I ended up with a device that shipped with it and replace it with Yunohost for a similarly beginner friendly experience that, so far, seems a whole lot more open.

Yup, using openVPN profiles. Proton VPN has quite clear instruction on how to do this on their website. Just do a search for “proton vpn openVPN profile Linux”

Depending on the game and comfort with bash scripting you can roll your own mod managers. I don’t really play Minecraft anymore, but if I did it would be heavily modded. In an effort to avoid installing a client/launcher beyond the one I already use I just keep folders for mod lists and configs, and then have bash scripts with aliases to do all the necessary file moving to swap between mod packs.

This doesn’t really work for most other games, but for things that run natively on Linux can usually do the trick.

For things running through proton it’s a bit more involved, but I also found a lot of satisfaction in figuring out how to manually install mods within the proton prefix. Used to have to do that a lot to mod Skyrim when it first came out and I got it running through wine on a school issued MacBook.

Yeah probably true. I’ve got some hopes for the work being done on running Mac apps on Linux, even tried getting an old version of preview working a while back, with absolutely zero success. The tool I was trying had incredibly limited support for graphical apps.

It’s odd because I feel like it gets mixed up, very fairly due to its name, with MacOS “QuickLook”, which is the actual file previewing tool, giving a quick peek into a file by hitting ‘space’ with the file selected. Preview is essentially an image editor, but it doubles, or maybe triples, as PDF viewer/editor and scanner importer. The names are kinda silly tbh.

Very fair, I updated the original post

I’m already running Linux. I’m looking for an application that can run on Linux that roughly matches the feature set of MacOS Preview for image and PDF viewing and basic editing.

I use Sunshine/Moonlight, OBS, Discord screen share, all on Wayland and an AMD GPU. No issues, both on my old Arch install and now NixOS. Every now and then there’s some issues in the actual updates that get pushed to these things, but those aren’t usually specific to my system. For example just recently an update was pushed to the loopback module OBS uses for virtual camera, but the OBS update that utilized it hadn’t been pushed yet, so I got a crash.

Yeah fair, though I do know of a lot of affinity groups already planning to come up from DC. There’s even fairly easy transit options. But I do agree with spoiling his footage. If he wants to issue the order to suppress protestors at his parade with violence I just hope everyone on the ground in DC is ready for that.

Stay safe but stay angry.

DO NOT GO PROTEST AT HIS PARADE! He wants the opportunity to paint the opposition as un-American by contrasting them against a parade full of US flags and lots of pomp and circumstance.

What to do instead? COME TO PHILLY! No Kings, 50501, and Indivisible are organizing a march/rally/protest THIS SATURDAY as a counter to his parade. Bring lots of US flags, bring your signs, bring yourselves. If you’re a vet, make that clear with your clothes, signs, flags etc. If you’re a healthcare worker please, PLEASE, show up if able and bring a first aid kit. We are expecting 80-120k people. The street medics will have their work cut out for them even if it stays totally peaceful. Should things be escalated in any way we will need the extra medical knowledge. Bring water, for yourself and to share if you’re able to carry the extra.

Mask, bring eye protection (safety glasses for blunt impact, lab goggles or similar should teargas get deployed), bring a respirator, cover tattoos. Have an exit and arrest plan in place. If you can, buy a cheap phone, DO NOT turn it on near your house, and DO NOT put a SIM card in it. Phones without SIMs can still call 911 and take photos/videos.

There’s so much more info if you really want to dig into it, but please just show up. Be part of the 3.5%

I realize you’ve already made your switch, but I wanted to toss in my 2 cents. I had a very similar, though shorter term experience with Arch, and I still love it dearly, but over time some jank began to creep in around the edges. The time came to make some sort of change when I finally decided to wipe the windows boot drive I had in the system. I took the opportunity to upgrade the m.2 ssd and decided on NixOS for a handful of reasons, and it’s honestly been super refreshing. I feel even more in control of the stability of my system than any OS I’ve used before. If something is going wrong, it is most likely something I did in my config, or the config isn’t even valid and the system tells me exactly what is wrong before I even get to a point where I’m trying to boot into a broken system. I ignored a lot of the online recommendations to use flakes and home manager and whatever. Just a single text file with all the details of my system in it. I find it incredibly digestible compared to tracking down issues with Arch.

Anyway, I also have a Bazzite system, and like it. Sounds like you’ve found a nice new home!

I’ve used it for a fairly niche case. I check out audiobooks from my local library through an app called Libby. There is a “desktop” version, but it’s just a wrapper of the webpage and you cannot do any offline listening. On android the app downloads its data unencrypted and simply tries to hide it in a big folder maze broken up into smaller files. With Waydroid I can download an audiobook and then automate the finding, formatting, and merging of all the files to get a proper audiobook I file I can stream from my home server to my various devices.

I really like LocalSend as well, but it’s very inconsistent with me. I think it has to do with one device being on a VPN, but I’m not totally sure. Basically I have some “one way” connections where one device can see and send to the one connected to a VPN but not the other way around. Is there some way I can specify LocalSend connections to ignore the VPN? I’m on NixOS and installed LocalSend in my user package declarations in my Nix config.

Imagine if all the space between the primary radial arms of trains was filled in with street cars and pedestrian/micromobility centric spaces. Like the problem you are saying cars solve just doesn’t exist in the first place and people can still get around very easily. Even more rural folks can simply drive to the edge of this style of urban design if they need access to something. The reason bus rides are 45 minutes is because of the number of cars they have to put up with. The density of people that can be moved with shockingly good area coverage if cars are not a factor is incredible.

“Let’s invent metal boxes with wheels that follow lines on the ground automatically to get you places.”

“Oh, you mean like trains.”

“Ew, no. They’re nothing like trains, these are ‘self driving cars’. They’re fool proof!”

tesla hits someone in a dense fog because it doesn’t have lidar

Queue surprised pikachu.

I use Sunshine with the Moonlight client for Remote Desktop. With my computer running Tailscale I can connect to it from anywhere. It’s designed for game streaming on a local network, but tweak the bandwidth settings down and it works a treat for remote work.

Getting to put time into smaller, slower games has been lovely!!

I don’t know the vibe of the cafe I found yet, if it’s only super competitive I probably won’t frequent it at all.

I’m looking to leave behind the graphical Obsidian app for neovim and plugins as I already use it for most of my other text editing. What is your setup and what plugins you recommend for neovim for general use, coding, and writing?

Maybe check out a local internet or gaming cafe for those periodic sessions? I just found one near me I’m considering going to a few times a month for the “slop” games. There’s a couple I still get the urge to play now and then.

I use Tailscale instead of hamachi these days. I find it way better. Used to use hamachi in the early days of Minecraft multiplayer, was always so jank and maybe it’s gotten better, but Tailscale has the added bonus of letting me easily share other services with the people I host servers for.