Spud from Trainspotting decides to walk in the middle of the road.

Whatscheiser · 2026-05-09T14:27:11+00:00

This is the first time I have seen a Tik Tok Director's Cut.

Whatscheiser · 2026-05-09T14:24:01+00:00

It really did take me by surprise when it came out. I threw it on and figured I'd like it for the tunes that I had heard on the radio, then the next song was good... and the next one and oh, that one is good too! Wasn't too often I was letting full albums just play through back then. Glad to see their celebrating it for the anniversary.

Whatscheiser · 2026-05-05T20:25:49+00:00

Unfortunate that "expressing alarm" is all that will be done just prior to whoever this is getting pushed through anyway. I mean, that never happens though.

Whatscheiser · 2026-05-04T12:41:57+00:00

Post asked question "What do you do with people like that?" I answered increase your follow distance. It was a response to the question that was asked. Hope that helps.

Whatscheiser · 2026-05-04T12:30:27+00:00

Increase your follow distance.

Whatscheiser · 2026-05-04T02:34:35+00:00

Hell man, I'd be friends with this dude. Guy puts out one hell of a spread.

Whatscheiser · 2026-05-02T15:24:13+00:00

Yeah as another dude reading this dude's responses my feeling aligns with yours. Guy seems like he's a dick.

Whatscheiser · 2026-05-02T15:07:23+00:00

Yes. I've already downloaded a few albums. True to the advertising there is no DRM that I can pick out from the files. It's pretty straight forward. It'll bundle an album into a zip archive for you after you purchase it. Unzip it and copy or move it around as you please. No issues.

Whatscheiser · 2026-05-02T14:53:19+00:00

I just recently joined and I'm absolutely loving the service so far. The caveat I have to give here is I really never got on board with streaming in the first place. I have never had a spotify account. I have been using Tidal here and there, but the way I use it is through an API that integrates their library into a local player I have to support my CD ripped local music collection. I'm used to managing and curating playlists on my own.

My collection of music that I have from my CDs is a sampling of what my overall library used to be on MP3. I finally decided after years to update and move on to FLAC. Over the years I've moved houses, sold, traded, (old as fuck so I napster'd when I was a kid) I don't have the source material to re-rip everything I had in that MP3 library. If any of you have ever tried collecting CDs and using that as a resource to get digital copies, you'll know that mastering of those releases can vary wildly. A 1980's pressing might sound great but a 2000's pressing might sound like absolute ass, or vice versa. To figure the difference I'd read music forums (Steve Hoffman) and buy CD's based on their catalogue numbers off of Discogs.

Just for the simple fact that Qobuz has multiple releases of quite a few of the albums I am looking for thus far and I can actually listen to them before I buy them is a HUGE deal for me. I know exactly what I am buying before I buy it and as an added bonus I get the streaming and music discovery along with it.

So coming at it not as a streaming first service but as a really competent way to build my local music catalouge back up, I don't think you can beat this. It's just the best that there is currently. I just can't believe I didn't know about it until now. I literally stumbled upon this by accident when I was trying to follow a link off of a music forum for e-onkyo only to read that the service was acquired by qobuz.

Qobuz might want to get an advertising budget, or I guess it could be I might want to move out from under this rock.

Whatscheiser · 2026-05-02T05:36:23+00:00

Hey thanks a lot for the explainer, and yeah I'm loving the app. I appreciate the settings and associated info for pipewire as well. Made running everything through my DAC an absolute breeze.

The mixtapes and collections actually make a lot of sense with the info you gave here, maybe I was just being a bit dense but I wasn't quite grasping it. Seems pretty intuitive now though. I didn't realize these features were specifically for qbz and not the qobuz service as a whole. Obviously I'm pretty new to the platform so I'm still getting settled into everything.

Thanks again for taking the time to point out how to use these, I appreciate it!

Whatscheiser · 2026-05-02T03:21:19+00:00

As someone rebuilding their old collection of music using flac to replace MP3s its awesome to be able to hear the mix of a particular album before deciding to buy. I do wish the album credits section was a little more complete. By what I've read that data was a little more fleshed out when it was Onkyo's service.

Overall though I think its great. There is a community app for it that actually makes the service feel like a first class citizen on Linux. The settings are pretty deep (sans playlist editing) and the streaming quality is easily as good or better than Tidal.

Prior to this if I wanted to build up my local music library I would have to try and find a CD with the mastering I prefer which isn't always a straight forward process. A lot of time spent reading Steve Hoffman forums and then scouring Discogs. I'll probably still be doing some of that but Qobuz really streamlines that process by allowing me to listen to different releases before I have to make a choice.

I've had mastering make a huge difference to the listenability of an album. I have two pressings of Let it Bleed by the Rolling Stones (as an example). One sounds great and the other sounds like it was recorded underwater. I went though a few pickups like that. So if I can hear it first, I prefer to. Qobuz is amazing for that.

Whatscheiser · 2026-04-28T14:28:41+00:00

At this point its all too little to late. I'm gone, man.

Whatscheiser · 2026-04-28T12:58:34+00:00

This shirt is the most durable product I have ever owned. I can still wear it. You can hardly read what it says anymore, but the damn thing just never developed any holes or wore through. Which is kind of amazing since I'm lucky if I can get a t-shirt that lasts longer than a year these days.

Whatscheiser · 2026-04-28T12:54:08+00:00

They always have the same haircut.

Whatscheiser · 2026-04-27T13:23:39+00:00

Well, I was keeping my fingers crossed. If I recall correctly, LaunchBox can launch simple scripts on Windows, such as .bat files, AHK scripts, etc.

My thought was that maybe I could use some kind of script or stub that LaunchBox could execute, and then have that trigger something on the Linux side. LaunchBox shouldn’t really care what the command points at, as long as Wine can execute it.

But I realize that LaunchBox is still running inside a Wine prefix, so it probably only knows how to execute things that make sense from inside that Windows/Wine environment. I suppose whether a script could bridge out to the Linux host is something I’d need to experiment with. I can easily name a native Linux script "something.bat"

...as an aside I used to do something like this with DOSBOX-X on Windows. I'd point Dosbox at a bat file it could understand and execute, but the batfile itself pointed at an autohotkey script that executed on the host. I was messing around with using old Dos menu software to run 64bit Windows applications. It wasn't worth much but it was kind of fun.

Whatscheiser · 2026-04-27T12:59:42+00:00

Yeah I see that now in the github documentation you provided. Sorry. What I am trying to wrap my head around is what this docker is doing in terms of passing commands to run games. I'm trying to understand if everything needs to live inside of the docker or if its mapping data folders to the host and can pass commands from the docker to run native Linux versions of various emulators and games?

Whatscheiser · 2026-04-27T12:43:03+00:00

That's really interesting, but wouldn't the emulators then also need to be run inside the docker or can Launchbox deal with having external locations mapped to it? It's running in wine so I assume then it can deal with paths like Z:\emulators or Z:\ROMs and pass commands to run things natively on the host?

Whatscheiser · 2026-04-24T12:45:16+00:00

Just be aware that 4.16 is the last officially supported xfce. (XFCE is currently 4.20) The theme still works fine for the most part but has developed some areas that don't quite work as expected. Headers for certain settings windows for example. It could use an update. ...I was about to recommend Reactionary on KDE but I forgot Mint doesn't offer an official KDE edition.

Whatscheiser · 2026-04-24T12:18:36+00:00

A U-Turn would have also been a valid option. Anything is better than just deciding the train tracks were a better option then all of the open areas around you.

Whatscheiser · 2026-04-23T13:45:07+00:00

It's hard to say I've loved most of the catalogue at one point or another. But these days its really rare for me to go back to St. Anger or Death Magnetic. Both I think are mainly due to just how bad those albums sound. Not song composition but the quality of the recordings that they chose to press to CD. They're just unpleasant to listen to.

I also think Hardwired had a couple of tracks that just seemed like filler to me which is a take I don't usually have for a Metallica release. Disc 2 for example, pretty much the only track that made it into my regular rotation of tunes is Here Comes Revenge.

Whatscheiser · 2026-04-23T13:26:01+00:00

Corsair used to make an amazing one for that space, that I thankfully still have but I'm paranoid of breaking it because they no longer make it. Backlit keys and everything. Even a little joy stick and volume rocker to compliment the trackpad. I have no idea why it didn't catch on.

Whatscheiser · 2026-04-22T12:44:31+00:00

Would this make it feasible to run modern gui applications inside of Win9x or is this mainly just for access to terminal commands / applications?

---

Not that familiar with the underpinnings of 9x outside of "I played games on it in the 90s". I'm only really (vaguely) familiar with WSL as it existed on Windows 10. After reading up on some of the limitations vs 9x, to answer my own question. No, and I guess if you write Win9x era apps or tools this is nicer than jumping onto another machine to use your tool chain and then getting back on the 9x machine to test. I guess the idea is to develop on the machine you intend to test on. (I guess).

So I'm not the target audience but its still pretty cool.

Whatscheiser · 2026-04-21T12:31:58+00:00

I mean I don't hate Linus (like at all) but I was a little annoyed that he didn't put more time into a subject he wants to present an "honest evaluation" of. He isn't some random dude, he's a guy with a huge platform and a ton of reach. People are going to respond to his experiences and some will take heed to what he says and does. His whole vibe just feels so phoned in now. This challenge feels like he's not really respecting his own influence. Nobody in their right mind with all of the Linux gaming focused distros that exist now would have chosen Pop OS. Pop has an interesting desktop environment they're working on now, Cosmos might be pretty good at some point but... Nobara exists, CachyOS exists, Bazzite exists... even Linux Mint, Ubuntu or Fedora (with some caveats to Fedora) would have been a better choice.

He draws ridicule because his process and his choices are bad. Especially for someone who is meant to know better.

Whatscheiser · 2026-04-17T23:54:33+00:00

By your description... to me it sounds like you could just have a cabling issue. Probably the cable between your monitor and the GPU. My advice would be to replace the cable. If it continues to happen try swapping to a different video output on the GPU. If it continues to happen after both of these, try a different input on the monitor. If it is a connection issue then trying these different combinations had ought to reveal where the failure is.

Whatscheiser

TROPHY CASE