There’s definitely something special about that era of games. The community would really shine and make creative stuff with relatively limited tech.

https://youtube.com/@excavation_goldsrc

This is the mod that’s blown me away the most. They somehow made the limitations of the Goldsource engine look stylish, all the while having some incredible animations and model design. Unfortunately development is temporarily paused but hopefully they pick it up again soon.

Whats funny is that most 20 year old multiplayer games today (at least on PC) are still perfectly playable because the server tech was given to the community, at launch. Battlefield 2 hasn’t been available for purchase anywhere officially in well over a decade, there’s still a dedicated, albiet small community.

I understand that with large, persistent worlds, it’s hard to release that server tech, but at least some form of it should be published. Ie, a smaller variant that maybe just lets a couple people join up as a co-op party, rather than dozens of people running around a large map at random, like in The Crew.

Ive seen some genuinely impressive GoldSource mods pop up in recent years.

Is it possible to learn this power?

I didn’t mean to imply it was a 1-1 comparison. I just used it as an example of a situation where a person or group of people were taking part in something really terrible, and were talked out of it by someone who was actually willing to take the time, and put in the effort. It can work. Not saying it always will in every situation, but it can.

Just to play devils advocate: Daryl Davis. A black man who has convinced over 200 members of the KKK to quit, by having civil conversations with them.

Edit: he directly convinced something like 50, but estimates more than 200 have quit because of his efforts

That word, I do not think it means what you think it means.

Don’t forget that they’re buddy buddy with amazon, and have even included amazon sourced ads within the OS at one point.

The Other Guys. At first glance, it’s a buddy cop comedy that harkens back to Lethal Weapon, but with humor typical to ~2010. But, the more you watch it, the more Zucker brothers esque, 1980s surrealist comedy influences you notice. One of the most subtly weird and funny movies to me, I’ve probably seen it, no lie, 10 or 15 times.

The PS3 fat could only read PS2 disks because it had stripped down PS2 hardware included. It was effectively a PS2/3 combined. This was part of what drove the cost up, so they gutted that hardware from the slim.

PS4s can’t read PS3 disks because the PS3 used a bespoke PowerPC based chipset that was a colossal pain in the ass to develop for. So for the PS4 to have backwards compatibility, they would have had to either A, include PS3 hardware in the PS4 (expensive) or B, create an efficient software translation layer/built in emulator (see “pain in the ass”).

From what I have heard, they smartened up with the PS5. It’s basically just a faster PS4. At it’s core, it’s based on very similar hardware, so it’s easy to make PS4 games run without issue, but the boost in performance allows games designed specifically to take advantage of it.

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Rookie. Sneeze into the back of your knee, then we can talk

I’m biased towards AMD in general, I just find them to be a slightly better value, but Intel CPUs are great too, and I don’t think they have any noticable issus on Linux.

As for other hardware, it depends. Just make sure to do a bit of research and compare multiple options, especially for something like the storage, motherboard, RAM, or power supply. It’s usually pretty easy to sus out which brands are trying to catch your eye with low prices and tons of RGB, and which brands are offering a great product (I will suggest Seasonic for a power supply. They aren’t the cheapest but the build quality is excellent).

Good point, I shouldn’t have used the world ‘literally.’ I was just trying to make the point that there are plenty of creative ways where tremendous amounts of money could end up back in someones pocket when by all means it should have gone elsewhere.

And yes, your example is perfectly believable and I wouldn’t at all be shocked if that kind of thing happened frequently.

I think you may be out of luck with a built in achievement tracker unfortunately, although I personally haven’t looked into it. I’ve never been a big achievement hunter, but I’m sure there are external Linux compatible tools for tracking such things.

As for recommendations, you’re going to see a million names thrown around. As a broad suggestion, I might start with something based on Debian (tried and true, tons of resources, huge community). Maybe Pop! Or Mint. There are purpose built gaming distros with more tools and optimizations out of the box, however these are often small projects with shorter histories so I’m hesitant to recommend them.

As for desktop environment, it depends on what you want. KDE is my go to. By default it handles very similarly to Windows, but it’s incredibly customizable so you can really set it up however you want. KDE also has basic HDR support, which can’t really be found elsewhere. Gnome is a little more MacOS like, but it’s really its own beast. Gnome is great if you leave it default but I think it sort of falls apart when you try to customize it.

Also, if you do decide to go with Linux, I emplore you to look at getting an AMD graphics card. Their drivers are built into the Linux kernel so they require little to no setup, and usually perform better than NVidia. NVidia cards often have niche, hard to solve issues (speaking from experience. I spent a few years with a GTX1080 and often had the strangest bugs that I just couldn’t solve. Switched to an RX7600XT and everything just works). As a bonus, AMD is also usually cheaper than NVidia.

Fyi an alternative to Playnite with a similar goal is Lutris. You can even integrate several platforms like Steam and GOG to download games directly through the Lutris interface.

On top of that, it’s super easy to install games via exe’s, custom install scripts, add existing install folders, etc. The UI is a little bit spartan compared to Playnite, but it’s very powerful.

I say this because, among other things, a huge benefit of Linux is that it’s great for older hardware. From the sounds of it, you aren’t looking for the latest and greatest in terms of build specs, so Linux may be right up your alley (also no built in spyware, ads, forced online connections, and resource hogging processes that can’t be disabled).

Ah, Dr. Doone Struts himself

As a guy who still plays those old school FPS games, they’re for me. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy Ghost Recon Wildlands, but the og GR with the Heroes Unleashed mod is unmatched. Ready or Not is visceral, but SWAT 4 feels better and has infinitely better AI.

I personally think it’s a cool way to increase situational awareness while using a scope. Also, being an obvious callback to the old Delta Force games, there’s definitely some nostalgia there. I at the very least hope it’s an option that can be toggled on or off.

I’ll never support Bungie again. I bought D1 and D2 before it went free to play, only to have the game I bought removed from the face of the Earth.