Why couldn’t there just be a soap dispenser on the wall nearby? That’s pretty common at heavy traffic sinks like at stadiums, movie theatres, etc.

I think one reason I really like Lemmy / Mastodon is that they remind me of the days when people ran their own IRC servers, and/or Jabber servers and when that was a normal and standard way to communicate.

What distro do you recommend if it’s a machine mostly used for gaming?

Yeah, it’s true. I don’t think that’s by accident either. The “evil” in Google’s “Don’t be evil” motto was at least somewhat inspired by Microsoft. Now, you can argue about how evil Google has become, but even very early on they saw Microsoft as a prime adversary. That meant not tying themselves to Windows in any way, and it also meant building a lot of capabilities into Chrome that made it so that people weren’t tied to Windows. That has opened the door to SAAS being a thing that happens in the browser, and not in GUIs written in Visual Basic, or something that is tied to the MS platform, which means you’re more and more able to do your normal work on Linux.

Shit just works (mostly).

That’s the “damning with faint praise” that has been the bane of Linux since slackware came on 500 floppies.

Sometimes that “mostly” is just “oh, you have to do this simple thing that is in a FAQ once and then you’re golden”. Other times it’s “oh, that hardware isn’t supported, so I guess you don’t have a usable video card”.

I think what many of us are hoping with when it comes to SteamOS is that a few of the remaining really sharp edges get sanded off. And, just maybe, there will be a tipping point where the smoother the experience, the more people use it, and the more people use it, the smoother the experience will be.

Among consumers, sure. But they also have put decades of effort into understanding how business buy and pay for software and computers.

I haven’t used Critical Roles new systems but I assume they could get a big switch over if they push it hard

It’s launching sometime in 2025, so we’ll see how hard they push it when it’s ready. So far, they’ve only hinted at it. I don’t know if they’d want to do this, but they could also try to convince other smaller (but still big) streamers to use it too. There are some streamers they’re pretty close with (the Dropout guys for example) and others who they’re on friendly terms with (like Penny Arcade’s guys).

If WotC / Hasbro wanted to mount a charm offensive to get people to keep using D&D, I don’t know how influential they are. Other than Chris Perkins, I can’t think of any well known D&D employees at all.

I think what might be different this time is influencers. If Critical Role abandoned D&D completely, I think they’d probably stay popular and whatever system they switched to would get a lot of attention. I also think that they’d be likely to use a system that isn’t math heavy, and allows for a lot of role playing and acting.

The problem would probably be splintering. But, if a tiny company like Paizo made such a big impact on the D&D ecosystem with virtually no ad money back in the 3.5 days, just imagine what could happen today when so many D&D influencers exist. If they worked together on something, it could be a major change to the D&D ecosystem.

I just wonder if maybe another big stumble from Hasbro will cause the rise of a new system.

Paizo is relatively tiny compared to D&D and especially compared to Hasbro, but Pathfinder gained a pretty sizeable following mostly from word of mouth, and this is basically before social media. One of the biggest “promoters” of D&D now is Critical Role, and before the stream started their home game was a Pathfinder game. But, CR is now also streaming their own game system called Daggerheart in addition to their main D&D campaign. I have a sense that many other D&D streamers have a “plan B” game ready in case Hasbro steps over the line again.

An interesting twist to all this is that you can’t copyright rules or stat blocks. That severely limits the kinds of “moats” that Hasbro can put up to prevent competition.

Anyhow, I think you’re overall right. I know Hasbro is going to push an exclusive VTT, and it’s just a matter of time before they try to push a LLM DM.

I check the heft and balance of sticks I throw for my dog, not because I’m an expert stickmaster, but because it’s nice to know the weight and feel of something before I start swinging it around and throwing it.