ShadowZone

GenXer here. I started drinking due to social pressure almost 30 years ago. I basically completely stopped already before covid. My wife is the same. On occasion one or two drinks when going out, but we don’t have anything at home. My cousin (similar age) and her husband went completely dry.

I think it’s more of an awareness of the health risks (also huge “don’t drink and drive” campaigns when I was reaching drinking age), add to that if we’re honest it doesn’t really taste that good, enduring a hangover is nothing to look forward to and also (at least in my case) I am fed up with how our society still looks weird at people that just don’t want to drink. Screw everyone who asks two or three times if someone says they want a non-alcoholic beverage or, even worse, makes stupid jokes, mostly to feel better about their own addiction.

Sorry got a bit heated at the end. My son recently reached legal drinking age, does not want to drink and is being pressured by peers to start drinking. Luckily he is mentally strong enough to tell them to go suck a duck.

Even on Linux, I don’t want to pay for software subscriptions anymore.

Reasonably well. I get some weird glitches where UI elements disappear for a fraction of a second, but only on my main PC and not the laptop. So probably some GPU driver thing.

As a daily driver for “normies”, Linux is fine. Browser, email client, office apps, all good. I can use Prusa Slicer and Blender, which covers all my 3D printing needs.

There is no real image editor anywhere close to Photoshop, and no, GiMP isn’t it. I have to use Affinity via wine. It works but I’d prefer a native solution. I need ML object recognition, layers with layer effects (stroke outline, drop shadow), easy text Input and manipulation (font size, height, width etc). Affinity can do it. Photoshop does it better, but I am no longer willing to pay Adobe. Screw subscription software.

For my RAW images, I am using Rawtherapee which I am much more comfortable with than with Darktable.

Audio is a mess. To have low latency in my DAW (Reaper Linux Version), I have to launch it via the command line using pw-jack reaper, otherwise it won’t recognize the audio device or uses ALSA or Pulseaudio both of which have way more latency than JACK. I have bought a couple of VST plugins on Windows, some work via yabridge and again wine, some work in part but have no UI. others don’t work at all and I am out of ideas.

For video editing, I use Davinci Resolve Studio (which I paid for), but the experience on Linux lacks behind Windows and it doesn’t support the same codecs (no AAC audio, making a lot of my archive footage useless unless I transcode everything).

My Framework 13 (AMD 7040) laptop has a fingerprint scanner. No dice getting it to work (I’m running CachyOS). Davinci Resolve refuses to work on the AMD integrated GPU (experience above is from desktop PC with Nvidia GPU).

And the session saving feature in KDE Plasma on CachyOS is inconsistent. I set it to only save a session when actively telling to do so, I don’t do it and it still opens up 5 apps I didn’t even have open last time.

Steam doesn’t want to autostart minimized, it goes front and center on boot. Annoying.

Those are my current gripes as a Linux user. Otherwise, all peachy.

Edit: well not exactly. My desktop PC has a Gigabyte motherboard and in order to recognize the fans attached to it I had to grab an I87 community made driver. Temp sensors etc are also reporting less to Linux than to Windows (if you compare what you can read out in HWinfo to GNOME Vitals or the like, it’s laughably little).

I have used Parsec for remote desktop. They have a Linux client but it doesn’t support hosting. Which sucks. Will look for another remote desktop solution.

I have a DJI drone. Haven’t yet tried running DJI Assistant to do firmware updates etc. Might go well might be horrible. Anyone with experience here?

I use Backblaze on my Windows install for off site backup purposes. They don’t have a Linux client for the consumer tier and I don’t want to pay enterprise grade money as a consumer. Maybe via wine? Need to find out.

Overall the main problem with Linux is that almost nothing outside of a very small set of use cases works without hours, day, weeks of tinkering. Which would be fine for one or two things, but it’s just spoo much.

Not my experience, sorry. I have bought Reaper years ago and the Windows experience was flawless. In order to even get audio, I need to launch Reaper via terminal using “pw-jack reaper” otherwise I have either garbage audio or too much latency.

My VST plugins (iZotope RX 11, iZotope VEA, Arturia Keylab, Bias FX) wouldn’t run via yabridge, haven’t figured out why yet.

I assume it has something to do with activating licenses or whatever crap like that. The entire “pro audio” industry and their overbearing licensing and “security” schemes can go suck a duck. For real.

One more vote for Immich. While I don’t like how it’s not easy to create albums from existing folder structures out of the box, the search and face recognition is amazing for a free self hosted app.

My YouTube channel. Been at it for 10 years, haven’t even broken through the 100,000 subscribers ceiling yet. But it’s fun, so I keep doing it.

Can we please stop calling someone “being worth” x amount of money? It’s disgusting on a fundamental level.

No regrets. Polestar 2 MY22 long range AWD. Ride is a lot harsher than in the BMW i4 for instance (family member has one). But overall I wouldn’t want to switch.

“Net new logos” was an actual term used in the company I previously worked for.

I’ve been using Backblaze long before it showed up in YouTube ads. It’s a great product.

I admit it: I’m a lurker 99% of the time. I do partake in the up- and downvoting though.