I’ve run into issues where a game will work with a specific version of wine but then not work with a newer version but then other games that don’t work with the older version, work with the new one.

Theres also potentially issues of dependencies for one game breaking another game. Separate prefixes just make it easier to troubleshoot a game not working since you can just install/uninstall whatever dependencies that it might need without worrying about messing up other games.

Its also just easier to delete the entire prefix when you realise you’ve installed too many useless dlls and you’ve finally found the one thing you do need to make the game work lol

I also like to archive games I like since companies can just decide to remove their games from existence whenever they want. So I just add the separate prefix that has any extra dlls or tweaks to the archive so that the game should still work in 3 years without having to try and download dependencies that may not be as easy to find in the future

But if you don’t have issues I don’t think its a big deal and if you do have issues with a game, you can just make a separate one for that anyway.

You could chance it, but they probably have logs of your IP/location data or they bought your data somewhere and so they could check, if they cared enough, but if you’re not an EU citizen and you live in an EU country then GDPR applies to you

Guide is maybe not the right word lol, it just exactly what I click to set up the majority of my games

I’m not 100% sure, but from my understanding yes the regisrty in the “prefix” folder would be changed. You can manually edit the wine prefix registry with regedit https://www.winehq.org/docs/wineusr-guid<br />e/using-regedit and Lutris supports this, just click the arrow that brings up the winetricks option and its under Wine Registry

Every few months I like to clear out my password manager of any accounts I don’t need anymore, usually just throwaway emails aliases.

I’ll usually attempt to log into any services that I know I’ve deleted/requested to delete to make sure they’re not accessible anymore and so far I haven’t been able to log in to any of them so I can only assume my requests are working.

I suppose if a service had a data breach, after my information was meant to be deleted, and I found my information there then I’d make a complaint to my regulator about not deleting my data. I would have proof of my request and their acknowledgement of the request so it’d be pretty silly of them not to delete it after saying they did

I rarely use anything but email aliases and fake information anyway and I never let online retailers save my card information. And if my address in on my account I change it to P. Sherman 42 Wallabyway Sydney before I delete/request to delete my account.

I spend too much time reading emails so I try to keep mine short, especially when they’re going to a generic email like support or privacy.

https://gdpr.eu/right-to-be-forgotten/

The GDPR does not specify what a valid request to erasure entails. An individual can make a request for erasure verbally or in writing. This request can also be made to any member of your organization, not just to a designated contact. As long as a request meets the conditions above, it is valid, even if it does not refer to “Request for Erasure” the “Right to be Forgotten,” Article 17, or the GDPR.

There’s no template to follow for a request. Once GDPR is mentioned, they usually just email back saying that they’re doing it or its done.

I haven’t come across any difficult companies but I’ve heard some make it as hard as possible and follow the Erasure Request form template in the link above and ask for proof of I.D etc

I use Lutris and set up my directories a “GameName” and then 2 subdirectories “game” “prefix” and point Lutris to these.

All of the game files go in “game” and the prefix is created in “prefix” when I press play in Lutris. Any extras dlls that are needed can be installed with winetricks within Lutris to that specific prefix

This way you can just compress and decompress “GameName” folder and point Lutris to these locations on whichever machine.

You can choose which prefix version you want in Lutris and it will download that version for you. I’m pretty sure it saves the version to somewhere in ~.local/share/lutris I’m not at my PC now so not 100% sure of the path.

It saves it to ~.local/share/lutris/runners/wine and you can put a custom wine build here and Lutris should recognise it when configuring the runner options

So you could copy this over to the corresponding location on the deck and Lutris will automatically detect this version as installed and won’t have to download it again but its not necessary unless you don’t have internet on the deck, or you’re like me and want to keep an archive of the working prefix for the future in case the prefix version is no longer available for whatever reason and other version just won’t work.

If you’re new to Lutris, I wrote a step by step guide on how I use Lutris on a different community

https://sopuli.xyz/comment/9858101

I usually just write

Hi,

Please delete my account and all data associated with this email in accordance with Article 17 of GDPR, I’m an EU citizen

Thanks x

I just assume if they haven’t made it easy to delete your account by now then they never will but these are really good points that will hopefully make companies change their policies, especially since its all things that benefit them

Theres at least 4 websites in the megathread under the ROMs section that have a bunch of Switch games. 3 begin with N and 1 begins with Z. In the FAQ section of the Z website is where I got keys and firmware

Pretty sure its because of the piracy shield thingy. Secure Core might be an option as long as no Italian servers are used and you’re using the VPNs DNS

https://torrentfreak.com/airvpn-stops-serving-italians-due-to-piracy-shield-blocking-requirements-240206/

“[A]ll parties in any capacity involved in the accessibility of illegally disseminated content – and therefore also, by way of example and not limitation – VPN and open DNS service providers, will have to execute the blocks requested by the Authority [AGCOM],” the notice read.

Use one of the websites in the megathread, unless you want to use the dev tools on a pc to find the video source link and try to download it from there but thats a whole lot of unnecessary effort

??? Theres a download button beside the play button that gives a bunch of sources and each source has a torrent file or magnet link to add to your torrent client

You should be able to kind of do both through android settings

Settings -> Apps -> YourApp -> Mobile data usage -> Allow Network access and Mobile Data

For VPN you’ll need to add a VPN and then Settings -> Network and Internet -> VPN -> YourVPN -> Always on VPN and Block Connections without VPN. This blocks all apps. There is 2 issues with this though, Blocking connections will block split tunneling connections set up through VPNs and also potentially this depending on the apps you’re using https://mullvad.net/en/blog/dns-traffic-can-leak-outside-the-vpn-tunnel-on-android

I’ve used https://github.com/Softcatala/whisper-ctranslate2 before for transcribing English and translating non English audio into srt files and its been pretty good for TV shows for me. Its not perfect but it usually gets me about 95% of the way there

Tl;dr Step by step how I setup lutris to run pirated games

I use Lutris, its pretty easy to setup and is pretty much the same setup for most games.

Install lutris wine and winetricks with your package manager. Wine is a windows compatibility layer for linux and winetricks is a helper for downloading and dependencies that a game might need and lutris integrates both of these.

In the file manager, I like to create a folder with the name of the game and then inside of that folder I make 2 folders “game” and “prefix” I put all of the game files in the game folder and leave the prefix folder empty for now.

When you open lutris, on the left, hover over wine and click on the little box icon to manage the wine versions. I recommend, wine-ge. Its a custom build/fork of Steams Proton that adds some extra stuff

Once you have installed that, back on the main page at the top left is a + to add a new game. Select the bottom option, “Add locally installed game”. Give the game name and select “wine” as the runner from the dropdown.

Then on the next tab, Game Options, select the games executable location, inside the “game” folder. Set the Working directory as the “game” folder. You can just copy the path that you put in the executable section and backspace until the folder called “game”.

For wine prefix, copy the working directory path and replace “game” with “prefix” this is where all the wine/windows stuff will install.

Set the Prefix architecture to 64-bit

On the next tab, Runner Options, you can select the wine version you want to use. It should default to the wine-ge version you installed. At the top right press save and your game should be good to go. There are a whole bunch of other options you can play around with but for pretty much every game I’ve played I just leave them as default.

This should be fine for most games but sometimes wine updates can break older games and so you may have to try older versions of wine-ge or different versions of wine like lutris-fshack or wine-staging. Or the game may need a special dependency that you need to install. This is why I set a separate prefix directory for each game.

You can look at the logs for a game by selecting it and pressing the arrow beside the play button, this may or may not be helpful for trouble shooting.

If you do need to install an additional dependency, select the game and press the arrow at the bottom right and select winetricks. “Select the default prefix” should be selected by default, press ok and at the top of the next screen you should see the path to the games prefix, then select the “Install a Windows DLL or component” Then you should have a list of packages you can install.

If you’re using a repack that needs to be extracted, put the path to setup.exe as the executable on the Game Options tab and run through the installer, selecting the “game” folder that you created as the install location, it is probably under the Z drive. Then when you’re done installing, right click the game in lutris and press configure and then back to game options and replace the setup.exe path with the path to the games exe and save.

There’s a whole bunch of other ways to do this, like bottles or just using system wine or adding the game as a non-steam game to Steam, I have a separate throwaway Steam account for this.

I like the way lutris is laid out and I like having separate prefixes for each game because I archive the games I like and its nice to have a known working prefix in that archive for games I had issues running.

Ha, we’ve been doing the same thing for the past few months! I just made a generic Immich account that we all log into and upload to that. I auto backup the library to other places as we go, just in case. Once we’re done, we’ll all get copies of the directory to do with as we please.

I have Immich set up to keep the name of the files instead of giving them a random name. As we scan we name the files with the peoples names and generic tags like Tom.Mary.Birthday.1992 and putting Mary before birthday indicates that it was Mary’s birthday. So that if I decide to try and add meta data to the files it will be easier.

I haven’t figured out a plan for adding meta info to the files so they at least have the year/month they were taken and I don’t know if I even want to since we’re 1000’s of photos in now

Yeah, carrier unlock and OEM unlock are completely separate and have nothing to do with each other. People will say ‘unlocked’ and mean carrier unlocked because most people don’t know what OEM unlocking is so it can get really confusing when trying to buy second hand and explaining the difference. Its a really common misconception that has been an issue for over a decade that’s why I always try to explain they have nothing to do with each other

I don’t know any other carriers that do this but I wouldn’t be surprised if more did. I never recommend buying from a carrier since most just carrier lock their phones anyway so its just more hassle if you decide to switch carriers.

I find buying from the manufacturer works out cheaper than from any carrier where I am. Its also better for privacy since I don’t have to deal with bill pay and can just pay cash for PAYG without giving any personal information and can switch to whoever has the best deal without faffing about, just get a new Sim card and I’m ready to go

OEM unlocking is not the same as carrier unlocking

Carrier unlocking is to allow you to use your phone with a different network e.g switching from Verizon to T-Mobile and putting a T-Mobile Sim in the Verizon phone. This can be done with both Android and iOS

OEM unlocking is an Android setting that enables the end user to modify the firmware of the device e.g unlocking the boot loader, installing custom boot images, ROMs and gaining root access.

AFAIK both T-Mobile and Verizon have custom Android settings that completely grey out the OEM unlock option in Android settings. There is no way around this as an end user, even if you had got customer support to carrier unlock your phone it would have made no difference, OEM unlocking would still be disabled.

AFAIK There is no way around this and the only solution is to never buy from either carrier.

I bought a refurbished Pixel a few years ago from the Netherlands and it ended up being originally from Verizon, I found a Verizon system app still preinstalled in settings and it was impossible it enable OEM unlocking.

Either buy directly from Google or buy second hand on the condition that you can check to make sure OEM unlocking is possible before purchase

Proxitok is a front end for tiktok https://github.com/pablouser1/ProxiTok/wiki/Public-instances

Don’t forget about this

FG or Dodi because of file size. Mainly use Lutris, and setup up my games in a GameName with game and prefix as the subdirectories. This way I have separate prefixes for every game so I don’t have to worry about one games dependencies messing up another game or a wine update breaking it.

I’ll try a few prefixes and add dll’s (usually dx and vcrun dll’s fix any issues) with winetricks but if they don’t work, I’ll add it to Steam and if that works then copy the proton prefix and replace the steam dll with Goldberg’s

If that doesn’t work, jc141 or LinuxRulez usually works, but their compresion ratios just aren’t as good as FG and Dodi unfortunately.

ROMs are usually from myrient or archive but I always check Gnarly first for PS3 because they have great compression ratios. I convert PS1 and PS2 to chd for smaller file size I always use portable versions or appimages of emulators and setup auto backups of the emulators save folders that default to the system drive, like RPCS3, to make them more portable.

I archive the compressed files with the prefix and any notes on changes I made for that setup to make it easier for future me to get games up and running for others or if I want to play again. I converted nsp to nsz before archiving too. I also don’t keep games on the system drive.

When I started using linux a few years ago, I would constantly either switch distros or completely break the system with no idea how to fix it so I would just reinstall it. I’ve also become a bit of a data hoarder so my goal is always to make each game small, portable and separated from the others so they can be used on pretty much whatever PC without much effort.