I understand the irritation. However, keep in mind that language is not crafted in a day.

You can't ask everybody to simply pivot and redo a well established convention they grew up in, even in the span of a few years (yes, it is a big ask, people absolutely need to communicate their thoughts in a way that doesn't feel forced and awkward).

I think at this point, what gender language reformists have too much of are disciplinarians and what they lack are skilled imaginative salespeople.

"guys" is very convenient. It has a warm tight knit inclusiveness to it (not from a gender perspective, but from a camaraderie group cohesion perspective). I can't think of a good substitute from the top of my head. "folks" doesn't have the same vibe. It feels more like you are addressing a bunch of strangers.

So the challenge you have right now is not to ask people to stop using a well established convenient convention and replace it with nothing or poor substitutes. That's a losing proposition.

The challenge you have is to replace it with something gender neutral that feels as satisfying and that will require a salesperson and possibly a poet. You have to win minds here. Carrot, not stick.

I'm getting tired of the bullying narcissistic type behavior. This is an innocent game forum post about which OS you use. If someone requires a daily affirmation about their beliefs or illusions I'm sure there are places for it but this is not it.

forced upgrade to windows 11 from...chrome OS and before that Windows 7 (laptop died)

I'd never consider laptops, but quick glance at a nearby store's site lists 12 available laptop models and 1 desktop model with 4 GB now. Most expensive of the laptops, equivalent of GBP 560.43 at today's rate, to give you an idea... and comes with Win 11 Home S...
And on the site of the store I selected the components of the computer I'm using from, 8 4 GB laptop models, most expensive the equivalent of GBP 577.26, a Microsoft Surface that comes with Win 10 Home S... And there are 158 listed available 4 GB desktop models. Most expensive, equivalent of GBP 401.11 (no OS).

Windows 7 (2 machines)
Linux (6 machine)

Chromebooks tend to have 2-4Gb, not a lot to work with but enough for a Linux Distro.

Worth noting that debian does not have release candidates. If you downloaded an iso that said rc4, that's rc4 of the installer, not the entire OS.

These days, there's a package called otvdm that can be used if you need to run 16-bit programs on modern Windows. (On Linux, WINE of course fills this role, and I believe otvdm may be based on Wine.)

(Also, I remember reading that, apparantly, the US English spelling "prgram" is standard in the field, even in areas where the usual spelling is "programme".)

I do not.

The powers of my mind are enough.

I must leave now to return to my home planet for my people need me!

That's pretty rich coming from someone who just today called someone a moron in a video gaming forum. In another thread about...operating systems...

When you argue something ludicrous like the Linux kernel being written by the NSA to spy on you then yeah. Though I did change it to genius since I did think it was a bit unnecessary.

Old gaming desktop (with "4gb" GTX 970) - Windows 7.
Old Acer gaming laptop (with 960m 4gb VRAM) - W10.
Main gaming desktop (with RTX 3070 8gb VRAM) - W10.
Main non-gaming laptop - W10.
Main gaming laptop (with RTX 3060m 6gb VRAM) - W11.

Currently, I have Windows 10.

I'm not in a hurry to upgrade to Windows 11. Besides spending money for a new OS, there is the possibility of compatibility issues with certain games.

Win11 and DSM7.
W10 at work.

Same as with Windows 10. They didn't change much when it comes to software compatibility. Mostly the "lower deck" parts of Windows were changed from 10 to 11 and since games can't access these anyway, there is no significant difference when it comes to compatibility.
I am not sure if Windows 10 already has that, because I only discovered it after upgrading, but Microsoft also improved compatibility to old software over Windows 7 and 8 at least for software that needs to write into it's installation directory and is installed in the program files directory, usually that would require admin access, but MS managed to bypass that by rerouting the access to a virtual directory that does not require admin access.

The biggest difference when it comes to compatibility you find from XP to 7 (removal of direct hardware access), later from 8 to 10 (significant changes in DirectInput).
(ps: of course I should have sait "XP to Vista", but no one sane uses Vista for gaming anyway, so ....)

Endeavouros (Archos Linuxos)

Hope that OP tells us what he/she/it uses for most part. Sometimes OPs are shy and won't come back to us after the initial post.


Oh man, that brought back some ptsd-like flashbacks! That was the last nvidia gpu I (briefly) owned, the GTX 970 3.5GB "Gimped edition" as I called it. It was a love-hate relationship, loved the core, hated the unfortunate way it was cut from 980 while still advertised as a full 4GB card. That gimped 0.5G portion ran really slow due to narrow bus. If it was allocated by something bandwidth-intensive, the game would stutter real bad. PapaJensen says that the more we buy the more we save, but I don't think so, oh no.

PC operating systems currently installed, not listing my Android phones and tablets and microwave oven and the Miele washing machine OS:

Dell work laptop:
=============
Windows 11 Pro (for work, I don't install anything extra like games on this partition)
Rocky Linux 9.2 Gnome (for personal use)

Lenovo Legion 7 gaming laptop:
=========================
Windows 11 Home
Linux Mint 21.1 XFCE

An older Acer laptop:
================
Windows 10 Home
- Windows 11 doesn't officially support this laptop (I think it complained about the CPU), but I was able to install it anyway from a clean table. There was some odd behavior though, I don't recall if it was sound issues or screen brightness couldn't be adjusted or something, so for now I downgraded back to Windows 10.
- In the long run, at least after Windows 10 is not supported anymore, I might install Linux on this instead.

An even older and weaker Acer laptop:
==============================
Linux Mint 21.1. XFCE
- Since this has only 4GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD, I removed Windows 10 Home from it and installed Linux instead.
- Since the battery is still working ok-ish with lowered capacity, I use this mainly as my backup work laptop as it is smaller and lighter than my official work laptop, so this is easier to carry with me and shit, even work sitting in my car with this laptop on my lap. After all, I basically just need a working VPN and RDP connection to my work place servers, and I am good to go. A weaker laptop is ok for that purpose.

An old eMachines laptop:
====================
Windows XP Pro
Linux Mint 20.3 XFCE
- This has only 3GB RAM and a slow 512GB HDD and is not getting much of any use anymore, especially due to the aforementioned two newer (but still old) Acer laptops. Even its removable battery is almost dead, which is why I have removed the battery and use the laptop only connected to power, as a desktop replacement.
- The only real reason not to retire this is that it is running Windows XP Pro and has a DVD-ROM drive too, and it is the only PC I have that can run the retail game "King Kong: The Movie", the older version which is similar to the PS2 version of the game, not the newer digital version based on the XBox version.
The thing with that game is that due to its copy protection, it requires Windows XP and doesn't work on Windows 7 or newer, but at the same time its hardware requirements are quite steep for an XP era game, which is why it won't run on my even older Windows XP PCs.
Hence, this eMachines laptop is perfect to run that game: runs XP, has a DVD-ROM drive, and has enough graphics and CPU power to run that one game fine.

IBM ThinkPad T41:
===============
Windows XP Pro
Windows 98SE
- To my big surprise, this ancient laptop still seems to run fine. Its battery is pretty much dead etc.
- It exists only as a retro-gaming PC to run some very old retail PC games (CDs), but frankly I really rarely run it, and won't care when it finally dies. I guess I should just recycle it. Its main achievements are that I could run e.g. the retail versions of Heavy Gear 1-2 and the Direct3D version of Dungeon Keeper on it without any issues.

An old 1-core AMD desktop
=====================
Linux Mint 19.3 XFCE 32bit
Windows XP Pro
Windows 98SE
- Another old retro-gaming laptop for running old retail PC games.
- Not seeing much of any use anymore, I think I've kept it as I was able to run Mechwarrior 3 on it without those issues that the game gets on too fast CPUs. Maybe they are a non-issue nowadays if you are able to limit the framerate of the game to 30 fps or so with some extra tool like RivaTuner or such...
- I am running the last 32bit Linux Mint on it because it has so low memory, 1GB if I recall correctly. The Linux is there only in case I feel I need to go online with that particular PC, but I guess nowadays even that Linux is too insecure for online use.

Raspberry Pi 4:
============
The default 32bit Raspberry Pi OS
- I wish to upgrade this to use some 64bit OS (since it has a 64bit CPU), but not sure which to choose. Tried out Manjaro and the 64bit Raspberry Pi OS, but I had some issues with both, which may have been related to the USB hard drive though.