The 1040EZ has been discontinued for several years now, but I’m with you that most free file tax software needs a simple return. Unfortunately, Direct File is one of those at the moment, though I hope it expands soon to at least slightly more complex returns that some other free tools (like FreeTaxUSA) can handle.

Ares as a project has a goal of accuracy at any cost, so tends to need a lot more resources than most other emulators. Before the tragic loss of Near, they wrote an absolutely exceptional article about the development of bsnes/higan and how much power it required for cycle-accuracy of SNES hardware, and it’s way more than you would think is feasibly necessary given that emulators like ZSNES (or Gens, as was my Sega emulator of choice at the time) ran under a crappy Celeron in the 90s.

I will say your CPU will likely throttle back well before it’ll shut down due to overheating. It might affect emulation performance some, but your PC shouldn’t shut down or anything.

This is my real problem with this (and also broadly pointing the finger to the “Unix philosophy” whenever a project like systemd or Wayland exists, ignoring that the large, complex, multifaceted, and monolithic Linux kernel itself flies in the face of that philosophy). Linux may have originally been built to be Unix-like but has become its own thing that shares a few similarities with Unix.

I forgot about Corel Linux and Lindows as well now that I think on it.

…Except Debian wasn’t even user-friendly when I used it two years after Ubuntu’s release. Red Hat Linux (not RHEL, which came later) was the only distro I’m aware of before Ubuntu that was more UX-focused.

Edit: I forgot about a few others — SUSE, Corel Linux, Lindows/Linspire, and others. Buuuuuuut most of those distros don’t exist anymore. I still stand by that Debian didn’t used to be as noob-friendly as it is these days.

I was a Twitter user and had been for a while; Bluesky replaced it for me and I rather like it. It feels very old-school Twitter, but is lacking some niceties such as videos and DMs.

Manjaro isn’t that fragile on its own. No, seriously, their goal is to make a stable version of Arch. No wait stop laughing —

The majority of issues with Manjaro itself (notwithstanding the team’s other issues) would be fixed by retiring the AUR as an official software source altogether. It simply isn’t a repository built with Manjaro’s slower burn in mind; it demands a bleeding edge system. If you don’t use the AUR, Manjaro is as stable as any other system. It just sucks for many other reasons, which is why I personally wouldn’t use it.

Oh hey, I was thinking about DSL recently and was bummed that it’d been discontinued for so long. It was my first Linux distro, downloaded over the course of I think a day and a half over rural dial-up. I moved to Ubuntu once I was able to get blazing fast 1.5 Mbps “broadband” but DSL still holds a special place in my heart. Going antiX-based was probably a good move to make it a bit more manageable, and while I downloaded it originally because it was 50MB I agree that it’s probably more realistic that people will download it with a connection much faster than dial-up, and the hard cap on a CD-sized image is I think a good compromise. It’s still, as the name says, damn small, at least by modern OS standards.

Every company you can buy a smartphone from is “another big company that will do anything to make money, no matter how much they’re already making.” This is an issue with capitalism, not just inherently Apple. Don’t fault people for using the tool that works best for what they’re doing.

Still have running? Probably my Sega Genesis model 1, bought a month before I was even born in 1991, though I rarely use it as emulation is easier.

Still use daily? Probably my gen 3 iPod touch, circa 2009.

Back when I was uncracked I almost exclusively played male characters so I wouldn’t seem gay, but related more to female characters.

Of course, I’m extremely bisexual and was closeted about that too, but it didn’t affect me too much to see the ass of either generally playable gender as long as they were hot. 😅

Thanks for the recommendation! Diablo II was one of my favorite games when I was a kid so this is way, way up my alley.

Lately I’ve been playing Spark the Electric Jester 3, Freedom Planet 2, Sonic Superstars, Vampire Survivors, and Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade. I think all of these are on sale!

I’m a platformer gal, especially fast-paced Sonicy ones, so Spark the Electric Jester, Freedom Planet, and of course Sonic Superstars are right up my alley. Sonic Superstars really isn’t a $60 game but I’d say it’s $36 sale price is all right. Freedom Planet 2 absolutely nails fluid 2D level design with insane levels of polish. And Spark 3 may be one of the finest 3D platformers ever made, with a tight control system and a incredibly high skill ceiling.

Vampire Survivors, however, is not a platformer. It’s a bite-sized RPG where your control of your character is exclusively directional and what upgrades to their skillset they get. It is incredibly addictive and while each session can last a maximum(ish) of 30 minutes I find myself wanting just one more try all the time. If you’re not sure about it, the mobile version is free with ads, but it’s really best played on PC.

And I don’t think I have words for FFVIIR. Say what you want about Square Enix (such as “fuck those guys”), they make a solid JRPG, and this enhanced remake of the first… like, quarter of the first disc of Final Fantasy VII? is excellently done and takes enough liberties with the storyline to feel fresh without feeling so different that it’s unrecognizable. (and the fact that they took liberties is actually a story point in and of itself but I’ll just leave it at that)

I’ve run Ubuntu Server frequently on VMs for work, but I could kinda go either way on it. The majority of people who have issues with Ubuntu have philosophical differences. I’m inclined to agree for my personal stuff (in principle I’d rather not get my packages from a single source that works on their own whims, in practice I never use anything but Flathub unless I need a package with deeper permissions) primarily because I believe that Linux should be as open as possible. That said, I already mentioned that my principles there only apply to machines I own, so I guess I’m a bit of a hypocrite 😅