Link for the platform: https://bandwagon.fm/

As much as GOG/CD Projekt have more than their fair share of problems, usually their versions of games work, can be preserved, don’t require as much bloat, launchers included, and usually don’t require 3rd party validation. And like others said, besides Wine and related, and installing through Steam as external games, you can also install stuff very easily through Heroic and the sort. So I’d say it’s the better option indeed.

Afaik most such Reddit alternatives support RSS feeds, so a RSS reader could be an option.

Besides Flatpak, Heroic also has an official AppImage version, if the OP wants to have an even more portable program.

To my knowledge, besides the newest updates not necessarily being as stable, but also, other softwares that interact with it would need time to adapt themselves to be sure they’re as compatible as they were before. In a situation of constant updates, other software would always be on a situation of catching up, whereas updates that take a bit longer to land allow “for the dust to set down”.

About gaming, from my personal experience, it’s overall pretty straight forward. When issues happen, you just got to have patience to read through logs and search up on Google or similar any suspicious parts of the log. Worst part is usually DRM/anticheat, but from what I can gather, usually pretty isolated cases are problematic due to compatibility, usually requiring the devs to go out of their ways to make the DRM incompatible.

As for the distros question, perhaps Linux Mint? It trades off bleeding edge updates for the sake of stability. Just avoid the Debian-based variant of Mint for now as it’s still in beta.

Look for games that are sold DRM free. Those can’t be taken from you by devs or the store after backed up. And usually devs and/or stores that deliberately sell such games also make it clear people can keep their games.

Both tools can be used from the terminal like most Linux programs, which should also give you better control during troubleshooting and also in the rarer cases of having to set up/run some more temperamental games. There are also graphical programs that handle Wine/Proton in a more friendly way, such as Heroic Launcher, Lutris and, specifically for Proton, Steam itself.

About the history rabbit hole, glad I was able to help! ^_ If you’d be interested for more history musics, Radio Tapok and Glittertind have some too, with Radio Tapok singing mainly about Russian history, and Glittertind, iirc, having only one history-oriented album, Evige Asatro.

And about the the article, don’t think I did. But maybe it was about Afrikaans? Iirc, it’s a variant of Dutch. Or maybe it was Macau or Philippines? Memory might be failing me, since it’s been a while since I checked into them, but I vaguely remember reading that they speak variants of Portuguese and Spanish, respectively.

So, you had asked about materials to study in a previous comment. While I found no concrete materials yet, maybe looking for questions related to proficiency level tests could be a good start? Like for example in my case, to study materials oriented at norskprøve (for Norwegian), JLPT (for Japanese), or to practice since I don’t get many chances to speak in Spanish, SIELE’s test.

Found something: Apparently Recochoku occasionally sells music videos, but the store is blocked outside of Japan.

On breaking down lyrics, reminds me of the English version of Sabaton’s “1648” song. During the song’s bridge, it seems to me that the singing becomes strangely deep for something sang in English, but since the main singer is a half Swede/Czech, a Czech name is used in that bridge, and the singer said he some times confuses the English and Swedish lyrics for that album, maybe that’s why.

And on the matter of colonization, that’s would be, for example, why the main Norwegian dialect, bokmål, is so close to Danish, as Norway, from what I could find, was a Dane colony for a few centuries. And in a similar sense, from what I could find, why the dialects in Spain are so strong, since after dictator Franco’s regime fell, a policy was placed to bring back the dialects he tried to erradicate.

Yeah, things like interest of the right holders, contractual limitations and availability of a given media do play a part on getting published on a given platform.

Other than GOG’s withering “movies” section, I only remember of two that aren’t overly niche, DLsite and Fakku (both mainly porn stores). Maybe Itunes’ videos are DRM free, but I haven’t tested and still it would break the “no app” condition since it’s required for payment and download. Also maybe Itchio and Gumroad have something on videos too, since they don’t limit the types of media allowed there, but I have yet to confirm.

GOG tried, but either gave up or wasn’t able to keep supporting it (their communication is bad so hard to pinpoint). Now their movies section is just collecting dust, like Humble Trove was in the months before the old model was axed.

My study materials, or even the methods, aren’t very consistent, and mostly revolve around trying to interpret posts with languages close to the ones I already know here on the fediverse, checking the etymology of terms I’m curious about (Wiktionary’s usually the first option for that), and watching some channels like youtube’s “Glossonauta” (warning: Brazilian Portuguese channel) and “Living Ironically in Europe” (has some interesting videos on linguistics despite the name).

And after the learning curve I faced thanks to Norwegian (it’s close enough to English that it often trapped me where it diverges), I also developed a habit of, when studying a new language, to think not just how it works, but also why. Like how anything can be shortened into a noun depending if the context allows in Portuguese, or how the politeness of a phrase in Japanese often seems proportional to its length, or how sounds often change in Norwegian to keep a good flow to speech, or how a language is influenced by the history or culture of its people.

Two places that are of interest for me recently are Spain and Norway, since both end up being very central for at least understanding somewhat languages nearby. I find it super interesting to understand languages around without studying them specifically, and it also helps drawing an etymological map in my head. =D

Linguistics, data hoarding, and when I’m in the mood or have time, gaming and reading.

There are cases where AppImages aren’t viable indeed, like with programs that require ring 0 access. But limitations exist for all formats, so perhaps another good alternative is having multiple versions of a given program, like downloading the equivalent deb package through apt while also keeping the appimage version. It would bloat the storage for a potential automated configuration, but it should help with ensuring compatibility.

One thing I like to have with me is the AppImage version of programs when possible, since they usually work out of the box. Also helps ensuring I don’t depend on the availability of whatever package manager the system uses.