Tech For Everyone #23: Halo and Linux Lessons

Greetings my friends, and welcome back to your dose of Tech, Linux, and gaming! Miraculously, I have managed to write a bunch of content despite the ever-present drug known as Halo Infinite existing.

(Yes, the campaign is EXQUISITE.)

Speaking of Halo and my gaming life, something big has transpired. An unexpected and potentially controversial thing. But also a SANE thing. I’ve gone back to my console gaming roots in a serious way. Read about that here.

I’ve also been covering Linux news that matters to me, and enjoying the freedom that comes with publishing articles on a platform I own and control!

And because I have ownership of it, I can choose to employ a privacy-respecting tool like Plausible instead of using Google Analytics. Not only that, I can be 100% transparent and share real-time website analytics with YOU.

Seriously: http://plausible.io/openforeveryone.net

I can’t express how much I’m enjoying writing again.

Below are the most important stories I’ve written up in the last week or so. Read one, read all, share a couple with your friends, and enjoy the rest of your week!

I don’t envy any individual or small organization that has to market a Linux distribution (or a FOSS project, or an indie game). There are currently hundreds of Linux distros in active development. 72 of those employ the GNOME desktop environment, and 77 use KDE. There are 51 Linux distributions based on Ubuntu. And Searching Google with the phrase “Linux distro for beginners” returns an astounding 9 million results.

If you think it’s challenging for new Linux users to make the right choice, imagine how challenging it is for Linux distro teams trying to be the chosen ones.

After 3 years of covering Linux full-time, I want to share specifically what Linux distros like Zorin OS are doing RIGHT to gain more mindshare, more exposure, more users, and more press coverage:

Major things are brewing over at System76. The strong and all-but-confirmed rumor of an in-house desktop environment for Pop OS being developed. It will be a DE built in Rust which may eventually replace GNOME altogether. 

But that’s not the only fundamental change happening with Pop OS. System76 is slowly but steadily reducing its reliance on Ubuntu. While some view this as a politically-charged decision, I maintain that it’s to more effectively serve System76 hardware customers.

Zooming out and looking at the big picture is fascinating. Here’s what’s going on, and here’s my take:

From falling in love with Xbox to Recalbox 8.0 and a fantastic retro-fueled Kickstarter, to the best BitTorrent app on Linux getting a huge update, here are the rest of the stories that matter to me:

That’s a reference to Cowboy Bebop. No, you really shouldn’t watch the live-action “reboot” on Netflix. It’s full of disappointment and half-hearted fan service. Just go watch the original anime, listen to that spunky jazz theme, and smile.

See you next time. Until then, take care! And take care of each other.