That’s not fair. You can make bootable Linux flash drives in Windows too.

I get the impression in the Star Wars universe that technological advances have slowed to a near halt. All of the tech is really old, and very little has changed for quite some time. A brand new X-wing or lightsaber or landspeeder isn’t all that different from one that was built 50 or even 100s of years ago. That’s one of the reasons why stuff in Star Wars looks so used - as tech doesn’t go obsolete, stuff ends up staying in service until it’s completely worn out and every bit of life has been squeezed from it.

That’s why you don’t really see where the technology comes from - the big innovators, discoveries, etc. are long in the past. Though we do get to occasionally see factories and manufacturing facilities where things are being built.

My first Linux install was Slackware sometime in the late 90’s. I didn’t really use it though, as I never managed to get it working with my dial-up Internet. Stupid winmodems.

The first distribution I actually used was Mandrake. Others I’ve used since then include Suse, Ubuntu, Debian, Mint, Manjaro, and EndeavourOS. I’ve landed on using Manjaro on both my main desktop and laptop, though I have secondary machines running Debian, Slackware, Ubuntu, and EndeavourOS.

I’m not saying that old hardware is useless. I make good use out of old hardware too. I have an old i5 Dell from about 2012 running ZoneMinder, a Phenom II system from around 2009 that I use a Linux server, an even older Core 2 Duo system that’s a glorified MP3 player, and even a very early 2000’s Pentium III that I use for a router (sadly I’m going to have to retire it from these duties soon - it can barely handle a 100 mbps DSL connection, and it’s too old and outdated to run the modern router distributions).

However, for every one of those computers I have another one like it sitting in a closet plus a few extras. All the geeks and tinkerers I know are also swimming in old hardware. If I really wanted to get rid of this stuff, I’d have a hard time giving it away. Economically, this stuff is worthless. The supply greatly exceeds the demand(*)

(*) well, except maybe the Pentium III… it’s old enough now that retro gamers may be interested…

If all she uses the computer for is playing Sims 4, another option is just let her continue to use Windows 10. If she’s running it through Steam she’s probably got another 3-4 years before that stops working.

That’s true, but the supply vastly outstrips the demand. They may make great Linux machines, but the majority of 10-15 year old computers have little to no economic value.

I remember my first game of Stellaris many years ago - I had bought some pack that included some of the DLC out at the time. The crisis was bugged so that even after I beat the crisis and wiped it from the galaxy, the game didn’t recognize that I had done so which left the game unbeatable. This was my first playthrough, no mods or anything like that, and I hit a game-breaking bug.

I played quite a bit of Stellaris as it was (still is?) a fun game, but I am more of a casual gamer and every time I picked the game up again they had changed at least one major mechanic, and there was yet another DLC out if you wanted the full experience. Encountering bugs in a play through was common, and game breaking ones would still pop up from time to time. Finally I just got fed up, especially for the cost of some of the pricier DLC you can buy a game like Factorio which is a much better value.

So at this point I’m done with Paradox. I suppose if I really had the urge to play Stellaris again I’d find something out on the high seas, but there’s enough other, better polished, games out there to keep me busy.

And for all the money you spend on a Paradox game, you end up with something that feels like a half-finished beta.

While we’re at it, let’s also vent about cars and trucks with loud modified exhausts.

I use BiglyBt on Debian. I use BiglyBt because I previously used Vuze, and I used Vuze because I previously used Azureus. I don’t really remember why I went with Azureus originally, but it may have just been because it was popular at that time.

I get the impression most people use other bittorrent clients nowadays, but BiglyBt does what I need it to do. I never really used any of the “advanced” features of Vuze myself, pretty much only using it for torrents.

The sad thing is back in the Windows XP days Microsoft had the focus stealing thing pretty much solved. Well okay - I remember you had to install some of the PowerToys or make some registry edits to get at some of the settings. But once setup pretty much nothing could steal focus away from the current window, which was a welcome change from where we had been. That started to break again in Windows 7, and has gotten worse with every release since then.

Admittedly XFCE isn’t perfect either, but it’s much better behaved than modern Windows.

I see enough weird behavior out of the Dells at work and their USB-C docks so I can believe it. Not detecting the dock, not charging from the dock, ports not working on the dock, randomly insisting the dock isn’t compatible. Even the machines that end up as folding desktops that never get disconnected from their dock end up doing this stuff. I really had no use for a laptop anyway so I finally convinced them to give me a desktop.

Our base is under a tack.

Youtube was founded?

The fun one that is at least a bit forgivable is “I found the solution! I just followed <long dead link to some other site>”. It’s especially fun when you keep finding multiple postings that look hopeful at first but then end up just linking back to the same dead link.

The lesson here is that it can be helpful to future internet searchers (or even your future self) to copy the relevant information or briefly summarize it instead of just dropping a URL. Especially when linking to something like an company’s official support forum or posting as many companies will pull that stuff down eventually.

I don’t know about still maintained, but it’s one of those pieces of software that did one task, did it well, and the one part you might want to update (the encoder) was a plugin. As such, even though it’s not seen any significant update since 2004, it’s really the only CD ripper I’ve ever used. All the way back to some old Pentium machine where ripping and encoding a CD to MP3 took longer than it would to play it. Though the times I’ve needed it in the past few years has dropped off considerably, and if I had to rip a CD today I’d actually have to boot up an old machine that still has an optical drive.

I’d say their search results have been in decline for some time now, though quality has taken a particularly big hit the past year or so. I’d switch to someone else, but I haven’t found a decent alternative yet. As poor as DDG’s results are, they are still a few rungs above the rubbish Google spits out.

As someone who’s grown up in the Midwest, Menards used to be just a hardware store/lumber yard but in the last 15-20 years really has branched out to more than just a hardware store. Hence the home goods, pet supplies, clothing, groceries, appliances, etc in addition to the hardware store/lumber yard bit. In some ways it’s a lot more like Fleet Farm than it is like Home Depot, though Menard’s doesn’t have the farming supplies and tractor parts and stuff like that which can be found at a Fleet Farm.

Since they made this change, the newer and remodeled stores are the ones with the multiple floors since they need all the floor space. But I remember some of the original and smaller stores were also multiple floors (electrical was typically upstairs), but those might be all gone by now. The one we went to when I was a kid wouldn’t be anyway close to being ADA compliant today. That store moved locations and the old building is long gone now.

It’s either that or the baseboard heater right behind the TV stand.

That’s assuming if Biden was to issue such an order as things stand right now.

If Biden really wanted to abuse his newfound powers of immunity, his very first official act would be making sure the supreme court won’t be standing in his way for any subsequent official acts.