Gotcha. Well, I guess being an old guy and having never correlated someone’s computer background to any kind of meaning other than they like that particular background, I guess I don’t see anything into it. But hey, I work with a bunch of terminals all day long so there’s not an opportunity to customize things there, and the one work machine that has a gui, I have just left the background as the default. That is a rule of mine, nothing personal on the work laptop.

younger me would’ve freaked out by the idea of having proprietary files

That’s good for starters. What do you mean by “younger me would’ve freaked out by the idea of having proprietary files”? Exactly what proprietary files are you talking about? Background pics are usually jpeg, or png, and those are not proprietary to linux, so I think that’s part of what has everyone confused about this. Are you also insinuating that people can only use certain backgrounds based on either belief or their own actual background? I am curious to hear your explanation if you aren’t a llm. And by the way, saying you don’t use chatgpt is exactly what I would expect chatgpt to reply with. LOL. I keed I keed.

When you say ‘younger me’ do you mean like four year old you, because eight year old current you doesn’t make sense? I have no idea what the whole point of this post is, other than it must be some chatgpt output someone thought would be funny to throw out.

Mildly off topic, but as a steam deck user, not another penny to rockstar from me. They can suck a bag of dicks.

If you have multiple profiles set up on one switch, before you start a game it will ask you which profile is playing. Any save info for that gaming session will be tied to that profile. Anyone with a Switch can use the physical media with the caveat that only one person can be playing it at a time. Now if you buy the games online, you won’t need the physical media, but the game is tied to the account. As for cost, well it can get expensive and my family usually reserved the large purchases for things like birthdays or christmas. If I had a nickel for every dollar I have spent on gaming systems over the years, I would be able to retire. :)

If you have time to not use the drive, you could use badblocks to test it. I usually use it with -svn as the options. s=Show progress, v=Verbose Mode, and n=Non destructive read/write mode,

Going to go out of the shooter box here and say Valheim. I am pretty sure it’s cross compatible with xbox and pc/steam deck. Might not be the thing though if you are just all wanting to pvp, but thought I would throw it out there.

I purchased a new monitor and video card right before rockstar pull their stunt with gta v. They arrived the day after I was locked out of gta online. So I feel your pain.

This person is an idiot and can only think of one possibility. They are ignoring the fact that fucking around on the job can have implications like increasing skills. I made the mistake of replying to this person with an anecdote of mine which I am sure will be deconstructed by them like they were there. Point is, boss allowed us to goof off with pet programming projects and that resulted in me experimenting with code I wouldn’t have had the chance to otherwise and making a breakthrough, which I then realized how to implement for the benefit of said company. So I wasn’t fucking around to make money, but the fucking around gave me the knowledge and skills to them apply that indirectly. But hey this person is determined to infect the thread with their single minded theory that doesn’t make a shit to the actual conversation.

It’s not as strict as you are trying to make it out to be. My favorite job ever was a small company. The owner was fine with us programmers just working on pet projects on company time. I was goofing around at some point and ended up writing us some code that ended up being kind of a workshop for some code that us programmers would have to sit and work on. It allowed non-programmers to set up the same conditions and handled the ‘code’ part internally. It was all because I was just goofing around with program ideas and eventually got to that point where I had my eureka moment. I didn’t set out to waste company time and money, but the end result paid off in droves, which is exactly how it sounds like the deck came to be. Another programmers goofy side project turned into an accounting package that we ended up tying into our actual product. If our boss/owner had been looking at it the way you are describing, none of that would have come to fruition, but look at all the money he would have saved not letting us programmers do what we did. /s

That said, this has always been the case, they’ve just covered their legal bases by updating their TOS.

Can you be a little more specific with your definition of this and always? I am old enough to remember that when you purchased a physical copy of a game, you got the game in it’s entirety in perpetuity. Eg: I still have my Donkey Kong cartridge for my Atari 800. To be a little more current, I have a copy of Kerbal Space Program from the company that I can download the entire copy of the game and install it on my pc. So what do you mean by your comment, as I remember a time when it wasn’t the case that you were only purchasing a license? Or do you mean that it’s always been the case with these services?

I was just had by rockstar when they cut off certain people who paid to play GTA Online and are now blocked. I will be voting with my wallet and never purchasing another rockstar game in the future, and in case they ever happened to see this, I was considering picking up the rdr games not only on pc, but my xbox and maybe even the switch. It has soured me to the point where this steam issue more of a concern and something I will be keeping an eye on.

Also, one last comment about your last line. We don’t need congress to get involved if we as a collective of gamers just gathered together and stopped “licensing” their games. Just like if everyone, instead of complaining about the price of beer and hotdogs at stadiums, would just stop buying them for a while, the people raping our wallets would be forced to bring prices down. But alas, I think the chances of that happening are next to zero.

I see your edit, and would like to comment that you also haven’t mentioned which rpi you were going to try this on. I recently wanted to set up a quick little pc using a rpi, just so I could browse the web and maybe watch some videos. Tried a rpi2 I had laying around. No way. Moved to a rpi3, and while it would load most pages, youtube was a bust as it completely maxed out the ram and swap. I then went to a rpi4 with 8gb and it has been doable, kind of. Sometimes it’s pretty choppy with the video, but basic web browsing is ok. I did try my plex the other day through the browser and it was barely acceptable. Lots of stuttering and sometimes just hangs, but that’s not the ideal way to view plex on anything. Haven’t tried my rpi5 yet, but my point to all this is that I think you are on the right track setting it up on a spare pc he has. If you had given him a rpi as a ‘desktop’ replacement it might have just soured him on the whole idea.

Doesn’t matter, but they contradict themselves.

Headline: why isn’t everyone using it?
Body: This article breaks down what Linux is, why it’s great and how it secretly powers most of your favorite devices, from smartphones to servers.

So it looks like most everyone is using it, they just might not realize it. Which to me is a sign of a great product, when it’s use is completely transparent.

If Linux cannot help me do them then in what way is it a widely suitable mass operating system as proponents are constantly claiming instead of merely a hobby tool that can do a very limited range of things.

Not sure what you mean by this as I have used tons of linux machines to earn a living for the last 20 years or more. Just because you haven’t delved into it doesn’t mean it is just a hobby tool. No offense, but if that is your attitude towards this then it might be best to not switch. Things might not always be up to par with what you are used to, but I have seen some pretty cringy things go on in current mainstream windows. Try having an issue with onedrive and asking the team supporting it to help. First step is to reboot. If that doesn’t work they uninstall then reinstall. If that doesn’t work, well then I guess you are out of luck. When I asked them about anything in the log files, all I got was blanks stares. My point is, windows isn’t some pristine environment with no flaws that we should all strive to reach, it has it’s own issues.

For instance, your Notepad++ question. I know you don’t want to use multiple tools to replace it, but I would venture to guess that the work I do daily, I would probably come up with solutions using vi, sed, and awk on the command line just as fast as you could using the gui. The thing is, I have been doing it for so long it’s just second nature to me. Would I want to switch to Notepad++, no.

Maybe come up with some examples of what you do in Notepad++ and people can give you alternative solutions.

My distro had an update for cups, so I am guessing people are already on this. Pop Os is what I just loaded on this machine.

Not going to hold my breath after getting a ‘fuck you very much’ reply from their tech support.