I use frugal usenet and usenet express for my providers. (for redundancy and speed, you only need one really.)

I use nzbgeek for search.

Both providers mostly saturate my 2.5gbps download speed, and when they don’t, my download automatically uses both of them at once anyway so I always saturate. (I limit speeds during the day so I don’t notice any network lag if an automatic download starts while I’m doing stuff.) I can’t recommend one over the other, they both perform great.

I use sabnzbd to actually download stuff, then the arr stack to trigger and control it.

Sabnzbd did require some extra configuration to saturate my bandwidth, so if you do run into any issues DM me and I can help.

All of this lets me download my publicly available and free Linux ISOs very quickly. Even the biggest ones download in a couple minutes. I still use torrents as a backup, as some stuff makes it to torrents before usenet, but I have usenet set as a higher priority. Both are searched automatically so I don’t miss anything.

I remember when graphics cards were for, you know, graphics.

Anyway, go team red.

Yes yes yes. Ever since I set up my arr stack on my home server, I’ve been blown away by just how easy getting everything I want in minutes is. It’s all automated. It’s actually insane.

I never didn’t own that I was a pirate. That’s not in question here. What’s in question is that the reason I am a pirate is I was tired of paying for and dealing with all of those streaming services, and the believability of having so many streaming services. Just because you don’t see the need doesn’t mean other people don’t.

And you are right, it is excessive. Several hundred dollars per month excessive. But that’s what a large portion of people do. Most people don’t know how to pirate.

Like you said, folks pirate because it is easy. Easier than the alternative. When Netflix was easier than piracy and it was the only streaming service around, I didn’t pirate (except anime but that’s another thing entirely). And when steam came onto the scene, piracy plummeted as well. When companies offer truly convenient options, piracy goes down. That’s not justification, that’s the reason.

Netflix, HBO max, Hulu, peacock, YouTube TV, crunchyroll, Amazon prime video, Disney plus, apple TV plus, paramount plus.

I have had all of those and a couple more. Personally, I’ve only had up to 8 at once, but if you’re asking that other person to prove it, it’s not outside the realm of likelihood.

All of those have exclusives. (especially for sports these days. I have to have 3 services just for football, I’m sure there’s ESPN plus or some shit for people really into sports) Needing all of those just to watch the handful of exclusives you want isn’t uncommon.

Login in this scenario means access. I. E. having 10 different apps and searching through all of them for one show.

I’d like a more Mario sunshine/64 style game. The movement mechanics were sublime in sunshine. That itch hasn’t been scratched since, even by odyssey, which came closer than the galaxy games.

Fascinating, thank you for answering

Do you see these eventually evolving into more a practical medical purpose or convenience/commodity purpose or both?

Also give black mesa a try. It’s a half life remake, very high quality. If you have the time do both.

But you don’t need to download it again. Keep good backup practices and it’s eternal. If you lose it, that’s the same as losing a physical object you bought at a store. Or if you don’t maintain your backup like you would clean and maintain a physical object you bought, it’s your fault you lose it. I can buy a game from GOG right now and keep it and use it until the day I die, then my grandchildren can use it after that.

Yeah I was aware of that. I don’t know if that constitutes the last hope for all gaming, but it’s definitely a positive. Other stores have a much better user experience, and until they rival stores like Steam in functionality and ease of use, actually owning your own game is just a very nice to have feature and nothing more. Of course, I wish all stores did that. I don’t want to have to resort to piracy if my steam library goes poof, but so far I haven’t had to, and piracy is still an ethical choice in that scenario.

My point isn’t that steam is better, but that GOG has a couple nice features and several downsides, and it is by no means changing or saving the industry. They have a long way to go, and I don’t think saving the industry is the end goal for them.

In what way? I know it’s great but I don’t know if I’d call it the last hope for all of gaming. It’s a good store front. Their application has better FOSS alternatives and there are other pretty okay ways to buy games too. I don’t follow them closely. Are they doing anything particular that warrants that description?

Like what?

Maybe it’s because you spell it “disco”

The important questions. I miss aero so much.

One monitor will be fine no matter the resolution.

Hey I will give my anecdotal recent experience. Several months ago I switched to Pop! OS and have had basically no issues. I have an Nvidia GPU and I play a lot of games. I don’t play any games that are blocked by anti cheat (not because I can’t, I just don’t happen to play the few that are blocked).

I spent the first day getting everything signed in, installed, set up and tweaked to how I like it with very minimal terminal usage. Mostly gui and clicking.

Steam+Proton along with lutris makes it easy to play any game for me.

Side note: I have 4 monitors of varying resolution, size, orientation and refresh rate and it hasn’t caused problems other than the initial setup (I used cursr to help with this)

Why in the world would I not want to see downvotes?

Play star citizen. You’ll use that up fast.