

Well, that’s just water under the fridge.
Well, that’s just water under the fridge.
I don’t know how I’ve lived this far into my life without using a random year generator. So often, I want to think of a random year yet the thought exercise is too encumbering.
It is shitty in many ways. First, I view videogames as art (because they are art) and taking out the human element just makes them a product created by a machine. Coding is a form of human expression. I understand the capitalist urge not to pay people, but replacing people with AI is a moral wrong. Microsoft, for example, after purchasing many studios over the past few years, has fired over 15,000 people in 2025 alone, despite making record profits and charging us more for new games.
I would be terrified if I were a full-time coder. Like many other occupations, programming jobs are in jeopardy. I would be considering other fields or specializations because these corporations plan to replace them all. Google already is saying that more 25% of their code is written by ai. That will only increase and bleed over to game development.
Second, by forcing the development timeline by basically any means necessary, you are creating an inferior product. Just throwing a game in early access because it isn’t complete isn’t a good solution and there are hundreds of games currently in that status. Personally, I avoid anything that is early access, with a few exceptions. I get the point in the article about making games with lesser graphics, which I am fine with if the project warrants it, but it feels like these companies don’t care what the product is as long as it sells. They are going to create ai-slop and charge us more for it. This is how the AAA industry dies.
Sources:
https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/29/24282757/google-new-code-generated-ai-q3-2024
The enshittification of videogames.
Instead of “the Oregon Trail generation” we should be called the “I read the damn manual” generation.
What you are experiencing is called a learning curve. Don’t let it get you angry, learn from it. NVIDIA is known to be problematic for Linux users (I have had my share of issues with my 2080 Ti) but once it is setup it is problem free. Librewolf is known to be one of the chunkier options, but 3gb really isn’t that much for modern systems (especially if you have 16 or 32gb of memory). I would personally take Librewolf’s privacy features over closed-source Vivaldi any day. Linux overall is much more efficient than Windows and I would bet that your system idle memory usage with nothing open is lower than it was with Windows.
I’m not sure why people are down voting this. I agree 100%. The most techie people I have ever known are part of what you called “the Oregon Trail generation” (I love this term).
As one of the older Millennials (1982), I can say that there is a lot of truth to this meme.
That is an older laptop. I run an even older HP laptop on Arch that still feels zippy, even compared to my gaming desktop pc. One thing to remember is POP_OS! is designed for newer computers as it is built by a company who sells them. There are known issues with POP_OS! and Mesa drivers. The Mesa driver might not be efficiently handling the graphical demands of the default POP_OS! desktop. I’m not suggesting to switch your distro, just keep in mind going forward that it is made for newer systems.
Some further troubleshooting you can try:
sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade
in the terminal .htop
, btop
or the built-in system monitor to see if the CPU or RAM is maxing out when opening a program.Welcome to the GNU/Linux family! Your desktop setup is lovely! I highly approve of the use of Librewolf. Pop_OS! is a great choice choice for a new GNU/Linux user. As for your system feeling slower, you might be missing something. Can you share some of the basic specs, like cpu/ram and/or brand/model of the laptop? What feels slow, the internet or the actual loading/power of the system?
Thunderbird on Linux and FairEmail on Android. I don’t like Thunderbird’s opt-out telemetry, I just haven’t found something that works better for me at the moment on Linux. I have zero complaints about FairEmail. I like Thunderbird’s fast and frequent updates, FairEmail’s respect for privacy. I think both have the features I want. I just check my email on either when it is most convenient.
I don’t think people understand just how much power it would’ve consumed. 600MW is about the equivalent of 180,000 homes. It would also use massive amounts of water. In the desert. In Arizona. These things should not exist anywhere, but especially in places with very limited water.
While I get what you’re saying, it is technically legal in the United States under an exception in the 13th amendment as punishment for a crime.
See more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labor_in_the_United_States
I bought a used Pixel 6 (for about $120 on Swappa) and installed GrapheneOS. I understand the irony of deGoogling and using a Pixel phone. From what I understand, the core reason GrapheneOS relies on Pixel phones is because they offer hardware security features (like the Titan M chip), an unlockable and re-lockable bootloader, and guaranteed long-term updates.
My favorite part of my phone (besides the ultimate security and privacy) is that my only “app store” (besides the GrapheneOS store) is Obtainium. There is nothing on F-Droid or Google Play that I can’t find (that I use/need) with Obtainium and IronFox. If I absolutely need to access something that requires proprietary or unwanted applications, I use IronFox to browse the website (my bank for instance). I have complete control over what my phone does and I only have FOSS software installed. It is a lot more work than I think most people would be willing to do, but it is important to me, and I think it is the only way (for me, this is subjective) to be truly free of Google or Apple and still use a smart phone.
Other “privacy” ROMS still communicate with Google in some way. The other ROMS are moving in the right direction, though. /e/OS, for instance, switched to AOSP instead of LineageOS, but it uses microG. By its very nature, microG communicates with Google, so that is not something I am interested in using. Some of the GNU/Linux mobile projects are showing promise (check out postmarketOS ), but they are a ways away from actually being reasonably usable on a newer everyday main device.
In conclusion, yes, just end it all. The best I can come up with is to deGoogle and reject all big-tech.
Does a bear shit on the pope?