Kristell

Gentoo is on the Latitude; it’s slightly more powerful, but it’s still an eight year old laptop. The big thing that’s cut down on compile time is using binary packages by default, only compiling when I either need to because my USE flags are different, or because there’s no binary package available. I don’t have that many packages installed that take hours/days (and I do mean days, I gave up on the source package for qtwebengine after 3 days of compiling) anymore. Average update takes maybe 30 minutes now, updating weekly.

For a more direct comparison: Same PC, installed Gentoo twice (I managed to bork my install), the source install took 3 days to actually get a GUI, binary install took 3 hours, and there is essentially no difference

I will also say: You can absolutely use your computer while the upgrades are going. Gaming won’t be great, but doing office/coding stuff, and watching videos is usually fine

Admittedly a lot of my audio stuff is either wireless or built-in now. Either laptop speakers, or bone conduction headphones since I want to hear what’s happening around me when I’m walking on the roadside. Not clear on what you mean by pre-enshittification tech, but here’s the stuff people either need explained, or look at me weird for:

• Gentoo linux
• FreeBSD
• Thinkpad T430
• GrapheneOS (this one’s weird to me because it feels almost exactly like stock android?)
• A lot of my games are from itch.io for the same reason you listed for GOG, though I do use steam a lot too.
• My files are synced through syncthing between 4 locations, depending on what’s getting synced
• The fediverse in general
• Having my own website? This one confuses me because you’d think that’d be a bit more normal because of the SquareSpace ads, but nope. The idea of just… having your own website is weird to people
• The Linux terminal. I occasionally go to the library and write books in a TTY, it’s a little funny seeing people react.
• Emacs
• Pick any terminal application. Ranger, w3m, cmus, cava, etc etc.
• I occasionally play MUDs/MUSHes
• Browser games that are text/image based. The ones I’m playing now are all 20+ years old, so well pre-enshittification.
• Honestly I’ve had people think it’s weird that I download my music to play locally, even though it’s through a phone app with a relatively modern interface.

We’ll be moving into an owned home soon, and I have some plans for tech, and non-tech stuff. Can’t wait to see how many comments we get about having awnings in 2026.

We do (in the USA) have a legal framework for this already? There are at least a handful of industries where, if it is found that they’ve mischarged, they do have to provide a refund.

Also the thing that annoys me the most is: They didn’t pay the tarrifs, the consumers did. Those price changes were 100% passed onto consumers, and it should be consumers of those products seeing the refunds. If they can prove that they lost revenue based on the price hikes, sure, give some recompense, but they shouldn’t be getting refunds on something they effectively didn’t spend money on

If you want something similar to WordPress, but serves webpages like Hugo, Publii is also nice from what I’ve heard. Has a GUI editor, but makes static files that you just drop on a server