I’ve tinkered plenty even when using Windows haha. I even have a Windows 98 and Windows XP virtual machine for some old things, but everything I care about seems to have a modern HD release, a userpatch or can be hooked with dxwnd, so I don’t use them anymore at the moment.

But yeah probably the long term solution is Linux. Personally I wouldn’t run Windows 7 anymore. The unfixed CVE list has become quite long. I just went checking for the above titles out of principle, because I don’t like this conflation of PC gaming with only Steam.

I still haven’t made the jump to gaming on Linux, unfortunately. Although I’ve been running a dual boot for the last 8 years or so, because I used Linux for my studies, use it for my work, and for hosting my game servers on a second computer, so I would be in a prime position… but so far I have just gone the way of least resistance, which is still Windows 10 at the moment.

But I have a deadline now: October 2025. Just need to figure out the best distro, I don’t think I’ll use my existing Fedora KDE install for this. Maybe Arch, or one of these new immutable distros, that might be neat for when different games require different versions of libraries.

Ah sorry I hadn’t heard that they switched to Java 21 with 1.20.5

The title of that article is kind of weird. It’s just wrong to claim they are dead for gaming because of a lack of steam.

Anyone can just get Witcher 3, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Stardew Valley, or Anno 2070 from GoG and for each of them you can game for another 50 hours without needing steam. Or get Minecraft from their page directly and play for 100 hours. This is all without going to any retro titles.

looks like a console from a 90s pop music video

All these shady things started happening after he left.

Not really, they have a history of this kind of thing. They just calmed down a little between roughly 2005 and 2015.

The big antitrust case when they killed Netscape was in 1998. Bill Gate’s deposition from that case is kind of interesting to watch as a historical document. It’s on youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL90W55zhFBOuZuhgxBsjpgDy0o3ll1PSz

In that lawsuit their “Embrace Extend Extinguish” strategy in which they tried to smother open standards became public too.

They tried with Java and their J++ language too, but failed luckily. And lost a lawsuit against Sun on the way.

On a general note I would say for the individual consumer it doesn’t matter so much if they keep releasing yearly, we just don’t have to buy yearly.

It’s kind of a waste of resources for the manufacturers supporting more models than necessary. If that leads to shorter support schedules that’s when it impacts us. But as you observed they seem to be lengthening at the moment.

I’m currently on a Pixel 6 from 2021, that I bought used from someone who was chasing the latest and greatest. I have no reason for changing yet. After October 2026 when support ends I’ll see if I have to migrate to Graphene OS or something. If no secure path forward exists I may have to get newer hardware then.

From what I can tell, the only OEM that does this currently might be Fairphone.

Does what? I don’t see anything in the sentences before that “this” could refer to.

Ah this bit is sad. The exception only covers bypassing DMCA protections to fix your own stuff not distributing the tooling for it.

It is still a crime for iFixit to sell a tool to fix ice cream machines, and that’s a real shame. The ruling doesn’t change the underlying statute making it illegal to share or sell tools that bypass software locks. This leaves most of the repair work inaccessible to the average person, since the technical barriers remain high. Without these tools, this exemption is largely theoretical for many small businesses that don’t have in-house repair experts.