No wrong times, only small periods of unfortunate times!

Thanks so much for the explanation. As they say, when a measure becomes a target it stops being a good measure.

Relevant XKCD for good measure.

How can these businesses keep running? Storing and distributing documents isn’t exactly the most technically challenging product to build. I’m not in the field though so I’m absolutely certain I’m missing a lot of the nuances here. Can you shed some light on why you think nobody new comes along to our compete these folks?

Careful, Windows can be vomit inducing.

I’d rather have SteamOS officially support more devices including desktop. Good on Valve for giving people options though.

I was thinking Linux at home would be Windows Subsystem for Linux.

Oh God, this brought back a traumatic memory. I was hanging out after hours at our office to look after a meetup group that was using our space that night. Nothing tricky, make sure people can get in, keep the lights on, make sure nobody sets the place on fire.

I was plugging away on my personal laptop which had Linux on it. Having a great time doing something or other when one of the meetup organisers approached me with a USB stick and asked if I could help them print out some signs to help people know where to go.

My install was rock solid, fast and set up exactly the way I wanted, but in that moment none of that mattered because it was me who froze. I thought back to all the decisions that lead me to that situation, even the conversation with a coworker a few months ago about Linux who literally said “I love Linux but one day I’m just afraid I’ll have to print something or whatever and I won’t be able to”. How foolish I was to dismiss the wisdom in his words that day, and now my worst nightmare had come to pass.

I swallowed hard, looked the organiser in the eyes, and told them I couldn’t help them. I didn’t even try. Best to rip the band-aid off, disappoint them now and get it over with. After the glaring admission left my mouth I waited for the inevitable response. I was a fraud, nothing more than a self proclaimed computer geek who couldn’t accomplish a rudimentary task despite all my time studying and tinkering. It was over, I guess it wasn’t imposter syndrome after all, I really was an imposter and now I’d been discovered.

But instead the the organiser just smiled and said “that’s totally ok, we were just a bit disorganised and didn’t print it before coming this time. Thanks for your help anyway!” And everything was fine. This time.

Great news! The more devices running SteamOS the better

Is this a reference?

For a second I thought that the first field was:

IRL nickname: I don’t use IRL

How dramatic.

EDIT: In the dramatic spirit though.

It’s too late for me, friend. The trap was baited with the frivolous and delightful outputs of an unethical capitalist machine and I was ensnared. I am now doomed to forever carry out a small percentage of my computing tasks in the glass cage of OS lock in and corporate surveillance. It’s not too late for others, though, you can still save yourself. Leave me to my fate, my only solace is that my experience may be a lesson to others.

Yeah proton works really well for me for the vast majority of my games but there are a few that don’t. I dual boot solely to play those.

• Star Citizen - much worse performance for me using Linux.
• Cyberpunk - Used to work fine but started crashing on Linux for me
• Counter Strike 2 - Audio cuts out after about 15 - 20 minutes on Linux.
• Supreme Commander - Frequent crashes on Linux.

I think people can run most of those fine but I haven’t had luck and don’t spend much time tinkering.

That would be awesome! There’s still the odd game I can’t run unrelated to anti cheat but that would still be a huge win.

I dream of a world where I don’t have to dual boot.

It was a joke on the dual meaning of “user repository” which I didn’t think about that deeply but that would have been smart.

And the Arch User Repository is really handy when you need some more users.

The ones that come to mind are Beyond All Reason and Battle For Wesnoth.

There would definitely be a lot more art permanently lost.

Not exclusively, but yes. I feel called out.

I tried to drink it but nothing happened? Maybe next year