BadlyDrawnRhino

@BadlyDrawnRhino@aussie.zone

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can’t upgrade your PC to Windows 11? Buy a new one, is Microsoft’s laughable solution⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve recently been dabbling with Linux for the first time, so here’s a few things I’ve found along the way.

  First, look at whether you can disable secure boot. Most computers can, but as I’ve recently discovered on my laptop, the option just isn’t there for some motherboards. If you can’t or don’t want to for whatever reason, it’s not the end of the world, you’ll just need to pick a distro that supports secure boot, I know Ubuntu does, and I believe a few of the other more popular ones do too.

  Next, grab a few distros to try out. You may want to look into recommendations if there’s anything specific you want to do. For example, I wanted to make sure gaming setup was as straightforward as possible, so I looked at distros that were tailored towards that. Create some bootable USBs and spend a few minutes just looking at each to get a feel. You’ll pretty quickly decide whether or not you like a distro, there’s really no point spending more time with one if there’s something that puts you off from the get-go.

  Dual boot is the way to go until you feel like dropping Windows entirely, if you can. And if there’s something that just isn’t going to work on Linux, it’s good to be able to just jump across to Windows for that purpose. The only annoying thing I’ve found is that Windows updates can break the dual-boot partition, so just be aware of that. If it happens, it’s not that difficult a process to repair it.

  Other than that, Linux isn’t that different from other OSes in how you’ll probably use it. There are a few different ways you can install programs due to the different distros, so you’ll want to look at things like how to install a flatpak. For Windows programs, you can look at whether you can get it running in Bottles or a VM if you don’t want to bother rebooting.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Bazzite is the next best thing to SteamOS while we wait on Valve⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This is useful for countries where the Steam Deck is unavailable but other handhelds aren’t. Here in Australia, Steam Decks are only available as grey imports, and that makes warranty issues a potential headache, but you can walk into most electronic retailers and buy a ROG Ally off the shelf.

  That said, I personally wouldn’t buy a handheld that didn’t have touchpads, so I bought a grey import and have had no issues.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Acer enter the handheld PC gaming race with the Nitro Blaze 7⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This is my thought with every single one of these. I was pleasantly surprised to see them on the new Ayaneo Kun, making it the only alternative to the Steam Deck I would consider. The lack of trackpads is too much of a limitation for PC gaming.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Celebrating 6 years since Valve announced Steam Play Proton for Linux⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It also means avoiding any future craziness in the name of “anti-cheating” from both Microsoft and publishers. It’s bad enough that publishers are forcing kernel-level access now, but once there’s a workaround for those applications, what’s the next step?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What do you use the back buttons for?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m playing through New Vegas right now. I have one of the back buttons assigned to quicksave. I also changed the default camera button to one of the back buttons, because I don’t use it often enough to warrant it being on the bumpers. And I have just assigned one to toggle collision, because sometimes you need that when playing something built in the Gamebryo engine.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Starfield’s biggest update yet fixes its rubbish maps, adds custom difficulty and expands ship decoration⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I haven’t played Starfield yet, but from what I’ve read it seems to be the next step in the procedurally generated games that Bethesda is heading towards, and I really hope it makes them rethink things for their next game.

  While I’m sure that there are people out there who enjoy the fact that there are infinite fetch quests in Skyrim, it’s hardly a feature that anyone really raves about. In fact, the Minutemen quests in FO4 were often the subject of ridicule when the game came out. But at least in those two games, the Radiant quests had the possibility of taking you to an interesting location you hadn’t been to before.

  Like you said, one of the key features in any Bethesda game is the exploration, but the more they rely on procedural generation, the less interesting exploration becomes, and the gameplay and writing of their games just isn’t strong enough without the finely crafted world-building they’re known for.