Spring update...

 I am considering purchasing new parts to build a new PC.  I've been on a Mac (M1) and Linux (first gen thread ripper and Nvidia graphics card) for many years now.  One of the reasons I am considering it is simply, Windows 11.  Now, I am not saying I am fond of Windows but, the truth is all my old games were really written FOR windows.   I haven't played Skyrim in years.  I can play a good number of games on Linux thanks to steam and thanks to Glorious Eggroll and his versions of Proton.

On the Mac, I am much more limited.  The M1 architecture is still not being accepted for most gaming companies and while Apple has done some wonderful work with emulation... well... you know.

SO!  I am considering a new build, even though I cannot REALLY afford it.  The current build I have spec'ed out is around 1800.00 USD.  And it will be the first build I've done with an Intel CPU in about a decade.

The other thing is two of the games I DO play on my mac and cannot currently get installed (easily) on my linux box are Star Stable Online and Diablo III.  They would run perfectly on Windows.

Not to mention, thinking Diablo IV might work on the Mac as well, I purchased it early.  But they have no plans on making it compatible with Mac OS or Linux so I am again, stuck with a pricey game I cannot play.  (Hey, I know, that is MY fault, not the game company's fault).

Anyway, that's my update!

Still using Fedora with KDE

It has been running very smoothly for the most part.  I have not encountered any "update woes" as I have in the past with Fedora.  So far so good.  Able to play Starstable and Diablo 3 very nicely.  And many Steam titles work as well with Photon turned on.

I still want to poke around and try other things.  I will give it a short rest though.  Can't constantly reconfigure my system.  :)  But I do keep all documents, music, video, pictures and some other items on shared drives which I simply mount the way I want them whenever I spin up a new distro.

Anyway, just a quick update.

Brief nightmare

So in June, the creators of one of my favorite games decided to create a new launcher, presumably more secure or something to that effect.

Well, the new launcher did not work with WINE.  I tried to install Windows in a virtual machine but could not get the accelerated graphics and such to actually work, in fact could not even install 64 bit version of Windows.

So I bemoaned my fate loudly and... wiped linux and installed Windows 10.

I am not a Windows 10 hater.  I like most operating systems.  But I really prefer my linux.  For a week or so I worked with Windows... then I decided to dual boot.  My install setup was not ideal so I needed to start from scratch.  It took me several tries (mostly because I did not want to read "the instructions" and just plowed ahead aimlessly).  On the third or fourth try, I successfully installed Windows followed by Pop!_OS and I am happy.

The downside is that if I want to play StarStableOnline I need to reboot into Windows.  Still it could be worse!

Self promotion

I have a youtube channel where I post up videos of a game our whole family plays, put to music.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSrCwyF4Wzxwb1vAPScL-kqS-l3JooZV_

Tuishimi's Star Stable Youtube Channel

Elementary OS

Well, despite my attachment to Steam on Windows, I decided to shift back to Linux.  I did a little research and, while I appreciate the efficiency of Slack, Arch or some other distro, I went with a little more flash and simplicity at the same time.

Elementary OS is an Ubuntu-based distribution.  It has a strong following and a solid development community (I donated money for the download to help keep that alive).

Elementary OS is designed to look somewhat like Mac OS X, but not quite... it borrows elements.

It had been a few years since I had last used Linux of any flavor (or BSD for that matter) but so far it has been relatively painless.  The download was quick, and I was able to push the ISO onto a small USB stick, boot into it and kick off the installation process.

Installation was simple but I wish they had a simpler process for allocating mount points; I have a pretty messed up set up, but that is all on me, not the fault of the distro.  Anyway, after several clicks the installation process plowed through and the system rebooted, I pulled out the USB stick and I had a full blown version of Elementary up and running on my PC.

The next part that took most of the day was getting it configured (read app installs) to the way I wanted it.  This included installing Wine/PlayOnLinux so I could install my favorite games:  Diablo 3 and Star Stable Online.  Believe it or not it was pretty painless and I have both games running... and in fact, SSO runs BETTER in Wine than it did on Windows 10 with all UI options checked.  Weird.  Diablo 3 is a little stuttery at times, but fully playable.

I still need to do some tweaking so I can record and such... but at the time I am writing this I am listening to Pandora, texting my daughter on Skype and earlier created a presentation for a Sunday school class...  pretty much anything I need or want to do on my PC is here... and in fact the development environment is better than Windows.

Well that is it for me for now.  I will try to update soon.