Glad you found it helpful! Though for people new to this, depending on their tech savvyness, less info might be more.

An average user doesn’t really need to know exactly how Lemmy/piefed work to actually use it effectively, and depending on how interested they are in learning how things work, the longer explanation I gave may be off-putting to some people, or make it seem too complex.

As an example; I’m not sure most people actually know how email works at all on a technical level, they just know that if they log into their Gmail and put the right address for the person they’re trying to reach, everything works. They may not even understand that the @whatever.com part means their email is being sent to a totally different server (if it’s not also Gmail) being hosted by different corporations somewhere else in the world, or how exactly an email is shuffled across all the different ISP’s, cabling, repeaters, etc. Explaining the details of all those things would make email seem horribly complex and off-putting to many. Without any of the that knowledge, as long as they know just the steps to accomplish what they want, all is well.

With Lemmy or Piefed, an equivalent could be just sending them a link to a known reliable general instance (Piefed.social would be a good choice) and telling them to create an account there and to use it just like they would reddit. For the most part, that’s all anyone really needs to know to have a pretty good experience. They may wonder why different users have different domain names at the end of their name, and if they ask you could explain further, but they’ll still be able to navigate around, comment, find communities and all the rest without knowing, which should lessen the feeling that it’s complicated.

Lemmy, Piefed and Mbin are all entirely different and unique attempts at creating a self-hostable software package for a reddit-like website. In the same way that Reddit was trying to be like Digg, but with it’s own codebase starting from scratch.

Despite using different codebases, Lemmy, Piefed and Mbin are all compatible with each other, like if you could leave comments on reddit threads from your Digg account while on Digg.

The reason they can talk to each other is they were all built with one thing in common: at the core of them is something called the ActivityPub Protocol, which in simple terms means the way they send messages, make posts, etc, are all using one standard, so they can all understand each other, like speaking the same language. An upvote from lemmy is understood as an upvote by Piefed, same for comments, posts, etc.

A similar thing on the web that functions just like that is E-mail. No matter what email provider you use, you can send an email to any other email provider, and it all just works because at the core, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL mail, Proton Mail, etc, they all use the standardized E-mail Protocol.

Just like with email, where you can’t log into a Gmail account from the Yahoo Mail log-in page, you also can’t log into a lemmy account from a Piefed login page.

But if you’re familiar with how you can use an E-Mail client, like Thunderbird or Outlook Express to log into almost any email account regardless of where it’s hosted, so to with lemmy/piefed mobile apps, which only act as a front-end like Thunderbird.

Each lemmy/piefed instance is like it’s own email provider (instance just means server, a server is a computer that hosts the software and makes it available on the internet for us to find). So lemmy.world is like Gmail, but piefed.social is an entirely different provider, equivalent to Yahoo mail. You could access either from a mobile app, which acts as a client, but if you went to them with a web browser, you’d have to go to lemmy.world directly if that’s where your account was, similar to how you would have to for email.

All of these servers are ‘federated’ with each other, which basically means once they establish a connection, they will continually offer new data to each other automatically. So Lemmy.world will always send out to piefed.social any new posts, comments, or upvotes that occur on lemmy.world, as well as pass forward any posts, comments, or upvotes that any lemmy.world user makes on a community hosted on piefed.social.

Lemmy, Piefed, and Mbin are open-source, which means they are developed collaboratively online for anyone to see or participate in (if you’re familiar with how Linux is developed, it is very similar to that).

As for who develops these softwares, you can see who has contributed to them on their respective development platforms.

• Lemmy is mainly developed by Dessalines and Nutomic on Github.
• Piefed is mainly developed by Rimu (and others) on Codeberg
• Mbin is developed on Github

But as for the instances themselves, they are owned by the individuals who run the physical servers that each instance runs on.

There are still active cinema and TV show communities, the ones from lemm.ee mostly moved over to piefed.social.

• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]

I had no issue making Wii Sports Resort with motion plus.

Looking at it again, I misremembered the Dolphin wiki entry for it. Apparently it only has problems unless using Bluetooth Passthrough mode, which I didn’t really want to mess with to get working with my bluetooth dongle.

you can completely erase the pain point of this by using Playnite as front end (in windows) and configuring your emulators (Dolphin, PCSX2 etc) to start full screen WITH controller support started at run time, along with enabling hot key macros for shutting down game and returning to dashboard etc. Playnite has native scripting control.

Unfortunately I wouldn’t be able to use Playnite, as I’ve fully sworn off Windows personally in favor of Linux. However, even if Playnite were on Linux, I’m honestly not sure I’d go that route for myself. Even though it’s fully configurable powerful, with macros that can be set up to get things just right, and specific versions of Dolphin may be more ideal for a particular game, I’m kind’ve at a point in my life where that type of fine-tuning and tinkering is far less appealing compared to when I was younger, where I would’ve seen it as a fun challenge.

The original merit of consoles was that they’re simple plug-n-play devices that don’t require much though to use, and that aspect is really appealing to me nowadays, as it leaves me more time to troubleshoot or experiment with non-gaming things, like tinkering to get a good audio production setup going on my Linux PC with certain outboard audio (which can be time consuming to figure out). So for me, a jail broken Wii really fits the bill of a simple box that I can just turn on and know everything will just work, and no update will mess anything up and require me to look into it.

But that’s just me! For others, that tinkering and the end result of it is highly gratifying, and more power to em, I say :)

From what I understand, the limitation in speed/scalability for lemmy/piefed/mbin is the database, not the back end language, so the specific language used appears to matter much less than it would seem.

Piefed has some some pretty great features over lemmy, but for the sysadmin side of things, it has a noticeable improvement regarding network resource usage, and potentially raw speed.

Piefed also appears to be less buggy overall. As an example, Lemmy has suffered from a persistent memory leak that’s been around for years, with no fix in sight. You can see the opinion of our sysadmin who has been running slrpnk.net (lemmy instance) for 5 years now to find that just because lemmy is built in a memory-safe language, it doesn’t automatically translate to a good experience.

i loathe the idea of giving google more money

If you don’t mind used or open-box phones, you could pick up a used (and more critically, carrier unlocked) Pixel off ebay, if you want to deprive them of revenue.

Unfortunately some carriers like verizon will not automatically unlock the bootloader even after unlocking the carrier restriction, so buying a used one that wasn’t factory unlocked from Google could be a slight gamble.

I guess I do sorta have the equivalent of a tactical nuke in my back pocket when it comes to low-spec Linux game recommendations 😅

Ah, wasn’t aware they were so far behind, thanks for the heads up.

Hadn’t heard of IodeOS either until seeing that chart. They also seem a bit slower than Lineage for certain updates, but for the more privacy minded, may be the best option for non-pixel folks.

Only downside with the miyoo is the size of it makes my hands cramp up if I play any game that requires a lot of movement, like fast paced racers. Didn’t think it’d be an issue since I have really small hands, but alas.

It’s excellent in every other way though, probably will get one of those grips that it can slot into to make it more comfortable, but I do kinda wish I’d opted for something a bit more ergonomic out of the gate, with controls on the sides of the screen, or a clamshell design, instead of the classic gameboy shape.

If you have a compatible Bluetooth adapter (it can be hit or miss), you can select Real Wiimotes in the controller section of Dolphin, and make sure continuous scanning is enabled, then once a Wii game is running, you press 1 & 2 simultaneously on the Wiimote, and it’ll sync up (but certain controllers, like Wiimotes with motion plus built in may need you to use the dedicated sync button instead to sync).

You’ll also need a USB IR bar for the Wiimotes to function, which can be had for around 8 bucks from ebay.

However, I personally couldn’t get the Wii motion plus functionality to work in the handful of games that use it, and some games still don’t work right in dolphin, like Wii Sports Resort.

Seconding the Wii. I personally dismissed it for many years as a gimmick console, but recently gave it a chance and did a deep dive on its library, and was astonished how many good titles it had available.

However, after experimenting with Dolphin vs using the games natively on a modded console, I ending up forgoing emulation, as I found that it was significantly less convenient to use compared to just booting up the console and immediately having the controllers synced up and working perfectly.

That avoided the need to boot up my couch PC, navigate to Dolphin with my Bluetooth keyboard/mouse, make sure it was set up properly (some games need certain settings enabled to avoid weird visual glitches, like Resident Evil 4) launch it, full screen it, and then sync the Wii controller (certain models of controllers must be synced with the sync button in dolphin, while others let you hold down 1 and 2 simultaneously). And if I left a game to play a different one, I had to go back to my Bluetooth keyboard, launch a game, full screen, and sync all over again.

I could’ve negated most of that faff by installing a retroarch distro to my couch PC, like Batocera, but I personally hate the UI/UX of retroarch and its various frontends.

I also found that my Wii motion plus controllers simply wouldn’t work correctly for the games that utilize it, and some games still don’t work properly in dolphin, like Wii Sports Resort.

The only downside of using the actual Wii is that it only outputs 480p, but with cheap component cables and the deflicker disabled in the ROM loader, it usually isn’t that bad once you’re moving around and immersed.

But that’s just my 2 cents.

What alternative OS you adopt depends on your phone and needs.

If you just want to mostly degoogle you phone, but aren’t that concerned about privacy or security, LineageOS is basically that. It’s as close to a stock android experience as you can get, minus the pre-installed google apps. It supports a wide range of android phones.

If you want more security and privacy, GrapheneOS is currently king, but the downside is it only works on Google Pixel phones, and it’s possible certain apps won’t work (banking apps can be hit or miss, and the Uber app I believe blocked it). It otherwise functions just like a regular android phone and can install sandboxed google play to use any app you could need, making it just as easy to daily drive. It’s the best choice if you’re an activist, journalist, or fear state actors. But even if you’re not, I’d say it’s the best choice if you already have a pixel phone.

CalyxOS has paused development, so not currently an option.

eOS has a bigger focus on security and privacy than LineageOS, but isn’t as secure as Graphene. The advantage is that it supports more phones than just the google pixel.

PostmarketOS is not based on Android, and instead is a real Linux Distro made for mobile. It’s still very much in an alpha stage, with varying levels of support for different phones, many of which cannot take calls or even use their camera properly. I would only recommend it to developers or people who want to tinker with a project phone.

The reviewer concludes it’s not a good sequel, didn’t enjoy most of their time in it. It’s a fairly okay detective game wrapped up in crappy action-brawler combat and a pretty lame open-world.

I assembled a rather large list of free Linux games a few years ago, and most of them are low-spec friendly. Hopefully you find something interesting from it :)

https://lemmy.world/post/14336843

Tyranny (a different RPG by obsidian) puts you in the role of a fairly high ranking judge working for a brutal expanding empire. You have the option to play a really nasty person if you wish. Not terribly funny though, usually quite a serious vibe.

If you’ve been holding off on Cyberpunk 2077, it’s in a really solid state nowadays, and has a pretty dang good main story with lots of roleplaying options, and plays well with a controller.

Terra Nil is a cool relaxing solarpunk strategy/builder game about restoring the environment. Not sure how complete controller support is, but its rated playable for the steam deck (could be hit or miss).

The Mass Effect series supports controller, and they’re pretty fun sci-fi RPG’s with good characters.

Disco Elysium is a more text heavy RPG. I personally bounced off it due to its theme, but it’s pretty unique, worth a shot if you click with it.

Glad you enjoyed! :)

I’ll be posting more of StrafeFox’s stuff here, they’re criminally lesser known considering the consistent quality of their videos.

That’s a good point. I went back to the video to rewatch it, and turns out I totally missed where they said they only freeze things during a testing phase, then unfreeze it after they’re done and allow updates to commence as normal.

They mentioned that due to Linux receiving more frequent updates often with meaningful performance improvements, they’ll have to throw away older data and re-test more often on Linux, as Windows doesn’t really change much in performance between updates. So I would guess that they would use release drivers with new cards, and likely would only re-test their entire suite if the release driver also gave a big performance boost on older cards.

AFAIK, It’s not an issue of automated testing, and I don’t believe they re-test all their cards on Windows with every new review either. Instead, they maintain the same versions of software on Windows as well until enough time has passed and enough updates have piled up that they do finally re-test everything with new games to create a new dataset to compare against. They’re trying to do the same methodology on Linux.

Without re-testing their entire suite of cards for every new card review (which is cost prohibitive), performance changing from updates would make the comparisons between cards less useful, as it cannot be determined if the newer card being tested is better or worse purely on the merits of the hardware itself, since newer software may be artificially making it look better or worse than the tested cards that came before, and thus the actual integrity and usefulness of the testing comes into question.

They are trying to assemble a like-for-like dataset that doesn’t require their entire catalog of cards to be regularly retested to ensure that it remains like-for-like. Keeping all the software the same across tests ensures that they can add new data piecemeal and still retain an apples-to-apples comparison.