Maxprime’s response is a good one - I’ll just toss in mine as well as someone very similar to your situation. I switched off Microsoft after paying for a Windows 11 key and then just not being able to authenticate.

I’ve run Linux and Unix servers from command-line but had 0 experience with Linux as a Windows replacement. I’ve been using Fedora 41 KDE Plasma for 9 months now as my exclusive gaming machine and while, yes, there have been a few hiccups to overcome, once you figure out a few simple tricks, most stuff just works thanks to the work put into Proton.

My entire Steam library works using Proton Experimental, I play Blizzard and GoG games via Lutris without issue. If you are interested in figuring more stuff out, the community is there to help guide you through your own exploration but if you just want answers, it’s easy to find those too.

Biggest issue I ran into is when Space Marine 2 came out. Played fine the first day then a patch dropped and I couldn’t play it. Found quickly that adding a command line argument in Steam to tell Space Marine 2 that it was running a Steam Deck fixed the issue until the dev could patch it.

I definitely urge people who are at all interested in Linux and not just saying “I’m a gamer, so I can’t use Linux” as a more polite way to say “I don’t want the hassle of switching from Windows” (which is perfectly valid and you do you), check out Ventoy (simple tutorial: https://www.linuxfordevices.com/tutorials/linux/ventoy-tutorial) - Install it on a USB stick, drop an ISO onto it and boot from the USB stick to select a temporary OS to play around in. Doesn’t have to be permanent, don’t need to lose any data, and you can get your own experience with a distro to decide if making the jump from Windows is right for you.

Have fun gaming, friend!

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When I played the original Fatal Frame it was unlike anything I had played at the time. The Penumbra series was also up there.

These 2 series lead to me realizing I disassociate when I watch or play horror and I stopped consuming that genre.

This is very much a case of “When the rich play games, it is the poor that lose”. There is no positive outcome from this, regardless of what side of this story you are on.

There absolutely is, call the cops. Take a video of the drone spying on you as evidence. Spying on your neighbors is illegal, you just can’t take the law into your own hands and shoot it out of the sky.

I do wish there was more power we had as individuals to stop this but I do not think using a dangerous weapon to destroy it which could potentially also harm another human is the solution either.

While Warframe is a perfect example of a well done FTP model, you can buy a lot of stuff with real money in Warframe, it isn’t just cosmetics. But it has limited PVP and the community is fairly friendly, so it isn’t so much Pay-To-Win as it is Pay-To-Not-Work-Hard.

I was on both sides of the coin growing up - Often the bullied but sometimes getting my chance to be the asshole kid.

It wasn’t until high school when a kid was insulting one of my friends that really turned it. The kid decided, because I “stuck my nose in their business” that he wanted to fight me. The fight was one-sided because I didn’t want to fight but the result was me getting myself into boxing and wrestling. Most people didn’t know I had gotten fight training but people largely left me alone after that simply because I didn’t back down or go passive anymore. It’s not worth it for a bully to go after someone who could hurt them when they have so many targets who won’t bother or don’t know how to defend themselves.

I’d say, my best advice, learn how to protect yourself. Having the confidence to stand in-front of a bully and let them know that you won’t take their shit anymore is often enough to deter them. Should they choose to “fuck around and find out”, defend yourself. Try not to embarrass them, especially if you are in the US, but showing them that not only can you defend yourself but can fight, they are more likely to leave you alone in the future.

Before I got fight training I suffered multiple trips to the hospital for stitches and concussions. Afterwards, I never had to defend myself. Violence is not a great answer but when faced with violence, we must know how to and be willing to protect ourselves.

My writing resolution was to simply put less pressure on myself to write “a thing” and to spend more time just writing. So far it is going well. Whether I want to write something that is only 3 paragraphs or 30 pages, I’m giving myself that freedom.

I wrote a cyber-punk short that ended up only being a few pages with a time-skip in the middle because I couldn’t figure out how write the middle part. Then I decided “it’s cyber-punk, everyone knows how the middle goes” and wrote the last bits instead. Not something that would be published but always trying to write something that would be publish-able is what stopped me from writing in the first place.

This is what I use when creating baselines for different price-points:

https://www.logicalincrements.com/

If you feel like you’ll need more RAM or a bigger SSD then that’s a simple thing to do but this will give you all of the components you need for a solid system at whatever your price point is.

That said, the “Great” range and up will play pretty much anything. You can even play pretty much any game on the “Good” range and up. So if you are looking to save money, I’d say the “Great” range will last you a good 5 years right now at least.

Even the PS3 game can be played via an emulator. The tech is still evolving so you still need a fairly powerful computer but it is playable. For reference, I was able to test archiving various PS3 games on my now 11 year old gaming PC which was a medium-tier system at the time of the build.

While what you say is absolutely correct, keep in mind that the profits a game makes go to the company. The workers are already paid. If a game doesn’t make money it would likely mean those people at the bottom would lose their jobs but the people at the top will absolutely get their share. But stealing a game like this doesn’t mean people aren’t getting paid. If Bethesda feels like the game doesn’t need all of the staff it took to make it, they’ll still get rid of them, regardless of how popular the game may be doing at any given time.

Indie game studios stand a better chance at doing right by their employees but a capitalist society means the profits go to the top and the losses go to the bottom and rarely are indie studios exempt from this rule of economics.

This person is being punished because they found a weakness in Bethesda’s setup and exploited it. It MIGHT be that if they had gone to Bethesda and let them know of this vulnerability rather than trying to sell what they had found that they would be been rewarded. But, more often than not, the companies who are shown a vulnerability still seek to punish those who point it out to them.

Fire Emblem Three Houses again - So much changes between the 3 different stories in that game, it is so much bigger than I initially realized. When my partner was talking about what happened in their playthrough and it didn’t at all resemble my Golden Deer playthrough I realized I’d have to get back to it one day.