Velma was the hot one, and I will fight on that hill. And win.

If one ignores the semicolon, it is at their own peril; they’re too useful, even when used slightly incorrectly

They got so much wrong it’s hilarious.

About the only thing they got right is that we have chickens and like comfy clothing, and one mention based on a five year old review. Literally everything else was junk.

Tbh, this in specific is why I still have a win7 pc for my music enjoyment.

Not that audio can’t work fine on Linux, it absolutely can. But it doesn’t always, and it’s definitely not as friendly to an external DAC unless you get lucky. Mine works fine overall, but it’s still not quite as reliable. The signal cuts out, etc. Works better on my laptop than my desktop, though the laptop I’ve never had any issues, despite using the same distro when I had Linux on that desktop.

Me? In your place I’d try some other distros before full on quitting, but I’m a glutton for punishment because I enjoy fiddling up to a point. Mint, maybe one of the more noob friendly arch options, something along those lines. PopOs might be an okay starting place to see if it’s Linux, or a distro issue. I do know that pulse and the other audio functions vary some between distros, though I’m nowhere near capable of understanding why without learning other things first. I do know that when I tried cachy via a live drive last, it was pissy about sounding decent straight out of the box, so I abandoned it without an install.

Either way, I totally get it. Some things, it isn’t about adapting to the system, you just want shit to work the way it should. Music is one of those things for me too.

That is the most interesting use of that phrase I have run across

Updates are non existent, basic functionality locked behind a subscription, iffy support, lousy documentation. They suck. I have one, and the only reason I haven’t replaced it is monetary I have too many other things eating into my budget to replace something that is working, if not to my preferences

Yeah, well, they’re shit anyway

Pfft, like they need my chipset for that

Kargyraa is the tits!

Like I’m ever “buying” a game from them again.

The turtle moves

Fucking

Epic

!even with the bigotry, keeping what’s known in game relevant is important !<

They didn’t do due diligence. It was easily prevented by double checking everything

You can legislate it to the point that it’s only possible to spread or hand to hand, and doing so is illegal. Hell, they could go a step further and make just having a copy of it within your house illegal, even if it wasn’t installable.

In any real terms, that means the only way to keep a foss os is to build it entirely yourself. Not build it from source, but code the source from the ground up. It would take time to happen, but when enough time passes, both only do the skills necessary to do that fade, but hardware changes being closed would add another layer of difficulty. Look at the pain in the ass that android rom developers have trying to get AOSP going on a given device.

I get it, I get the dream of a dedicated and determined underground keeping Linux alove under an oppressive regime, but it isn’t realistic

This is neither military hardware, nor international security/defense.

The c/ has a fairly narrow focus, and the sidebar/about section is very easy to find and understand

If you think that some asshole won’t be willing to legislate that away, think again. It might be the last refuge, but it is entirely possible to shut that down

Tbh, when I tried it, I was completely unfamiliar with port forwarding, so it was more of a me thing.

Well, currently using mullvad because I paid cash and have months left.

However I tried ivpn with their one week option (two bucks!) At their basic plan.

I find speeds better on mullvad, but they’re otherwise comparable. I like both apps fine on android. If I was already on ivpn, I would not switch to mullvad for the minor speed uptick, since prices are comparable and switching multiple devices can be a very tiny annoyance.

In the past, I’ve used airvpn and proton for extended times (over six months). Proton is over priced, speeds were only marginally better than their free options, and iirc they were a pain about linux setup (I could be mixing them up with someone else though).

Airvpn worked great as a vpn. Port forwarding was an absolute cunt to get working for me. I suspect user error to be the biggest factor. Their android app sucks, and setting it up via other methods is preferred. But, at the time, they also lacked the built in ad/tracker blocking that I’ve enjoyed with mullvad and ivpn.

I did use nord briefly at one point. Worked fine, but at the time I was in need of port forwarding, and they had stopped offering that.

The only reason I’m maybe switching away from mullvad is the dubious political alignment of one of its owners. It really does work well for me, and is consistently faster than others I’ve tried, even with multi hop on. Even there, I’m not fully sure that the exact choice made by their part owner is exactly as bad as the common reaction is, so while I am likely switching away, I still can’t really state that it’s horrible to use the service.

The party he donated to has one big issue that’s a hell no for me, but it might not be there for everyone, and other aspects of the party slate are less objectionable, or even agreeable. In other words, I’m not mad at anyone that shrugs the donation off. It ain’t my business to judge people over such a narrow subject.

THAT being said, ivpn really is essentially the same service in terms of functionality. They even have servers that are in the same data centers. There’s several in the US in specific that are 100% in the same center once you go looking at the lists of exits. And I know there can’t be that many exact matches in cities across the world that aren’t from the same location. Since VPNs rent either virtual or hardware space in data centers to provide exits, if a given company doesn’t break from that, you won’t see a major difference between them.

I have run genshin on both the steam deck and a relatively old laptop running mint.

Neither was without hassles, but it played fine

Kinda stretching things here, but if you don’t mind some fantasy in your mix, Richard Kadrey’s Sandman Slim series is oddly Reacher-ish. It’s a very similar character type, just with supernatural elements thrown in. I can’t say there’s much politics mentioned at all, but the main character is okay with his girlfriend seeing women instead of and alongside him, so I’d definitely say it isn’t right wing.

But that series hits the same kind of itch for the whole tough guy taking no shit vibe for me.