Dice maker, gamer nerd, developer, Dolphins fan. Reddit refugee (maybe).

Still fighting the 80s 8-bit wars, one port comparison at a time.

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • It’s interesting how far Linux desktop has progressed recently… I don’t hate Windows, in fact I think it’s a great OS for most purposes. But I happened to try Linux Mint a few years ago in a fit of pique about being excluded from the Win11 upgrade for spurious reasons… and it just kind of stuck.

    Two years later and I am full on Linux now. Don’t even have a Windows partition (though I do keep a VM). And I’m about to buy a new laptop that I intend to buy without an OS, it will never be touched by Windows, there’s just no need.

    For my purposes, Linux does everything now. OS, software, the games I want to play… I never even think about it. Also, everywhere I look, I see Linux - my Steamdeck, my MiSTer, my Pis, my Miyoo Mini. It’s everywhere…




  • Dave@lemmy.worldtoFediverse@lemmy.worldI can't code.
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    1 year ago

    I’ve been coding for 40 years, it’s both my job and my hobby, and I still feel old and out of touch when reading or taking part in coding conversations outside of my sphere :)

    This is not meant to be discouraging - even the smallest amount of coding you could learn will be immensely rewarding - more to say that coding is vast arena with a breadth of complexity that can often feel overwhelming. So don’t be put off when you teach yourself some JavaScript and then still feel adrift in a conversation about C#.

    I don’t have any specifics to recommend, but I would say that you should start small. Don’t aim to write the next Flappy Bird as your first project, or the next Mastodon. Just concentrate on making a web page say “Hello world!” or changing the colour of some text. Back in the 80s, most kids got their first taste of programming by having a computer shop C64 print “Dave is rad!” on an infinite loop! :)

    Good luck!






  • It’s crazy. I’ve tried 100s of games on my Steamdeck, and I can’t think of a single example where one straight up failed to run. The most I’ve had to do is change the Proton version after a bit of Googling. Best of all, it doesn’t feel compromised - it feels like you’re running natively.

    (I should say, I don’t do much online gaming, so I haven’t been thwarted by anti-cheat)

    I realised the other day how ubiquitous Linux has become in my life. I have a Steamdeck, I run Mint on my laptop. I have numerous Pis around the house doing various things. For emulation I have a MiSTerFPGA and a Miyoo Mini Plus. My arcade cab runs RetroPie. It all just kind of sneaked up on me…


  • Leaving Twitter for Mastodon barely had an impact. I was just about done with that whole place, with or without Musk in charge.

    Reddit is different… I still loved using it. I had my subscriptions honed, all my interests represented. I suffered none of the toxicity that others saw. Not sure if that was just because I mostly used smaller, niche-interest subs or because I mostly lurked and seldom posted? It was all friendly, knowledgeable and entertaining, a stream of consciousness that I could dip in to whenever I wanted to.

    So I’m not leaving Reddit because of the experience, but more on principal (both the API kerfuffle and a general aversion to ad-revenue models, which are clearly harmful to society). Principals sadly don’t give me something to read over breakfast…

    I hope Lemmy can become that stream of consciousness in time. I’m trying to do my bit by being an active contributor rather than a lurking grazer.