Can you please elaborate on the security layer that flatpak adds? Some commentators here suggest Flathub is not secure.

Amen, exactly.

Agreeing about Firefox, Linux and Twitter. Like, seriously agreeing, without sarcasm.

Finally Windows users have a legit reason to use the command line! /s

Hopefully you are right.

Yes, that’s what I meant. I take courses using Firefox in desktop mode. The Unity course was one of them.

Yep. I listened to a course on Coursera about Unity game development (alas, Unity), and installed Unity Hub and the engine, and made actual (simple) games on the Deck it self using a keyboard and TV. Then I was able to test play the said games on the Deck right there. Here are the links to the games if you care to check them out:

• https://moormaan.itch.io/solar-system-project-for-the-coursera-unity-course
• https://moormaan.itch.io/2d-shooter-for-coursera

I was on a decade-and-a-half gaming hiatus (job, kids, the usual) until we got the Nintendo Switch early in the pandemic (and it was a saviour for the whole family). When the Steam Deck was announced, I hesitated a day or two (this probably pushed me three to four months in the delivery queue), but eventually realized that this is the device I’ve been waiting for my whole life (a Linux-based gaming hand held which can also be used as a general purpose computer) and ordered it. I had a dormant Steam account with only Civilization V in it (my wife got it for me on DVD when it came out, and that’s when I made the account). Since then, I bought >200 games and >100 DLCs (I started playing some of the lighter ones on my under-powered Linux laptop before the Deck arrived and continued on the Deck using cloud saves), finished multiple games, and felt sleep depraved for months.

Currently, me and my wife are playing Divinity 2 in split screen mode on the big TV. I also use the Deck for online courses, responding to emails, writing documents, surfing, etc. I created a desktop controls binding for handheld desktop mode usage which allows me to change zoom and brightness, bring up the keyboard easily, copy and paste, open the start menu, alt-tab between windows and go in and out of full screen mode etc. all with one or two motions of the controls. For example, I mapped swiping up and down on the left touchpad to mouse wheel up and down, and swiping left and right on it to SHIFT+mouse wheel up and down, allowing me to scroll in all directions using my left thumb. This allows me to use it for reading illustrated books where I need to zoom in and out and scroll across the page.

Steam Deck is a game changer in so many ways.

We have both. Kids play on the Switch, parents play on the Deck. Also, Switch is a great, hassle free, family friendly, small & light, cheap and versatile gaming console. Deck is awesome and let’s not forget Windows free, it’s a god send (thank you Valve). I think they are both great, and while there’s overlap of course, they also aim at different markets.

If your wife likes gaming, you can play co-op on the said TV! The dock is somewhat expensive, but any USB C hub with power in and HDMI out will do. We have a thin keyboard with the mouse pad built in and two blue tooth controllers - voila! For optimal play on large screens, you should run it in Desktop mode. For gaming, I still use the Big Picture mode for Steam to be able to navigate to games with the controller, but with the keyboard and mouse, you can use it for anything really. I’ve responded to school emails, done online courses, even built small games in Unity (did a course on it), all from the comfort of my armchair and big TV screen.

Steam Deck is so versatile, you’ll love it!

We should. Yes please.

I agree, that’s what I’m saying. I used “this” ambiguously, I just realized. I edited “this” to “this comment”, and added another clarifying sentence before the quote.

Here’s an excerpt from the older article which isn’t paywalled, that I linked in my comment (before the edit):

"Constructed more than 20 years ago, the turbines at the small Keyenberg wind park are less powerful than modern equivalents, with each producing about 1MW of energy per hour at a wind speed of 15 metres per second, roughly a sixth of the output of a more efficient state of the art turbine.

Since windfarms in Germany are no longer eligible for subsidies after 20 years in operation, the park would probably have been “repowered” with new technology or wound down even if it were not for the nearby mine.

Nonetheless, North-Rhine Westphalia’s ministry for economic and energy affairs on Monday urged RWE to abort its plans to dismantle the windfarm.

“In the current situation, all potential for the use of renewable energy should be exhausted as much as possible and existing turbines should be in operation for as long as possible,” a spokesperson said."

The title, paired with an expensive paywall and the fact that the quote below is the only part visible for free would certainly suggest that this comment is true.

Here’s the un-paywalled article intro:

"German energy giant RWE has begun dismantling a wind farm to make way for a further expansion of an open-pit lignite coal mine in the western region of North Rhine Westphalia.

One wind turbine has already been dismantled, with a further seven scheduled for removal to excavate an additional 15m to 20m tonnes of so-called ‘brown’ coal, the most polluting energy source."

I think this article from last year is relevant to this story: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/26/german-windfarm-coalmine-keyenberg-turbines-climate

I hear you 😁. For whatever reason I stuck with the Vim tutorial and did it a few times over the years. Now I’m using the IdeaVIM extension in IntelliJ - that mode system is just sooo powerful. It has a horrible learning curve, yes, but if you manage to stick with it, it pays huge dividends. I probably know, like, 18% of all commands, and it completely changed how I edit files (mostly for coding, but also text).

Wow, it looked like a screen grab from a text based adventure game or something 😂

Is this picture from a game? Looks like something I might like to play.

Thanks for the pointers! Is there a way to legally obtain ROMs for these games if I don’t own actual physical games? I don’t even know if WII could have games delivered online, or it only used physical cartridges.

Can you please describe how you made Link’s Awakening run on the Deck? Is it the new, remastered version that is currently available for the Switch? I’m interested in getting Twilight Princess for the Deck somehow…

For viewing and commenting on this post, reading books and PDFs, doing Coursera courses, playing Minecraft Java edition…

Here’s a nice (non-paywalled) breakdown of the original article and reactions to it. I just managed to get the first few sentences of the WSJ thing (despite disabling Javascript), but between the article and the breakdown, it seems the author picked a baity title to an otherwise uncontroversial (if lacking) analysis of food price inflation.