Ditto, but I don't exercise as much as they do so I assume its longevity is based off of how much you sweat.

Pepper Grinder (Steam/GOG/Switch/PS4/PS5/XB/ONE/S/X)

Released in March of the is year (and in August for non switch consoles) Pepper Grinder is a traditional 2D platformer with a world map, levels, and a gimmick of using a drill to travel underground like a dolphin through water.

Its platforming has a good rhythm to it, with a nice momentum when you go in and out of the dirt. The best way I can describe the game is that it feels like a Mario Gimmick level that's been expanded to its own game.

If I had any complaints about this game, is that the boss fights are a bit too tedious. Not impossible as I've been able to beat them. But requires a bit more precise movement than the levels which preceded it.

Overall though, I haven't played a 2d platformed in ages which I've actually wanted to go through in ages. And it is a welcomed addition to my gaming library.

Pro: Price, Convenience, Looks

Cons: Much like buying an "iPhone" from Temu, the price is usually reflected in the quality.

Don't get me wrong, there are cheep smart watches if you look for them or go second hand. But what you'll find advertised on Temu isn't it.

Build quality is usually the first to suffer, but you'll find mislabeled battery info a 500mah instead of the promised 1000mah. Or an LCD instead of an OLED.

But those are things we can adapt too. The biggest problem is software. That'll do and close enough has been the name of the game for years now. And sometimes "smart" just means it can (badly) track your steps and pretend to check your heart rate with a led pretending to be a sensor.

Alternative

If you are looking for any budget electronics try looking for last years or a few years ago models. I got a Garmin Forerunner 235 in 2022 for 1/5 of its asking price because I found a deal on eBay.

I'd also look into the landscape of the market you are buying into and seeing who is actually making these things, and what is running on it.

For smart watches I found the answer was

Apple

Android with Watch OS (Samsung google and many more)

Garmin

If the watch isn't running android watch os or is made by Apple or Garmin. Assume its good too be true and look into it more, or look elsewhere.

Good news China is lazy and one clone usually is made by many factories and someone else made a video about it. Might not be the same name, but it'll be close enough.

It’s fun to zoom in on the GameCube icon on the controller spool. At 4K it doesn’t look like there will be detail, but there is.

Fun part, since I've made each stylus for each system, the icons are all unique. There shouldn't be (I hope) duplicates.

I happy to hear there shape are unique enough to recognize their wireframe. I was a bit worried that they were a bit too generic.

Favourite as in the one I love the most. Model 1 Genesis, or Virtual Boy. Love their aesthetic.

Favourite as in best Library. PS1/PS2. Massive library of games which are still being enjoyed decades after they were launched.

Favourite as in still using. By my books, I’d consider the PS Vita as retro now, if not then the Nintendo DS/PSP.

Bold assumption to think that I have a Neogeo pocket color. (I'm broke)

I miss Pebble. ePaper Display, week long battery life, and I can see all my phones notifications and reply to texts on the watch itself.

Made my old phone with bad battery life usable.

Garmin is the only "smart watch"/fitness tracker that does this and does it well. Wish it wasn't as pricy for the week long battery devices.

So long as you are using a cable to send images and video to a TV, someone will find a way to intercept and record it.

The bigger issue is that Blurays are the highest quality video there is, especially when it comes to audio. For those who do care this is deviating.

From my personal experience Arch is several months ahead of other distros and depending on the package and sometimes has everything you need already included for gaming.

I believe this is due to the Steam Deck.

However for ease of use, I agree there are other better distros. Fedora is only 2ish months behind arch in terms of graphics drivers and Ubuntu… has the latest proton from steam and lutris since proton isn’t installed from the local app stores.

Manjaro, its a clean and simple way to install Arch with lots of good GUI for all the tasks a user needs to do on their system... Then it crash and bricked the install... 3 times.

Anyways I'm on Mint now.

I prefer GOG but not enough to not buy from Steam. And each store has its pros and cons.

As a single player gamer, I love the DRM free nature of GOG, especially for classic games like Rollercoaster Tycoon or SimCity 3000. I have older PCs lying around and being able to play my games on them is very very nice.

On the other hand, updating my game is a chore and GOG Galaxy while cool isn't polished, and very buggy especially only Linux via Wine. I wouldn't even consider online multiplayer games unless it had its own server.

Compared to Steam which works with Linux by default, no Lutris or Bottles configuring to get games to work. Updates are seamless and online multiplayer is built into the client. Let alone remote play, steam families, big picture, and all the other features it does.

My only gripe with Steam is the GIANT question mark on what happens to my games when they pull support. I mean I can't even play my older games any more on my old Windows 7 machine, and its not like Fallout 3 is getting updates.

So my priority is thus: GOG then Steam, if its single player and the price is similar (+-$10). Steam then GOG if it makes sense or I need steam features (I.e. I got Stardew Valley on Steam since my SO has it there too and we can play together). Finally if the game is around $5 get it on either, or maybe both if I like the game.

Didn’t think anyone would be inspired by this controller

I think it depends on how invested you are in ebooks, and how much time you wanna spend on it. I would advise a Kobo if you aren't up for Tinkering or an iPad if you are flexible with the screen.

But if you are up for a challenge a Chinese ePaper Android Tablet like Onyx Boox or Bouyee, so long as you can get Google Play to work. Or a Pocket Book if you can sort out DRM removal for ebooks.

Here are the pros and cons bellow

Kobo is the easy option.

• Adobe Digital Editions for non-kobo DRM, and library access. Its able to read DRM free books like you find on Project Gutenberg or Humble Bundle.

• Major downside is that you can't read Amazon without effort (or a kindle serial number), book sorting kind of sucks without Calibre, and the storage size is small if you are into Comics.

iPad is the safe option

• Apple Books app is convenient and can read anything. It can sync with your iCloud if you wanna so you can continue on your iPhone. And DRM isn't an issue since you can just download the apps.

• but its a LCD Tablet, and no ePaper display. iTunes isn't the easiest to figure out to move books and iCloud can get verrry expensive if you are syncing comics.

Android Tablets are kind of in the same boat but...

• with KOReader even an old (but not too old) tablet is viable. Side loading official apps.

• OS updates are kind of hit or miss, support for older android is worse than iPad, and the devs don't put as much effort in their Android ports.

Android ePaper tablet (Onyx Boox)

• Usually steals KOReader as its base, if its new probably has pen support so you can use it as a writing tablet, if it has Google Play you can get official apps

• But its expensive, there is often no updates to the OS, usually no MicroSD card, and has a lot of preinstalled bloat which is hard to trust.

Kindle Tablet/fire tablet

• Cons, its made by Amazon and will track your every movement.

• Pros keep it offline and it can read converted DRM free ebooks converted to AZW3 via Calibre. Fire Tablets can be made into cheap eReaders with side loading. But more importantly if you do give your kindle an Amazon account you can decrypt ebooks with its serial number. So you can get cheap books on a better eReaders.

I agree with you. But with how fractured the software and hardware space has become. Building native is expensive and time consuming.

For example a web browser is compatible with x86 amd64 armv7 aarch64 on any OS from Windows, Linux, Mac OS, iPad/iOS, and Android.

Which means that if I make 1 web page, I can support all these platforms at once.

The customer doesn't care, they just want funny cat pics.

Building native requires both the hardware (especially if you need to build for the walled garden known as iOS), and frameworks. Where its just easier to recompile chrome, and bake in a Web Page, I.e. react native

Is it the Dacia Sandero?

Pokemon Sapphire/Emerald/Ruby/Leaf Green/Fire Red were my goto especially for grinding. From sound and memorization along you can play pokemon without looking... Or at least I could.

Zelda Oracle of Ages is another game which I found calming. Its more puzzle than combat, but there is still combat. Not goof got meeting but good for afterwards.

The GBC Harry Potter games or Prisoner of Azkaban are fun RPGs that I played before Pokemon. A fun time too, and can almost be played under a desk (don't ask how I know)

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, rogue like endless(ish) dungeon crawler. Amazing story, but the post game is just a grind perfect for fiddling as you are just doing the same thing for 99 levels... Until you find the boss. Better on DS with Blue rescue team, but red on GBA is a good choice.

Outside of mega man battle network, the rest of my games are platformers which don't fit the bill

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and Chamber of Secrets.

Are they good games? No

But they are well themed and have chiptune version of Jeremy Soule’s soundtrack. I like replaying the, from time to time.

Manjaro is fine. Ran it for a year straight before I broked it.

My 2 cents is this. Don't install from AUR unless you have to. Thats how i broked my manjaro install when i was uninstalling packages to fix a bad install. So my install order to protect myself is:

Main Repo

Flatpak (if its not a system tool like an IDE)

AUR

I've tried and used both. They are both arch, and they both have their uses.

Endeavour is an excellent "arch with GUI" as another user pointed out. However its missing GUI elements which I personally expect from a modern OS like a Package Manager. There are work arounds like Buah, but I found them to not be as polished as having a distro shipped with it.

Manjaro on the other end is also Arch, but with a heavy emphasis on User Experience. The depth and detail their GUI is, means you don't need a terminal if you don't want to use one. Kernel, Systemd, and more has a GUI interface baked in to areas you'd expect them, like in setting.

But their packages being behind means that installing from the AUR can cause issues when the AUR package expects a newer package that manjaro is still evaluating.

For me, I am using Manjaro since I just want a work station that works. And not having to deal with a terminal to fix most problems is something I desire in an operating system.

With that said when I got EndeavourOS to a point where its mostly usable with GUI, there was no noticeable difference in day to day use. I just found it tiring when something broke.

Why you shouldn’t buy FO4 on GOG: On Linux it’s a bit more work, installing the game via steam it’s just one button and you are good. GOG you need a third party game manager like Heroic or Lutris. From there you can add it to steam, you’ll also want to download art as the ones provided by lutris are low res.

You’ll also have a hard time with online saves as you’ll need to also install GOG galaxy, which isn’t fun and is very buggy.

That said, from an application perspective, it’s running on Proton regardless, so it’ll run the same. And since the folders are easier to find (more structured like windows), I personally find modding in general easier.

The reason you want to buy the GOG version is that it’s drm free and yours to keep. No launcher required. Not something you’d care about on a steam deck, but on a PC it’s nice to have.

Don't know how to specifically, but usually the GBAtemp website is a good place to start.

This forum looks like it has relevant info about the VC save formatting for N64 saves.

https://gbatemp.net/threads/transferring-wiiu-virtual-console-save-files-to-retroarch-on-switch.601327/

Have you not heard of the Steam Deck and Proton? Running MS APIs through a compatibility layer is the main goal for Linux gaming for the past few years, as it allows legacy games that had no hope in getting a Linux native port (or a terrible Linux port) to run in Linux, through the Proton Compatibility layer.

The apps I was using were running with DXVK, but due to a bug with intel iGPU driver which affects both Windows and Linux users, it didn't work. A Intel Mesa update patched the bug, and my game worked better. When I moved back I was on an older driver and had to wait for it to be added in.

Didn't get it on Steam but it is deck compatible (and on steam), The Outer Worlds. Nice no nonsense Fallout Stylus RPG, without the Bethesda jank

Yes the AUR is the best feature of Arch, which is why I am still using an Arch distro and not Fedora or Debain.

However one of Manjaro's features which other Linux distros don't have, is how much of the OS's troubleshooting and repair is in GUIs. For the most part I can setup a fresh Manjaro install without touching the command line once. And that's how I want to use my machines, I want to just browse the web, play games, or do office tasks (the reason I use a computer), not trying to figure out how to install a GUI package manager from the AUR in EndeavourOS since it doesn't come with one.

Depends on the distro.

I found Linux Mint good enough for 99% of things, and most problems can be solved without a terminal.

Problem is you’d still need to know enough about Linux (just like with windows) to troubleshoot. For example, the files app was causing an error when plugging in drives, I need to figure out that the files app wasn’t call files, but nemo, it’s config lived in a hidden folder called .config in my home folder, and in .config I could delete my configuration to fix my issue.

In my view Linux is about Windows XP or 7 in terms of usability, a bit of a learning curve, but one worth learning.

A few modern improvements which makes using Linux easier.

Use Flatpaks where possible, it’s platform agnostic and usually supported by the actual devs.

AppImages (think portable exe for windows), are another option, but to “install” them you’d need an app called Gear Lever.

Check with an apps developer before installing, flatpaks can be packaged by anyone, and they might loose support (steam for example is installable via Deb not flatpak).

Many reasons. Many of which is down to how Google as a company is reaching between the proverbial couch cushions to get at the loose change to make a profit. Default opt-in tracking, breaking ad-blockers, and probably more which I forgot about since I abandoned Chrome years ago.

Yup. We use to have Netflix and another service depending on what was coming out I.e. Disney plus when Mandi was releasing.

Now we just do the other service,

Please ignore the iPad usb c dock with the hdmi splitter connected to it.

My first system I could call my own (not sharing with siblings) was the fat Nintendo DS. It will always be my favourite out of nostalgia.

But my primary DS is my New 3DS, does everything want and plays everything.

For me the DS is the Pokemon machine, from the mainline series to the spin offs. Such a good time to be a fan of Pokemon. Even the knockoffs were fun like Fossil fighters.

The DS was also a good rpg power house the first system I beat Chrono Trigger on.

Then there was the slog of platformers, from new Mario bros, to license of game dubious quality, nicktoons unite anyone?

The 3DS was just an overall disappointment in comparison, game selection was limited and 3rd parties just didn’t give it the time of day. Don’t get me wrong love my 2d Zelda and Metroid revivals on it, but outside of Nintendo games, it didn’t offer me anything.

For the first time in over 10 years. LBP Vita. Wanted to record it and just got sucked back in.

Also playing LBP PSP but not getting as sucked in

I've tried Linux on my Surface Go. It was awful but not in the way you'd think it would be.

Pros: Honestly Linux made the anemic processor on it feel snappy again. I couldn't play the newest games, linux is not a miracle worker. But compared to the bloated experience its better than Windows 10.

Cons: The smallest features didn't work. SD reader never worked. Needed the Surface firmware to get the webcam to work and even then it was worse than it was on Windows. No good on screen keyboard software, and from my testing no DE had a good tablet mode.

Plus the giant red "unsecured" bar on boot was an eye sore.

I know Linux is has more compatibility on different Surface models so maybe it was just my Go. Or perhaps it was Manjaro. Either way if you don't have a machine yet maybe look at other laptop/tablets

This comes from personal testing of games. There was a DX11 bug intel igpus where UE4 games crash instantly on boot. I was able to work around this by forcing dx12 in arch, but when I moved to fedora it wasn’t working, that was until about 2 months later after an update. Since I don’t know exactly how far behind fedora is in terms of graphics drivers I said it in ambiguous terms.

DuckTales or DuckTales 2 for the NES playable in the Disney afternoon collection. TBH most of the games there should be your jam based on Shovel Knights influence.

Hollow Knight based though, Guacemelee is good, not sure about its sequel. Axiomverge too. But they are metroid like games so Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion would be another recommendation.

Yup my install order is

Repo

FlatPak (if it doesn't need is level stuff)

AUR

It was the reason I moved to Linux. Though with another arch based distro and not the deck

Prolly

I have a Nova 3 Color and 2 like books.

The likebooks never got OS updates, but the Nova got updates, but they were updating the default apps.

I don't like moonreader, as I found it to be a battery hog. KOReader is my favourite and its the default reader (or a skin of it is)

By bloat I am referring to the Onyx store which is on my home screen and is not removable.

With that said my Nova is my preferred eReader, especially when I kill the WiFi. 2+ week battery life FTW

I can give you my opinion on a Gigabyte Clevo Laptop.

My laptop both ran to fast and hot which drained the battery. This was an issue in both Fedora and Manjaro.

I need to use different utilities to reign in the battery depending on the OS. Fedora it came out of the box but Manjaro I needed to install Slimbook Battery.

The other issue is the networking kills my sleep. Fedora was better with this than Manjaro, but newer versions of Manjaro kill WiFi when you put it to sleep. So it been better.

In comparison with windows while id like it to just work. Being able to tweak it is much preferable.

Lutris makes installing GOG games with proton pretty easy. Haven't had issues on my end