• 0 Posts
  • 10 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: August 16th, 2024

help-circle
  • I was using Windows 10 LTSC for a bit before Home/Pro editions reached EoL. My past experiences with Linux were all such a significant addition of frustration; I couldn’t justify switching to Linux.

    After a string of back-to-back hardware failures, I’m back to using a 10+ year old desktop I built. Ended up trying trying Fedora 42 with KDE and suddenly had none of the issues I had with past Linux attempts. My three biggest complaints before about Linux had been random Bluetooth device incompatibility, Nvidia support being trash, and most Steam games requiring extra commands and constant troubleshooting to get running decently.

    I feel like a lot of those issues were from me starting with Arch derivatives on niche laptop hardware that was already beginning to fail. My experience with Fedora has been fantastic. My biggest problems now have been: -KDE discover store is really inconsistent with its packages. I would not expect the average Windows “user”(bought a PC and that’s what it came with) to bother understanding the difference between a flatpak and a native package, and would get really annoyed when stuff is out of date or mis-configured out of the box. I had a better experience using a GUI in Arch with the AUR to install software, ironically enough. -There are a few things, ie Nvidia drivers, non-free codecs, non flatpak Steam, that have inconsistent community documentation on how to install them. These become immediately bad first impressions on people switching from Windows, and I think its important that they are clear to install properly as possible.

    Other than that, Fedora is stable and runs great. I’m using a Nvidia GPU and have no issues with it(this time, at least…). A lot of my software was already open source, but I run a few Windows applications, besides Steam games, with Wine; rarely do I have to do any extra configuration. KDE Plasma as a desktop environment has given me the customization and control out of the box that I have been missing from Windows for over a decade, while Fedora has some sane defaults for it that make it accessible to Windows users expecting something a bit more familiar.

    There’s always a weird quirk here and there, but I have had my fair share of troubleshooting on Windows before as well. I feel like Linux as a home PC OS is mature enough that people who don’t do much on the PC anyway could find their way around it, while it’s still going to be an annoying learning curve for people who see end user software as a hobby. Entirely usable though.

    Obligatory I don’t play games with anti cheat and I don’t use streaming services with DRM. I have a few games with Denuvo, and haven’t had any problems arise that needed me to switch Proton versions that end up triggering install lock outs.




  • Usually how these verification systems work is; if you cant verify, you don’t get to chat. Its supposed to lock out children from communicating with strangers online. There is no reason to verify children if the only people allowed to talk are verified adults.

    I don’t know what clown shoes system Roblox has decided to go with. Again, the article doesn’t seem to specify why they are collecting children data. If the idea is to age gate chat between player demographics, so that kids can talk to other kids… that seems like a wasted effort. Children are quite capable of abusing each other without any adults around. Age verification is not an alternative to moderation.

    And that’s without getting into “AI age verification is easily fooled”; kids and predators alike are going to get around the system if they bother looking into how to do so. Just as all the generations before them were constantly circumventing lazy tech solutions for blocking content when children are involved.


  • Age verification is already dystopian, but why do kids need to verify their age??? Wouldn’t the logical assumption be that if you can’t verify as an adult, that they would be underage and therefore be chat limited? What purpose is there to having photo verification that someone is a child? I figured it was a poorly written headline, but the article does seem to suggest they are pointlessly collecting data on children with no explanation.

    Also don’t appreciate this article acting like corporate monopolies should be more trusted with the surveillance state. It’s crazy seeing all news sites manufacturing consent for this shit so openly.




  • Do you have any guides or resources to using OBS as a screen share tool? I tried in the past to use it as a platform agnostic solution, but ran into a lot of problems that would prevent my friends from using it. Virtual cam didn’t provide audio, and using input mixing to combine mic + isolated application audio(already a multi step process in OBS per app) involves a lot of tech knowledge that is beyond what the end-user demographic of discord is willing to put up with. I also tried using vdo ninja as a P2P shareable link for video group conferences, but couldn’t get the webRTC links to work with direct streams from OBS.

    I despise Discord and have been having success with moving close friends to more private IM apps, but so far, nothing has come close to the effortless ease of discord group calls with screen sharing. Most competing social screen share apps don’t even have audio support, and the ones that do either don’t have audio isolation, or their implementation of it is broken.


  • I don’t know why you are so insistent that everyone who mentions Windows is using a online account, but you actually do not need a google account to use an android device in most cases. I have been using android phones with no logged in account, with side loaded app stores and independent apps for years. Maybe the mainline flagship devices enforce it; I haven’t had that problem personally.

    Google would really like to crack down on installing software without their permission, and they still track every bit of information they can with the Google Play API even without an account, but I digress. I haven’t had a google account in several years. Or a Microsoft account either, for that matter.