I started avoiding games that make it hard to play without choosing the meta. I look for indie games where solving mysteries about the game made it more interesting. Its not for everyone but it could be a breath of fresh air for anyone looking to get away from games that expect you to play a specific way or to grind for new stuff.
I worked for a bank. When they decided to deploy Linux on their infrastructure, they chose RHEL and they have signed a big contract with RedHat for tech support.
Overall, they chose RedHat for the same reason they chose Microsoft before: tech support. They have >10000 engineers, and yet somehow they think they absolutely need tech support… They pay a lot for it. In my building, they even got a Microsoft engineer once a week on-site until Covid. I don’t know for the other people working for this bank, but I asked for Microsoft support only once in 2 years. In the end, their guy sent me back an email telling me “I’ve transmitted your question to the corresponding engineering team” and … diddlysquat.
Now to be fair, for paying customers, RHEL and Microsoft both ensure security updates for a really a long time. Red Hat pays a lot of people to backport security patches from upstream to previous versions. It allows companies like the bank I worked for to keep running completely crappy and obsolete software for an insane amount of time without having to worry too much about security vulnerabilities.
Anyway regarding RedHat contributions, a lot of them are subtle.
A friend of mine works for RedHat. He is a core Python developer and is paid full-time by RedHat to work on Python.
Through this friend, I applied for a position in their company at some point (unfortunately, it didn’t happen ; don’t remember why exactly). The position was in a team dedicated to improve hardware support. They have built an infrastructure to let computer manufacturers (Dell, Lenovo, etc) test the compatibility of their new hardware with Linux/RHEL quickly and automatically.
Part of the technical support they provide to some clients is “making things work”. It may imply fixing bugs or improving drivers and then sending patches upstream.
If I’m not mistaken, they paid Lennart Poettering to work on Systemd and Pulseaudio.
They pay for the development of some infrastructure software like Corosync for instance.
This list is far from exhaustive. I’m sure they have paid for a lot of other things you’re using daily without knowing it.
An eReader that doesn’t lock you into a format doesn’t mean much when ebooks from Google, Kobo and Amazon locks you into their DRM.
But let’s say you happen to strip the drm find a DRM free source of ebooks like on Humble Bundle and want an eReader and are looking for options.
From looking into myself you have a few options depending on the screen.
eInk:
Kobo (Clara 2e/HD)
Android eInk tablet (Onyx Boox/Boyue)
LCD:
Android Tablet (with KO Reader)
iPad (mini)
spyware fire tablet
For ease of use the Kobo is probably the best if you are just looking for something the integrates well with everything. But you will need Calibre on a host PC to store and manage your library since Kobo doesn’t do that for you.
iPad would be my second choice mainly because of the native apps for each drm. If you dont want to use the native apps, tutorials are limited but the Book app can read any ePub well, and you can sync books with iCloud. That said if you don’t want iCloud its a pain in the but todisabled, but iTunes can be used to manually add books to the Book app (or adobe digital editions)
Android is the most flexible but takes more work. A Samsung tablet will be the easiest to buy and run. And each eBook store does have a native app. That said DRM free is where Android shines, KOReader is a fabulous eReader app that supports so much that even the eInk android devices use it. The GUI isn’t the best but its functionality is the best.
This also applies to android eink as well. However do not expect software support more than what’s already installed. For a phone/tablet this would be a killer (have a likebook stuck on Android 4 with a dead play store) however since ebooks are offline the devices are still usable. If you want anything official… Good luck.
Amazon
While you will see a general consensus that Fire Tablets and Kindles should be avoided I have looked into them and this is my two cents on them.
Kindle - are surprising more usable then a Kobo without an account, but the majority of its features are locked out if you don’t have an account. With Calibre you can convert ePubs to Amazon’s format since they are rebadged ePubs and the Kindle will read it even if you are not signed in. However I personally don’t like the amount of work is needed to use it beyond what Amazon wants you to use it for. And especially out side of the USA the lack of Audio book functionality is irritating.
Fire Tablet - is the most useful of the Amazon devices. It can be used without an account with a lot of work and diligence during the checkout. Since its an Android Tablet you can install all but Googles DRM and even then Adobe Digital editions works on it. SD card storage upgrades are a nice bonus too for comics lovers or audiobooks fans. But you will be missing features until you sign in.
And here’s the thing, you may want an Amazon device, logged in since you will have a Serial Number which maybe used to “improve” the usability of your Amazon ebooks on non Amazon devices. Especially when the old gen of tablets go on sale. 😉
I understand where you're coming from when you look at the games with the most marketing, but we also live in the age of Minecraft, not to mention the countless games and genres it inspired. The stuff you're looking for is out there.
Already been mentioned but the The Wizard of Earthsea (Earthsea Cycle) by Ursula K. Le Guin is the only other fantasy that feels “similar” to the Lord of the Rings to me (admittedly I haven’t read a ton of fantasy, but I’ve read a decent amount). I’m reading through the series for the first time, on book three right now, and it’s just great. Feel like it does a nice job of defying my expectations of a “fantasy story” and Le Guin’s writing is beautiful.
Also these books straddle the line between fantasy and sci-fi, but the Broken Earth Series by N. K. Jemisin are amazing and among my favorite books. Actually gave the series a reread after my most recent reread of LotR earlier this year, so I can vouch they are an excellent follow up! These ones have less of an obvious fantasy parallel to LotR but they’re too good for me to not mention!
shrug I play mostly single-player RPGs and similarly story-heavy games, so while the mechanics are different and the graphics much prettier, the structure is the same as it's been for the past 30+ years: Follow the story to get anywhere, or just wander around in your current area if you want to grind.
As others have said: Federation doesn't matter. You don't need your star wars wiki to be compared to your battletech wiki and your pro wrestling wiki
As for avoiding "centralized" hosting companies: It runs the risk of "ruining a good thing", but Github pages are pretty much perfect for this. Public repository where the "mods" are the people who review pull requests. Make a pull request to the page of your choice and the markdown goes up. And because it is just a git repository, migration becomes trivial.
All you guys think fandom type wikis. I am thinking about practical knowledge. A wiki about donkey care can very well need a quick link to a wiki about medicinal plants, and wikis about adjacent practical topics, or think for example car tuners and motorbike tuners - they might like to have different wikis but will have lots of similar or equal topics. Wouldn't a federated wiki mean it can be better protected from attempts of centralized censorship?
The benefit of federation would be shared accounts. Which aren't at all needed.
Like, you mention fandom. They have more or less killed wikis. They were not the norm a decade ago. And it was pretty common to see the trivia section for an actor or actress say "And they were in star wars!! WOOKIEPEDIA BITCH!" as a link
And that is how the internet worked. That site about engine repair? If they felt there was a good site on how to do timings for a transmission or whatever, they would link to that. And they might even contribute on multiple message boards with multiple accounts.
Play indie games. There are still a lot of fun games out there. AAA games are all "live services" nowadays and designed to maximize your play time, not fun.
Yeah, it's a golden age for indie development. I struggle to find AAA games I want to play, but when it comes to games as a whole I have far too many I want to check out thanks to the current vibrancy of the indie scene.
Absolutely. This is how I discovered games like Hollow Knight and Spiritfarer, two of my absolute favorites. Can't bring myself to play very many AAA games outside of some multiplayer ones like Mario Party and Mario Kart.
Is that how we're gonna do this? Roll back all our jokes to 2015 reddit memes? Are we gonna start posting rage comics and complain about 9gag again? I'm not complaining, just trying to understand what's coming up.
RH will just cut them out soon enough, if you believe the trends.
Best have a plan to move on FROM them, though. Look into parallel porting to PCLinuxOS for now, as it’s a VERY similar maintenance routine, and it has a very wide app support window. Their unattended install (ie packer for vagrant or ovirt) is absolute ass, but that’s their achilles heel. Ultimately, that may not be a problem for you.
I’d direct you to the PCL/OS lemmy sub, but I think there is none yet.
People are going to be pedantic about this one, because it’s not ALL games, but what you’re seeing is real. Game design, especially corporate design, has changed to accomplish two things:
Engagement
Accessibility
Games are designed to be playable by as many people as possible for as long as possible. Some would say this is just Western AAA games, but lots of anime games have been doing this nonsense for decades - games with 10 hours of baby’s first JRPG tutorial and 80 hours of grinding and filler. Many of them critically acclaimed games that fans would flog me for if I actually named one of them.
There are indie games that help you escape this, but many take that accessibility-first approach that requires everything to be very structured and corral you toward the right direction.
Again, I think people are going to be dismissive, but you’re right. It’s a tough world out there for someone who just wants to play a game and not be suckered into a live service engagement trap, or ladder system that hides your real MMR to keep you grinding up an imaginary points system. It’s not like the old days when you can just pick something popular, you have to discriminate and carefully judge what you buy now.
I should put “accessibility” in sarcastic quotation marks. Here, it doesn’t mean adding options or features to assist someone with different handicaps or needs. It means making the game so easy that anyone, even a toddler or game journalist, can finish it without having to learn from mistakes or think about what they’re doing.
Particularly with regard to excessive guidance. Varying degrees of “mobile game that makes you click exactly what it says for 30 minutes to prove you played the tutorial.” Those games may be the worst offenders, but less-dramatic hand holding happens in console and PC games too.
That's a sweeping generalization, there are many indie games that are hard, obtuse, hostile or all of the above. Even a walking sim's difficulty is higher than just "beating" it, just like the point of a museum is higher than going through all the rooms and saying you "went"
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