You weren’t wrong across the board though. I know it’s hard to focus on the positives these days, and we are constantly bombarded with depressing and inane content, but we can’t lose sight of them.

It’s hard to overstate how much the internet has made scientific research and collaboration easier for instance. The sheer amount of research being done has exploded, and it’s far from being all slop. Publishers try their best to paywall the articles but they’re still available nonetheless.

And what about all the art that is shared online by people who would never, in a million years, have been able to show their creations to the world before the internet. Not to mention the people who don’t share it but can make it because of freely available information.

I know it’s not as idyllic as you probably foresaw it (yeah, understatement of the century, I know), but it did happen, even though unfortunately it also led to a gigantic pile of shit. Both can be true simultaneously.

Yes, some sort of commune is definitely not out of the question, on a personal level. That does not help the vast majority of people who stand to benefit from it (more so than me) though.

Congratulations on making and shipping a game on your own. That’s really fucking impressive.

The game looks very cool, I’ll definitely try the demo later!

I so want a UBI. Time to help my community, make open source contributions in ways I deem meaningful and beneficial to society rather than driven by corporate profit, make art, and have as much time as I want with my family? Sign me up.

But we wouldn’t want to prove that people don’t need the fear of homelessness and starvation to be productive now would we?

There is no age at which it’s ok to stay in a relationship that makes you miserable. One can fix it or leave it. By the sounds of it, you seem to believe yours is beyond repair. And there is also no age that is too old to experience new love again.

A good friend of mine, about your age, was in a somewhat similar situation minus the religious element. He held as long as possible, until their children were out of the house, at which point there was no glue between them anymore and he filed for divorce. That was a year ago. This summer I met his new partner, and he’s the happiest I have seen him in a while.

That being said, I also have examples of divorced men who aren’t as lucky relationship-wise. Some of them are ok with it, others not so much. I am not saying this to agree with your family, I just don’t want to give the impression I am looking at this with rose tinted glasses. It’s always easy for strangers to give advice, but when actually faced with the situation, it’s another dilemma entirely.

Ultimately, whether it’s leaving or staying, you do whatever is best for you. I sincerely hope you can figure it out for yourself, with honesty, and without external pressures.

No problem, I wasn’t sure how I came off either, knowing how some of the community can sometimes respond to posts criticising Linux/ranting about real issues, I just thought I’d make sure and clarify my intent.

FWIW, I also hate the flatpak/snap trend btw…

Yes I do on my laptop (have not tried on my desktop which is connected to a standard monitor) + using an Xbox and an 8bitdo controller through Bluetooth.

Never had issues with hdmi audio passthrough, (but did use to have weird resolution issues, circa Ubuntu 10.04, on a particular TV that I never could solve).

I am not trying to negate your experience, or trying to assess sample size btw. I am just genuinely just as baffled as you seem to be, from the other end, and would like to know of potential issues I am not even aware of.

So you’re the person who got all my bugs so I could have none.

Jokes aside, the pipewire stuff in particular sounds painful, this is a rat’s nest I am very glad I have not had to touch.

Genuinely curious what the ton of extra configuration and controller issues you’ve encountered are? Speaking only for myself, since Proton it’s been pretty much smooth sailing, even with an Nvidia GPU.

Granted I don’t have more “niche” interests like VR or flight/driving sims which would require pretty specific “controllers” and may just have been lucky all around.

They appear on their own during compilation. Unsure whether setting it on fire yourself would speed up the warming phase though.

Compile Gentoo on an old machine and you won’t even need to mod.

For Mint and gaming specifically, somebody else would probably answer better but I can’t imagine it’s going to be too different from any other Linux distribution. If my memory serves me right, there are pretty easy to use utilities to install Nvidia proprietary drivers (which can often be the painpoint for people, though my experience has luckily been different). That being said, I do know a lot of people tend to advise Bazzite for gaming, so again, maybe someone more knowledgeable there could chime in.

For the more general question of gaming on Linux (irrelevant of the distribution), Steam has made things really easy for a lot of games. I have switched to Linux about 15 years ago and I can tell you it used to be a pita, but now with Proton, a lot of games “just work” TM. Unfortunately, some games do remain unplayable, in particular some multiplayer games which require kernel level anti cheats. You should check beforehand for the games you are interested in, but if something is truly unsupported that you want to play, Mint or no Mint, you’re shit out of luck.

My advice would be, if you have time for that, to back up your data (which you do anyways right?) and just give Mint a spin. You won’t brick your computer, worst case there is a showstopper and you can just reinstall windows. I am sure plenty of folks online would be happy to help in the process ;)

Mint is just so fucking great to get new users in, it’s also what I install on the machines of the poor souls who are still trapped in Microsoft’s hellscape and are open to the idea of trying another OS.

The Linux Mint devs are really doing awesome work.

Aligning figures the way you want to in Latex saps all the energy that would otherwise be dedicated to lying.

Turns out you can be from an impoverished background, part of a minority with a strong history of persecution in your own country, and still come out of the Oxbridge pipeline as an anti-union, downward-punching bellend.

I agree with the fact that it’s easier for everyone to share the same name, especially when one parent travels alone with the kids. It’s such a faff (with good reasons) if you don’t have the same.

The issue is more that it’s often assumed that the wife has to take the husband’s name by default, rather than it being ultimately a choice between the couple.

Had this specific issue a couple days ago, but, to make it worse, the up-to-date package was not yet available. So discord would straight up not start at all.

So, to add another tip: telling discord to shut up about updates is the only reasonable response to that bs in my opinion. I’ll update when I want to, thank you very much. Just add "SKIP_HOST_UPDATE": true in the settings file at ~/.config/discord/settings.json to put this software in its place.

Feels like we need to push back against this sort of shit on the regular these days (and as a EU citizen currently living in the UK, I am getting a double whammy). It is so fucking tiring to repeatedly see such egregious and moronic decisions being made by an increasingly controlling and authoritarian ruling class.

In any case, thanks Maria for bringing attention to it. I don’t know whether this is only true for me or not, but I heard about chat control a lot more the first time it was being discussed a few years ago, and I only just learned about this instance now. Unsure why, and if it is actually being talked about less or if I was somehow under a rock, but your PSA is really appreciated regardless.