I used to use Homeplug to get network from my router front downstairs of the house to the my office upstairs and back. It’s a small house, and I thought the homeplug was ok - I was getting about 150-200mbps of my 900mbps; not great but I thought it was a good as I could get. The electrics are about 10 years old but I could see there was a lot of noise and error correction when I looked at the software that came with the plugs. Simple direct wifi connection was atrocious as the walls are largely solid brick.

Then a couple of years later I read about how good they Mesh systems could be so I decided to try a cheap one. I was skeptical as wifi hadn’t worked for me. I got a Google Wifi system (not a fan of google but it was a cheap system compared to other mesh networks); it has no backhaul connection, just 3 wifi points (one in front room, one in hallway and one in office), and my speed jumped to 500mbps and low latency. I also hadn’t realised how bad the latency had been on my homeplug set up - it was night and day.

I have since upgraded to an ASUS XT8 system; 2 units only and I now get close to 800mbps on a good day, and 600-700mbps floor. My PC in my office is where I work (which involves high data transfers) and also game and chill, it’s been a huge boon.

So yeah, Homeplug does the job but it’s not great in my experience. It was cheap compared to a mesh network, but you get what you pay for. You can get some of the cheaper and older mesh systems 2nd hand on ebay - but unfortunately a good system is pricey. In my experience it was totally worth it.

I’ve not seen Euphoria, but drugs, drinking and sex plus underage clubbing were all things that happened at my schools between 15-18.

A drama like Euphoria is of course going to be way over the top regardless of setting.

I do agree casting 25year olds (zendaya is 29 years old) feels bizarre but that is what American TV has always done. Presumably it’s to do with experience given these are expensive shows that need to work to strict production schedules given how expensive these shows are. Its understandable they’d want a cast who have been proven to be reliable and experienced, and also are not restricted in the hours they can work. Also age consistency matrers - once you have one 25 year old cast member all of them need to be the same age or it looks disturbing with a mixed age cast set in a high school.

I suppose profile may matter too - Zendaya was already famous; the pool.of famous 18 year old actors is smaller than the pool of 25 year old actors. Certainly regardless of fame the pool of 18 year old actors with a big CV is going to be small. It’s risky to cast an unproven 17 year old but less risky to cast a 25 year old who has done plays, and maybe TV or movies, or completed acting training.

I agree they could just not set it in a high school but then the specific dynamics and stories they want to tell would not be available. High school is a strange time - in the US but also globally - where people are on the cusp of adulthood (16 in many places, 18 in the US), yet totally restricted by the law, family and school. It’s a perfect setting for conflict, which makes drama, and it is universally relatable as almost everyone went to school.

Meanwhile if you set something 19-25, it is no longer universal. About 50-60% of people in rich countries go to university / college. And those institutions massively vary from community colleagues, poorer universities, up to elite places. Meanwhile 40-50% do other things.

So yeah, I get that it feels bizarre that shows set in high schools are all 25 year old actors but I think it makes sense why, and setting things in high schools make sense too. These shows obviously make money and have a wide audience, even if it’s not really my personal taste.

They said “from what I know” which implies uncertainty, while the response made clear, no it doesn’t work.

If you want to try Pop OS, go ahead. The most important thing is back up data you want to keep - it’s not a bad idea to have a dedicated partition for your home folder and another for the OS to help with fixing problems or moving to another distro, but backups off your laptop are critically important. Then if you don’t like a particular distro, or you fuck up, you can install another and restore your data from backup.

Personally I use OpenSuSE Tumbleweed, I’ve tried quite a few distros and I think generally for gaming they’re much the same. OpenSuSE has a good user interface in YaST for tweaking and keeping the system how I want it. I like being on a distro with a big install base and linked into an enterprise distro as there is an incentive to test rigorously and also fix things when they break. But Tumbleweed is a rolling release so there will still occasionally be problems.

If you want stability and no headaches then I’d go for a decent point release distro with a big install base overall. I’d suggest OpenSuSE Leap or Fedora KDE over smaller niche/community distros. Go for Gnome equivalents if that’s your thing. I have gone off Mint in recent months as I think too much support out on the Web is out of date and provides bad solutions to problems (such as adding random ubuntu repos to install software). Mint itself.Is a decent distro.

I’d avoid Ubuntu due to Snap, I’d avoid Debian due to its slow upgrade cycle (very stable distro but may not be the best for high end gaming and tweaking), and I’d avoid Arch due to the complexity of set up (unless you want your system exactly right and are prepared to problem solve your way to what you want; it can be a very powerful and efficient set up of you’re willing to out he work in). I’d also personally avoid atomic distros as it can be a headache to tweak and run custom software although there are ways if you enjoy leaning new things.

Trying to rewrite history huh - they suspended the show because Kimmel criticised Trump, and the FCC threatened ABC/DIsney. Never forget.

Agree although surprisingly the About section is a little vague on some of what OP wanted.

OP, it’s an SVG editor so should be perfect for real world projects you allude to. You can set the canvas size and change the default units with relative ease; Pixels, points, millimetres and inches but also Parsecs if you want to go wild, and as it’s SVG it’ll scale as needed without issue. https://logosbynick.com/change-the-canvas-size-in-inkscape/

There are also measurement tools too and areas can be calculated (but objects do need to be converted to paths to measure areas).

Everything else is covered in the about.

A quick google search shows that many people have issues with the Intel Integrated Graphics on this particular PC (including on Windows) and this seems to be the solution: https://forum.asrock.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=17021&title=solution-for-intel-graphics-freezing-system

The main solution is Windows based but someone does offer a Linux route to the same solution, although a linked file that sounds like setting it up may be easier is missing. Essentially it looks like the chipset needs tweaking to throttle the GPU slightly to prevent the flaw triggering.

Great to see another person moving to Linux and OpenSuSE. My only caution if this is your first time with Linux is that a point release like OpenSuSE Leap is probably a better place to start than Tumbleweed. I’m on Tumbleweed and it’s generally good but I have had a few things break over the last couple of years, often fixed at next update in fairness but it is frustrating even as an experienced user. I have also had to reinstall Tumbleweed on one occasion; it wasn’t a big deal as I’d set up a separate Home and System partition. Tumbleweed is great but it is a rolling release and even though it’s a well tested one rolling releases are always riskier in terms of things breaking.

Agree, a USB stick live install is a good way to test - users should just bear in mind it is slower than a real install as USB drives are not as fast as internal hard drives. Once the OS is loaded fully it will feel reasonably snappy but still every piece of software you launch will take longer to load than a real install, and the bigger the software the longer it will take to load.

I also tended to recommend Linux Mint for beginners although I think I’m moving more towards recommending OpenSuSE Leap. The reason being it ships with KDE which is a slick interface with a Windows like set up by default (although very customisable - users can create MacOS or Gnome like interfaces with relative ease if they prefer) and gives a better idea of what modern Linux is capable of than Cinnamon in my opinion. Also KDE’s Discover app makes it easy to install software, comparable to Mint’s software store. Mint still has many more guides online but they’re often around terminal use and APT based solutions, and I’m beginning to think that is actually a bad thing. Most stuff for mainstream users can be done via the GUI, and KDE offer’s a great GUI. Plus Flatpak is a far better way of installing custom software than the APT recommendations I still see widely shared, so I think it’s actually better to move people away from Mint. Personally I think OpenSuSE Leap is the better option (and possible Fedora KDE Plasma edition although I am less familiar with it).

Yeah absolutely, these things are cyclical! Hold on to those cabbage patch kids.

I wonder why they’re making a Linux native version? It is one of the ironies of Proton that windows native games are so easy to install it seems a bit pointless? But also making games for Linux is ironically difficult as it’s difficult to support long term as they can break as libraries change over time.

It feels like we need a Flatpak style set up for Linux native games which may help games launch stable long term versions that won’t “break” if newer libraries don’t work with them. Flatpaks “bring your own dependencies” approach is more similar to how windows games often work with their own dlls (even to the point of installing old versions of directx when needed) except without windows annoying set up of spraying dlls all over your hard drive making them difficult to clean up when you uninstall a game.

Although arguably Steam already deals with that on both Linux and Windows currently. But it is proprietary. And maybe Flatpak is already that solution? Maybe Appimage too although not sure how well a 30gb would run from a single file virtual file system? Is it native speeds or have some overhead?

It will depend on the drivers that Audeze Maxwell supply? I can’t see any USB drivers for Linux beyond the dongle but they may exist.

However if they have a 3.5mm port then I’d use that. I have a Sony headset and while I don’t have any issues with Bluetooth, I do like to use 3.5mm analogue conenctions to save battery (even with noise cancelling on the battery lasts way longer off Bluetooth). I bought a long 3.5mm cable online and plug it into the front of my PC. No USB or Bluetooth faff, it just works, and at high quality.

However note that if you want the mic to work too it will depend on whether the headset’s 3.5mm jack is set up for both audio and mic (if it’s good quality it should be), plus you will need a 4pin 3.5mm plug and cable to pick up the mic from the headset and cable instead of the common 3pin audio only plug. At the other end if your pc has separate 3.5mm audio and mic jacks you will need an adaptor that splits the audio/mic into two cables to plug in to both jacks. If it’s a desktop there will be separate jacks around the back although sometimes the front jack may be a combined mic/audio jack, or you may also have one joint jack if it’s a laptop. If you do need to split the audio and mic then you can find these adaptors and also 4pin 3.5mm cables on ebay or amazon.

Edit: Just in case you’re not aware - an audio only 3.5mm cable has 2 coloured bands on the plug (splitting it into 3 metal rings or pins). An audio + mic 3.5mm cable has 3 coloured bands on the plug (splitting it into 4 metal rings or pins).

Edit 2: sorry look for 4 pole 3.5mm rather than 4 pin; you’ll see the better quality stuff when searching as pole is the correct term!

They might need access so that widgets can work?

I use Lawnchair which is FOSS rather than some company scraping data (like Nova which was bought by an analytics company and is being shut down)

How familiar are you with Linux? If you’re new to it, pick something mainstream with lots of support and advice out there. I usually recommend Mint as a starter distro - it’s well supported, easy to use and doesn’t have the downsides of a distro like Ubuntu.

If you’re familiar with Linux then I’d recommend a point release distro and not a rolling release distro. Rolling release are cutting edge but that means much more opportunity for things to go wrong which isn’t a good thing to deal with if you’re new to Linux.

Beyond that, most distros dual boot well with Windows (although Windows is not well-designed and can occasionally break the bootloaders as others have said).

I’m on OpenSuSE and recommend it; it’s well designed with good tools in the form.of YaST. I’m personally not a fan of Fedora but I know a lot of people swear by it as a distro. Of the big distros I’d basically only really avoid Ubuntu because of how Snap is forced down people’s throats. I’m also personally not a fan of immutable distros due to the reliance on Flatpak and other downsides but your milage may vary.

Regardless, dual boot with Linux and Windows is a good solution. It’s how I got into Linux; my main PC still has a Win 10 partition which I don’t use but keep as a backup. My laptop and a living room.Media PC are pure Linux.

I’d say Win 11 in a VM is an alternative route for those few apps but I find windows is a bit laggy even on a decent PC. It’s perfectly usable - I’ve run Office and even windows at dual 4k without major issue, but there is a noticeable albeit small input lag and slowness in rendering the desktop that I found just annoying enough to put me off (even at 1080p single screen to be clear).

From reading it seems Win 11 does work fine if you pass through a discrete graphics card for it to use but that’s only doable if you have 2 GPUS. You might have that option if your laptop has a discrete graphics card as well as an integrated one. For me it reflects how bloated and poorly optimised windows is, but there are people who report getting Win 11 to work with high end games without issue although it takes some work. Meanwhile I can get Linux VMs on a Linux host to run at near native performance with ease.

There are free alternatives to Nitro Pro but if it’s an essential for you I’d try dual booting initially while.you test but don’t have to solely rely on VMs initially. If VMs do the job then wiping Windows will free up a lot of space and also stop it interfering in your Laptop set up.

Brave is being forced to use Googles version of Manifest 3 meaning ad blockers and anti trackers are crippled in favour of advertisers and Googles ad business. Brave will be including 4 manifest 2 extensions in its backend but that’s it. They’re stuck because Google decided to screw over the entire Chrome based ecosystem.

Mozilla is implementing Manifest 3 differently so the original techniques for adblocking and privacy still work.

So the only choice is Librewolf. Sacrificing privacy and security for smoother animations and Web translation of pages is not worth it.

I find KDE works well with GTK3 and below, but GTK4 apps are set to ignore themes, which is a design decision on the GTK4 side. They invariably look completely odd and out of place as they often force the entire Gnome app UI as well as an unalterable theme.

And then Flatpaks also don’t generally follow system themes as they’re so sandboxed (although there are some work arounds, including making them consistent as flatpaks or allowing them access to the system theme folders to pick up themeing).

But anecdotally I’ve not had the level of title bar variability on KDE as that screenshot. Although admittedly I do tend to actively avoid Gnome apps as I don’t like the design philosophy.

It uses Android Web view which is essentially just Chrome without the interface, and is entirely proprietary. It suffers from all the drawbacks of Chrome based browsers with the added problem of being an Android component so out of much, if any, control of the developers.

This app should not be a serious consideration for anyone who is privacy or security focused. The very first thing a secure browser should be providing is it’s own rendering engine. Even providing it’s own chrome based rendering engine would be more secure than this.

Also in terms of extensions, as it is Chrome based it’s extensions such as uBlock will have the same privacy breaking restrictions as the rest of the chrome ecosystem with manifest v3 which favours Google’s advertising business over user security and privacy.

I like the concept. It’d be nice to customise it a bit but I prefer it as more legible / bigger, plus in a decent location for my thumbs.

The old menu was unnecessarily cramped and to one side. This change has potential but isn’t quite right yet.

It also does make much more sense if you move the tab bar to the bottom to complement it (doable.in settings menu).

It’d be interesting project but it seems overkill and over complicatiion when the simplest solution is dual booting and giving each OS complete access to the hardware. Hypervisors for all your systems would be a lot of configuration, and some constant overhead you can’t escape for potentially minimal convenience gain?

Are you hoping to run these OS at the same time and switch between them? If so I’m not sure the pain of the set up is worth it for a little less time switching between OS to switch task? If you’re hoping to run one task in one machine (like video editing) while gaming in another, it makes more sense but you’re still running a single i7 chip so it’ll still be a bottleneck even with all the GPUs and that RAM. Sure you can share out the cores but you won’t achieve the same performance of 1 chip and chip set dedicated to 1 machine that a server stack gives (and which Hypervisors can make good use of).

Also I’d question how good the performance you’d get on a desktop motherboard with multiple GPUs assigned to different tasks. It’s doubtful you’d hit data transfer bottlenecks but it’s still asking a lot of hardware not designed for that purpose I think?

If you intend to run the systems 1 at a time then you might as well dual boot and not be sharing system resources with an otherwise unneeded host for hypervisor software.

I think if you wanted to do this and run the machines in parallel then a server stack or enterprise level hardware probably would be better. I think it’s a case of “just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should”? Unless it’s just a “for fun” project and you don’t mind the downsides? Then I can see the lure.

But if I were in your position and wanted the “best” solution I’d probably go for a dual boot with Linux and Windows. In Linux I’d run games natively in the host OS, and use Qemu to have a virtual machine for development (passing through one of the GPUs for AI work). The good thing in this set up is you can back-up your whole development machine hard drive and restore it easily if you make big changes to the host Linux. Windows I’d use for kernel anti cheat games and just boot into it when I wanted.

Personally I dual boot Linux and windows. I barely use windows now but in Linux I do use Qemu and have multiple virtual machines. I have a few test environments for Linux because I like to tinker, plus a docker server stack that I use to test before deploying to a separate homelab device. I do have a Win11 VM, barely used - it doesn’t have a discrete GPU and it’s sluggish. If you’re gaming I’d dual boot and give it access to the best GPU as and when you need it.

And if you want the best performance, triple boot. Storage is cheap and you could easily have separate drives for separate OS. I have an Nvme for Linux and another Nvme for Windows for example. You could easily have 2 separate discrete Linux installs and a Windows installs. In some ways it may be best as you’d separate Linux gaming from Linux working and reduce distractions.

Linux works great for gaming in my experience. I have a huge games library and I haven’t had many if any games that don’t run. There are certainly some games that need some tweaking to get working or optimisation to run well. I generally have those problems with older games though as my library includes some retro games (games for Windows 98 being the ones I have to tweak most).

Mods certainly do work - I’ve modded skyrim and rimworld extensively on Linux, as well as Oblivion, Cyberpunk 2077, Stardew Valley, Cities Skylines, Minecraft and more without issue. Proprietary mod managers may not work but they’re often the poorer ones that are really just tools to advertise and market at you.

The vast majority of game mods work inside the game itself, so if the game runs on Linux the mods will work. The exception would be mods that need to run as a Windows program themselves separate to the game exe. Those can also be made to work, it’s just a bit more involved. Those kinds of mods are pretty rare in my experience though. Mods that act as game launchers etc work fine too, but just need some tweaking to ensure they launch instead of the game exe.

Most games mods can be manually installed and big games even have their own Linux native mod managers - like Minecraft custom launchers and Rimpy for Rimworld etc.

I do still have Windows on my PC in case I need it but haven’t used it for gaming in well over a year. I have a desktop so having a spare drive for windows is not a big deal to me but I’m tempted to wipe it as I don’t use it.

The one bit that people do have issues with is Anti cheat software for multiplayer games. That’s not an area of gaming I do, but I have seen reports of certain games using proprietary systems that lock out Linux. That’s a problem you can’t get round except by having Windows available on your system.If there is a specific game you want like that isn’t working on Linux.