I mean I’ve spent time studying occult stuff, so I guess pretty much the trope codifier.

Turns out they mostly just like to do the macarena. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Absolutely my favorite. Just download and go. Super portable.

Sacrilege.

I mean if you want one app to rule them all, there’s only ever been one option… Emacs. It can be your text editor, task organizer, calendar… operating system. If by work efficiently you mean endlessly feel the need to make tweaks and modifications, and maybe learn an entire idiosyncratic language while you’re at it… Emacs. Praise be.

I’ve had an e-ink device, and read ebooks on a number of devices. Some notes:

• If it’s a casual read and I can get the book in epub or mobi format, I might just have it on my phone and use Librera.

• I did not like e-ink displays at all. The text itself doesn’t appear easier on the eyes to me, and if anything the jarring refreshes on each page turn make the overall experience even more straining. For this reason regular Android tablets have become my preferred way to read books.

• For tablets I suggest one that is at least 10 inches. A lot of ebooks are still only available in pdf format, and I’ve found that anything smaller than a 10 inch display makes for bad pdf reading.

• Following from all that, I would suggest the Pixel Tablet, because from a privacy perspective, you have the option to install GrapheneOS on it. From there you can get F-Droid, install any of those ebook apps, and now you have a reasonably secure and private ebook reader - and the best part is, because it’s a general purpose tablet, you’re not accumulating unnecessary single-purpose devices. You never know if the tablet might have other important uses down the line.

I agree with pretty much all of your points, especially about limited inventories. In isometric arpgs in particular it drives me crazy that half the gameplay is essentially a gambling system of explosions of massive amounts of items - yet they give you virtually no room to carry it? Terrible.

But on Morrowind, I love the game with mods like MULE, but the vanilla level up system makes the stat system self-defeating. The purpose of skill-based progression is to let me play the character I want to play, and do the things I want to do, and trust that my character is going to grow accordingly. But the level up stat multiplier system forces the player to do all sorts of things other than what they want, in order to get the most out of the stat system.

It’s even worse in Oblivion because everything levels with you much more in that game, which means if you don’t do these ridiculous things to min/max, your enemies can actually become too powerful to beat!

Skyrim size was just about right. I just want a deeper stat sytem that promotes more build diversity than stealth archer (but keeping the skill tree system intact - never want to go back to the Morrowind/Oblivion systems), enemies and items that don’t level with me, more monster variety (so sick of draugr), and bring back levitation and modifiable acrobatics!

Wireguard, I find it both simpler and easier to use than OpenVPN.

dd. No other iso writing utility has worked as consistently, even if my usb devices would gain weird glitches after using it.

Believe it or not I am a person who goes out of their way to avoid using the terminal, so this is very much vouching for the software itself rather than the ux it’s based on.

Came in to say this. Linux on ARM is getting so close to daily driver ready.

I know it would have the same issues as the Unreal Engine - all the training, engine building, and systems integration it’d take to get a game released, but I think it’d be cool if Bethesda were to make an Elder Scrolls game on their ID Tech engine. That codebase is pretty celebrated.

Mint is literally a slightly modified Ubuntu.

Or just use flatpak or Appimage.

Is the Snap backend available and open-source? If not, then it’s antithetical to software freedom because Canonical is trying to close their users into a walled garden in the ways that Apple and Google are with their app stores.

There are plenty of software packaging systems that work just as well or better than Snap, and promote software freedom (Flatpak, Appimage, or even just traditional package managers). By using and promoting Snap over these, you are working against the growth of digital rights.

It’s impossible to have a fully free system?

https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html

But more to your point, it’s a false dichotomy. Even before the latest changes to the Debian install media, for years it was maybe unintuitive but still easy enough to just choose the “nonfree” install iso. That one would automatically include all the proprietary bits that are necessary for a fully functional Linux system.

But now those nonfree parts are in the Debian install by default, so there really is just nothing that you get from Ubuntu that can’t just as easily work in Debian - especially since everyone is moving toward flatpaks, and appimages anyway.

This.

But you’re also promoting Ubuntu’s continued use, when Snaps are just one example of Canonical being antithetical to free software values. Mint is all the benefits of Ubuntu without that garbage, so why not that?

Snap should be reason enough that everyone should abandon Ubuntu, especially when Mint is right there. The last thing we need is to make Linux more like Android+Google Play.