Image alt text: An image of Steam's top 10 best-selling games at the time of posting, three of which are marked as "prepurchase"

I checked the Steam stats and noticed that in the top 10 best selling games by revenue, there's three games that aren't even out yet. If we ignore the Steam Deck and f2p games, it's three out of four games. They have also been in the top 100 for 4, 6, and 8 weeks respectively, so people just keep on buying them. I would love to know why people keep doing this, as the idea of pre-ordering is that there is a physical copy of a game available for you on release, but this is not a concern with digital items. So after so many games lately being utterly broken on release, why do people not wait until launch reviews to buy the game? If you touch a hot stove and get burned multiple times, when does one learn?

Due to the recent announcement of Proton moving to a non-profit structure (although not becoming fully non-profit) I've decided to take another look at them and really, Proton Unlimited is an enticing offer. However, the fact of everything from mail, to accounts, to storage being in one place is somewhat disconcerting. Also I recall them being decent, but not particularly outstanding at refusing to provide data to outside sources, there was a situation a while back where they handed over information of a climate activist.

To be fair, mail is insecure by default and if you're going so far as to write to another Protonmail user you might as well use something actually secure and I am not exactly planning on breaking the law so I'm not too worried about data being handed over to authorities, yet it still leaves a bitter taste in my mouth and with the state of politics where I live there certainly is a concern that, being queer, I should also be a bit weary of governing bodies as well, as laws may change in the future.

Basically, by switching to Proton I'd be putting a lot of trust in them, instead of splitting it up between things like Mullvad, Bitwarden, etc. and besides a password manager (and to some extent my email provider), while dramatic, a single failure at any point wouldn't be a total disaster. Are they trustworthy enough for the convenience benefits to be worth it to any of you?

I'm having trouble finding a proper starting point for self hosting, so I am curious on any resources you'd recommend, or even some build lists / pre-built devices.

What I want to do:

Important

1. Host some applications like TinyTinyRSS, Jellyfin, GitLab, and Nextcloud which I'd want to be accessible in my home network
2. Use the computer as a NAS to back data up and have it easily accessible on my desktop and laptop
3. Have a piHole

Optional

4. Access my hosted applications from outside of my network
5. Use tools like Radarr to automatically download things from torrent lists
6. Use it as a seedbox

The reason the last three are optional is because for that I'd have to expose the computer to the outside network, which has a whole bunch of benefits, but also a whole bunch of risks I am likely neither capable of nor comfortable with working around, so unless there's an easy fix (number 3 might be able to be handled via a VPN?) they're a problem for future me. For anything further I think I can just go from here once those requirements develop

I have already skimmed through some articles, watched some build guides for both NAS and home servers and honestly I just don't know what I need, both in information, hardware, and software.

• Should I separate the NAS and Home Server, get a separate device for the piHole, or just have all three in one?
• What hardware would be suitable for this?
• Should I buy something off the shelf like a mini PC (for instance an Intel NUC) or one of these fancy prebuilt NAS devices where you just need to plug in some drives or build my own?
• Would it be smarter to go with a Linux distro as the OS, for instance Debian, or should I use something like Unraid or TrueNAS which from what I can gather make setup more convenient and even handle docker images for you?

I am somewhat comfortable with Linux and the command line and have a budget of about 1000€, but if I can get away with less that would be great, and I can also stretch higher if needed for my requirements. I am also very new to self hosting and my networking knowledge is not non-existent, but limited.

I'm just a bit lost and would love some beginner-oriented resources or direct advice, thank you!

So, Konsole shipped by default with KDE Plasma, my current Desktop Environment. While I don't have a problem with it, I am interested in what other people are using, because there very likely is something better out there.

Specifically I've seen talk of Kitty and Alacritty, although I've also read that the dev of Kitty is allegedly kind of a jerk, so I am specifically interested in how Konsole matches up to Alacritty in your experience, but other suggestions and general terminal emulator discussion are also welcome!

Better get the subscription and let them brick your printer if you stop paying

I would like to set up a NAS/Home Server Combination. I am not particularly experienced with networking and this general area, although I can handle Linux well enough at the very least, so I have a few questions, particularly about security, but also other things.

So, here's what I want, to provide a general idea of my plans:

I'd like

• Storage for my local network
• Nextcloud
• "Sync sources" for myself like a self-hosted RSS Reader and I guess Nextcloud counts for this too, with Calendars, Contacts, etc. (These should be available primarily to me, but indirectly through other apps)
• Collaborative tools also accessible to others (OnlyOffice, Etherpad, etc.)
• Plex/Jellyfin/Similar
• Factorio/Minecraft/Tf2 server for a handful of players (not all at once)

This isn't a comprehensive list, but should provide a rough idea

So, my questions:

1. Is it reasonable to combine a NAS and Home Server?
2. How do I keep it secure, especially with potentially sensitive data on Nextcloud or in general storage, if I also want others to be able to access parts of it?
3. What price range am I reasonably looking at if I want, let's say, 8TB (is that normal?) of storage and enough performance to run all the above plus some extra things?
4. What are some general best practices for hardware upkeep / preventing data loss?
5. What are some best practices for security overall?
6. Is there anything you'd like me to know, as a total novice in this field?

I am grateful for any tips, even if they're not entirely related to my direct questions, so please feel free to dump all kinds of knowledge and tips on me, if it's not too much of a bother for you!

I'm personally using NewsFlash at the moment, and it's perfectly fine, but its borders are completely incongruous with my theme, I assume they're based around Gnome and I'm on Plasma, so I'm looking for a new one and was wondering what people here use?

On top of one for Linux, I'd be curious on if any of you have recommendations for Android or iOS, as only being able to check the news on my pc has led to me relying on RSS a bit less than I'd like.

Hi, I was here and asked about a few distros already, so here's a quick summary of my situation:

I'm thinking about what distro to put onto my new Laptop, which will be used for University, Work, and just general daily usage. I am currently using EndeavourOS on my main PC and have been decently satisfied, but I want to experiment more. I've already asked if Arch was fine for this situation, to which the answer was a general "Yes, but keep x in mind" and I've asked about NixOS, where the answer was generally a no.

I've been looking around a bit more, and now I'm kind of curious about Fedora, specifically the KDE spin (or i3, I haven't quite decided). It seems to be cutting edge, compared to Arch's (and by extension EndeavourOS's) bleeding edge, and I'm wondering what you all think of it. From what I can gather it has basically all traits which people used to enjoy in Ubuntu, before Canonical dropped the ball on that. While it's not rolling release, the stability improvements and user experience compared to something like Arch, or even a more comfortable fork like EndeavourOS, seem quite decent, but in your experience, does that make up for the lack of the AUR and reduced applicability of the Arch Wiki?

I'm curious to hear about your experiences and recommendations!

Edit: I feel like I need to clarify, I know about the difference between EndeavourOS and Arch, I mostly just brought it up as a note that I am somewhat familiar with arch-based systems, and as a question of if it'd be stupid to just go with raw Arch, as EndeavourOS is basically the same, but with a more comfortable installer. I should have specified that more clearly in the first place, my apologies.

I've tried shaving my leg hair a few times now, but it takes an hour or two just to get back with stubble within roughly two to three days at most. Also for some reason my skin just can't help get irritated, no matter how much I exfoliate, apply lotion afterwards, all that stuff. Because of this, I've been looking into other options

• wax seems fine, but having to buy new stuff each time sounds like a pain
• shaving cream sounds too good to be true, but from what I've read it also really messes up your pores, so I'd rather not

And so I landed on epilators. Since masc hair is a bit tougher though, I'm wondering if any of you have recommendations of epilators that actually do the trick? I've read a few reviews of some and every now and then you see a review along the lines of "I'm a man and it didn't work properly for me since the battery ran out before I was done" and since I'm not on hormones or anything, I assume my hair growth is similar-ish, meaning it wouldn't be much of an option for me either.

So again, do any of you recommendations for good epilators? And if not, do you have any shaving tricks or generally other ideas for how to get rid of leg, or even better, all kinds of body hair? I loved the feeling I had after shaving my legs, it just sucked that it lasted for two days and then I had about a week's worth of leg itching, despite trying my best to do avoid that.