Thank you for the recs. Part of the reason I wasn’t more specific is because, in terms of retro games, I have no idea of what I like since I haven’t really played any. Another part is that I want to know what you, the people, think holds up in 2025. And another part, I’m trying to keep my taste open – my first exposure to video games was GameBoy games, then Halo on PC, then having an Xbox 360 and playing popular action-y games. Later I’d find a taste for action RPGs (after much picking up and putting down), and only in the last few years have I expanded that to more…traditional? slower, I guess…RPGs like BG3 and Disco Elysium…expanding to puzzle games, sidescrollers, bullethells. I know they’re a lot different but I guess my point is, at one point, I found it hard to get into them, but over time I was able to figure them out and have fun. Still have never played a JRPG, so that’s on the horizon for me. I enjoy when things “click” in my brain, and if it takes a long time, that’s okay.

Some games that I’ve loved over my 25 or so years of consciousness:

My all time fav is Outer Wilds

RDR2

Disco Elysium

Balatro

Alan Wake 2

I’ll always have a soft spot for Halo 1-Reach

Portal 1 and 2

Hades

Risk of Rain 2

Doom 2016

Batman: Arkham City

Dark Souls, Dark Souls 3, Sekiro

Dave the Diver

Vampire Survivors

INSIDE

(noticing none of these are retro games so idk if this is even helpful)

Kingdom Come: Deliverance

Baldur’s Gate 3

Dredge was cool but I didn’t finish it

Witcher 3

Baba is You

Factorio was too addicting so I had to stop because it started feeling like work

GTA V because I enjoyed the satire

I have 2k+ hours in Rocket League since its the only game I can play while focusing on an audiobook or podcast or album.

Sounds pretentious because it is, but I like “heady” stuff, in games-terms I think that translates to things that expand my conception of what a game is and what it can do, or something that challenges me in a new way. But yeah, that’s a long winded explanation of why I wasn’t more specific regarding my taste.

Idk about curated playlists but I use soulseek to share files with my friends.

I like the same genres, I can recommend you some albums I’ve been liking if you want

Who moderates the discord? the main lutris dev?

Every few years I get the customization bug and trick out my desktop. Then things start breaking down slowly. Then I get frustrated and reinstall vanilla gnome, swear off customization forever, and feel better.

For gaming its Plasma.

Knowing the default DE’s idiosyncrasies also helps with work – I’m never surprised when I reinstall/install a new machine. Same goes for aliases. No for me, knowing the commands themselves, however cumbersome or verbose, helps me better deal with freshly installed machines.

I think I have seen a similar issue. Mine is that sometimes my firefox gets stuck in the background and I can click the icon in my dock to maximize it. Nothing happens. I have to hit the Windows key to view all my windows in that particular workspace, then click firefox to get it to the front. Sometimes it doesn’t work and I have to close out Firefox and reopen. Is that similar to what you’re seeing ?

Helps them feel better than others, maybe they have low self esteem or something

I came pretty close to buying an index off marketplace (blegh) but then I snapped myself out of it. I’m really really hoping Deckard offers some innovation over what is currently available in terms of VR, and that it is a mostly open platform.

Hackers acting as if they’re doing a public service by bringing down a free publicly accessible tool is a new level of assbackwardness.

If the goal really was to force IA to increase their security, they would’ve tried to consult with them. This is more about notoriety and chaos and the hackers have no moral ground to stand on.

it’s mostly political

Oh I gotcha. Interesting. I don’t follow FSF or GNU or anything, do you know if they tend to be antagonistic toward nonfree devs who still try to be as free as possible? Honestly, I read the Stallman quote about FreeBSD in this thread, and a statement from GNU that acknowledges the impracticality of their philosophy, and I kinda agree with their ethical takes. Except, I also think people should be able to install nonfree software, because otherwise you have a pretty bad dilemma with the word “free.”

Ultimately, if they are actively antagonistic toward those who don’t share that philosophy, I think that’s not great. Sure, free software according to the GNU project may be the only ethical one, but we live in a culture that promotes the exact opposite idea, so why would I be surprised and upset when an otherwise ethically acting person doesn’t conform to my own ethical framework, and they go on and create nofree software. I’m still going to get a beer with that person because at the end of the day we probably have common values and how else am I going to sell them the idea free software

I’m afraid to ask this because I’m not a dev, but I have a fair amount of linux experience. Why is it that the ability to install Google Play Services on GrapheneOS makes it not FOSS/open source, while the ability to install Google Chrome (or any proprietary software, I guess) on Linux doesn’t make is non-FOSS/open source?

I’m not articulating that question very well, and I’m assuming I’m missing some key component, but they seem comparable to me, as a regular user. Is it something like the level of access that GPServices has to the kernel?

Hell yeah. Exo one was kinda what I had in mind, something with stupidly simple mechanics. But I am definitely intrigued by POOLS. Looks spooky. Thanks!

These right wing-ass fuckers ruin everything you love, and now they’ve come for LOTR.

I got an OLED the other day and splurged hard during the summer sale.

I got Stray and Little Kitty, Big City to show off to my cat-loving GF, and for me I got Dave the Diver, Sifu, and Babu is You. Also picked up Hollow Knight for good measure, but have yet to start it. 9 Sols, Mullet Madjack, Warhammer Boltgun, Baldurs Gate 3, and Return of the Obra Dinn all on my wishlist.

Thanks, I’ll check out strange horticulture. I’m looking for arthouse games in a sense. Outer Wilds completely changed me, for example, and I want to try to recreate that feeling, but I don’t want an Outer Wilds clone, like how Lords of the Fallen is to Dark Souls.

I want something that’s going to destroy me and make me think, or just be ultra fun and different from anything else I’ve played.

It took me a bunch of tries, too. It’s not really a “fun” game, more like a visual and interactive novel. Once I got the hang of the dice rolls being the biggest part of the game, and knowing/remembering where to seek them out, and getting used to the map, it became easy to pick up and put back down. It’s amazing, but not easy to get going.

My OLED is coming in today, so hyped. Will definitely help with the commute. First off is finishing up Disco Elysium, then maybe playing Edith Finch? Anyone have any other recs? Besides Hades 1, I guess.

Ideologically Ubuntu makes me cringe, but I also use Google and a host of other technologies that fuck my privacy, so I guess I have accepted the world we live in.

In the same way that I think it’s noble when people try to live waste free, I think it’s noble to use things like GrapheneOS, or selfhost all your services, or de-Google your tech. But it’s unrealistic for all of the world to live waste-free or customize their tech so as to be private. In the end, the government needs to step in and force these giant-ass companies to behave better, because they are the primary forces pushing forward the destruction of the environment and personal privacy.

I dont really fuck around with the GUI stuff tbh…I’ve always just done ubuntu-drivers autoinstall

I guess my issues with the installer have mostly stemmed around the software raid and manual partitioning. Simply installing on a single drive isnt bad.

Hate saying it, but Ubuntu just works for me. I’d rather focus my computer configuration and maintenance efforts on clients rather than my own laptop. If I have to reinstall for whatever reason, its pretty easy because I’m already very familiar with the (shitty) installer, and I don’t do much customizing because I’d rather not have to go through that every time I reinstall.

Granted I’ve never even bothered to run Arch, or any really other desktop distro for that matter. Ubuntu + Gnome looks nice, seems to just work, all I need to do is apt install nvidia drivers and firefox post-install and I’m up and running. I don’t want to do work on my laptop, I want my laptop to enable me to do work.

I’ve been using Ubuntu for the past 6 years, haven’t tried another distro because I’m so comfortable here. Could you tell me why you think others are so much better?

Maybe I should switch, but I think my experience in Ubuntu might outweigh the negatives that it has ie I might just know how to deal with it’s peculiarities and I don’t even realize