I would say that it’s as simple as adding a prompt during initial user setup with check boxes. Would you like windows to handle XYZ for you? Instead of assuming all users just want to use their computers to become influencers and forcing frustrating problems onto everyone.

It may have started out with “hey we are doing this for your own good” to now it’s “how can we exploit ignorance and data mine our users and put ads on the desktop?”

Maybe this was their ace card? Make everyone pedos and incrementat themselves?

The thing that’s driving me away from windows is how pushy it’s gotten. Forced updates, ads, AI, OneDrive, and subscriptions. I just want to be able to turn on MY computer and do what I want or need without having my guard up that I can’t trust my home PC with my privacy.

Windows 11 is ok, but is frustrating to use and I can’t trust it not to screw with settings and there seems to be something annoying added instead of something useful with every update. I also hate the Settings menu, it’s like an unhelpful layer between you and Control Panel the eventually will take you to the same place but took 5 more clicks and searching through drop downs for a link to what you needed.

No because the half that currently can’t drink might drink twice as much

Yes ladies we all know why you have the super duper pulsating adjustable pressure shower heads.

No shame from me. Just pointing out that a >30min shower costs money and a vibrator is $50ish plus batteries. Just saying

That seems tough, beanbags are squishy

It’s optimized for gaming and you can install a lot of standard Linux apps. But it only works on specific hardware like the Deck and Legion at the moment, the Frame and Machine should be running their versions. A lot of things that come in a standard Distro for PCs have been removed that you might take for granted. I like to think of it as a balance between PC and game console, remember when you could side load Linux onto a PS3, sort of like that.

I use my Deck in desktop mode and connect it to my TV for web browsing, Steamlink to my tower and occasionally use the Libre apps, but I wouldn’t recommend using it as your daily PC. It doesn’t exactly feel like a fully fleshed out PC, hard to put a finger on it until you use it.

I don’t think I have ever been asked for my GPA or school transcripts. Usually they just check to see if I graduated.

If you for a corporation then yes, your job is to make someone else rich. If you don’t like it then start your own business and hope it doesn’t go tits up. You can also try to become internet famous but that’s hard if your parents aren’t already well off.

Adult hood and responsibility is rough. Good luck young dude.

Don’t confuse it with wicked hot

I do agree, if we remove the problem then there’s no need for the solution. If we didn’t have to worry the sudden expansion of electric vehicles and large data centers. But would we not be exchanging one problem for another? A lot of cities were not built with future public transportation in mind so building railways and bus routes then changing how people travel might be just as hard as getting electricity from rural areas.

I also agree that the farmers would plant another crop. But covering the land with solar panels is just impractical. The reason these farms are located where they are is because turning it into biofuel crops is easy, inexpensive, and the land probably isn’t worth doing anything else with. Turning it into food crops would depend on climate and demand.

Either way, as a society, we have several immediate problems and you’re right there isn’t one way to solve them. I just felt that tiny patches of land spread out all over the world would generate enough power and get it to where it needs to be for everyone to have electric cars just seemed like a silly idea when there’s much simpler and faster ways to get power where it’s needed the most.

Especially since I’m an electrical engineer that works for a company that specializes in energy management, building controls, and engineering sustainablility into buildings. So I’m actively working on these things that are theory to most of the people here.

Ok change it to transparent solar. I was half asleep

Bah hahaha you got me there… didn’t you

Listen to sports commentators out of context. Sounds pretty gay to me

Simon didn’t say put your hands up…BANG

Google translate=close enough

They’re right, in the sense of square acres.

Get ready for a rant.

Except it doesn’t work that way and it isn’t that simple, the article pokes a big hole in its own argument in the second sentence, the world, it’s spread out across the world. The crop land used for biofuel is hundreds or thousands of miles way from where the electricity would need to get to. The farmers would have nothing to farm and they would have to give up or lease their land to electric companies or the government. The entire infrastructure for utilities and farming would need to be torn down and rebuilt, it wouldn’t be practical for at least 2 generations once construction started, in that time we could be using a completely different form of fuel making solar obsolete.

The problem isn’t where to put panels but how to get electricity to the electric cars that are thousands of miles away from the farms and the farms are many miles from each other. Plus biofuels will never go away and we’ll need significant quantities for at least another hundred years.

Use old landfills or old quarries or building rooftops, they’re a lot closer to the cities. Why not use the windows of the buildings for thermal energy transparent solar. Why not use the energy from our heating and cooling and plumbing systems to generate electricity. Plus we can do them all at the same time, it doesn’t have to be one or the other, put a windmill and solar panels and thermal on the same rooftop. Put steam turbines everywhere.

I guess that’s the problem with having multiple distros and this example might be an edge case. But I would also make the argument that installation instructions can and should be clear cut for the terminal for novice users. For example, the instructions for the terminal commands shouldn’t assume that I know the inside lingo or acronyms. I shouldn’t have to be indoctrinated to use Linux, that’s gatekeeping and seems to be pretty common on websites for the Linux community.

I love your enthusiasm but Valve makes hardware to sell more Steam games. I don’t think they would make a phone controller unless the intent was to push Steamlink. I could see a whole ecosystem of Steam products if the Machine takes off.

Official keyboard and mouse would be great for the Deck and Machine. When I’m not traveling or sitting at my desk I plug my Deck into my TV and having something native and Steam branded would be great because I enjoy playing FPS and RTS.

I would really like for Valve to put a mag on the back of the Deck, maybe for Deck 2. Like a Magsafe/MagGo. I have The Mechanism (Deckmate) and it’s fantastic, I really recommend it, the variety of parts and attachments really cover a lot of bases. But it’s not perfect, the clips sometimes break and they attach using double sided tape, so you have to peel it off and clean it up, then stick a new one on. Wireless charging on the Deck doesn’t seem practical but there’s a lot of great Mag stuff already out there.

Valve should also open up LAN play. If I have friends over and I have a PC/Steam Machine/Deck then I would like to be logged in on multiple systems if they’re connected via LAN instead of logging me out of the other PC if I try to launch a game while a game is running. I’m sure this is a built in security measure, but I’m sure a guest account would be do able, like on consoles.

A premium bag/case for the Deck. Check out The Mechanism Bag, it’s expensive but I believe it the best bag out there. I would like to see the Deck 2 come with a much better bag/case than the one the Deck came with. I carry a charger, battery pack, folding keyboard, mouse, headphones, kickstand, sometimes a HDMI combo charger and attach a pair of controllers. My son and I will play local multiplayer games on long trips. I can fit everything, except for the controllers, in The Mechanism Bag. But I attach the controllers to a carabiner to the bag.

The Mechanism

Recently been playing around with Mint. For the most part it’s user friendly. Where it falls apart is it’s not intuitive, it took me hours of googling to try to figure out how to add windows specific drivers (because the manufacturer didn’t create Linux drivers) for a Bluetooth mouse so I could program the mouse buttons. There were community created drivers on GitHub but no direct way to get them, I would have had to download and configure several support files before I could even try to install. I eventually gave up and just bought another mouse.

Most people would have given up in the first 5min and tossed their PC out and kept the mouse.

It’s not that Linux doesn’t work, it’s that it takes work to get it to work.

If Linux worked in the sense of clear step by step instructions and the developers/legacy users didn’t expect everyone to be experts or expect everyone to spend hours trying to figure out world peace just to perform a mundane task, then it would probably replace windows pretty quickly.

OneDrive secretly changing all of my save paths to OneDrive and not adding the cloud symbol to show that it’s beed saving my files to Microsoft servers, even when OneDrive sync is turned off.

I wish I could drop Microsoft completely.