There’s The Serial Port, It’s not really ‘home networks’, but he finds and sets up very early (~80-90s) ISP gear and explains how it works and the history of it. Similar to how Ben Eater uses an ‘old’ 6502 to explain stuff.
The amount of effort that has gone into trying to extract every possible stream dollar makes me just wanna fuck the system. I am happy to pay to watch or play something, but pirating is the only way to get it without being ripped, “this is no longer available” or “buy this other platform and make an account”.
Steam and GoG got alot of my money because I could buy what I actually wanted. I would have happily paid for a soap2day app that allowed me to just select and watch stuff. The amount of 90s cartoons I could show the kids…
I run ubuntu’s server base headless install with a self-curated minimal set of gui packages on top of that (X11, awesome, pulse, thunar) but there’s no reason you couldn’t install kde with wayland. Building the system yourself gets you really far in the anti-bloatware dept, and the breadth of wiki/google/gpt based around Debian/Ubuntu means you can figure just about any issues out. I do this on a ~$200 eBay random old Dell + a 3050 6gb (slot power only).
For lighter gaming I’ll use the Ubuntu PC directly, but for anything heavier I have a win11 PC in the basement that has no other task than to pipe steam over sunshine/moonlight
How many good shows are no longer available, or required a more expensive package to keep? If that hasn’t happened yet, it will soon.
My mom constantly complained about her favorite shows disappearing, so I bought her a ROKU and plugged it into her TV. She canceled her cable two months later.
I use Debian stable because I’m tired of constantly twiddling with breaking stuff, I just want a distro that keeps working without issues and tinkering.
If you still want to learn Linux stuff and debug packages, then go for a bleeding edge distro.
I have tried them all, it’s Navidrome. It’s actually less resources for me to run 4 instances of Navidrome for my different users than it is to use any of the other servers that allow for separate user libraries. Just make sure you alter the folder scan interval, it’s stupidly frequent by default.
Alternatively, if they are happy with their pro-grums, familiar with the interface, and not getting gouged worse than the next cable subscriber — consider letting it rest.
From things like being able to punch in a channel number to having the cable company to call for issues, folks in that generation might really prefer paying.
I’m basing this on my years of experience with a now 60-something and now 80-something. YMMV
Really sorry for your loss. If s so sad. We have a kitty who’s getting up there in years. We had to put down her bestie earlier in the year (check my post history), and she’s the next oldest. We’ve been mentally preparing ourselves ever since to say goodbye to our awesome oldest cat. Again, sorry for your loss.
kbin.life
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