I’ve never been into tablets, are Surfaces as easy to install Linux on as a PC? Is there any bootloader unlocking or anything like on a phone, or is it more like secure boot on a PC?

I had installed Linux on an old Chromebook and it would always offer to wipe the hard drive on every boot, so now I’ve assumed that some hardware isn’t as Linux friendly as others. I think a lot has changed since I got my desktop and the last laptop that I installed Linux on.

And are the Linux touch screen interfaces any good? I tried a Fairphone that was running something Linux and the touch interface was lacking. (It was a great tiny laptop for using a terminal though).

And last random thought… I loved the 10” netbook form factor back in 2009 or so. I think tablets are a similar size, but the weight is in the “monitor” part, I preferred the bottom heavy laptop form factor. Are the Surfaces okay for that, or top heavy enough that they can fall over and can’t have the angle adjusted finely like a laptop?

Message me on matrix in #alexgames:matrix.org if anyone wants to try playing a multiplayer game together :)

(I’m not actually very good at chess or go)

Ah, the comparison to Epic helps me understand a bit… maybe. Are they simply worried about PS5 “winning” and Xbox disappearing? I don’t worry that Steam will ever disappear because of Epic and don’t care if they get games (in fact I have an epic account just to claim the free games, but I don’t really play them because they don’t support Linux). But if Steam did disappear in favour of Epic, I would be pissed. I wouldn’t care if there’s a merger or rebranding as long as Linux support and my existing library is maintained.

Even still… worst case, they buy a PS5, and get all the same games and more? A friend of mine switched from Xbox to PS and thought it was pretty good. I do prefer the Xbox thumbstick placement over PS5, though. I guess they’d also lose their Xbox friends/following/achievements/etc. Though surely it would, at worst, be merged into PS.

But still, even if you’re worried about this backfiring and Xbox disappearing… it seems worth the risk, to me. Presumably there are some good PS exclusives that could come to Xbox?

I’m really trying hard to figure out how this isn’t just fanboy whining and I’m coming up short. I’m interested in other ideas!

I couldn’t understand why this would be anything besides good news, but I guess they’re worried that the hardware won’t get as much focus?

(I’m out of the loop, I play PC games now and haven’t bought a console since the Xbox 360 back in… 2008 or so? I forget)

“It’s so easy to see Xbox is killing its hardware and putting a stake in the heart of it by doing this,” he said. “And there’s no going back… it’s dead.”

He later tweeted: “Xbox could have killed Game Pass, say buy our exclusives and focus on our hardware and that’s 100 percent the better idea [than to] SAY LETS KILL EXCLUSIVES AND put Halo on PS5. The outrage would be half of this and guess what you might be back to having a healthy business.”

It still seems like an over reaction to me. Exclusives have always seemed bad. I’m just glad games are getting released on PC, though I haven’t played many AAA games in a while.

Awesome, thanks for confirming my suspicion that air travel is too overpowered. I feel better about giving OpenTTD another try some time. It’s hard to find time where we’re both free and in the mood to learn a new game. Plus I much prefer just figuring something out myself over reading comprehensive guides (I don’t mind looking up specific things).

I’m also excited to look into mods!

A thousand times, yes. I love Factorio and want to get my partner into it, but she finds the logistics tedious and doesn’t like the gritty art style. We love Cities Skylines (the original, I haven’t tried this new one yet). There aren’t enough city builders (or games focused on building and without much combat) that have good multiplayer.

Does anyone have any recommendations for that? We loved Stardew Valley but I want something with more building. The multiplayer mod for Rimworld works pretty well. I considered vanilla Minecraft but it seems like the buildings don’t feel important enough without mods like FTB.

OpenTTD seems like it should be exactly what we want (also it’s free! And runs on weak hardware, and mobile), but maybe we were playing it wrong. Airports seem to give way too much easy money. And when we first played through we only made transportation for passengers, and I think we should have focused more on industry. I tried it again myself later and did better after focusing on industry, but it still seemed like airports were better money (and way easier).

I was wondering what this was, here it is:

Ryujinx is an open-source Nintendo Switch emulator created by gdkchan and written in C#. This emulator aims at providing excellent accuracy and performance, a user-friendly interface, and consistent builds.

(from https://ryujinx.org/)

My raspberrypi works great as a backup git server, as long as it doesn’t fall off my table and get stepped on or rolled over by my chair. I also host a few static webpages on it for cooking recipes.

It actually has better uptime than my desktop, which I occasionally boot into windows when I (rarely!) encounter a steam game that doesn’t work well on Linux.

It does not work well as a DLNA server though, though it seems to manage lower resolution videos okay. I think I tried both tried reading videos from the SD card, and a USB external hard drive.

I tried “Out of Space” last night with my partner and wow, you weren’t kidding. I really liked it, but we died every time. Eventually we switched to the easier “zen mode” and were able to win a few matches. I couldn’t help but wonder if the balance wasn’t finely tuned for 2 players, maybe they balanced it for 4.

For anyone interested: this is a really fun game, but it’s not quite as much like “The Sims in space” as I expected. It’s closer to “Overcooked, but with some placeable furniture that you need to interact with”.

If anyone knows of a co-op (not necessarily local, but that’s a huge plus) game like “The Sims”, I’d be very interested. Rimworld is close, but the multiplayer mod didn’t work well for us. I think my partner’s old laptop couldn’t keep up at 3x speed, causing big desyncs. Factorio is great for co-op IMO (though not at all like “The Sims”, more like Sim City)), but my partner doesn’t really like it because of the gritty environment.