I already basically get that half the time I boot into windows after an update. They say “let’s finish setting up your PC” and try to get you to pay for one drive, office, even game pass.

I’m so glad gaming on Linux has gotten to such a good state. I barely ever boot into windows now. (The “ad” on boot up is probably only once every few months, but that’s about as often as I boot into windows).

You may know this, but my understanding is that they randomly stop either to do another delivery on a different app, or to get gas/etc. (edit: I don’t think this justifies it to the customer, hence why I’ve stopped using these apps. I do have some sympathy for the driver, I have heard that the companies incentivize them to maintain a streak and take fewer breaks between drives, and somehow it seems like long unnecessary pauses aren’t penalized (perhaps because they’re hard to distinguish from traffic))

I haven’t used delivery apps in a while due to cold food and outrageous prices.

Awesome, thanks for sharing this! I haven’t gotten into audiobooks yet, but it’s good to know that there are user friendly options out there.

Vaguely related: it’s also possible to listen to audio books through local libraries in some cases. I think the app is not as friendly, and does a lot to prevent you from getting DRM free mp3s, but at least there’s no charge.

Thanks, this is somewhat reassuring. Maybe some day I’ll try it. I used to like tinkering with things, but lately I haven’t had as much patience or free time.

Ah, I actually have bought a few music CDs a while ago, and they were actually fairly easy to rip myself. I can’t complain about that at all. If ripping DVDs was that easy then I would probably enthusiastically buy a few DVD boxsets. But I don’t really want to buy dedicated hardware just to read DVDs on my PC to do a cumbersome ripping process, and also probably lug that hardware (or the entire PC) to my TV now and then to watch a movie.

I’ve been interested in vinyl for a while, does it really sound better?

Ah, good point. I had briefly heard of this and was shocked: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_region_code

For anyone who hasn’t heard:

This is achieved by way of region-locked DVD players, which will play back only DVDs encoded to their region (plus those without any region code).

This definitely furthers the original post’s point. And he may have even mentioned it.

It’s infuriating that you can pay for something and then move, and lose your collection. This comes to mind: https://xkcd.com/488/

I may have missed it, but does he (or anyone else) have recommendations for options to simply pay for content and get high quality DRM free files (edit: I mean legally)?

And how much of a pain in the ass is it to buy DVD box sets and rip them? Presumably that’s legal for personal use? Is that the only way? :(

I have some additional frustrations with Netflix:

• they have removed some shows that I like
• if you travel to another country, you can’t always watch the same shows— even if you downloaded them within the app
• they completely remove some episodes: the episode of community where they play Dungeons and Dragons, and (other streaming services) remove the Michael Jackson Simpsons episode.
• extremely user hostile way to browse content. They always move your list around and show the same show in multiple places
• I absolutely hate how all these streaming services auto play to the next episode. You can often change this behaviour. But my partner sometimes casts it to our TV and the damn app (Disney+ in this case, I think) changes the interface just as you get to the credits. I want to sit in peace and let the credits play, and discuss the episode. But it tries to shove another one down your throat, presumably to “maximize engagement”. (I get it for content that you’re binging or are re watching. But this is horrible if you’re just watching an episode during dinner and don’t want to have to scramble to stop the autoplay as soon as it ends)

+1 to everything you said. Another funny thing I noticed: I looked at my steam catalog on a family member’s Macbook. Many of the games aren’t available on Mac, plus they dropped 32 bit executable support.

I never thought that only ~15 years later (from when I first tried Linux) we would start booting into linux from a mainstream OS for gaming. How the times have changed.

Ahhh… memories are flooding back now. I remember the screen would get distorted and change into the mini game. Agreed, it was amazing and I also can’t believe it was hidden. I miss little gems like that in older video games.

This is awesome! “The Incredible Machine” seems like it’d work great too. It was a bit awkward to control in the browser (having to bring up the keyboard a few times), but I’ll have to try their app later.

And yeah Ur-Quan Masters didn’t play very well. I figured it would be better than nothing on a long flight, though. (But who am I kidding, I always have my laptop with me anyway)

You can either use on-screen touch controls, or you can press anywhere on the screen and have the ship move to that location (while constantly firing). The on-screen touch controls do not work very well for me, but the “follow my finger” method works pretty well. I think I made it through “hard” or maybe medium with it.

It’s not ideal, you have to stop moving to stop firing and let your generator catch up if your shields took a lot of damage. But it’s fun enough as a casual game if you have a few minutes to kill. Or maybe it’s just the nostalgia that makes me enjoy it.

And you trigger sidekicks or toggle weapon firing modes by pressing the info on the right side of the screen. I assume this was added for the mobile version, I didn’t think it was clickable in the original, though I doubt I ever tried it.

Awesome, thanks! I played Sonic when I was younger, but somehow I never tried any of the others you mentioned. I’ve been meaning to try the “Final Fantasy” series forever and it never occurred to me that it would work well on a phone.

My raspberrypi works great as a backup git server, as long as it doesn’t fall off my table and get stepped on or rolled over by my chair. I also host a few static webpages on it for cooking recipes.

It actually has better uptime than my desktop, which I occasionally boot into windows when I (rarely!) encounter a steam game that doesn’t work well on Linux.

It does not work well as a DLNA server though, though it seems to manage lower resolution videos okay. I think I tried both tried reading videos from the SD card, and a USB external hard drive.