Good to be back

[IsabellaWhite]

Heya, I'm River! I'm a old user who used to be active, but lost my credentials for my last account several years ago. After being an lurker for years, I've decided to come back with an new account.
The post 'Why independent websites like GBAtemp are struggling to survive in 2025' inspired me to create this account so I could support the site.

Things I like: Video games, GNU/Linux, OPSEC, and old technology.

Here's hoping for a bright future for this site!

Welcome Back.

 

[River_01]

Ohhhh so BACK THEN, it used to be a problem.. I still see people not recommending GNOME to new users, but tbh, I'm quite confused by that. The best thing about this DE is that you're able to customize it with extensions, and you can make GNOME feel like Windows, Mac, or something custom, similar to KDE Plasma. I used to work with the original, but after realizing I can make it work like Windows, I Immediately stuck to doing that. I even made a pusedo combination of the two, having the background apps on the taskbar show on the top, an eject button, and the dock from MacOS.

I guess the reason people don’t recommend Gnome to new users is because most people are coming from Windows, and Cinnamon and Plasma resembles Windows a lot more. For Mac users Gnome will mostly feel familiar enough. It’s interesting you mention customization is one of the reasons why you use Gnome when it is known for not liking it. I don’t know if it still applies but when I used Gnome I kept it pretty vanilla because every time I updated it to the new version it broke all of my extensions.

That's because NVIDIA, unlike AMD and Intel, is closed-source, and of course, nobody likes closed-source. Fun fact, this and the fact that Windows automatically turns on Secure Boot on my machine are the reasons I started supporting Open Source software more than ever. I used to appreciate them a little bit by now, but all I wish is for everything to be Open Source (but I can't).

I mostly run free software where I can but I want to play games on Steam and they ain’t it. Then there is the all the firmware I need to make my stuff work, like GPU and Wi-Fi. Even though the drivers are open source, the firmware (the small blob that initialize the hardware) are closed sourced. I run a special kernel on my school laptop that prevents any non-free stuff to run. Sure the Wi-Fi chip in it doesn’t work but I just happened to own a Wi-Fi usb dongle that works with free firmware.

I completely forgotten that Taito re-re-released this game on modern hardware, but yeah from what I'm looking at, it is just the Satrun version. I think its the definitive way to play the original. I don't get on how there's some Arcade games that aren't on PlayStation that have been ported to the Saturn without issue. One example of this is Magical Drop II. I guess they preferred the Saturn hardware more than Sony's? Idk. Only time will tell.

Cleopatra Fortune got a release on Playstation but…it’s better we don’t talk about. The graphics and performance are terrible compare to the other versions. I think it’s accurate to compare it to Arcade vs Atari 2600 of Pac-Man. Saturn was more powerful than Playstation (even though it was a nightmare to develop for) so it isn’t surprising that Saturn had better arcade ports.

I can't believe I'm actually speaking this much.

Same. I just came back and immediately started to ramble teehee