I’ve been a synology user and fan for over 15 years now. Both personally and at work. They used to be powerful-for-the-price, efficient devices with good software. Photos, drive, media server, file storage, and docker containers were the big use cases. They were easy to set up securely for remote connections, and I’ve never seen one fail.
Nowadays though, I’d recommend something else. They have started on the enshittification journey. They removed hardware decoding features, they force you into their hard drives now, the hardware is overpriced, and other diy systems have caught up wrt features and ease of setup. Synology isn’t bad today, it’s just not the only game in town anymore. You can get more for less money with the same amount of effort.
WRT to data collection-I don’t think they collect anything now. But I’m not sure I trust them anymore. It probably won’t stay that way.
I’ve installed Ubuntu and fedora workstation on 5 machines in the past 6 months. Not a single install required using the terminal even once. A couple of those installs were on sketchy hardware and everything still just worked.
Meanwhile I installed win11 on a new machine a couple of weeks ago and it had missing drivers on install, trouble activating, and the login screen switched to Chinese characters after a few reboots (it is a known bug).
Par for the course in Boston and southern New England generally speaking. You can have my firstborn if you really need it, but I reserve the right to break your balls forever.
We’re not nice but we are kind. It’s how we keep each other sane when the fuckin sun goes away at 4:30, and the plow just un-shoveled what we just finished shoveling (cue the ice storm to make that snow extra wet and heavy only to later freeze into a foot thick block of ice).
That may be so, but perception is reality. Nobody trusts it. The first thing everyone thinks is “that’s going to bend”. It doesn’t need to be true to sway people’s purchase.
I’ve had good success with makemkv for ripping both blu rays and dvs. I’ve not had good success making a duplicate disk though. It can be done but it’s been a very long time. I used to use handbrake in that chain but it got to be too much trouble. I resorted to ripping all my stuff, serving it up digitally, and only taking the disks out when nostalgia hit.
But ya - makemkv and handbrake used to get the job done a long time ago, you can search in that direction. Maybe there’s a newer better way.
No no - not like that. Like crappy overpriced laptops. Like “I’m a piece of crap laptop masquerading as a good one and sold to people who don’t know better at a price way way way too high”.
It’s often a laptop, something us nerds wouldn’t buy generally speaking, so they tend to have hardware issues. So newer tends to be better. So plain old Fedora workstation with gnome. I pin their favorite programs to the dock, and show them the basics of the interface. I show them the software button and say they can install anything they want from there, and that they should do the updates that pop up from there.
Zero issues. Honestly does a better job than windows - things are more intuitive for the non tech savvy.
Edit: mint is pretty good too if it works. It’s one of those two systems.
I don’t know why there’s so much nvidia hate going on here. It’s MUCH better than it used to be. Lots of distros mentioned work out of the box with nvidia cards, and if you pick something else - it’s just a matter of installing the right driver. On fedora for example you just go to the rpm fusion site and follow the very easy directions.
Another option not mentioned yet - get a portable Panasonic or equivalent blu ray burner. 1) they still make and sell new ones 2) you can rip the disks once and have digital movies 3) you can play the dvd/blu ray/whatever on your pc OR use the usb c from there (like with a laptop if you own one).
Should cover all your bases and give you more options (all the options?) than you asked for.
Sometimes I’m just out with coworkers but not starving. I used to get a cheese and chicken quesadilla. It used to cost $4 and change. Then they started charging burrito prices - $15 and change for a tortilla, a handful of shredded cheese and 1/4 of a chicken breast. I get there is regional pricing differences - but their costs (at least here) are out of control.
Fast food has been historically cheap. Chipotle worked because it was fast, it was cheap, and you didn’t feel like you were as much of a fat ass compared to grabbing a giant bacon burger and a bucket of fries.
Now you go to chipotle and pay $20 for a burrito and a soda. Still fast, still decent enough (at least the one near me), but $20 is highway robbery.
OR, I can go across the street to a sit down restaurant, have a first generation Thai guy (who started his American dream restaurant) whip up the best damn drunken noodles I’ve ever had for $12. AND he does this FASTER than chipotle (seriously how does he do it? Must be a magic wok).
If it’s a texture thing, have you tried all the tomato varieties? Like Roma tomatoes have very little seed and pulp, cherry tomatoes are kind of like grapes, and I’ve even tried some obscure varieties that make me question what a tomato is.
If that doesn’t work, I’m honestly having a hard time thinking about a substitute for a tomato. They are pretty unique.
You’re overthinking it. The hardest part is making sure you have a good backup. Get your files backed up, don’t forget about save games and whatnot that might be hiding in random folders. Take a disk image if you know how to do that.
Format the drive. Install an easy to use distro with gui stuff. Mint is great - feels windows-y. Ubuntu works - the drama is real but overblown for someone just starting out with Linux. Fedora desktop is the new Ubuntu. It just works. Gnome is different but many people like it a lot (myself included). It’s not hard to learn. Save the distro hopping and niche distros for later.
Install your nvidia drivers. (Look up Rpm fusion for fedora, mint has directions on their forums).
Install steam. Log in. Buy a game. Install game. See if everything behaves. It probably will. If it doesn’t - spend 15 minutes researching and trying the fix. If you can’t get it to work - just wipe the drive and try another distro. Generally newer distros will “fix” whatever issue you are having.
You can do all of this in an hour or two as a newbie and be playing games from the steam sale.
I disagree. I’m old and Pepperidge farm remembers :)
Back in the day, there was “no way I’m sticking my credit card numbers into the internet.” People were MORE likely to give out credit card numbers over the phone, or write them down on a piece of paper ripped out of a magazine and mail it. Crazy, I know, but true.
Amazon was cool because it became the first big digital store. You could order all kinds of quality stuff, from the comfort of your house, CHEAPLY, and then they shipped it to your doorstep. If you joined prime - they delivered in two days. Full stop. Oh - it didn’t make it there in two days? Here’s compensation.
Let’s compare that to today:
quality? No - now it’s endless cheap crap from resellers an middleman vultures
from the comfort of your own home? Everyone can do that today
cheap? Nope - amazon is now almost always either more expensive or the same exact price as buying from the manufacturer directly.
Shipped to your doorstep in two days? Amazon falls down on this all the time now. Sometimes the thing shows up in hours if it’s stored locally, other times it takes weeks.
Amazon lost its way. We ditched our decades old membership and shopping habits. We save more money, stuff gets delivered faster, we don’t worry about getting knockoff crap, and cutting Amazon out of our lives has been a total non issue. (Surprisingly - I thought it would be much more inconvenient than it’s been)
I’ve been a synology user and fan for over 15 years now. Both personally and at work. They used to be powerful-for-the-price, efficient devices with good software. Photos, drive, media server, file storage, and docker containers were the big use cases. They were easy to set up securely for remote connections, and I’ve never seen one fail.
Nowadays though, I’d recommend something else. They have started on the enshittification journey. They removed hardware decoding features, they force you into their hard drives now, the hardware is overpriced, and other diy systems have caught up wrt features and ease of setup. Synology isn’t bad today, it’s just not the only game in town anymore. You can get more for less money with the same amount of effort.
WRT to data collection-I don’t think they collect anything now. But I’m not sure I trust them anymore. It probably won’t stay that way.