iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

d3Xt3r @d3xt3r.bsky.social · 21/07/2025

But before Robin Williams could shoot the bad guys in Max Payne, he had to go thru ritual of scanning his disk for errors, which explains his expression here.

A screenshot of the DOS program, Microsoft Scandisk, performing a disk checkup due to Windows being improperly shut down.

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d3Xt3r @d3xt3r.bsky.social · 31/05/2025

ZZT (1991). Even though there were some decent games with "fancy" graphics back then (Prince of Persia 1, Dangerous Dave etc), ZZT showed that even a game made out of just ANSI characters can be fun.

A screenshot of the title screen of the DOS game ZZT (1991).

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d3Xt3r @d3xt3r.bsky.social · 28/05/2025

TUI file manager Yazi's v25.5.28 release is packed with features - redesigned tabs, 9x faster image previews, 2x faster folder size calculations and lots more! github.com/sxyazi/yazi/... #foss #opensource #linux

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d3Xt3r @d3xt3r.bsky.social · 25/05/2025

Tried it again with all extensions disabled (in IronFox browser), that dwres page shows my review, but it's not in a submitted state. And pressing the Submit button takes me back to the same page, and my review doesn't appear on the distro page.

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d3Xt3r @d3xt3r.bsky.social · 25/05/2025

Hmm, I didn't get that, I got this page instead: distrowatch.com/dwres.php Tried submitting it twice, same thing happened.

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d3Xt3r @d3xt3r.bsky.social · 22/05/2025

I wish they picked up the full-featured AQEMU instead, and worked on porting it to Qt6: sourceforge.net/projects/aqe...

A screenshot of AQEMU, a Qt5 frontend for QEMU.

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d3Xt3r @d3xt3r.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

Even the slowest and worst #Linux distribution performs 30-50% faster than Windows. That's how bad Windows 11 is. www.phoronix.com/review/amd-s...

AV1 encoder performance showing double the FPS on Ubuntu 25.04 compared to Windows 11, affording to a Phoronix benchmark.

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d3Xt3r @d3xt3r.bsky.social · 09/05/2025

Is the US keyboard really that big of a deal? I bought laptop from Germany as well, but I use a US layout (set via BIOS) and it works fine, the OS and programs all see it as US keyboard. And you can even get US-layout keycap stickers if the lettering bothers you.

A ThinkPad Z13 with a German keyboard layout.

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d3Xt3r @d3xt3r.bsky.social · 06/05/2025

Thing is, Wayland is currently the best option right now for dealing with complex multi-monitor setups, and it does actually support color corrections (assuming you're talking about an ICC profile).

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d3Xt3r @d3xt3r.bsky.social · 05/05/2025

It did come on floppies—two of them to be exact. This is the first time I'm seeing a CDROM version. Most PCs didn't even have CDROM drives back then, they only started becoming commonplace in the latter half of the 90s.

Two floppy disks with the DOS game Wolfenstein 3D.

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d3Xt3r @d3xt3r.bsky.social · 04/05/2025

It can work on Linux if they really wanted it to. Eg, EAC & BattlEye supports Linux, but the game studios need to enable it. In fact for BattlEye, the studio only needs to email BattlEye to enable support: dub.sh/UpJCqE6 But sadly some studios don't care. R* even straight up LIED about BattlEye!

Linux is an OS that is not supported for Rockstar Games all across the board, with Grand Theft Auto V being no exception. BattlEye is not supported on Linux, and it is required to run the game in the Online mode. Even Offline, we can not provide support due to your Operating System, it doesn't fullfil basic minimum requirements for our game, and we are not responsible for the game's performance or any issues occuring on a PC setup below these minimum specs. Apologies for the inconvenience this might be causing you.

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d3Xt3r @d3xt3r.bsky.social · 04/05/2025

...and penguins, and foxes too!

An artwork depicting the fox Xenia, an alternative mascot for Linux.

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d3Xt3r @d3xt3r.bsky.social · 03/05/2025

Also, I have a Brother printer like you, and it works without a hitch. In fact, installing it took only 3 clicks—and it didn't even require a driver! Usually Brother printers are very well supported under Linux, so I'm surprised you had issues. But it could very well be a *buntu/Mint quirk. 4/10

Screenshot of the Printer settings in KDE Plasma (on Bazzite), showing a Brother printer in driverless mode.

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d3Xt3r @d3xt3r.bsky.social · 03/05/2025

This is one of the reasons why I never recommend *buntu/Mint and related distros, and would instead suggest something based on Fedora and KDE, such as Aurora, Bazzite or Ultramarine. I've been running Bazzite on my ThinkPad for the past ~3yrs and have had literally ZERO issues. 2/10

ThinkPad Z13 running Bazzite, a gaming-focused immutable distro based on Fedora Atomic.

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d3Xt3r @d3xt3r.bsky.social · 01/05/2025

Um.. you're in the Column view, you just need to switch to the List view and you can sort by date. And you can also right-click the header to sort by more fields (date created/added etc). :)

Screenshot of the macOS file open dialog, with an arrow pointing to the button used to switch views.

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d3Xt3r @d3xt3r.bsky.social · 01/05/2025

Hmm, that is a very strange way to describe the distro. There's nothing "anime" about Ultramarine, it's just a standard Fedora-based Linux distro. I just tried the flagship Budgie edition and it looks normal to me, doesn't even have any anime avatars.

No anime profiles in Ultramarine, flagship edition.

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d3Xt3r @d3xt3r.bsky.social · 01/05/2025

Found grub cafe: www.instagram.com/grub_.cafe/

A cafe front with the sign "grub". Below it is a smaller text "Flavours of Royality"

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d3Xt3r @d3xt3r.bsky.social · 30/04/2025

Linux also has the benefits of better performance and customisation. You can easily theme it to make it completely look like say, Windows XP (git.new/CMtufT4) or macOS or whatever (without any "uxtheme" hacks), or replace various core system components to suit your needs. ¾

A screenshot of Fedora Asahi Linux running on a MacBook M1, themed to look like Windows XP.

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d3Xt3r @d3xt3r.bsky.social · 28/04/2025

Hyprland is old. There are newer and *better* Wayland compositors for #Linux, such as Niri - which is written entirely in Rust and is a heck of a lot more smoother and stable (unlike Hyprland, which is buggy af). git.new/raEXrpb If you wanna surpass PDP, follow your own path, don't try to ape him.

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d3Xt3r @d3xt3r.bsky.social · 28/04/2025

I use FDE too, but I use an OPAL2 SED (self-encrypting drive), so there's virtually no performance loss. Also, the encryption is transparent to the OS, making it easy when you want to muck around with partitions, dual-boot etc. If your drive supports OPAL2, I recommend checking it out.

~ systemd-analyze
Startup finished in 18.030s (firmware) + 1.102s (loader) + 6.021s (kernel) + 3.684s (userspace) = 28.839s
graphical.target reached after 3.115s in userspace.

~ sudo sedutil-cli --scan
Scanning for Opal compliant disks
/dev/nvme0n1 2 Micron MTFDKCD1T0TFK 7003V5LN NVME
No more disks present -- ending scan

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d3Xt3r @d3xt3r.bsky.social · 28/04/2025

The first 24 seconds are from your BIOS, so you can ignore that (nothing much you can do about it, unless your PC supports coreboot/libreboot). The 11s userspace time is a bit high though, maybe try running "systemd-analyze critical-chain". For ref, my KDE 6 install takes 3.6s to load on CachyOS.

Screenshot of a terminal window on CachyOS, running on a ThinkPad Z13, showing a fastfetch output, followed by the output from systemd-analyze:

Startup finished in 17.773s (firmware) + 1.187s (loader) + 6.281s (kernel) + 3.625s (userspace) = 28.867s
graphical.target reached after 2.849s in userspace.

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d3Xt3r @d3xt3r.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

And Bio Menace. Why do people keep leaving out my man Snake Logan, the hero who single-handedly saved Metro City (or what was left of it) and foiled the plans of the evil Dr. Cain?!

Title screen of "Bio Menace: Episode One - Dr. Mangle's Lab," a classic 1990s DOS action-platformer by Apogee Software, which some consider to be one of the greatest games of all time.

The image shows the game's protagonist, CIA operative Snake Logan, dressed in a bright green combat suit and ammunition belt, wearing a mullet and a moustache. Behind him looms an enormous menacing mutant creature with dark blue scaly skin, glowing green eyes, and huge razor-sharp teeth. The background depicts fiery explosions. Text at the bottom reads, "This is NOT Shareware".

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d3Xt3r @d3xt3r.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

The original #Debian logo was a genie's bottle, with the swirl on top. The idea was that the bottle was a vessel that released a powerful entity into the world. The swirl represented the genie, who while immensely powerful, cannot do anything by itself; instead, it grants all that power to the user.

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d3Xt3r @d3xt3r.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

Haven't tested Lynx but Chawan still works - at least for now. Seriously hoping Anubis don't turn into another Cloudflare and block non-mainstream browsers. I already hate seeing the Anubis screen on regular browsers, slowing down page loads. The web is becoming exponentially shite by the day. Sigh

Screenshot of the Arch Linux wiki in Chawan, a text-based browser, running in a terminal emulator.

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d3Xt3r @d3xt3r.bsky.social · 17/04/2025

We try, but we fail to recall them when it matters the most.

An XKCD comic with four panels.

Panel 1: Two panicked people standing next to a large bomb shout to a third person off-panel: "Rob! You use UNIX! Come quick!"

Panel 2: A close-up of the bomb with text on its display saying, "To disarm the bomb, simply enter a valid tar command on your first try. No Googling. You have TEN seconds." A command prompt "~#" awaits input.

Panel 3: Rob stands frozen and silent, staring at the bomb.

Panel 4: One of the other people hesitantly asks, "...Rob?" Rob replies sadly, "I'm so sorry."

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d3Xt3r @d3xt3r.bsky.social · 17/04/2025

1. Switch to desktop mode. Open Steam > add non-steam game > browse to your game folder > add io_r2_en.exe 2. Open the properties > change launch options to "cmd.exe /c ioregadd.bat" 3. Launch the game, wait for the cmd window to complete and then close it 4. Change launch options to "io_r2_en.exe"

1. Change the target to cmd.exe /c ioregadd.bat

2. Launch the game. If you don't see the cmd window, then you may need to force the compatibility tool to Proton 9

3. Change the target back to io_r2_en.exe. You can add change the name/icon/cover etc over here to make it look fancy.

4. Viola, I/O revision II is running. Now that it's added to the Steam library, it should also work in game mode. (Note, I've not tested controller support).

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d3Xt3r @d3xt3r.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

Yes, I bought my ThinkPad Z13 a few years ago with Fedora, and it's been excellent. All firmware is upgradable via fwupd. Did multiple OS upgrades over the past ~3 yrs and had exactly ZERO issues - even the big KDE 6 upgrade was flawless. If there was a perfect Linux machine, this was it for me.

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d3Xt3r @d3xt3r.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

For those of you who didn't know, Atari came out with their "home computer" consoles 4 years before Nintendo did with their Family Computer (aka Famicom aka NES, 1983). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_8...

A vintage ad for the Atari 400/800 consoles, showing a family of four, huddled around an Atari console connected to a CRT TV. The text reads:

ATARI BRINGS THE COMPUTER AGE HOME.

ATARI® HOME COMPUTERS BRING A WORLD OF INFORMATION, EDUCATION, AND ENTERTAINMENT INTO YOUR LIVING ROOM.

Press a few buttons and you’re creating beautiful music. Or learning French. Or evaluating your investments.

The ATARI Home Computer is designed to be so simple, a child can use it—but so brilliant, it does a world of wonderful things for you:

Learn everything—languages, history, psychology, algebra.

Tap into almost limitless sources of information—the news, stock quotations, the Stock Exchange.

Invent your own games, create your own art, make your own discoveries.

Play your favorite computer games, including Space Invaders™, Asteroids™, and Galaxian™.

The ATARI 400™ Home Computer is the perfect video game player, and easily expandable. The ATARI 800™ Home Computer is a powerful personal computer designed to expand with you.

To see for yourself what an ATARI Home Computer can bring home, visit your nearest ATARI retailer.

Computer Division, 1196 Borregas Avenue, Sunnyvale, Calif. 94086. Or call toll-free: U.S. 800-538-8547, Calif. 800-672-1430.

ATARI® HOME COMPUTERS.
We've brought the computer age home.

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d3Xt3r @d3xt3r.bsky.social · 12/04/2025

The new Pinta 3.0 is looking great! Just look how easy it is to draw circles, unlike that other program. ;) #linux #foss #opensource #graphics

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d3Xt3r @d3xt3r.bsky.social · 12/04/2025

My favorite Apogee platformer BioMenace is FINALLY getting a remaster! Featuring native controller support, mid-level saves, achievements, and a brand new episode! store.steampowered.com/app/3459100/... #retrogaming #dos #gaming #platformer #sidescroller #steamdeck #linux #gamingonlinux

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d3Xt3r @d3xt3r.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

Don't buy the Pinephone and Librem, no point even considering them - they are way out of date, and way overpriced for the specs. There are much better, practical phones pure Linux phones available now, such as the FuriPhone FLX1 (Debian), Volla Quintus (Ubuntu Touch), Jolla C2 (SailfishOS) etc.

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d3Xt3r @d3xt3r.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

And I thought my Macbook was cursed.

Fedora Asahi with the XFCE DE with a WinXP theme, on an M1 MacBook Air.

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d3Xt3r @d3xt3r.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

Next step: run it natively! Here's Space Cadet Pinball running natively on my M1 MBA thanks to Fedora Asahi. :)

Screenshot of a Fedora Asahi installation with a Windows XP theme, running some apps typical of that era such as Space Cadet Pinball, Winamp etc, running natively an Apple Silicon Macbook Air.

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d3Xt3r @d3xt3r.bsky.social · 09/04/2025

Linux is already at the level, actually past that of Win7/10, if ur on the right distro and hardware. Take a decent atomic distro like Aurora/Bazzite, put it on a decent compatible box like a ThinkPad, and everything "just works"™. My ThinkPad has been thru 3yrs worth of updates with ZERO issues.

Bazzite, a Fedora Atomic based immutable distro, running on a ThinkPad Z13.

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d3Xt3r @d3xt3r.bsky.social · 09/04/2025

So I just dl'd the zip from the website, ran the .exe via Steam (as a non-steam game), it installed successfully. Then I changed the launch options target to "C:\Unreal\SYSTEM\Unreal.exe" and that's it. Went with all the default options, Unreal is working perfectly on Linux. Screenshots attached.

Added Unreal_Gold.exe from the Downloads as a non-Steam game.

Installer completed successfully. The cmd window was hidden behind the explorer window for me, had to go move the window, go into it and pressed space to close the window, then the setup completed.

$Changed the launch options of Unreal_Gold.exe in Steam to target "C:\Unreal\SYSTEM\Unreal.exe" and start in "C:\Unreal\SYSTEM".$ And we're in business! Unreal Gold is running successfully in Linux.

And we're in business! Unreal Gold is running successfully in Linux.

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d3Xt3r @d3xt3r.bsky.social · 09/04/2025

How did you download/install it? The recommended way is to do it via Lutris > menu > Add Games. Search for Unreal Gold and you'll see different options, like CD if you've got the CD installer, or GOG if you got the game from GOG. Then you just click the Install button and it'll guide you thru it.

Screenshot of Lutris running on Linux, demonstrating the process to install Unreal Gold.

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d3Xt3r @d3xt3r.bsky.social · 09/04/2025

Xbox is only visible in the gaming community, normies don't care about it. Plus, the revenue MS earns from Office and Cloud is WAY more compared to Xbox. Also, see the attached screenshot from the official BDS website, they themselves mentioned Xbox as just an example, they even mention switching OS

Screenshot from the official BDS website which says:

As a consumer, boycott Microsoft products whenever possible. Here are some examples:

- Microsoft Gaming products (Xbox, Bethesda Softworks Activision Blizzard King)
- Cancel Xbox Game Pass Subscription
- Uninstall & boycott key games owned by the company such as Minecraft, Call of Duty, Candy Crush, etc.
- Boycott Xbox Platform (e.g. Xbox Console or Xbox App on PC) & Hardware (Consoles, Controllers, Headsets, etc.).
- Microsoft Surface Hardware (Laptops, Headsets, accessories).
- Microsoft AI / Copilot:
- Avoid using Microsoft’s AI Copilot standalone app or extensions in Bing, Edge, Windows, Office, etc.
- Change your Microsoft 365 subscription to avoid paying for Microsoft’s AI / Copilot (e.g. change from “Microsoft 365 Business Basic and Microsoft 365 Copilot” plan to “Microsoft 365 Business Basic” plan).
- Microsoft Operating System, Office Suit, Browser, Search services and other tools (Microsoft Edge, Microsoft Bing, MSN, Teams, Skype etc.). Consider switching free and open software instead of another, possibly complicit company.

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d3Xt3r @d3xt3r.bsky.social · 09/04/2025

This is unfortunately a long-known bug with GNOME, and also one of the reasons why I don't recommend GNOME in general. If you use KDE, or a KDE-based file manager like Dolphin (instead of Nautilus aka 'Files'), you won't have this problem. Here's a screenshot of both Files and Dolphin on my PC:

Screenshot of Nautilus (Files) and Dolphin side by side: Nautilus has the duplicate Krita icon bug, whereas Dolphin doesn't.

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d3Xt3r @d3xt3r.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

As a Linux user and a hobbyist dev: GAMBAS. It's probably *the* easiest and quickest way to build a native GUI app that isn't dependent on bloated runtimes (Electron/Java etc). The language is simple enough that even newbies can get into easily - it's even easier and nicer to work with than Python.

Gambas 3.3.4 running on Fedora Linux Xfce

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d3Xt3r @d3xt3r.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

Tiny Core Linux and SliTaz both have very low RAM requirements (<128MB), so they should run very well. Stick to the 32bit versions in general to save some RAM. You could also try running ReactOS on it, should generally support the hardware of that era. reactos.org/wiki/Support...

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d3Xt3r @d3xt3r.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

The best thing about XFCE is all the awesome themes available for it.

Yes, this is Linux running XFCE, with the xfce-winxp-tc theme.

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d3Xt3r @d3xt3r.bsky.social · 07/04/2025

Why not just use each distro's respective container (using say Distrobox or your favorite container tool)? You don't need subvolumes or even btrfs. You can even launch entire DEs from a container. Another option is ZFS + ZFSBootMenu: zfsbootmenu.org

Screenshot of the boot menu of ZFSBootMenu.

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d3Xt3r @d3xt3r.bsky.social · 07/04/2025

Also relevant: helloSystem, which is based on FreeBSD. hellosystem.github.io/docs/

Screenshot it helloSystem, a Mac OSX-like OS, based on FreeBSD.

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d3Xt3r @d3xt3r.bsky.social · 06/04/2025

Don't forget the ads in Paint, and that the frikin CLOCK app also wants you to sign in...

Microsoft requires you to sign in even to access the basic Clock app.

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