I’m using Windows as my daily driver due to prioritising gaming over everything else. But I also have a 8-year old laptop which is stuck with Win 7, and I’ve been wondering if I should just install Linux on it to try things out. In the past, I’ve only ever tried Linux for short times, never used Linux as my main OS or longer than a week.

With this context, I’ve had the “which distro should I choose?” on my mind a few times. There’s some obvious and some non-obvious issues with this questionnaire. I’ll just go over my thoughts step by step:

• “I want anonymous web browsing” and “distro which is supported by game publishers” can’t be selected at the same time. Is this really true? I’m doubting my understanding of what “anonymous web browsing” actually means.

• “I often need help from others” and “I have already used Linux for some purposes” can’t both be selected. Why? The logic behind this is “You have used Linux at some point, so you can clearly solve some problems without asking anyone”. Makes no sense, and/or the questionnaire’s creator thinks that Linux is impossible for newcomers. I have used Linux in the past and I’m generally good in troubleshooting, but anyway.

• “I want to use the default preset values in the installation assistant” is impossible to answer if I don’t know which values are given as the default. My general answer would be “give me a default value for everything, but also let me change the things which I have an opinion about”. An answer equal to this doesn’t exist.

• Pre-installed programs: this does feel like it lacks the answer of “let me choose what to install during installation of OS”, but I guess I can just skip this question without answering since I don’t care.

• “There are many way to administrate a linux distribution” -> “I want to avoid systemd”. I’ve never heard about systemd, and the explanation give on the page doesn’t really help. For what reasons would I want to avoid it? My actual answer for this is “I really don’t care”, so I just skipped it.

About the result of the questionnaire: I did answer that “I’m fine with paying something”, but it’s not really something I aim for. The suggestions seem to tag “There is a non-free version available” as a plus for the distros, which really isn’t what I answered - there’s a difference between “I’m fine with something” and “I want something”.

I also marked “supported by game publishers” with a star, because gaming is what I’m aiming to do on it. I have no idea if this even matters in practice, but it made sense as an answer when asked about. The smoothness of gaming experience will always be the primary reason for any choice of OS I’ll make.

The first EIGHT answers on the list have either “Programs versions may not be up-to-date enough for gaming” or “May require additional configuration for gaming” as a downside/warning. The game publisher question is the only answer which I marked as important.

The first distro from the suggestions that included “supported by game publishers” is Linux Mint - which does match what I already had in mind, but I really feel like the ordering of the suggested distros feel off.

Short “review” about this: it really didn’t help much. The list of suggestions is practically full of equally good distros, and I’m still stuck with the question “which one of these should I choose?”. I only learned about more distros that I had never heard about before.

As for actually choosing the distro at some point later: I think that I’ll just find out the top 5 most popular distros, and select from those. My reasoning for this is that it’s much easier to find answers if/when I run into issues. Using a niche distro wouldn’t really work for me - Linux isn’t my hobby, I think OS is just a tool to run whatever programs/games I want to.

But this questionnaire doesn’t have any data about popularity, so for my usecase, it lacks some information. I feel like it could use an additional question about “Are you fine with using a niche distro, or do you want to use a popular one?” - this question does have the issue of not being objective though, as there’s no clear answer of what can be counted as “popular”.

TL;DR good idea, but execution could be better.

…what

…I guess it was indeed a disaster because I can’t remember even hearing that name before.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bebo

originally operated from 2005 until its bankruptcy in 2013

It was announced in January 2021 that it would be returning as a new social media site the month after. By May 2022, it had once again been shut down, without having ever left beta testing.

I do like Nioh, it’s always on my list of suggestions for people interested in that type of games. But I feel like it’s also quite a different game from Dark Souls - there’s room for both in the market, and I enjoy both for different reasons. While similar, Nioh’s combat feels more like a fast-paced arcade-y brawler, while DS feels slower and more methodical. Personally I can’t really say one is better than the other, since I just enjoy both of them - but they’re different enough that it’s clear that some players will prefer one over the other.

Outside of combat, I again feel like DS is a bit “slower”, I spend more time just exploring and wondering where to go next, etc. Nioh areas and levels are (usually) a bit more straightforward and faster to progress due to its mission structure. Storytelling format is also really different. But again, I just enjoy both of them for different reasons.

Especially during New Game+ rounds 2 to 5, Nioh also gets much deeper in the gear minmaxing department compared to DS - I’ve 100%d all DLCs in both Niohs. The gearing system in Nioh is also made in such a way that sometimes it’s useful to just go farm the same bosses over and over - this is something that doesn’t really exist in DS. Then there’s even the infinite boss arena mode. I personally often think about Nioh as “a game with DS-style combat design, Diablo-style progression”. I love the end result.

As far as I know, they’re planning to do similar DLC content in Wo Long too (new round of NG+ per DLC), and I’m waiting until they release all DLCs so I can go complete those too.

Blade of Darkness has been on my to-do list for quite a long time now, I really should get into it some day. :D

I was originally about to mention Fromsoft also creating Sekiro and Bloodborne in between Dark Souls sequels, but I guess it can be argued they’re all just the same with different skin. AC is at least completely different. Personally I have no issues with game devs finding what they do best and just keep doing it with only minor improvements - as a player, I can just choose to play games from different devs anyway.

I often describe Elden Ring with the following sentence: “If you gave me this game with no title and told me it’s Dark Souls 4, I would have no reason to doubt you”.

It’s great for everyone that wanted more Dark Souls, and ER is arguably a good starting point for anyone that hasn’t played any of the Dark Souls, but it’s still Dark Souls. If someone had tried Dark Souls in the past and realized that they don’t like the game, I really wouldn’t expect Elden Ring changing that.

For me personally: Elden Ring is pretty much my favourite game of all time. I feel like it’s the “culmination of Dark Souls design”, and just happens to be exactly what I was personally looking for in DS games - but even with this in mind, I don’t feel the need of getting more of the same.

But hey, as for Fromsoft just doing the same thing over and over - Armored Core VI coming out next week, and that’s quite different. :D

Considering the amount of “yarrrr” in this thread I’ll probably get stabbed for this take, but: shows/movies take time and money to create, and running these services isn’t free either. Is $15 really impossible to pay when you want to watch a show?

Cable doesn’t answer the problem of “I want to see [insert show] from start to finish, starting right now”, so it’s worthless as a service for most(?) people. As such, I feel like cable should be forgotten as a point of comparison - it’s a different and much more limited type of service.

Let’s say I have no streaming subs running right now. I feel like I want to check out [insert show]. I find out which service has it, and buy a month of [service] for like $15.

I watch the whole show. Now I also have the rest of the library to check out for the rest of the month. Maybe I find a couple of other movies/shows from the service, maybe not. It still cost me a whopping $15 to watch a full show, and I also now have temporary access to a practically random selection of shows (“random” = depending on whatever service I ended up buying).

Sure if it’s a long show it can take multiple months to view it, but I still feel like the cost is minimal compared to what I get. Nobody is asking you to pay for all of the different streaming services every month.

I’m using a show as an example - but if we’re talking about buying a month ($15) just to watch a single movie, I do agree that it can feel a bit expensive. But in most cases you can find a few other movies that you can check out during the next month. If you’d want to buy a single movie digitally, they often cost like $10-15 per movie anyway - might as well buy a month of sub at that point.

Sure, I’ll also be happier if stuff stays cheap, but anyway. The usual works here: if you don’t feel like a service is worth its cost, don’t buy it.

It’s not like there’s lack of entertainment in today’s world - some free, some filled with ads, some cheap, some expensive. Pick your poison, I guess.

I really think this thread is a great example of why the average person doesn’t care that much.

The whole thread is full of comments like “the issues caused by giving away all your data are too abstract, too far away, or too difficult to understand”. This is true by the way, I completely agree.

But I haven’t seen a single comment trying to explain those possible issues in an easily understandable way. The average person (or, at least me) reading threads like this won’t learn anything new. Give me a practical issue that I might face, and if I agree that it’s an issue, I’ll focus more on avoiding that issue.

In other words, an example:

• Let’s say I’m a person using lemmy/mastodon, only using privacy-focused search engines etc.
• If I would now change to using facebook/threads, started using Chrome as my browser, etc the usual mainstream tracking stuff - what problems can this cause for me in the future?

PS. I do agree with the notion of “minimize the data you give away”, which is one reason I’m here, but I really don’t have an answer for these questions. I’m like “I understand the point of privacy, but can’t explain the reasons”.