In my experience, installing Linux Mint onto just about anything is trivial. IMO, the learning curve is more about using a different operating system than it being pre-installed.

That said, as long as you have a preconfigured distro like Linux Mint I think it’s about as easy to use as Windows or Mac. The main difference is that people are already used to how Windows or Macs work, and have forgotten there’s plenty of jank that they’ve learned to avoid. There are still things Linux could improve on w/r/t new user experience but I think the gap is getting smaller every year.

Feigned enthusiasm/friendliness. “Thanks for catching that problem!”

Whenever I have something to say, someone has already said it. People are always on the ball here.

Wow you weren’t kidding lol. I watched the 2.0 demo and at this timestamp there’s a CSAM-related room title that Matthew was invited to (at the top of the right window). Granted it’s probably someone stream-sniping, but it goes to show that there’s apparently active bad actors trying to interfere.

The angle-bracket spoilers also work on the eternity client, as it’s just forked from some older reddit client. I made a spoiler oopsy recently with it.

FWIW at my job using Slack threads are critical. I’ve never used threads anywhere else though. I think it just depends on the nature of the community.

If you want more psychological horror emotional abuse, try Echo, which gets frequently compared to DDLC. It’s set up like a gay furry visual novel to start with, but it’s more like Night in the Woods where the paths are who you hang out with instead of who you explicitly want to “date”. As the story progresses it gets extremely dark. I could only do one of the paths before I had to look up the others because I’m too much of a chicken.

Fair warning that it’s a slow burn to get to the rough stuff, but the story is solid and it’s humorous on the way so it’s not boring.

Edit: I hadn’t played Echo in a few years so I went to the wiki to refresh myself on the story and it is a lot more tightly-written and lore-heavy than I realized. Each “path” has a different story with a subset of the lore, so you need to play all of them to begin to understand the full picture. There’s also a sequel, a prequel, and a prequel-prequel(?), which all presumably contribute to the lore. I see there’s a giant Let’s Play of most of it, which I think I now feel compelled to watch at some point. It would probably be less spooky to experience it with other people in control.

Edit 2: I strongly recommend you don’t play Carl’s first, solely on the basis of it not being a strong introduction to the game. Carl’s route takes a long time to get into the swing of things, and the story payoff doesn’t entirely make up for it (though I still really loved this path by the end). This was apparently the first path they wrote, and cynically I think that shows a bit. Leo’s path was much more of a page-turner for me throughout and I think it gives a much stronger sample of the unique Echo flavor. Leo’s is the one I played years ago and there’s maybe a dozen moments from this path which will never leave my brain.

I’ve seen people online say to do Carl->Leo->TJ->Jenna->Flynn, and with regards to Carl and Leo I’d say objectively that’s probably the correct order in terms of lore unfolding, but there’s only a couple of small references from Carl’s route that you can notice in Leo’s route, so if you’re on the fence about whether you’re even interested in the game at all I’d do Leo’s first so you can get a proper introduction to the game’s themes.

The previous person was worried that Valve wouldn’t be able to convince “a sizable chunk of users” to move to Linux because all of the software they sell is written for Windows. If we apply a little bit of critical thinking, we realize that Valve has actually already thought of this(!) and applied a different(!) solution that solves the same problem(!) without requiring “everyone to write software for something that’s not the platform nearly all users are running”. If you want to see Valve’s attempt at getting everyone to switch to Linux without using compatibility tools you should look into how successful their Steam Machine campaign was.

They’ve more or less already done that with Proton and DXVK. Nearly all Windows games “just work” on Linux without developers needing to change anything. TBH whenever big studios develop Linux versions of games they’re usually not well-done anyway; for now it’s better if people develop with their comfy Windows tools and let compatibility tools take care of the translation. When the balance shifts to Linux dominance we can start pressing on them to learn how to use Linux SDKs.

Yes, almost certainly.

I really wish GOG was a stronger supporter of Linux. I would move my business over to GOG where possible if so. Right now I heavily value the work that Valve has put into not only making Linux gaming a reality, but the Linux desktop in general as a side-effect.

You keep using the word “animal”, but anthropomorphic cartoons are not real animals. Attraction to real animals is not what being a furry is. (You already know this, you are using the term in a loaded way in order to say one thing but mean another) (this unfortunately does not convince anyone).

There’s nothing inherent to being a furry that demands a “delusional fantasy” (you would know this if you knew what furries are). You call yourself Deceptichum and have a transformers avatar - you may be at risk of being in a “delusional fantasy” if that’s how you want to classify the people with anonymous names and furry avatars!

So where is the part where the “world is a worse place” because of furries?

It is repeatedly hilarious that you pretend that these arguments are any different than the ones homophobes are using. What is the harm, exactly?

Giving up when facing any opposition seems like you never really intended on improving your worldview. You just want to be hateful of things that you don’t understand. The irony of you thinking that those who oppose the LGBT are any different is not lost on me. It’s easy to punch down on things that you don’t personally like, but those are real people that you’re targeting with your malice. I’m not a furry, but I am gay, and as an LGBT member yourself you should understand the power of being an ally to a minority that often gets painted in a bad light. Doubly so when ~80% of furries are LGBTQIA+ in the first place; it’s an LGBT subculture.

That is again not even close to a correct definition, and it is interesting that you think yourself the best person to judge something that you don’t know the first thing about.

Unhealthy designated by you, the puritan police? Do you know that the anti-LGBT people also consider being gay unhealthy? They’re drawing the line in a different place, but still playing the same role you are. Would you recommend shock therapy for furries, or is that just a cure for being gay? If you’re so concerned with how the furry fandom works you should maybe actually research your bigotry and learn that it’s massive, and no two furries express themselves in the same way. Many do not have overlapping interests at all. You are on the fediverse, so I’d suggest you get comfortable with the idea that people are allowed to exist without your permission.

That’s not really how furries work so you might want to work a little harder if you’re going to designate yourself as the puritan police of what people are allowed to like. Let me know when you’ve moved on to how gay sex is unnatural and trans people aren’t real.

Did you watch the video before disagreeing with it? We’ve had the concept of clickbait titles for quite a while now, so it would be silly if someone still hasn’t realized how they work. It unsurprisingly does not say that furry porn is objectively “hotter”, but moreso that it’s objectively healthier, for both participants and emotional state. There are lessons to learn by comparison and study, instead of sticking our heads in the sand and pretending that there are no problems with the porn industry.

“Escape hatch” specifically refers to the speculation that Valve is positioning themselves in a way that they can’t be forced into paying fees for existing on the Windows platform, and that if push comes to shove they can say they only support Linux now. This hasn’t happened yet, but it’s a strategic stance which will likely prevent it from even beginning to happen. This doesn’t have to do with the Steam Deck specifically; it was also part of their intentions with the Steam Machine and etc.

Maybe it needs to be more obvious that there are many ways to do things in Linux, and give new users a short “learning to learn” primer on how things operate differently in Linux-land, and where/how to look online for help. There are always first-boot popups but I imagine most people are conditioned to click out of them without even reading; forcing people to confirm a couple times that they want to skip “very helpful reading” may cut down on people that play the search engine lottery on what information they use for their first steps.

Also semi-related, I hope that mainstream Linux eventually “un-stupids” computers for regular people again. I get the distinct feeling that Microsoft and Apple have, at least somewhat intentionally, imposed ‘learned helplessness’ onto average computer users. “Oh computers are magic no one knows how they work. We are the only wizards that could possibly understand them and we will sell you the solution.” Windows/OSX/iOS/etc are so locked down that people have rightfully learned over time that if they run into a problem, there really is no solution. I suspect that’s permeating into the new user experience on Linux where people will encounter one problem and throw their hands up and say “fucking computers” instead of using basic problem solving to try another approach.