ouch!

As a recovering Apple user, the hardware really is very, very good.

I have an M2 MacBook Air that is, quite frankly, the fastest computer I’ve ever used. Running Window in a VM within it gave me the fastest Windows computer I’ve ever used. I’ve had it two years and still get all day out of the battery. It can export a two hour AIFF recording of my radio show from Reaper in around 10 seconds. In the two years I’ve had it there have been perhaps three occasions where I wished I’d opted for a Pro instead.

I also have an iPad mini which is a ridiculously useful little tablet, when used in conjunction with my MacBook.

However, over the past year I’ve been drawing further away from their ecosystem, to the point that I mostly only use the MacBook to present my radio show because it’s fanless so doesn’t cause any noise issues when my mic’s open. And that’s as a direct result of Apple being a trash company run by corporate fuckheads who would sooner capitulate to fascists than actually fucking stand for something.

So yeah, very few of us do actually support them.

Very nice!

You can already run Graphene entirely without Play Services. You have to install them yourself after you set up. It’s just that if you do install them, they’re sandboxed.

I’m not an expert by any means, I moved directly to Graphene after 15 years of iPhones without really touching Android in between, so I mostly scrabboed about, found a path that worked and stuck to it.

But the way I use it is with Aurora to install apps from the Play Store. You can use it anonymously, or you can log in to your own Google account.

In terms of other Google services, you can install then, whereby Graphene will run them in a sandbox. You have control over how much data they can have. For me it strikes a happy balance between knowing that I have some semblance of control, but also having the convenience of things like Maps. And Google’s camera app is much much better than any of the others I’ve tried. Which is annoying.

You don’t have to run any Google stuff at all, if you don’t want to.

I bought a Pixel 9 with the sole intention of putting Graphene on it. I wasn’t massively down with giving Google money, but my provider offered it to me for £30, then £30 a month on contract. Can’t argue with that.

If you have a Pixel, then GrapheneOS is the sensible choice. Not least because it currently only works with Pixels anyway.

It’s mad that I have to search for how to turn my iPad off every bloody time.

Also, Apple don’t seem to have an appetite for supporting gaming on macOS, beyond a few big name titles announced once a year to reig ite interest.

I tried to go with Bazzite on my wife’s old PC. Fuck knows what happened, but I could not get it to recognise that I’d downloaded the image with the Nvidia drivers built in.

Ended up giving up and rolling Kubuntu. I know Kubuntu and like it. And it works beautifully. Back in the world of RDR2 now, and loving it.

Its become abundantly clear to me over the past few years that Linux is in place where, to get significant share it needs to have a major figurehead. Imagine if all ThinkPads suddenly were only available with Lenovo’s own fork. That kind of thing.

Unfortunateoy, that’s kinda the opposite of Linux ethos, and not necessarily likely to make Lenovo much money.

So the best we can really hope for at this point is a company with the brand awareness of Valve pushing SteamOS into the mainstream. People who play games know and generally trust Valve, so people (like my wife) who are on the fence, or who just need their computer to work without needing too much faffing, could likely trust SteamOS in a way they wouldn’t necessarily trust Bazzite or CachyOS.

Surprised no one’s mentioned Thank Goodness You’re Here yet.

That game had me rolling from start to finish.

I didn’t actually ask you specifically to answer my question. If it was too difficult for you, then you needn’t have bothered. Instead you chose to be condescending.

You might not think that’s the case, but it is.

This isn’t a real world enterprise situation. I have never been in such a situation. It’s a forum on a website where enthusiastic amateurs and IT professionals alike discuss a shared common interest. I fall squarely into the former category, and I assume you the latter. But I don’t have to conform to your requirement for assistance. And if I don’t, then ignore me.

You tell me that I ignored the practical guides you linked, but in the comment you’ve just replied to, I specifically thanked you for the information you’ve imparted. I’m aware of the links, but life gets in the way and I’ve not yet had a chance to actually do anything with them.

You accuse me of lacking humility, yet if you look at my replies to others you’ll see that I’m grateful for their input. I am! What I don’t like is being criticised because I’m not conforming to a standard that you’ve imposed upon me. If I’m guilty of lacking humility, it’s purely in my responses to you.

I expect nothing of anyone here. I asked a question (that you considered insufficient) without any expectation of reply. I hoped for one of course, but ultimately it was just an attempt to pick the brains of those who know more about these things than I do. And evidently you do.

Your responses to me have irritated me enormously, which is a shame as I’m certain that wasn’t your intention.

I’ll draw a line under this here. Thank you for the information you’ve provided.

Yeah, it’s cool.

I’m ADHD as fuck, my partner is autistic as fuck (with probably a large sprinkle of ADHD too), so I get the communication thing. But also, being ADHD, I tend to either comment with all the context anyone could possibly ever need (and more), or with broad strokes because I want to achieve something but also want to go off and focus on something else. I can be very difficult to live with. My partner is a saint.

But yeah, I get that - as an IT professional - you come to support requests with a certain level of weariness. I work in engineering health and safety, so I know how thoughtless people can be.

Thank you for your response, I do appreciate your input.

However, if you weren’t trying to be rude, you kinda failed. I didn’t actually ask anyone for advice on how to sort out my setup (though advice supplied is always gratefully received), what I actually asked for was if anyone knew of any useful guides on how to learn how to set things up.

I was asking how to learn, not to be told how to write a better support ticket.

To address your reply further; how much information could I have provided that would have been enough for you? You even ask for information on my router (I use a TP-Link mesh network, if that helps. It streams my partner’s PC beautifully), on what planet would I have known to tell people that when asking how to learn?

But as I said, I do appreciate your input, and you have imparted some useful information. Thank you.

I have to admit, I’ve not replied to the previous comment because it came across as condescending. Helpful in its way, but condescending enough to be unhelpful.

But I would like to respond to this one.

I never actually stated there was a problem with the hardware, and I didn’t actually ask for any specific help with my setup. I’m aware of my own limitations as I’m new to both gaming PCs and Linux. What I actually asked for was if anyone knew of any useful guides I could browse to help me get an understanding of what I need to optimise. Perhaps I shouldn’t have offered any further context to what I’m trying to achieve, because that’s just served to allow three different people in the replies to criticise my ability to request support.

I’m happy to admit that I don’t know what I’m on about here, but I am willing to learn, and I’m happy to take on board that maybe I need to be clearer in future. But the attitude from several in these replies has come across as almost gatekeeping. A weary sigh of a comment, a reluctant imparting of knowledge, for which the only payment is me knowing my place.

As in playing it via Moonlight on an Apple TV in my lounge. So yeah, remote play.

Thanks, I’ll look in to that.

Sorry, I was trying to avoid replies from the kind of person who’d say “your shit’s too old! Get a new one!” when the point of what I’m doing is giving new life to a forgotten computer.

As I said, it still plays RDR2 beautifully, so for that reason alone I’m keen to get it running as well as I can, because I love getting lost in that wilderness.