Unpopular opinion maybe: many of the suggestions here are not worth the time.

Buy I’ll add one to the mix: yt-dlp I use a lot to download YouTube videos. Very robust.

Russia is sanctioned for invading Ukraine.

Autumn is always Diablo-season in my family. We’ll play a modded Diablo 1 or 2 together. It’s tradition!

A coworker recently sent me a Word document with edits and comments they had added. When I downloaded & opened it (in Word on Windows!) it told me that it had the edits/comments but it wouldn’t let me see them unless I log in to my Microsoft account and then view it online in the web version of Word. What the actual fuck?

Fuck that. I responded to my coworker and asked them to just send me the edits via email in plain text. I’m not winning popularity contests at work, but what the fuck Microsoft?

If you’re nervous about the switch consider dual-booting. Then you’re not fully committed to the switch & you can have your old Windows system back whenever you want it.

Main steps are:

• Run a defrag on your Windows machine to physically consolidate all your Windows data to one area.
• Break that partition into two (Linux will go one the new empty side)
• Install Linux from a USB as normal, but don’t choose to wipe your drive completely. Choose a manual option instead where you specifically indicate your intended Linux partition from above.
• Optional: Once installation is complete you can set up another partition to hold files which can be available to both OSs.
  • Boot into Linux & define the remaining unused space in the Linux partition as a new NTFS partition & give it a name which makes it obvious what it is (i.e. “sharedspace”)
  • Then boot into Windows and move the existing data you’d like to share between OSs here (work documents, movies, music, etc.)

Some useful links:

• Video on setting up a dual boot
• Howtogeek used to have a great walkthrough for doing this but I’m getting a 404 error when I try to follow the link now :(
• Optional: Setting up Linux symlinks to point to the shared space partition

What’s a “gang input”?

Could switching your user agent help? Try setting yourself to Windows+Chrome.

“Sure, it is not perfect. But, sometimes it is incredibly helpful. No matter what you do with it, unfortunately, it is not an open-source solution.”

This article needed a better ai to write it .

I use Linux at the office. I’m the only employee at my company who does.

I haven’t had many issues collaborating with others using libreoffice while they use MS office. I do keep a Windows VM running for those somewhat rare instances where I need Windows for something though. I also needed to invest quite some time to figure out Linux alternatives for everything (how to use company VPN, how to get MS Teams working, how to connect to network drives, etc).

But so far so good. Been 100% Linux at work for maybe ~1.5 years?

Very good suggestion. Alternativeto.net is a great resource that I return to often. Eased the transition greatly when I originally left the “mainstream apps”.

This is fantastic! Gnome is such a great project! Well done!

This will sound silly, but I didn’t realize that governments support open source like this. But it’s such a good idea! It’s similar to governments funding a park or a road any other public resource. Open source projects fit very nicely there!

https://www.protondb.com/ is an excellent resource. Before you commit to Linux, look up your favorite games there to double check that they’ll work.

My personal experience is basically all games work on Linux. To the point I don’t even look games up on protondb before I buy. The exceptions seem to be multiplayer FPS games which use anti-cheat (but I don’t play those kinds of games).

What’s the “Bandcamp situation”?

This sounds amazing!!! Too bad it’s gone…

Neovim!

deleted by creator

Or… VIM commands! set -o vi!!!

Notpad++ works in Wine. And I used to run JMP 10 with wine too (data plotting software). Neither required Proton though.

I’ve spent quite a lot of time trying to get The Hell mods running on Linux. Finally today I managed it. I wrote up some instructions (below) and provided the special Wine prefix were required to get the game running. Please let me know if you have any issues or have suggestions for improvement!

How to Install Diablo: The Hell 2 or 3 with Lutris

It was very difficult to find a way to run this on Linux - so I wrote this guide to help others who I know have also beat their heads against the table. The trick which finally allowed me to run it was I lucked into building a Wine prefix which is apparently crucially important to running the game. I have no idea what makes this Wine prefix special, but I’ve tested it on four computers (Ubuntu 20.04, 22.04, & Pop!OS) and it works on them all.

Downloads

You need the following four files

1. The mod: TH3_vx.xxxx.zip, and music pack: TH3_music_vx.x.zip

• Download pages: The Hell 2, The Hell 3

2. The Wine prefix: diablo-the-hell-wine-prefix.tar.xz

• Download here

3. Diablo base game data: diabdat.mpq

• Available on the game CD-ROM, a copy from GOG, etc.

Wine setup and install

We’ll create the Wine prefix, install The Hell into that prefix, and then set up Lutris to point to it. This guide will create the prefix at ~/Games/diablo-the-hell, but you can put it elsewhere if you like.

1. Unpack the wine prefix file diablo-the-hell-wine-prefix.tar.xz to ~/Games/diablo-the-hell
2. Create a Windows folder for the game. You can use the UI or the terminal: mkdir ~/Games/diablo-the-hell/drive_c/Program\ Files/diablo-the-hell/
3. Unzip the mod file TH3_vx.xxxx.zip to ~/Games/diablo-the-hell/drive_c/Program Files/diablo-the-hell/
4. Unzip the music file TH3_music_vx.x.zip to ~/Games/diablo-the-hell/drive_c/Program Files/diablo-the-hell/
5. Copy diabdat.mpq to ~/Games/diablo-the-hell/drive_c/Program Files/diablo-the-hell/
6. Open ~/Games/diablo-the-hell/drive_c/Program Files/diablo-the-hell/config.ini and make the following changes:

• set DDraw on Very important!!
• set fps 60 Limits frames per second (optional)
• set startvideo off Skips opening cinematic on startup (optional)
• set screenwidth 1920 Sets resolution width (optional)
• set screenheight 1080 Sets resolution height (optional)

Lutris config

1. Press + to add a new game, and set the following:

• Name: “Diablo - The Hell”
• Runner: Wine

2. Click Game Options, set the following:

• Executable: ~/Games/diablo-the-hell/drive_c/Program Files/diablo-the-hell/TH2.exe (for The Hell 2), or ~/Games/diablo-the-hell/drive_c/Program Files/diablo-the-hell/TH3.exe (for The Hell 3)
• Wine prefix: ~/Games/diablo-the-hell/

3. Click Save
4. Optional, if the game art doesn’t auto-populate:

• Right Click on “Diablo - The Hell” -> Configure
• Next to “Identifier” click Change
• Change text to “diablo”
• Click Apply -> Save
• Click Lutris under “Sources” on the left -> Community Installers
• Search for “diablo”, and wait for results to populate (the search downloads the art)
• Exit the community installer section

Final thoughts

• Important note on running the game: the opening UI menu has a visual bug But with the mouse & arrow keys (& some patience) you can navigate the menus to create a character. Once through the initial screens the game runs perfectly fine.
• The special Wine prefix was built using Bottles, however Bottles is not required to run the game (these instructions use Lutris). If anyone can learn what is special about this prefix which makes the game work please let me know!
• Despite what I’ve read online this mod works fine with DXVK. I don’t recommend disabling DXVK in Lutris when running the mod (contrary to what others have).
• In case anyone asks: the specific Wine version doesn’t seem to matter. I had success with: lutris-GE-Proton8-8, lutris-7.2-2, and soda-7.0-4

Lububtu is another lightweight distro for old devices. I’ve used it before on very old devices and it’s great!