What do you guys do when you want to run unmaintained programs?
I recently wanted to run tegaki, and my experience is pretty much summed up by the meme. I consider myself fairly tech-savvy, but I just couldn't figure out how to compile it. So I just gave up, downloaded the .exe and put it into a fresh wine prefix. After installing CJK fonts, everything ran fine. Now I'm trying to get gpaint to work. My distro recently dropped support for gtk+2 (which I am fairly pissed about, since it's the last good version of GTK+), so I have to set that up manually as well.[[[ EDIT: gtk2 is alive and well. I was just being and idiot and searching for gtk2, when the package is actually called gtk+2. ]]] I installed all of the dependencies that ./configure told me to, but I still kept getting obscure errors when running make.
So, here's my question: what tools make the process of running abandonware easier? Docker containers? Also, what can I use to package abandonware in order to make it easy for other people to run? Flatpak? Appimages? Any advice is appreciated!
Also, inb4 "just find a modern alternative". That would be a reasonable solution. I don't want reasonable solutions!
I don't get what the benefits of windows are supposed to be. I just want to play games and ride on the information superhighway. Why would I even want a.. Cortana or paperclip or whatever?
The redpill is that there are none. You know how w*ndows search is absolute crap, but you can get actually decent search results with Powertoys Run? You know how instead of trolling through control pannel and Settings, you can just directly search for whatever configuration you need with god mode? You know how w*ndows has a package manager, but it is not even installed by default? Or how it supports hibernation (suspend-to-disk), but hides it from the power menu? Ask yourself, why add all of these useful features, and then hide them far away, while presenting the user with a painfully outdated interface bloated with crap like c*pilot or c*rtana or whatever? The answer is that to remain relevant, M*cros*ft needs to keep the computing experience painful for their users. If they make W*ndows actually nice to use, people will swiftly realize that using your computer can actually be enjoyable. And that leads to trying out alternatives like BSD and Linux. And trying out alternatives leads to finding out that those alternatives are superior. Think about it. They've already lost in the server world. Once the remaining office workers and college students realize that m*cros*ft has been pissing in their mouths while telling them that it's raining, the only userbase that will be left are "capital G" g*ming addicts. And that demographic is also slowly waning thanks to wine and the fact that modern v*deo g*mes are slowly becoming utter trash.
No, I don't know any of that. Some of those words are familiar, tho. Sorry, I ain't had a Windows partition on my own personal computer since... damn I forgot what the one before 7 was called - Vista! We still had the family gaming PC, and I stayed buying games during steam and gog sales (even tho I mostly played on consoles - Nintendos and PlayStations only, lol) but I guess I haven't actually been on it since Windows 8 and I hated it so much! But it's gone now anyway, cannibalized for parts. Only 1 kid left at home, he's got his own PC, and I don't even know what version of windows he's running. It's hilarious, go back a few decades and I was free windows tech support for everyone, but now I don't even know how to Windows.
And look, I'm probably just a trash monster. Like, I'm playing Just Cause 4 on my PS4 right now. And I play plenty of other trash (but also some good games) on my Garuda (it's based on arch, btw - installed by my husband who has only ever installed windows in his life, with very minimal input from me) gaming PC. I also have the steam deck, but once my son donated parts after his latest PC upgrade, the steam deck just mostly gets picked up to do a little update every so often - but I'm about to go on a trip (and the switch has already been claimed)!
To be fair to the steam deck, I mostly don't even power on my gaming PC, as I really love my PS4 (I can't stand the PS5 and usually only get on it to help my grandson when he's here) and my rarely-turned-off MX Linux PC (I don't hate the KDE of Garuda, but there's a reason I use an XFCE-based distro as my daily driver).
I might be a gaming addict.
But Microsoft hasn't had anything to offer me since like, George W Bush was president. And even then, it was steam then gog who really had stuff to offer me on the PC. And in the console department, they ain't ever had anything I've wanted, maybe my hands are too small or something but I've always hated the Xbox controller.