Well there is the Stop Killing Games initiative started by Ross Scott and supported by the Pirate Parties. If they succeed, companies selling games in recent years will be required to either keep supporting their game or to make it available in a way so that others can ensure its continued support.

When this is achieved the step to free older games is small.

If you live in Europe you have the chance to support the movement by vote in the upcoming elections.

Maybe Kolibri OS?

Its an amazing project, booting from a single floppy disk into a full graphical OS with multiple tools. And that on PCs with almost no RAM.

I sometimes use it to backup ancient PCs.

Example from Networking Hardware:

Cisco has had multiple cases where they likely built exploits for Government spyware into their devices. And they have far to many vulnerabilities which are found. This leaves two options: Either their security is so bad that intelligence always has backdoors ready and governments shouldn’t use them, or at least some are backdoors built in accordance to NSA demands and goverments shouldn’t use them. https://thehackernews.com/2016/08/nsa-hack-exploit.html?m=1

On the other hand Huawei, far less security issues, even offered to open their code for checking of backdoors and to let goverments check all updates. They are shunned by western governments and partially even banned.

Ivanti Connect Secure VPN

So its spreading via a closed source VPN software. Why should you even use that when there is great VPN software available on Linux which works reliable for decades?

Well of course you miss zero trust connections, multi-cloud readiness, award‑winning security and proven secure corporate access …

The point is, they already did. 99% of webservers run Linux. They are all out in the open and hackers love to get their hand on them as they are likely to have mailservers on them and they have a public IP so they can always be reached.

And most of them do not get hacked. And those that do mostly get hacked due to bad passwords or bad website code. I administer one and see the thousands of attacks running up against it daily (most are just attempts to log in with basic credentials). And of course I see the daily influx of updates from Linux.

If a new security flaw is seen, its often quite difficult to use. And with Linux somebody makes a patch before simple tool for hackers are out. With Microsoft products you wait till the next patch day, in the best case critical exploited bugs are patched in days. Also security flaws in closed source products are often easier to exploit and tools to use them are available fast. (Such flaws are often already discovered in open source products by third eyes and testers before they make it to production systems.)

Of course there are exceptions to the rule, like heartbleed. This was an easy to exploit flaw in an often used Linux service and it caused a big turmoil because many where to slow to patch their systems.

Also of course if Linux gets more popular on the desktop more software will be an attractive target for malicious actors and some software may get popular before many people take a look at the source code. But the situation will still be much better compared to closed source systems.

(Also of course more closed source software will be made for Linux then)

An SSD really is the solution. You believe it just speeds up boot time, but it does speed up nearly everything else too.

Your Webpage? Your Browser loads it, stores new data into the cache and stalls while waiting for the HDD. Or it knows elements are in the cache and stalls waiting for them.

You click on the application menu? You PC tries to load 20 icons, tiny amounts of data an SSD has ready in a microsecond. Your HDD takes a full second because the seek between the 20 places where the icons are on the HDD takes so long.

I have some very old PCs I manage (mainly for relatives) and one couple uses a Core 2 Duo E6400 which should be quite similar to your PC. This PC is very usable for daily browsing with Ubuntu 22.04, boot time is about 25 seconds, then about 10 seconds to load up ebay. (I admit I optimized boot time quite a bit) The other PC they have is even slower than that, I just do not remember the exact CPU right now. That one is even used for old browser games similar to candy crush.

Of course it is not what I would use given the choice. I want to compile code in seconds, watch videos in glorious 4k and play a 3D game from time to time. But for them it works perfectly well, so well that they deny my offers to upgrade them

I upgraded my PC in Oktober with a RX 7600, enough for older games, silent and efficient. I really looked forward to enjoy Witcher 3 at highest settings. A few days later rumors about Witcher 3 Next Gen. How dare they! Now I can’t push every single slider to max and enjoy 120fps!

In all seriousness: The update is great of course and I applaud CD Project Red for releasing it free. Besides the better graphics (Which even the 7600 can handle at Full HD without high RT settings) they also included tons of fixes and quality of live improvements the community made over the time. I can really recommend it.

I even bought it at full price years before I played it because I enjoyed Witcher 2 so much and was certain they will make a good game.

Einstein didn’t say that religion was needed for science. Cosmic religion is not a good term because any reader will associate it with our umbrella term religion while he defined something else. Writing it without context is manipulating any reader who does not have/take the time to read up on the term.

He firmly stated that he does not belief in any religion associated with any god or gods like all the religions OP probably means. Even going so far as calling such beliefs expression and product of human weaknesses.

He also wrote “the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.” And “I, like yourself, I am predominantly critical concerning the activities, and especially the political activities, through history of the official clergy.” So he does se a conflict between religion like OP means and science. He only once made a statement in support of the traditional religions when he said he was positively surprised that the christian church opposed the Nazi regime. He later backtracked on this because the church supported the Nazis partially during the further years of the war.

He still stated he is no Atheist because he believes in the existence and governance of the fundamental laws of nature and what he sometimes called religion he defined as the aspiration to pursue the research on these fundamental laws.

The thing is: Asus phone where never small.

I still use my Nokia N9 from 2012 daily as second phone. It has 117 x 61 x 12 mm. The Asus Zenfone 8 has 148 x 69 x 9 mm. Thats 25% higher (And also 25% heavier)

If you like big screens thats fine. There are plenty of offers for you and the market caters to you. I like small screens and device, because I tend to use complex Apps which require me clicking all over the screen. This is a hassle even with the Pixel 5 which I now got to use apps required (Banking, and so on) I have no options to buy such a device for year. Yes there are very few sometimes popping up like the Unihertz Jelly Star Star, but they all lacked features I consider essential.

(In this case update support, no OLED and Android apps can not deal with the low resolution display) Other features I miss but by now do not even dare to dream of: Real Multitasking, ability to fully customize the lock screen and menus (e.g. to red fonts for stargazing), weeks of standby time in flight mode and a single week in GSM mode, ability to work fine in 2G too because no copious amounts of data are sent in the background without asking you.

So yes there are plenty of options for the standard user, all with minimal differences. But for users like there are many in this thread, there are none.

I had great experiences with old games on Linux. Mostly they work better than on a modern Windows system. For Example Neverwinter Nights 2. Under Windows movement is jittery on fast CPUs. There is a community patch for that thankfully. Under Linux it just works with WINE (the patch is advisable for other reasons there too). Also loading times are blazingly fast under WINE and Linux. On my HDD PC 1 second vs 50 on Windows. Now with a NVME SSD, Windows also only takes 2 seconds.

Of course Wine/Proton is not perfect, I still have a dualboot system for that. But I boot to Windows very rarely these days. When I do I am hit with so many slow updates, that I don’t get to my game. Maybe I should stop doing them and cut of its network access.

Really old games tend to be more difficult. For a relative I set up a VM with Win98 as the performance impact won’t hurt the games, some even benefit. (I believe the games where Safecracker and Theme Park) Even older than that DosBox and ScummVM work perfectly.

Lenovo IdeaPad Pro 5 Gen 8 Notebook comes with a MEDIATEK MT7922. Windows 11 does not want to install unless you circumvent the requirement for Internet or supply it with a manually downloaded driver.

Linux? Just works.

I can’t speak for the Nvidia issue. (Only that it is widely know that Nvidia actively works against Open source and only just has begun changing their stance, so Nvidia support is still poor on Linux. Their proprietary drivers aren’t great either. I stick to AMD since using Linux, they work great out of the box)

But the audio issue baffles me. Under Kubuntu with KDE I just klick on the Loudspeaker in the systray and choose the device. It even remembers it over unplugging and replugging devices.

Rgarding openssl: Thats the price you pay for freedom, you can change the system how you want, even into non working states ^^ BTW: You can repair such mistakes with a LiveCD even major ones like this.

It seems you have not read my post or the study in detail.

Indeed it seems that cloth masks are not very or even not effective. But, and that’s a big but: FFP2/KN95 Masks seem to be quite effective.

The Cochrane study authors themselves note the low confidence they have in their results. The sample size is quite small (e.g. only 8407 people in summary over all studies they evaluated for FFP2 masks) They even got the result that handwashing has no benefits.

In Contrast the studies in the metastudy I linked work with far larger sample sizes.

I won’t respond anymore after this comment as you seem agitated and resort to personal attacks which won’t lead to a productive discussion. I hope you find a calmer moment to consider the evidence studies have gathered and overthink your position.

I don’t understand people downvoting without correcting. This way this wrong information stands here, seemingly scientifically sound as a study is linked, contradicted only by votes and words.

Thank you @[email protected] for looking at the study and noting its limits here.

If somebody wants to check for himself I suggest to take a look at https://www.futuremedicine.com/doi/full/10.2217/fvl-2021-0032 A study which looks at many different studies and metastudies.

To summarize:

• Some studies exist that measured no benefits of masks under certain circumstances. E.g. only evaluating complete protection. But few also seem to be sound at first glance. E.g. one looking at effects of a mask requirement in Bexar County, TX.
• Many of the negative result studies focus on cloth face masks, one even suggesting they increase risk.
• Many studies and metastudies with generally more sound methods suggest mask are effective at preventing spread and limiting mortality.

Conclusion: Masks, excluding simple cloth masks, are likely quite effective. More research is needed.

Well only due to a short cold wave. Now they have 16-30°C in Winter which is 1-7°C above the usual temperatures for this time of the year. https://www.ventusky.com/?p=-19.8;24.3;3&l=temperature-anomaly-2m