My 80 year old dad has been using a XUbuntu for years and never even noticed. The only reason he knows he’s using Linux at all is because he saw a news story about Windows tracking and asked about it. He was quite happy not to be affected.

It’s been awhile and I haven’t tried to latest hardware, but I’m sure it’s still doable. The process wasn’t terrible, just a few extra steps to add compatibility for some of the devices.

I mostly just used the guidance here:

https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface

I put Ubuntu on a handful of Surface Pros a couple years ago for work, and while the process wasn’t horrible, I was wishing for something with more native support the whole time. Nice to see I wasn’t the only one.

Honest question: if you’re not a Steam user, what does Proton do that wine doesn’t just as easily? I’ve played games in wine prefixes for years now, but haven’t bothered with Proton or PlayOnLinux or any of the other wine front ends. Are they worth it?

Mine are learning more Linux than Windows. They really only use Windows for Office, and only then when Office Online absolutely won’t cut it.

Their laptops dual-boot, but flipping over to Windows is happening so rarely these days (school changed some things around) that I may just have them on Linux going forward.

Bonus round, it’s much easier on them for computer science classes.

Long range transmission of AC power is limited to about 40 miles. DC can be transmitted much farther, but the infrastructure is substantially more expensive (because it’s more dangerous), so that’s only done for extreme need.

We aren’t getting away from having many power generators all over the place, so one location-dependent storage solution isn’t going to solve all the problems.

Absolutely. Coal has remained consistent as demand for power has risen steadily. Renewables are growing, but remain a tiny slice of the whole generation picture.

Natural gas has become a cheap and reliable replacement for coal over the last 10-15 years as it’s become less expensive to transport. Many coal plants have been converted, even. So as demand has risen, it’s natural gas, not renewables, that is filling the gap.

It works very well, not disputing that.

But, like geothermal power generation (which is also very good), it’s extremely dependent on location. Most populated areas don’t have the altitude differential (steep hills) and/or water supply to implement pumped hydro storage.

Where it can be used, it should be (and largely is - fossil fuel generation does better with some storage as well, since demand is not consistent), but it’s hardly something that can be deployed alongside solar and wind generators everywhere.

Storage. Coal, natural gas, and nuclear generate power regardless of weather, day and night.

Solar generates plenty of electricity (with enough panels installed), but it slows down significantly under cloudy skies and stops entirely at night.

Wind generates plenty as well…unless the wind stops blowing.

The grid needs power all the time, not just when it’s sunny and windy. For renewables to actually compete, the excess power they generate during sunny and windy times needs to be stored for use when it’s dark and still.

As much as we applaud lithium batteries, our energy storage technologies are abysmally inefficient. We’re nowhere near being able to store and discharge grid-scale power the way we’d need to for full adoption of renewables. The very best we can do today (and I wish I were kidding) is pump water up a hill, then use hydroelectric generators as it flows back down. Our energy storage tech is literally in the Stone Age.

It never stopped. Hasn’t even really slowed down.

People need electricity. Renewables are great, but they don’t provide for the full generation need. Coal and natural gas power generation will continue unabated until a better (read: lower price for similar reliability) solution takes their place.

In my opinion, fossil fuel generation won’t take a real hit until the grid-scale energy storage problem is solved.

That’s true, and there are people who go see movies specifically because of whom appears in them. But I’d hesitate to call that the majority, especially in gaming. The set of people that play games and the set of people who follow the industry are certainly overlapping, but are far from identical.

Sad to say, but the union probably won’t get many meaningful concessions from this one. The technologies to fully generate model movement (motion capture) and emotive voice (voice acting) are already reasonably mature and constantly improving.

The artists will (rightfully) get strong control over their own likenesses, but if they think they’re going to stop mass adoption of AI in video games they’re dreaming.