That makes sense.

I gotta say, the SteamDeck has been a weird journey. I’m playing a lot more high graphics titles now that I can just quickly check for a ‘SteamDeck Verified’ badge.

On the one hand, mine is a first generation portable, so there’s a lot of games it is never going to run.

On the other, it keeps surprising me what gets ported to it.

so staying flexible is important for multiple front

Yeah. I do work to stay current in the big 3, for the same reason. That used to mean alternating my home setup as well, but now I only do it on my employers dime. I think the reason is mix of my having less patience for proprietary interoperability issues at home, and of Linux just being able to do everything I care about.

for Remote Desktop, all the Linux solutions are…not that great, they work

Agreed. I recently bought a nice little portable monitor for home, for exactly this reason. If Linux RDP was a better experience, I might not have bothered. That said, I even do my grandparent’s remote IT support from my Debian machine now, regardless of whether they’re on Windows or Mac. So I’m pretty satisfied with it where I absolutely need RDP.

Not sure what your Windows guys mean by needing Windows to remotely manage Windows,

Yeah. Many of them are point and clickers. Some of us are mentoring them on expanded tooling available. Their interest varies, which is fair. I don’t want their job, anyway, so it’s not my problem how efficiently or inefficiently they do it.

I used to bounce between them for the same reason, but nowadays the right tool, for me, is always a Debian variant, anyway. (or Arch, counting SteamDeck).

• My gaming is on SteamDeck now.
• My Office bullshit works fine on Android, and Linux. There’s always been a community for this. There’s a learning curve to get professional results, but it’s so much less hassle once mastered.
• Remote management is so much nicer with Linux. I still deal with some of that crap on Windows, and the Windows admins go on about how they need Windows to be able to remotely manage. I bite my tongue, but I feel embarrassed for them every time they do so. Remote management is about 20 years more mature on Linux than on Windows.
• Artistic stuff, interestingly, also Linux, for me. (I never got into Adobe suite, I felt wary of their monopoly early.) But GnuIMP and Krita get the job done, for me.

Edit: And I can still collaborate. Office cloud tools work on Linux in the browser, nowadays.

This sounds completely fair and benevolent. A lesser dictator would have them thrown into the pit of despair.

Nice. An effective union is probably the only thing that will bring me back to shopping for AAA titles again, so this seems like a win for everyone.

This does not address the searchability issue

Search will always be a challenge, but my understanding is that WordPress is as well or better optimized for search than any thing else that exists.

or the complexity and cost of self hosting.

WordPress is the single most hosted app in existence, I think.

I want less friction for the user who is only focused on publishing and does not care much to own their infrastructure.

You just described WordPress.

Edit: I don’t even like WordPress. Lol. But I still think you’re dismissing a likely 80% or better solution to your problem, if you don’t look into WordPress.

For creating an RSS feed, WordPress will certainly get the job done.

I will say however, I’ve encountered a few things that were unsolvable because I wasn’t a professional coder with tons of time on my hands.

Oh, yeah. That’s still true. I’ve hit those as well.

Though at least with open source stuff, I usually find the issue solved when I try again a year or so later. (Maybe not how I would have solved it, but there’s typically at least more and better options.)

FFVII on SteamDeck maybe? I would probably play that.

The odds that the US Government, under the authority of Patriot Act, has not inserted spyware into the Windows kernel, I put at an even 50/50.

The US Government has the motive, the leverage (huge customer of Microsoft), and maybe even the legal authority (the Patriot Act overreaches like crazy, and arguably compels certain government officials to gather all available data).

To be clear, I’ve never seen a shred of evidence that there’s any official sanctioned backdoor in Windows. But I can’t honestly claim to be sure it’s not there.

It’s all a bit of a moot point though, as the vast majority of Windows installs export nearly every scrap of data to Office Cloud, and if Office Cloud doesn’t have a government back door, I will eat my hat.

Source: The text of the Patriot Act. It basically outright says “we will put a listener anywhere we can reasonably fit one, on US soil.”

Weirdly, DOS is scared, here. Probably because none of us are forced to use it anymore.

I know we’re joking about how obnoxious we are when we make this recommendation… But it’s also true. Linux problems are much more likely to be solveable. The proprietary “no serviceable parts within” boxes are much rarer.

I love Rogue Legacy as a casual game. In the early game, it’s decidedly not cozy, due to missing mechanics and how common unwinnable rooms are.

Rogue Legacy 2 fixes these issues, and adds a ton of difficulty sliders, and can be tuned to be fantasticly cozy,

Yeah. I would probably start with Dave the Diver, in their case.

It’s so good. Decently chill. Great vibe throughout. The Boss fights each have a simple gimmick to win, and they don’t try to be clever about it. (Nothing pisses me off like “we changed the pattern of interaction five to turn a narrow victory win into a loss”. Game designers need to cut that out.) Thankfully Dave the Diver has the classic two patterns per battle, and aims for predictable fun. And the Boss fights are rare, anyway.

Yeah. The Breach is fantastic. Ready to pick up and set down. Utterly fantastic tactical gameplay. Cool tech, interesting progression options.

All that said, it’s not my go-to cozy game, because it’s atmosphere is too well done.

They only thing about “The Breach” is that it’s so dang well done that I can’t take a turn not seriously. It regularly makes me make movie heroism level of decisions. Do I make the safe play, or try to save everyone? Am I willing to sacrifice my pilot for this win?

The vibe is fantastic, but decidedly not cozy.

but most of the world considers them to be right wing.

Yep. I’m fiscally conservative, mildly sympathetic to people who fear and resist change, and fond of the pragmatic pursuit of libertarian ideals, where that’s possible.

I also feel that how others do sex is none of my damn business, taxes supporting social services are necessary, and equitably applied rule of law is critical for any real economic prosperity.

On the scale of history, I suspect that makes me centrist or even a moderate conservative.

In my country, and today, somehow, astonishingly, this combination makes me what most would call very left leaning.

I feel that the right has gone insane and continues to alienate people who might otherwise have been allies.

That’s a great point. A nice Debian LTS release could be just the thing.

Yeah. I think you can’t go wrong with either Debian or Fedora with Gnome. I would pick whichever I’m most comfortable with. The grandparents will probably never notice.

I love to give Gnome crap for being a large install, but I’ve lost count of the number of machines that I’ve put Gnome on and had it just work. And I’ve lost count of the number of times that I’ve searched for a fancy command line way to fix an annoyance in Gnome, and discovered there’s just a simple toggle in settings for what I want.

Who decides what’s “legitimate”?

Ooh! I know this one! It’s the people with all the money, isn’t it? It’s usually the people with the most money who decide these things.

Everyone is losing their minds because they’re afraid there’ll be a run on popcorn, not because anyone will miss a waste of space healthcare CEO.

If people don’t feel like we can make things better with negotiation, this is where it goes. I’m not up for pretending I didn’t see this coming.

This may be good time to be an experienced professional body guard, because there’s a lot of healthcare CEOs left and no way was the alleged attacker (I didn’t see shit!) the only person they’ve hurt.