All the talk the last few months about SteamOS and Bazzite (plus Windows 10’s imminent death) got me to finally let up a Linux dual boot. Choosing a distro is a fairly contrary process with half the review lists being useless “tech media”, half AI buzzword word salad, and half distro stans trying to sell you on their version by pointing out flaws in the others.

I jumped in and am now on Manjaro as I use my computer primarily for gaming and media consumption. I originally planned this because of Manjaro Gaming edition, but Manjaro Gaming edition hasn’t been updated in years so looks like abandonware. Regular Manjaro it is, and add what I need as I go. I hope.

I decided to try Manjaro over PopOS due to enough anecdotal reviews about PopOS stability issues to make me second guess it. I have used Mint on old hardware in the past, and it was ok but I was concerned about gaming support and Nvidia drivers (accidentally jumped from Nvidia to Amd anyway, but that’s another story). Ubuntu has the same issue as PopOS on top of being the corporate distro. I also still have a bad taste from trying Ubuntu years ago and gaming attempts on it sucked.

I do not want to distro hop to find the promised land or just to see what the other grass is like, it’s just not something I am interested in and never have been. As bad as Windows can be, I have usually been able to ride an installation for multiple years barring external incident. I want to primarily sit down and use my computer. Reinstalls should be reserved for hardware refreshes and new builds.

If SteamOS can eventually simplify the decision paralysis involved in making the jump to Linux, it is going to be an absolute win. As a hard core techie with decades of experience building PCs, if I had this much trouble making the switch then I expect an even worse experience for the regular Joe.

The Warhammer tide games, either Vermintide 2 or Darktide. Best melee combat in a video game, relatively short rounds, and super satisfying to just genocide some heretic/xeno hordes for the Emperor/Sigmar.

You just alerted me to the existence of Orcs Must Die 3, and I am going to check it out after absolutely loving the first 2.

All excellent recommendations, and I’ll triple down on the Vermintide 2 recommendation. One of the best bang for buck indi games out there. Darktide has similarly hit a state where I can recommend it as well finally, even if it took an embarrassingly long time to get to a Vermintide 2 level of playability. If you like the -tide games, give it a go.

Behind the scenes Bungie decided they didn’t want to be a single franchise studio and sunk all the money from Destiny 2 into a bunch of failed projects. Something like 8 new IPs they tried to get off the ground and none have seen the light of day. Marathon or whatever it might be called now might get a release, but no guarantees. Basically squandered all the money and good will for the Destiny franchise trying to become the next Activision or EA and committed corporate suicide.

Add the new massively expensive campuses while having a mostly remote workforce, and the CEO buying millions of dollars in classic cars to display, and you have this worst timeline we live in. Expect Sony to replace the board and completely take over the studio soon.

Sunsetting killed the game for me too, I wasn’t able to replace ever piece of gear to keep my stat split correct and there were still entire element and weapon types missing entirely a year after it went into effect. I took a break, then a longer break, then never went back because I felt like I missed too much.

I heard they fully un-sunset everything they had sunset, but at this point I have zero desire to play the game anymore. This is after having played thousands of hours and having D2 as the only game I played for much of that time. As a 50/50 PVE and PVP player, the slow death of PVP and the removal of half the raids kills the game for me.

I’ve been wanting that since 1994. Jawsome!

The Virtual Boy was released in 1995. It wasn’t wildly successful, but was roughly the start of home VR gaming. There were many VR arcade games and attractions after that in the intervening years until the Oculus DK1 and “modern” VR in 2010. That’s ignoring the really early VR stuff in the 70s and 80s. Just because we have had major breakthroughs in the last 14 years with consumer cost doesn’t mean time starts there.

Palmer Luckey didn’t invent VR at 16 in his garage out of whole cloth without the decades of tangible growth and development done in the prior 2-3 decades. His breakthroughs in latency paved the way for the the current renaissance in consumer home VR, not minimizing his contributions, but VR didn’t start with him, nor Valve, nor HTC.