I’ve only been a Linux user for a couple of years though so I’ve got no excuse!

XFCE is fine, it seems to largely behave and while it doesn’t have any bells and whistles it can do everything it tries to do fine. Gnome on the other hand… everything I wanted it to do required a plugin which had since been broken by a new version. Plasma seems great so far!

I just moved to Plasma from XFCE and my first thought was wow, this runs fine on old hardware, why have I been suffering through the 2010 experience when I could have had features all this time!?

Mmm, creamy

Maybe they’d only ever used it headless?

I did my first fedora atomic install yesterday. I’m doing my part!

I set up Mint for a non-techy relative on their old desktop.

• Their use-case is almost entirely web browser, so there was no need to cover installing programs. Click the same browser icon and it should behave basically the same way.
• No need to explain the terminal beyond “this is where you can type advanced commands, you don’t need to worry about it”.
• If there’s an error message, read it and try to understand what it’s actually saying rather than just dismissing it. Do a web search if you’re feeling confident, send me a photo of the screen if you’re not.
• Explain how to install updates (or just configure automatic backups and updates for them).
• Explain when and why the computer will ask for a password (e.g. login and updates) and how that password is for the computer, not for their email or whatever.
• Explain the basics of folders. This is your home directory, here’s where downloads go, here’s how to create a folder and drag your files into it.
• Tell them not to panic. I’ve seen a lot of older people terrified of pressing the wrong button, make sure they know how to understand what they’re doing and undo their mistakes.
• Be patient!

That’s cool, could be useful if you wanted to limit your usage or something like that. Instead of constantly opening an app and scrolling to see what’s new just set the RSS reader to poll every 24 hours and only look at what it presents you with.

Ooo interesting, I use this for specific communities but I hadn’t thought about using it for a whole feed. How does it fare for something like Top Day, does it just update once a day? And how does it even know about what I’m subscribed to?

While it does have a paid tier it’s fully useable for free, and I’m pretty sure you can import from keepass

Did you have the special controller through?

It says “alternative app store”, not “alternative iOS app store”, “alternative to Apple’s App Store” or even “alternative App Store”. The term “app store” is used pretty generally nowadays, there’s no implication in the title that it’s even talking about mobile apps!

This article vaguely hints but doesn’t actually say anywhere that this is for iOS apps

I played Metroid Prime for the first time recently and Samus Aran is an absolute badass. She crash lands on a planet and kills every single thing she encounters. If you read the logs of the space pirates you find scattered around they basically say “oh fuck the hunter is here, she’s coming for us next”.

The atmosphere is almost a little survival-horror-esque, but the experience is more like doom: you’re not locked in here with all these monsters, all these monsters are locked in here with you.

Whose legs does Linus have on his desk? They definitely don’t look to be attached to his body…

I picked this up for free a few years ago and was pleasantly surprised, a lovely unique little platform/puzzle

FYI there’s [email protected] and [email protected] if you’re looking for more enthusiasts

I loved that game. It’s been a while since I played but I remember the only way I could reliably do the max-difficulty missions quickly was by using the brick spaceship to smash directly into the room where the target was or something insane like that!

Any beginner’s guides for this? I hadn’t thought about it until now but my fans do seem louder since I switched from Windows!

It’s basically an Android TV box (which as far as I can tell is just an Android device specifically for use as a smart TV) in the shape of a Chromecast dongle. I think you can probably use it almost exactly the same way you do with an old Chromecast and ignore all the apps (or at least install them once and then forget about them).

The hard part might be finding one, they’ve replaced it with a newer, more expensive 4K one so you might not still be able to buy the old (1080p) one from official sources anymore, but have a look and you might get lucky.