I believe OnlyOffice may be problematic from an ethical perspective if I remember correctly because of Russia or something. But it’s FOSS, has a linux desktop version, and its compatibility with Excel has been absolutely rock solid for me.

Advertising isn’t the problem. And before I get my balls cut off, I’ll back away slowly while explaining myself…

We’ve always paid for ads. Back in the old days you paid for a cable subscription and got to watch ads every 15 minutes. That’s not a new phenomenon. Hell, television was designed around the advertising break. The entire one hour series 5 part script model was created with the “cut to ad break” in mind. You think about your CSI:Miami “sunglasses of justice” stinger, or your fourth ad-break plot-twist as the Romulan war bird uncloaks and the music dun-dun-duns into a commercial for cheese-its…

That’s not a problem in and of itself. In fact I kind of miss it when shows were written that way. Heck, Tubi and Pluto TV do it and no one complains about that. And if Netflix wants to add those back into their free tier, more power to 'em.

But advertising is not about getting served a few commercials every fifteen minutes anymore. It’s literally in front of the content, within the content, etc… It’s not about “hey look, it’s an ad break, let’s go refill our 7-up and take a piss”, it’s inlaid with the content, as well as taking up as much, if not MORE time than the actual content itself. and THAT’S part one of the problem.

Part two is the fact that if you’re going to make more money by making me pay for your service AND watch advertisements, you better damn well be giving at least some of that new money to other creatives that are MAKING those advertisements. Make a commercial with actors and actresses; pay them. Hire a writer to create ad-copy, just like we used to do. But if you’re going to charge me AND make me watch lazy shit you made with A.I. slop, than THAT is where I’ll happily take my ship and head onto the high seas.

I’d be perfectly happy to sit through two or three traditional advertisements every fifteen minutes just like we did in the old days. But what I WON’T stand for is watching five minutes of lazy A.I. ads after every five minutes of actual content and be expected to PAY for the service on top of that.

I use Cromite. It’s a more hardened fork of Bromite. Which itself is a hardened fork of Chromium.

The only thing I’ve found so far is that it likes to block the discussion threads on some websites. But other than that I’ve had no issues whatsoever.

It’s not designed to be an anonymous service, just a private one.

I think this needs to be said a lot more often and a lot louder. Anonymous and private are NOT necessarily the same thing, nor should the expectation be that they are. Both have a purpose.

Haven’t checked today since I woke up and went to work. But the post is 14 hours old, which means when it was posted I was happily watching some Red Letter Media on Freetube last night. So working fine for me (then at least). Will check when I’m home.

If you think your Apple phone isn’t listening to you, I have some seaside real estate I’d like to sell you in Montana.

It’s already been mentioned, but I’ll throw in for Jitsi. I believe it can also be self-hosted.

I had switched to HeliBoard in order to de-Google as much as possible. I’m not militant about it, but if there’s an alternative I’ll take it.

Decided to try out FUTO because I felt like I was missing swipe typing. And it’s good. But for me it’s just too much. It turns out I didn’t really miss swipe typing, and (possibly just a me issue) that extra feature was making FUTO much less responsive than Heliboard. So back I went.

I guess for me, simple and fast is more important than replicating my old Gboard experience. But each person is different.

This thread took a strange direction…

I hadn’t noticed. but I have no real comparison since I was on Linux long before starting either title, so I’ve never played either on Windows.

They seem to run well enough, so even if its faster on windows and that’s the tradeoff for having no Windows in my house, I’m cool with it.

I’d say yes; with the mods available 2 is still WELL worth it. i n fact I’m doing yet another play through at this moment.

1 is also excellent, especially with the Long War overhaul installed.

Most of mine have already been mentioned; KSP, Rimworld, Stellaris.

So I’ll add one of my all time favourite games and say XCom and XCOM 2. I’ve sunk hundreds of hours into xcom 2 with various mods.

Close second is Crusader Kings 2, and close third after that is Empire Total War.

And of course CIV. It’s not a proper list without CIV.

As long as your web browser can access udev for the controller, just go to Xbox.com/play or something like that. I’m away from my desktop, but I think that’s the address. I’ve done it a few times now.