Kiernian

For gaming and everything else I couldn't easily do on Linux back when mandriva and Gentoo were still considered fairly new distros? And because I didn't know Linux well yet?

Linux has come a LONG way, but back as much as 20 years ago, doing something as simple as installing suse8 could see you with a fat string of error -3's just because you had a slightly less common model of hard drive. Forget trying to play one of the few MMOs that existed back then.

Production mac's were still running os8 back then.

It was a different world and gaming meant windows for almost all major titles because there were only so many WINE contributors.

So, I kinda had this problem myself at one point a decade and a half ago, only it was booze and serviio.

I ended up taking an old tower I had, installing Ubuntu on it with no Xwindows or GUI of any kind, set up ssh, and unplugged the monitor, keyboard, and mouse and accessed the Ubuntu box only from a putty session on my windows box.

Then, when I wanted to do anything on the Linux box I'd ssh in and command line it. And Google and try again until I got it right.

I turned it into a domain controller for the windows boxes (well, login server via ldap) and had an irc bouncer and a bot on it, among other things.

All while still drinking and streaming video.

I can't say what the magic bullet will be for anyone else, but I was able to learn by removing my "crutches" until it just... Clicked for me. YMMV but don't stop trying.

LOL

Ten years ago I would have just blocked the MAC address.

Agreed, that's critical. That said, I periodically subscribe to all of those, and all of the ones I've tried in the last year on Firefox on Debian, have worked perfectly. If there's any left that still don't, I haven't tried/encountered them.

That's great news and it gives me a lot of hope.

You raise some great points though. The average user isn't going to use workarounds or alternatives, so we should focus on actually solving the problem instead of saying use this instead.

These kinds of things are the first things that come to mind when people start going all "Linux is ready for $blah" because while I can figure out how to deal with these issues, they're invariably the first things I get phone calls from my non-IT-career friends about when they switch to Linux.

Windows changes insane amounts of interface whatnot on the regular, users can usually figure THAT out, finally, no matter what OS they're using.

It's the stuff that just works out of the box on windows or Mac but doesn't on Linux that's at issue, and it's what will continue to halt widespread adoption at the casual user level, unfortunately.

The ability to stream media from legit paid sources. (Netflix, Comcast, max, disneyplus, prime, I don't know where the list is currently, but anything that bitches about user agent.)

TPM.

The ability to play multiplayer games that rely on anti-cheat ( seriously, make Linux a hit with the fortnite crowd and the upcoming generation will think of windows as boomerware )

The ability to use an HDMI cable at full speed. (It's the leading A/V cable standard and the only one some people understand. )

Then there's the stuff I'm unsure of the current status of but that I know was a problem once upon a time: Online banking, online doctor stuff, encrypted emails from mainstream providers, you know, anything that could qualify as "every day stuff" that works out of the box on windows and yet sometimes requires complicated (for grandma) setup on Linux.

Failed Fact Checks

None in the Last 5 years

I want to marry this rag.

Just out of curiosity, what are the ramifications?

I had a period of time 15 years ago where I was eating about 1000-1500 calories a day for months because I was so busy I'd just forget to eat.

Life is getting to the point where I'm forgetting to eat on weekends again and I'm contemplating just following suit during the week to drop some poundage.

I know if the weight loss is TOO fast there's a heart component, but is there anything else to worry about?

The belief that everyone decrying Harris' stance on Gaza was knowingly or unknowingly participating in enabling a worse stance on Gaza than the still-not-great one we would have gotten with her.

Look back now with hindsight and tell me what would be better for Palestinians in Gaza. What we're getting with trump in charge? Or what we might have gotten if every single person who said negative things about Harris' stance had instead focused solely on how Trump's stance was objectively worse per his own words.

By not putting the focus on the absolutely 100% guaranteed WORSE stance of the two, people enabled talking points that led, in part, to where we are now.

THAT is why so many of us screaming about harm reduction and the lesser of two evils is SO pissed off about single-issue Gaza voters not putting in for Harris.

Stop letting perfect be the enemy of good. It leads to this.

Elections are about holding your nose and making the best of a bunch of imperfect choices.

Trying to make it anything else from the top down is folly. You have to start from the bottom up. Until that happens, we will never see our way out of a two party system.

Turning, my ass.

They're tossing penny candy off both sides of the parade float in the hopes that the crowd won't rush them.

Until he wasn't.

Lucas was eventually quite against large swaths of the EU.

It doesn't change how many people enjoyed it.

I think we can both agree things would be vastly different if Tolkien were still alive, but what I sincerely doubt anyone can agree on is what that would look like.

Just look at how many origins there are for orcs.

Not even Tolkien was a Tolkien purist, read some of his letters where he explained the overarching subject matter.

Originally, the Hobbit wasn't intended to be connected to the Middle Earth stories of involving sauron and the rings at all, he didn't even think it was set in the same world at first.

I think getting all up-in-arms about stuff that was still evolving and growing until the moment he died is a bit ridiculous.

Rings of Power is definitely MORE THAN ENOUGH into the realm of "in the spirit of" for me to personally find it highly enjoyable.

I'm having a hard time figuring out why so many people seem to have such an abiding need to specifically shit into other people's bowls of Wheaties the instant they find out they poured them from the box with the Harfoot biathlon team on the cover, though.

Considering the amount of whipped-up outrage I saw years ago when the first picture of a black female dwarf was revealed, I'm finding myself wondering if a bunch of actual fans are getting caught up in a driven sentiment that has nothing to do with fandom for Tolkien's actual work and more to do with a few overly vocal groups finding every niche, crack, and crevice they can to put a negative spin on representation in any form.

I would love to know how to do this, step by step, preferably without a Mac.