Ulu-Mulu-no-die

Not just clickbait, the title is maliciously wrong.

The article is about Apple holding developers conferences with cops with the purpose of developing apps tailored to them, there’s nothing about users privacy.

A business trying to enter a new market, what a weird concept eh?

I didn’t either, not even once in years of playing on Steam.

Many years ago at work, when PCs started to spread, I taught a 60 years old lady how to use one. She never saw a PC before yet she learned pretty well, and I saw much younger people not learning.

Being willing to learn doesn’t depend on age, it’s a mindset, either you have it or you don’t, and if you do have it, it will last your entire life.

OpenSuse is essentially free marketing for SUSE, nobody would know them otherwise

I’ve been working for big enterprises for many years, SUSE is used in enterprise environment to run SAP systems because it’s recommended by SAP, OpenSuse has nothing to do with that.

LMDE (Mint Cinnamon)

True, it’s the desktop manager that can make a difference but you can install any DE on any distro.

What are corporate users using?

Windows on PCs, Linux is used mostly only on servers (RedHat/SuSe), hardware brands are usually HP, Dell and Lenovo.

I think that is my standard

Why? Do you expect companies to ask you to use your own PC for work instead of providing the tools you need? Be wary of those who do, using whatever personal PC for company work can lead to data breaches and that’s a very serious problem.

World of Warcraft has its own anticheat that works on Linux no problem, if Blizzard can do it why Riot can’t? It’s not that WoW has more players than LOL so it could be justified, it’s actually the opposite.

You can argue that copyright law should be revised.

It already has been, there is a ruling that allows an exemption to copyright law for the specific use of preservation by libraries and museums.

Maybe they could do more about it but what’s already there is way way better than nothing.

she didn’t really want to switch to Win 11

On which computer? Her own?

Does not the company provide a PC with the tools needed? If yes, she has no right to decide what goes on it, the company does and she should respect that, doing what you want on a company PC can get you in serious trouble, way more serious than finding out you’re using a pirated version of Office.

If the company expects her to use her own PC, they should at least provide the needed software licenses, Office365 can be used on the web, no need to install anything and it can be used on Linux no problem.

BUT the serious problem remains of having company data on her own PC, the best thing to do in such a case would be creating a VM, encrypting the file system and keeping all company data contained inside the VM.

Tho in such a case I would change company, no serious company today would expect employees to keep company data freely on whatever personal PC, that could lead to data breaches, I would never want to be involved in case like that, tho I live in EU, we have very strict laws about data integrity and privacy, dunno about other countries.

I didn’t add which GPU I have but I saw you asking in other posts so: currently NVIDIA 4070 with proprietary drivers.

I’ve been using NVIDIA on my Linux desktop for over a decade, it always worked very well tho you have to install proprietary drivers (opensource ones are not good enough if you use software that requires performance), Linux MX has a script (menu item) to install them, very easy.

In all this time, only a couple of times I had serious problems with a kernel update (something that can happen with any distro), but Linux MX always keeps boot entries for the last 3 kernels so when it happened I just booted with a previous one and waited a few days for devs to fix it (no tinkering on my part required).

NVIDIA cards have problems on laptops, those I only buy Intel, but a dedicated card on desktop is good.

Yeah Lutris has fantastic scripts that do everything for you, also the Steam store is really good even if you don’t buy from them, checking that a game is verified for Steam Deck is a guarantee it will work on any other Linux PC.

Debain (alt Linux Mint DE) Pro: The most stable OS I’ve used, with a wide range of software support both officially in the distros package manager, or from developers own website. I am most familiar with this OS and APT Cons: Ancient packages which may cause issues with Davinci Resolve and Video Games

I don’t use Davinci Resolve but I do play videogames, I build my own desktop for it and I use Linux MX (Debian), it’s rock solid.

“Ancient packages” are not a problem with backports, there are also flatpacks if some backports are not enough for you, or DEB packages directly from software developers (I manually install a couple of those).

The only games you will have problems with are those implementing invasive DRM, but that’s not a “Debian” problem, Linux in general doesn’t support that kind of DRM (not yet at least), tho I personally don’t mind since I think DRM is stupid and I’ve always tried to avoid it.

only the “free” product was downloaded and their sales folks essentially accused us of lying about using it for corporate use

According to Virtualbox site:

This VirtualBox Extension Pack Personal Use and Evaluation License governs your access to and use of the VirtualBox Extension Pack. It does not apply to the VirtualBox base package and/or its source code, which are licensed under version 2 of the GNU General Public License “GPL”

Extension Packs are also free to download, are you sure a pack wasn’t downloaded as well? Oracle salesmen would have no ground otherwise (Virtualbox itself is GPL 2)

That was on the kernel 6.1.0-18, I had it too, fixed several days ago, but in OP picture the kernel is 6.1.0-17, that one wasn’t affected.

Ah ok.

I simply assumed it wouldn’t work because that’s the case with like 99% of steam games

That’s because the vast majority of games implement DRM unfortunately, BG3 does not, Witcher doesn’t either, any game that does not have any DRM can be played fine outside of Steam, tho there are not many.

DRMs are not Steam doing, it’s game devs.

You can do that with the gog version.

You can do that with Steam too, I know because I’m doing it. I have dual boot, I use Windows very rarely (I play on Linux) so Steam is not installed on it at all, I copied BG3 on it to try out mods because Mod Manager doesn’t work on wine for me.

I can assure you the game works perfectly fine without Steam.

With the steam version it’ll try to launch / connect to the local installed steam at startup

As you sure you’re using the right exe? bg3_dx11.exe and not some launcher?

Doesn’t that depend on game devs?

I mean, I can copy Baldur’s Gate on a PC where there’s no Steam at all and play it just fine, because the game itself doesn’t have any restrictions. If other games have DRMs I don’t think it’s Steam fault.

If you want to be totally free from DRMs you need to check GOG, if a game is there, it doesn’t have DRM, so neither the Steam version will.

Amazing job as always!

Not being dealt with is not the same as not being illegal. I live in EU, piracy is illegal, as in there are laws against it, but noone will come after you if you (as a common citizen) download pirated movies or software.