What are your experience?

My last “real” Windows experience was with WinXP and every time I have to touch Windows at the PC of a customer, which happens sometimes when the stars align, I feel like the first human that ever walked the earth.

I have no idea how people get any work done on a system that is constantly nagging for attention, popups, restrictive Enterprise environment and non descriptive error messages. Nothing in this world seems to make sense or is presented in a unified way. Every dialogue or sub system seems to be it’s own isle stemming from another decade of tech. The experience for someone who is simply not used to Windows any more due to missing exposure is horrible.

Heck a Mac feels alien to me too but in the end that’s still a system I could deal with given some time.

Mebbe I’m spoiled by stuff like systemd, PipeWire, Wayland, btrfs and all that candy we get nowadays on a Linux desktop. I’m not even talking about privacy or FOSS principles at this point. Just the fact that the system doesn’t get in my face with ads or AI or “very important reboots” seems to be a revelation in 2024.

Accidental UI design - as usual 🤣

We used to pipe all sorts of 💩 to /dev/dsp just to know how it would sound 🤓

Jul 91? Now I feel old.

Can relate ;)

Thanks to GitHub this wonderful article, that made me opt for another domain for my recent project a year ago, is now… drumroll under an .io domain too: https://tamouse.github.io/blog/politics/2019/10/02/why-is-the-io-domain-problematic.html

Irony much.

The situation is really bad for consumers. Even with a Pi-Hole and a dumb TV and something like a Fire TV stick (they tend to send lots of telemetry too and apps like Toggo will nag you to oblivion to consent to data mining - if an app asks at all that is).

I’m slowly building up a Jellyfin library and yeah I jumped the hoops to find a non-smart TV. Wrote about it at https://beko.famkos.net/2022/11/27/on-non-smart-tvs/ and settled with a https://www.homex.eu/u55nt1000.html that ticked all my boxes:

☑ cheap affordable ☑ 4k (UHD) ☑ dumb non-Smart ☑ HDMI ☑ 55″

No idea about it’s tuner though[1] alas it’s not really any longer available in any market space today and I hope it will not die on us any time soon or the quest to find a new one starts again 🤓

[1] We’ve a decent external receiver that does all the work and HDMI juggling but even that thing is on the WiFi for software updates and in-house streaming but from what I can tell it behaves at least, which is probably just because it’s old by now.

Thanks 🙏

Wieso auch? Ist die auf .de tot? Habe ich [mal wieder] Drama verpasst?

Some argued that the new requirements were to protect cars from theft.

Car thieves: Oh noeeees… anyway 🤷

Whenever I order I always get a male and female connector because the terminology doesn’t seem to be consistent across connector designs.

Heh, there are a lot of unusual designs that are neither and both too :D Connectors are wild.

Hope they fix that EAC bug first eventually. I mean currently all Linux PC gamer (or really anyone who killed their EAC) is just… tolerated. That’ll change whenever they flip the switch :-/

Good to know that the Virpils work. They are totally on my list as a replacement device when my current gives up.

My head tracker did cost me 5 EUR and is made from cardboard 🤓 Any dead cheap webcam can keep up with the required FPS with good settings and a proper filter. I say this in case no Playstation Eye is available any more. The cam is perfect for this, of course.

I attached a quick demo and the more important settings here: https://social.tchncs.de/@bekopharm/108317573758997762

This is how I built it: https://beko.famkos.net/2021/07/08/diy-headtracker-for-gaming-on-linux-pc/

Both. It’s complicated. Wild mix of my trusty X52 Pro, my own virtual joystick written in Rust and AntiMicroX and/or Moltengamepad.

Think you have to configure the sticks on Windows. Don’t think Wine can do this. That’s hearsay though so YMMV. Mine are software anyway or just work™.

TrackIR API works. I demo this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7n4hwABJFU (it’s also on PeerTube but our instance is bust atm)

TrackIR hardware does not. That’s a blackbox since v5. Tobii hardware does AFAIK not work but this may change any day. Some people started hacking at this again and again.

Also do check out the StarCitizen LUG and the helper scripts: https://github.com/starcitizen-lug/lug-helper

This. It’s basically only a thing for rotary encoder, where interrupts should be used for the reading, so they don’t miss a beat.

Also: Combining several joystick devices on the PC again is a pain in the neck especially if the game only supports one device of each kind.

Right, of course 🤦 I had the sign up address in my password db in the username field 🤦 Thanks!

Zitadel says my username doesn’t exist 🤔

Did you purge old accounts or something?

Doing this in reverse all the time. Stretching games on my triple head setup to full size. It’s the same principle. If the game doesn’t offer it kill it with gamescope, Wine virtual desktop or if nothing helps a completely virtual display that overlays your current:

https://beko.famkos.net/2021/05/31/extreme-multihead-for-gaming-on-linux-pc/

For some editing the config files directly works wonders. Looking at you Unity!

💦