“Prefer”… when you’re young, you’ve got time to burn online without distractions.

Then you get married, have kids, work a demanding job, and you don’t get time for uninterrupted online play.

Eventually, correspondence chess is the only gaming you have time for! /s

No problem. When I decided to look for myself, it seems this question has come up on their forum, and the dev gets really salty over it 😂

Looks like good software, though. 👍

It doesn’t look to be open source, or is it?

Tech companies only care about making money. If people continue to buy their half-effort products, then they’ll keep making it.

On the other hand, open-source (hardware or software) is designed for maximum longevity.

Unfortunately, the wrong people have unlimited resources when it comes to making our tech products.

I think everyone is misunderstanding the “kids” part.

The daughter is a teacher, meaning she has “kids” (i.e. in her classroom), but not “real kids”, as in, kids of her own. A strange way of saying it, but I’m sure that’s what she meant.

The no real bills part… that could mean anything. If she’s living with her folks and doesn’t have to pay rent, utilities, etc., then I can understand how a request like that could be taken poorly by the mother.

Still, posting it on social media is Karen-like behaviour.

From what I remember, $20 gets you a premium pair! I was getting glasses from Zenni and others for <$10.

If the daughter is looking at Lasik, it’s not out of necessity.

I mean, if you’re an adult with an income and living with anyone else (parents, roommate, etc.), you really should be helping with the upkeep of the place and bills. As well as paying for your own food, phone bill, etc.

“Forcing you to pay” sounds harsh without context. You’d have to pay rent to live anywhere else, right? Perhaps, “expected to pay” seems more logical… assuming you’re an adult with an income.

I’ve used plenty of Linux VMs through Windows, so I’m aware of the limitations. I’m not trying to game through a VM, more like accessing some programs that I need for a few minutes at a time (and not even on a daily basis).

Can you share the software you went to use? Maybe there’s a good Linux alternative or someone knows how to get it working in wine.

These are all paid programs that don’t have viable alternatives and/or I actually need to use them.

A few off the top of my head:

• Excire Foto
• Jpegmini Pro
• Garmin Basecamp
• Garmin Express
• several paid video editing/photo editing apps; I’ve tried alternatives, but they aren’t nearly as intuitive.
• Reolink camera software.
• ACP Ups software.

I do my best to find alternatives to other software, and prefer to use self-hosted solutions, but the ones above aren’t really easy to replace, so I’d rather just run them in a VM.

I’ve use VMs in windows to run Linux, so I’m aware of the performance hit and possible startup times (but I use snapshots for quick access). I’m not too concerned about that for any of these programs, since I’m only using them from time-to-time.

Bottles didn’t run anything I tried, unfortunately. They seemed to install just fine, but that was about it.

Ok, I think I’ll grab another drive and try again over the weekend.

Their forum is pretty good, and there’s a dedicated linux section there, too. They also have extensive support documentation.

I’m sure I can get it working to be more stable, but man, it’s an effort for sure.

My laptop is a Framework and has official support for Fedora and Ubuntu. I wouldn’t expect these kinds of issue, TBH.

I can probably try a few more distros, but I’m just disappointed that the experience seems to always be the same :(

That is a fair point. I don’t expect every feature to match 1:1. But minimize and maximize window seems to be a no-brainer for basic use. At least, how I use floating windows.

But… I’m glad that there are options to bring those features (and more) back if someone chooses.

Is this only when using Linux? The drive’s S.M.A.R.T status is all perfect (it’s only got like 40 hours of use on it), and tests with no errors).

Maybe I can try another drive.

Well, I think my experiment might have come to an early end.

Yesterday, when I booted up fedora, I lost my wifi (like, it didn’t even give me the option to use wifi). Re-booted and it worked again.

Then I decided to get a copy of Fedora with KDE Plasma loaded up. Seemed fine, started setting it up.

Let’s try some Windows software through Wine (Bottles, I believe, is what the actual software was called). Program 1, installed, but won’t run. Program 2, installed, but wont’ run…

Then, out of nowhere: Blank screen.

After waiting several minutes, I hit the power button: FAILED FAILED FAILED messages “Failed to start plymouth-reboot.services” being the last. FFS…

I just don’t understand how I can break Linux so quickly without really doing anything. My experience over the last 20 years of trying Linux has always ended the same. Are there no stable distros available? Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, Elementary, Damn Small… none of them last more than a few days/weeks before they crash and burn.

And when Linux crashes and burns, I really don’t know how to fix it.

It’s extremely hard to go from Windows 11, which has been absolutely rock solid. Literally no problems, no crashes, no BSOD, no compatibility issues, etc. to Linux, even though I value Linux more.

I would rather not use Windows, but I feel like I’m forced to at this point.

I may have another external SSD I can use, so it should be easy to just install another copy with KDE or whatever on it.

Or… I may just stick with GNOME, since I’d rather keep things simple anyway. Regardless, I’m glad I have options.

I’m sure by now you know about the troves of compatibility layers that exist in order to make this possible; depending on the software.

Yes, I’ll need to do a bunch of experimentation to see if I can get it working. But it’s a messy solution to something that isn’t even a thing on Windows.

This is more of a DE issue than Linux issue, I’m assuming you went with the default Gnome but you might like KDE or Cinnamon for a more windows like experience. I personally loved both of those DEs until I made the mistake of getting comfortable with a window manager

Fair point, I’m using what Fedora came with, but I can go with something else. Better if I do that sooner, rather than later. LOL

After some encouragement, I’ve been making an effort to switch much of my computing over to Fedora (at least, on weekends until it’s got everything I need on it).

My (Framework) laptop fully supports the OS, and even booting it up on an external SSD has been easy, and it works fast and smooth.

But, it’s absolutely not as easy to settle into compared to windows.

With Windows, the only “tweaks” that a user might make is installing a different browser, but everything else will work as it should.

Power Windows users will spend more time removing bloat and ads, I won’t deny that!

But on Fedora, I had to scour the internet to find out how to get a minimize and maximize button on a window (had to install another utility, then an extension…). Then I had to do the same to move things down to a dock.

Annoying, but it wasn’t a huge deal. These small add-on, tweaks, and personalization options all require that you know where to look and how to actually apply these fixes. Thank god I didn’t have to fuss around with device drivers.

Then, as I happily watched the Para Olympics while multitasking, my screen just went black. No warning, no way to recover it. Hitting my laptop’s power button throws up a series of errors and !!! “FAILED TO EXECUTE SHUTDOWN BINARY”.

If this is the equivalent to a BSOD on Windows, then it would be my first BSOD in many, many years.

Now I need to figure out how to get some Windows-only software to run, if that’s even possible, which adds another layer of time and aggravation.

If I were a novice computer user, I wouldn’t even bother with any of this and just stick to Windows. Hell, I wouldn’t even know where to begin with any of it!

But I’ll see how long I can ride this out, and perhaps I’ll be a full-time Linux user some day.

Bring Fairphones to North America already, ffs! 😂