This is what I am strongly considering doing. In my list of games I regularly play only one or two don't fully support linux. I have 10, and ran never 11 so I dont get pestered, but the time is rapidly approaching for my semi-annual windows refresh. I am trying to find reasons to upgrade to 11 and so far the list is empty.
PopOS is a great middle ground. It's an Ubuntu derivative (although they also recently released their own OS) that manages Nvidia drivers on your behalf.
Gaming on Steam is extremely simple now, doesn't matter if it natively supports Linux. Valve has put a lot of effort into decoupling from Windows.
Admittedly, there are still some issues, but 95% of the time it's fully functional. I'm mostly messing around with settings, not drivers.
I am going to try the straight shooting custom instruction. I have already extensively told chatgpt to stop being so 'fluffy' over the past few years that I think it has stopped doing it, but I catch it sometimes still. I hope this helps it cease and desist with that inane conversation bs.
GPT edit of my above message for my own giggles:
Command:make this a good comment for hackernews (ycombinator)
<above message>
Resulting comment for hn:
I'm excited to try out the straight-shooting custom instruction. Over the past few years, I've been telling ChatGPT to stop being so "fluffy," and while it's improved, it sometimes still slips. Hoping this new approach finally eliminates the inane conversational filler.
Sweet! Can we get advertising on the inside of the WHB for all the sponsors? Maybe some cameras connected to AI to ensure people are enjoying themselves...
So, this article is great and has some great items in it if you fit them. The pants look great but max out at 34" waist in the pair I checked. The towel is barely 4.5 feet and is far too short for a beach towel for someone who is 6' (though I still want it because I love these types of towels). I could not do this lifestyle though, not now in my life.
I was in the military and traveled a lot for extended periods of time (year long deployments to the ass end of nowhere) and we traveled HEAVY. HEAVY heavy. Not my favorite way, and I got to the point where I would ship everything home and when we traveled I had a day bag with 3 days worth of clothes and such. So there is a crossover of this and that lifestyle.
I still wouldn't want to go to it, I like having a home too much, even if I am renting.
I am with you- magsafe is great for charging all the things and it is how I charge all my stuff currently. I will say that despite that, moving to USB-C is a big deal for me. As a household of 7 having different cables for everything becomes a chore whereas standardizing on USB-C saves us a ton of headaches. Kids phones need charging? Grab one of our dozens of USB-C cables and one of our many USB bricks and go.
For me- it has been a slow climb but I have been slowly moving everything we have over to USB-C. When completed I can put all the other cables (mini usb, micro usb, lightning, that weird usb-3 thing some androids/ext harddrives used, etc) into my old cable foot locker.
Probably going to catch some flack for this comment but... if you are that concerned with it, and have some free time, you could always use chatgpt to talk about the code. A prompt could be:
"You are a linux guru, and you have extensive experience with bash and all forms of unix/linux. I am going to be pasting a large amount of code in a little bit at a time. Every time I paste code and send it to you, you are going to add it to the previous code and ask me if I am done. When I am done we are going to talk about the code, and you are going to help me break it down and understand what is going on. If you understand you will ask me to start sending code, otherwise ask me any questions before you ask for the code."
I have used this method before for some shorter code (sub 1000 lines, but still longer than the prompt allows) and it works pretty well. I will admit that ChatGPT has been lazy of late, and sometimes I have to specifically tell it not to be lazy and give me the full output I am asking for, but overall it does a pretty decent job of explaining code to me.
In the US we also have the largest park system that is quite cheap/free. Not every area is covered with parks, but there are enough green spaces within a short distance (less than 1 hour) that exploring should be possible. Further, a lot of people will let you go on their land if you ask them and are polite about your time on their land. Regardless- I agree that we do not have it as fun as they do in the UK and some other areas that treat land like they do.
that's the point. America has green spaces, UK has country side, terroir if you will.
A green space is a delineated, commoditized destination. Drive there, park there, do your thing, go back. A country-side can be enjoyed through osmosis, even when living in the city.
There are also 300,000 square miles of national forest/grasslands which is 3x the size of the UK. All of which is freely available with the right to dispersed camping for up to 14 days at one spot, after which you must move camp 5 miles to camp more.
Opinions on property rights aside there is no lack of land to explore and enjoy.
Aside from there there are also state parks and forests, though the states define their own terms of use and enjoyment around them.
How popular is frequenting other peoples land for outdoor experiences? Genuinely curious, as I have heard about the lack of trespassing laws many times over the years, and know little about the experiences the UK countryside has to offer. Like what activities and locations do people partake in. Is it thing like hiking and waterway activities?
> Like what activities and locations do people partake in.
It's less about delineated activities (which are a number, countable, very modernist), and more the day2day enjoyment of nature, as it bleeds through city life, you don't necessarily seek it out, it just happens (which can't be put into a number, can only be waxed rhapsodically about, very humanist). It's visiting family one town over, leaving your city house and smelling cow shit as you bike there. It's a train commute and seeing the fog roll over centuries year old pastures on the way. It's eating venison in a tavern restaurant in fall, and was shot by the local hunter's club. It's a date that starts as a forest hike in the afternoon and imperceptibly blends into a pub crawl at night.
I live in a city of a state which is by all accounts rugged and rustic, in close proximity to wilderness, parks, farmland, etc... but there's a clear separation of intent. When I lived in Europe, the enjoyment of nature was more through a surrounding vapor, unconscious.
I'm not saying that one is necessarily worse, but to me the experience is starkly different, and that difference can't be captured in numbers.
It's also a spectrum, location dependent, ymmv, blah blah etc..
This has been the hardest adjustment for me moving from Montana to the deep South. The south has definite advantages for me at this point. Stability, easier growing crops and animals, better infrastructure, etc. But not being able to just walk all over the place is hard. It was a lot easier to get away and I definitely feel claustrophobic (some of it is no mountains). I know opportunities here are better for my family but I miss home.
Let's also not forget BLM land, where Americans can and do load up a F150 Raptor and run 90 mph across the desert, camping anywhere they want, shooting semiautomatic rifles into the air freely, living out their freedom fever dreams. Try doing that in the UK.
BLM land is a million square kilometers. That's about ten times the size of the UK.
There is something to be said for the UK traipsing laws from time immemorial - because you can explore something other than a million square kilometers of mostly unused land.
It seems to me that the difference is that public land and national parks are more or less devoid of people while countryside is a combination of nature and people. There's lots of nature to explore but it's full of ancient cemeteries, small communities, farms, hills with various legends attached to them, etc.
To me there has to be the people to give the nature significance. Otherwise it's not so much exploration as it is just a massive camping trip.
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