Related question - will any 3rd party launcher allow for multiplayer authentication? Right now I install each game manually but sometimes I want to play on online servers.

Many distros (at least Ubuntu) auto-installs security updates, and here a mislabeled “security update” was auto-installed. This is not the fault of the sysadmins.

The extended support updates aren’t available to end consumers but is a paid product for enterprises that need more time to update.

The big reason I switched back to Nvidia was because I wanted to play with some local AI models, and doing that with AMD cards was quite difficult at the time (I think it’s improved a little, but still isn’t straightforward).

Relative to other countries, the US has much more competive industries and space for new entrants to grow. In Canada for instance many industries (banking, grocers, telecom, media, etc.) are each dominated by a handful of uncompetitive companies that exploit consumers.

To be clear I know that the US has this issue too to some extent, but it’s better there than elsewhere.