If looking for a Linux or Windows laptop, this is the right answer. Look for one of these used, and get the highest spec model in your budget. I’ve still got ThinkPads from 2012 kicking around running Linux that are perfectly capable light duty machines, not that I’d go that old if it was my primary laptop.

I also didn’t care for bg3, having played previous Larian games, esp the Divinity Original Sin games, I thought the D&D rules are a step backward, and not fun in a video game. having to constantly rest, nerfing of environmental effects and offensive items (vs their other games), and I didn’t care about the story (but I never do so that’s fine I guess). I’m glad they aren’t developing sequels. but also hopefully it printed money for them so they can do great on their next game, and hopefully it gets more folks interested in their games generally.

I know it’s a lot of folks game of the year, but I just don’t get it. It was boring, less good Divinity for me. But whatever, people loved it and I’m glad it’s successful for them.

I think you meant Animal Well, and that game was amazing, definitely my game of the year.

ah definitely. I haven’t tried it out yet but I think they improved that in plasma 6.1. although that’s absolutely the point you were making: lots of things that used to work fine on X11 that Wayland just doesn’t have yet.

yeah with the exception of krita (which runs fine on xwayland, even with a tablet) I’ve been able to run 100% Wayland, with sway for work and KDE for home, but my needs aren’t too wild. I’m sure a lot of users feel like the rug was unnecessarily pulled out from under them; change that feels like a regression even for very good reason will almost never feel like reason enough if it’s your shit that gets worse, definitely.

still, I think you’ve got to get people using the thing if you want the thing to get better. probably more casual users didn’t even notice when gnome moved over, for example. but probably even the most casual user ran into some problem, and that’s a bummer.

out of curiosity what use cases/software has stopped you from running Wayland? I do miss the magic of tunneling an X session over SSH, that felt like dang magic in the early 2000s.

I mean that’s a fair question, because I feel like mostly the advantages are, hm, not “theoretical” because it’s an actual advantage, but not something you’ll really encounter day-to-day. better security for example. but generally who cares because if I interact with something malicious I’m probably owned anyway.

originally I was interested in it because of fractional scaling, but I think that works in X11 for the most part now?

at this point it’s mostly about using the bleeding edge stuff so I can help find problems. I do find that when it works it works very well, and the experience of using a Wayland desktop is less wonky: fewer weird rendering glitches when dealing with multiple monitors, connecting and disconnecting my laptop from a dock, etc. I find this works better with Wayland, but I wouldn’t say “so much better that you must move to it today” if you’re happy with what you have.

similarly full-system stability has been better, and I have fewer crashes that take down everything, I feel. it’s perhaps subjective though: I’ve been running it for so many years maybe all I’m experiencing is that the software I run has become better in general.

so: I don’t think it’s a night-and-day life-changing experience or anything, but it does feel modern and stable, and it’s definitely where things are heading so why not get used to it now, and help to improve it, is my thinking.

mostly just water but if I need electrolytes I’ve found most pre-made powders, tablets, or drinks are too sweet, more so if they use alternative sweeteners like Stevia. so, I found a place that sells electrolyte powder, unsweetened and unflavoured, and mix it up myself with some water, lemon juice, and a bit of Stevia. much better than the premade mixes.

although I do like pocari sweat as a rare thing. you can buy that as a powder online, but the local asian market sells cans of it so I keep a few around.

I’ll check that out, thanks for the recommendation. as for it defaulting to X11, it’s no issue because the Wayland session is also available and has been absolutely solid for me, I was just surprised that it wasn’t the preferred session by the distro.

I can’t speak to MicroOS but I have been running Tumbleweed for about a month. normally I run arch.l, but wanted to try something new for a change, and I was interested in trying out a full DE as I typically run sway.

I’ve been extremely impressed with KDE; I assume you feel the same if you’re looking at Kinoite, but feels worth saying out loud for other readers.

Tumbleweed, for an Arch user, is fine. it installed fine, was reasonably sane out of the box (although defaults to X11, not Wayland) and it’s been perfectly stable for the month I’ve run it. Doing development on it is very easy, and it comes with a non-root docker setup script out of the box which is nice, and I’ve had no issue building software on it. YaST is powerful but has an awful UI.

However: it has the same problem as Ubuntu for me, which is that if you want software from outside the repos you have to trust other repositories and trust their keys, and they often want to replace packages, and finding out if they are built safely can be quite challenging. compare this to Arch, where you can easily read a PKGBUILD and they almost always download sources direct from the developer/vendor, and they very rarely replace other packages. So I find it hard to trust this system’s integrity over time; where are my packages coming from? So in the end I’ll probably go back to Arch, or maybe try out Endeavour, but if this doesn’t concern you then I think Tumbleweed is a capable distro that’s easy to get up and running.

A lot of decent ones have been mentioned so I’ll add a few I didn’t see:

• Keep your hands off Eizouken: I can’t express my love for this one enough; it’s beautiful, touching, funny, and just one of the most lovely things I’ve ever seen.
• Bocchi the Rock: very funny, and extremely uncomfortable for introverts but in a good way
• Delicious in Dungeon: extraordinarily good adaptation of the manga; this one isn’t done yet so who knows but it’s wonderful so far, and Studio Trigger’s animation won’t disappoint
• BNA: another Studio Trigger, lovely animation. I love how this one almost makes a point several times and then just glances off of it; it’s a bizarre one

thank you for the reminder to rewatch north by northwest

Newsblur. it’s open source but there’s a hosted instance of it, and it’s paid (but very cheap) so it’s a fair exchange. it’s run by one guy and has been for a long time; I’ve used it for over 10 years now.

they make bad products that are media darlings because it’s fashion more than anything. they’re treated like consumer advocates but they are one of the absolute worst companies for vendor lock-in, and are absolutely anti-consumer, but will have innumerable articles written about how they’re “the best” for any given measure. it drives me nuts how the public perception of them is the complete opposite of what they actually are, and i don’t get it.

also their software is bad. all due credit their hardware impressed but it doesn’t matter if the software is crap.

and they aren’t private: they’ve got all your data but have somehow convinced everyone that it’s fine that they have it because they’re somehow better than every other large tech company.

you were cool the whole time

yes, things like Midwest emo are seeing a resurgence, see Origami Angel or Arcadia Grey for instance; or things that blend hyperpop with more pop/punk sensibilities like Dynastic. there’s a lot of it out there, it’s just not what’s mainstream.

yep. I use backblaze B2 with rclone, and just don’t worry since it’s encrypted (including the file names) before it leaves my server.

find a hobby and join up with folks that do the same locally. join a gym. go to a local pub and watch some sports. I find this far better than social media, however I also live in a (small) city; i don’t know how people manage in rural areas.

jq, or if I need to do something wacky a one-off python script.

yeah my vr rig is just a dedicated beat saber machine these days.

the story reveals in Horizon: Zero Dawn. it’s hard to say much of anything without spoilers, but that game had me absolutely riveted.

also HL: Alyx had some stunning moments. I haven’t been much of a VR fan but that game is fantastic.

I need to figure out how spoilers work in Lemmy haha. hard to talk about.

I think Google Fi works like you describe.