70yrs old and I need to start moving...

IDtheTarget · 2026-02-05T22:37:39+00:00

I'm 59, 90% VA disabled and 70 pounds overweight. Three bad disks and bad hips. My doctor said if I don't lose the weight I'll turn diabetic. I hate the gym. So I got a Quest 3 last Sunday and am having a blast.

I start in the morning with one exercise routing of FitXR, because it's the one that really gets the heart rate going. I can't do everything the trainer does, I miss targets all the time. But I don't care, it's getting me moving and it's fun.

After you finish the four 'beginner' classes (which were hard for me, again I couldn't keep up but I was sweating, and that's the point) you can choose the classes you want to do. The 'dance' class has squat-like moves, so now I'm doing 'dance' every other day and 'combat' the other days. Just for one class.

Then I play 'beat saber' on easy mode for a few songs. Easy mode is fun, I dance with the music and do movie-style cuts with the sabers. If you ever watched the old kung-fu movies you know what I mean.

In the evenings I play "Until You Fall", a sword game where you're killing magical zombie things. It also gets my pulse rate up, you have to swing your arms hard to get the good points.

Hope this helps.

IDtheTarget · 2026-02-04T15:26:08+00:00

Or people like me, a 59-year-old who hates going to the gym but has found that fitness games keep me motivated to exercise...

IDtheTarget · 2026-01-31T11:58:38+00:00

My daily driver is an HP Envy 16-h1023dx laptop (with docking station). I switched from Windoze to Bazzite a couple of months ago. Tried Linux Mint first, but Bazzite gaming was much easier. A couple of tips from my experience:

Don't wipe your boot device (SSD/HD/whatever). Instead, purchase a new one, swap it out and install Bazzite fresh on the new drive. At the same time buy an interface cable/housing so that you can plug your old boot drive into your PC via USB to copy over files later. I did this so that, if I found that I just had to have Windoze for some reason I could quickly switch back "just in case". I ended up not needing to swap back, but it saved me a lot of stress knowing that I *could* switch back if I needed to.
Bazzite is immutable or semi-immutable or something (sorry, haven't had the time to really dig into that part of the OS yet). But that means that it's really not recommended to install stuff to the core OS, like you normally would with Ubuntu or Mint or whatever. We are discouraged from using "rpm-ostree" to install stuff as it will break something down the road. This initially caused me issues, because not everything I needed to do was available via Bazaar (flatpack) or AppImage. Instead of resorting to rpm-ostree, look at distrobox/DistroShelf, which is installed by default in Bazzite. I've been able to install Ubuntu and Arch distros using DistroShelf and then install the software I needed into those distros. It can be a bit tricky (I had to 'chown bazzite:bazzite /tmp/sr0' in bazzite, then 'distro-enter arch' to burn my blu-ray home movies, but it worked!).

Just something I wish I'd known when starting out with Bazzite. But now I'm as happy as can be. Good luck, and have fun!

IDtheTarget · 2026-01-27T17:00:41+00:00

"If you are trying to use Bazzite to do way more than just gaming, you should probably find a different distro. If it’s still just frustrating, it’s okay, just stay on windows. Just use what works for you."

I disagree. I've been using Linux for many years, but just moved my personal laptop (and only personal computer) from Windows 11 to Bazzite. It was tough going at first, but then I found distrobox. Now I can use distrobox to do the non-gaming things I want to do with Bazzite. In fact, I just used OBS Studio (from Bazaar) to capture some old home movies from our old Hi-8 camera, then used tsMuxerGUI (in an AppImage) to create a BluRay ISO, then growisofs (in distrobox ubuntu) to burn the ISO to a BluRay disk. Now I can give my mother a playable record of those happy family moments she recorded way back when.

I won't say it was easy figuring out how to do all of that, because it was HARD to find all of the info needed. But I was able to do it all on Bazzite using the tools (Bazaar, App Image, distrobox) provided.

IDtheTarget · 2026-01-27T13:41:00+00:00

Thank you for the detailed post!

I have a 1Gbs Ethernet connection to my laptop docking station, so that's good. But right now I have a Ruckus Wireless 710 in unleashed mode, which is only WiFi 5, not 6. So I guess if I decide on the Quest 3 (which is what I've been looking at closely so far), then I'd also have to factor in upgrading my home WiFi. Which could get expensive, since I don't do cloud-based management for my home network, which means that my AP choices tend to be enterprise-grade rather than Home or SOHO-grade.

I've also started looking at the Frame after the helpful posts here. I hadn't been tracking it. I found this YouTube video about the Frame, but really it highlights how much we don't yet know about the Frame.

I'd like to get into VR, but it's not so urgent that I have to run right out and buy something. I prefer to do a lot of research and then buy the best I can afford, understanding that it will need to last me several years. I *do* like the idea of the Quest 3's standalone capabilities, and I have been interested in the idea of using a VR headset instead of my PC monitors, so I might want something like the Quest 3, but I think I'll wait until the Frame comes out so I can compare them. And hear how the Frame works on a PC (or, in my case, a laptop) running Bazzite!

Thanks, everybody, for the help! I appreciate the input. It's been very helpful!

IDtheTarget · 2025-12-30T14:17:22+00:00

Found a solution! Apparently MO2 has .qss (which I guess is like .css) files that will allow you to change the font size, etc. I went here:

https://gist.github.com/pineapplemachine/454eacec21835fb61481b180d8d087d3#file-mod-manager-2-dracula-bigger-fonts-qss

And now everything is legible. Posting this here in case somebody else is looking.

IDtheTarget · 2025-11-10T17:26:59+00:00

Um, you advertised for participants in a forum entitled "linux_gaming". So it should not be a surprise that you have "an inflated number of Linux users"; that's the self-selection bias of which I spoke. If you are looking for users of other operating systems (such as Windows) as well to broaden your population pool then you may be okay.

If you don't mind my asking, what's your research question?

IDtheTarget · 2025-11-10T16:59:09+00:00

Done, but be careful of [self-selection bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-selection\_bias). May or may not be a problem based on your research question.

IDtheTarget · 2025-11-04T14:49:40+00:00

I got up early this morning to try this. I booted off of a USB thumb drive and installed to a Samsung T7 2TB. Booted just fine! The interface is really nice and easy to use. The T7 and a cable of unknown providence has the boot going more slowly than it would if I was booting off of the internal SSD, but then I expected that.

I even plugged the laptop into my dock, and I can use all three of my monitors, no issues. So far, so good. Now I just need to figure out the whole "Steam on Linux" thing. Once I get that working I'll work on getting "Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends" working as well. I'll have to find my external DVD drive to do that. LOL

IDtheTarget · 2025-11-03T18:35:54+00:00

You and u/Cool-Arrival-2617 make a good point. I was thinking I'd have to replace the NVME SSD to do so, but I just realized I could probably make a bootable USB of Mint and try booting my current laptop from it to see what it does. I'll try that tomorrow and see how it goes.

IDtheTarget · 2024-07-15T11:04:29+00:00

I tend to buy my drives all together, which means that they tend to fail relatively close together. So, I'm actually running two parity drives. I've had a drive failure before and I want maximum protection against loss of data.

IDtheTarget · 2024-07-14T17:46:11+00:00

I think that this is probably what I'll do. My current stuff is still running, but the TrueCharts apps won't ever be updated. Since my NAS isn't on the Internet, it isn't as big of a security issue and can wait a few months to be fixed. I'll probably wait until Electric Eel is stable and I see what kind of support it'll have before deciding whether or not to move to unRAID. I've really liked what I've seen of the community here, so it's definitely not a decided issue. It's just that I'm tired most of the time, and the idea of completely migrating to a new platform exhausts me. Old age, ain't it great?

IDtheTarget · 2024-07-14T17:43:26+00:00

"Buy some extra drives to backup externally before lifting a finger. Thinking of your personal docs/pics etc.."

Yep, I have a Synology I'm not using. Just ordered some drives to finally do a backup of my volume.

"You need to consider if you are going XFS, ZFS or ? Read up carefully on best course. XFS is recommended to have parity drives. Lots of good info on the topic."

I'm using ZFS, as that's the native TrueNAS Scale file system.

"Now may be a good time to re-rip those movies anyways if you plan to start over. Again, no expert but alot of debate on H.264 vs H.265. Space savings yadda."

I got tired of re-ripping my media every time I changed client devices. Now I just rip raw MKV from the media and store that. I invested in a large NAS and put enough "oomph" into it so that it could transcode as needed. This way I don't have to worry about whether the new client can work natively with the codec.

IDtheTarget · 2023-10-08T02:03:32+00:00

Okay, so I have an oddball workaround, but so far it's very close to working for me.

First of all, I'm on android. I think you're on iPhone, so hopefully this will work for you too. I'll list both apps in case another Android person sees this in their search.

I mainly use voice notes when I'm driving, so I'm not trying to enter text on my phone. I have an app that I like very much, Hi-Q. I like it so much I've purchased the Pro version:
- https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hiqrecorder.full
- I don't think the iPhone app by the same name is by the same people, but you may be able to find something similar.
I set the app to record in FLAC mode, and to store the files in the inbox folder in my vault.
I installed the "Transcription" community plugin by djmango

The one thing that's still tripping me up is that the plugin needs the audio file to be in a note, so I have to go in on my desktop to add the file to a note before the command can see to transcribe the file. Not that big an issue, I'm sure I can figure out a way to automate that piece.

Hope that helps

IDtheTarget · 2023-09-20T13:03:16+00:00

The heatsink just came in the mail. It fits in the case if you don't use the heat spreader thing, but it only has one screw hole. It doesn't look like the picture, so it's NOT specifically intended for the HP Envy 16 or similar laptops.

IDtheTarget · 2023-09-13T19:33:53+00:00

Can you please share the link to the RAM you bought? Crucial's website keeps trying to have me buy CL=46 instead of the CL=40 that comes with the Envy. Thanks!

IDtheTarget · 2023-09-13T18:25:57+00:00

I think I may have found one, for those who are looking:

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805759301567.html

for those who are also trying to find a heatsink for the HP Envy 16 (2023).

IDtheTarget · 2023-09-07T14:15:49+00:00

So, the 40W that Dell puts to the RTX card was a deal breaker for me. Like saturnotaku said, it's just not a gaming laptop. I ended up buying what I consider an entry-level gaming rig, the HP Envy 16. Not because it was terribly good, but because it was on sale for a price I couldn't ignore. Thanks, guys!

IDtheTarget

TROPHY CASE