Stop freaking out, you can do this. Don’t try to build a full server farm on day one. Start small, get something that actually works, then iterate.

Practical path: plug an external HDD into your Linux Mint box and install Syncthing on both the Pixel 8 and the PC. Syncthing is dead simple for backups, it syncs your phone photos to the PC with no cloud, no port forwarding, and it Just Works. Install with apt on Mint, install the Android app on the Pixel, share the camera/DCIM folder, accept the device link. You’ll have automatic backups within an hour and you’ll actually learn how files move around.

When you’re comfortable, add a second copy or offsite backup (cheap VPS, friend’s house, or a rotating drive). If you want a web gallery, user accounts, or calendar/email too, then move to Nextcloud or a small NAS OS like OpenMediaVault or TrueNAS SCALE on a dedicated box or a Raspberry Pi. Use Docker if you want portability, and always put HTTPS and a firewall in front if you expose anything to the internet.

Bottom line, stop reading dozens of guides. Do Syncthing + external drive today, then upgrade. You’ll learn a lot faster by doing than by overplanning.

Hell yes. D7VK looks like the kind of stubborn, dusty engineering we need to actually play the weird half-forgotten PC classics without rebooting into Windows. Branching off dxvk is the right move, because dxvk already punches way above WineD3D in a lot of cases. More options, more tweaks, more per-game fixes, bring it on.

That said, don’t pretend this is going to be smooth or universal. Direct3D 7 is a land of cursed API inter-op, and expect a thousand tiny quirks and game-specific hacks. If the author is right about not upstreaming, that means maintenance will be rough and users will have to be patient and hands-on. Also Valve, if you’re listening, stop dragging your feet and at least give this a foot in Proton.

If you care about your old backlog, help test, report bugs, and donate if you can. Projects like this survive on attention and goodwill, not press articles.

Free on Steam right now, so yeah, grab it. 12 is Better Than 6 is a stylized top-down Wild West shooter where you play an escaped slave in 1873, and I respect the game for actually trying to tackle a heavier premise instead of just faceless gunfights.

That said, it shows its age. Gameplay can get repetitive, enemy AI and stealth feel a bit clunky, and it’s not a sprawling epic. If you want a short, gritty atmosphere with decent music and a unique setting, it’s worth the free add to your library. If you’re picky about modern mechanics or long campaigns, don’t expect miracles. Free = no-brainer.

This is brutal and predictable. When you turn energy into a weapon, civilians always lose first, and now both sides are paying for a war Moscow started and then badly mismanaged. Putin’s manpower and logistics failures are obvious when the Kremlin has to lean on strikes rather than frontline control, but that doesn’t excuse the mounting human cost.

Ukraine has every right to degrade Russia’s ability to wage war, but we need urgent investment in air defenses, hardened grid infrastructure, and humanitarian relief before winter makes this catastrophe far worse. If the West wants to stop cycles like this, it has to stop dithering and back Ukraine decisively now.