I think it’s probably more a situation where they are not a good fit for each other anymore. The D&D license has value and Hasbro rightly wants to capitalize on that. Larian is a hot commodity right now and they don’t need to borrow the credibility that comes with a big license like D&D. There’s also a timing issue. BG4 is unnecessary when BG3 will continue to sell for years to come. Larian will put out at least a couple more games before BG4 makes sense.

Larian is in a position where they can make whatever game they want and it will sell like hotcakes. Why the hell would they want to pay enormous royalties again when they can bring the writing in house? Sure, Hasbro could reduce their fee, but they can’t reduce it to the point where it’s worthwhile for both them and Larian.

If I’m running Larian, there’s no way I’m making another D&D game. The lore is great, but the rule set sucks. There are better systems in the tabletop space and there’s no reason to even be limited to that after you’ve already made the decision to not make D&D. Wizards isn’t exactly a paragon of reliability and stability either so there’s risk there. Not to mention, it was Larian who helped pull Hasbro’s asses out of the fire. They were facing massive backlash from their core customers until a kick ass movie and BG3 made everyone forget about it.

In short, Larian is riding high and Hasbro is not. There’s a lot more money for Larian doing something else and probably good money for Hasbro licensing to another developer.

It’s horrible. My laptop with hybrid graphics works ok except for a brief flicker every time it wakes from sleep. It’s not a big deal. My desktop with dedicated nvidia is a hot mess - constant flickering. Steam is borderline non-functional and there are all kinds of graphical glitches on the desktop. I’m stuck with X11 on that machine.

Then what’s it for? Looking pretty?

Framework if you want to repair it yourself and Lenovo if you don’t. Lenovo makes a good machine and has very reasonably priced on-site support options.

Fuck ransomware gangs. Also, fuck Epic. I guess if it’s gotta happen the silver lining is that it happened to an asshole company.

To be honest, Bethesda’s best work is probably behind them. They will sell a few more games based on brand recognition and because we are suckers, but I don’t expect much. I’m old enough to have seen many of my favorite developers go through this. It’s difficult to have overwhelming success and keep knocking it out of the park with every release. Expectations for something better than the last thing are so high, the pressure to do something new, the culture change that comes with huge growth, and they eventually lose that magic that captured us in the first place.

I have been very happy with my X1 Extreme. I did have an issue with the keyboard and later the touchpad, but I paid for onsite support so it wasn’t a big deal. They came out a day later and fixed it right there at my dining table.

I would say buying a ThinkPad is worth it for their paid support options alone. When I had a keyboard problem on my old MacBook, AppleCare took like 10 days to fix it. Lenovo’s premium support is reasonably priced and they don’t mess around. A person picks up the phone when you call and they treat you like you are important. If it’s a hardware problem, they are not fucking around. They don’t care how it happened or ask a bunch of questions. It’s covered and they are fixing it. Fast.

The X1 is also super easy to work on. It’s easily disassembled with normal tools and upgradable parts like SSD and RAM are right there when you open it up. They don’t do dumb things like solder in the RAM or leave you without an open slot. This thing is designed to be repairable.

Linux support is flawless.

Yeah, it’s also the same group of people who are always complaining about how much RAM a desktop environment or app uses, that app being whichever one they are using right now.

You’re missing out on watching a lot of progress bars while you reinstall all the time. If you like what you have, keep using it. All you get from switching is a different package manager, a few slightly different package names, maybe faster updates and a new default desktop background. You’ll still be using all the same apps, probably similar versions, probably systemd. It’s a bigger difference logging into a new desktop environment than a new distro.

It’s made by a lot of the original Opera team, including the founder. They have some nifty features that either require an addon in Firefox or are unavailable. Tab tiling is the one that I miss almost daily when I’m using Firefox.

They are an innovative group that often pioneers features that eventually trickle down to other browsers. Although it’s based on chromium, it’s an excellent browser that offers better privacy than Chrome. They have done a great job building a browser that caters to power users but can also be configured to use a simplified UI similar to Chrome.

If they had container tabs like Firefox it would be my favorite browser hands down. They have profiles like Chrome that work much better than Firefox profiles, but each profile is a separate window whereas container tabs can be mixed in a single window.

Check out ublue. They have Silverblue/Kinoite images with some extras to make it a more usable without having to layer it yourself. It updates in the background and you get the new version whenever you decide to reboot. It keeps a few snapshots so you can rollback right in the grub menu. You can even run an Arch container on top of Kinoite with distrobox and get apps from there. Or you can fork their image and make your own immutable OS.

The headline makes it sound like a bad thing, but that’s more than plenty for launch if they are distinct apps that represent a variety of use cases. Frankly, it’s a lot more than I would expect for a new product like this. Sure, there’s VR and AR available now, but Apple has a track record of rolling together existing tech in a package that’s more accessible and often more useful. You can throw a few things out there to showcase what’s possible, but you also have to wait and see how consumers actually want to use it. They will find use cases the creators didn’t think of or were unsure about. Then the floodgates can really open up in terms of apps. I really wouldn’t be surprised to see people wearing these things out in public.

In that case, this is the one you want: https://github.com/ublue-os/startingpoint

The instructions are here: https://universal-blue.org/tinker/make-your-own/

You need a GitHub account first. Use the web installer they link to under the setup section. Don’t forget to enable the actions in your repository because they aren’t enabled by default. Everything else is in the instructions. No coding required.

Their startingpoint repository makes it really easy. You fork it and just have to edit a .yml file to customize your packages. GitHub actions will automatically build it daily and rpm-ostree upgrade works like normal.

You could also look at something like the bazzite repository if you want to do things manually. It’s basically a Containerfile and a bunch of shell scripts that run inside the container before it’s committed. Then you have the same GitHub actions for automatic builds of your image.

Is the story that bad? I played a few hours and I was into it. Does it get worse later? I set the game aside because it was buggy and didn’t exactly run well. I’m planning to pick it up again after it gets some updates.

In the 6 or so hours I played, it was the inventory and menus that drove me crazy more than anything else. They are so poorly designed and implemented that I wonder if anyone actually played the game during testing. I can’t see myself continuing the game until they are improved.

It will be if they give it some TLC like CD PROJEKT and Hello did with their games. There’s a lot to like about Starfield, but it has problems that have a big impact on gameplay. I don’t want to deal with that inventory system for the hours it will take for me to enjoy the story. In general, the menus kinda suck. They really need to work on the ergonomics.

Kitty, although I was using Alacritty until last week. I got an update that had a bug related to launching Alacritty full screen. I’m in a terminal all day so I couldn’t be bothered with it. I installed kitty and adapted my configuration pretty easily. I can’t tell the difference between them except for the icon.

Or GNU stow.

Hopefully a new CEO with better vision and ability to execute. Mozilla’s leadership is a joke.

The usual suspects are ThinkPad T, P or X1, Framework or System76. Some people also like the Dell XPS but I don’t because of the lack of ports. I use a ThinkPad X1 Extreme. It runs great, it’s repairable and there are good premium support options available.