So that’s it. Sorry for the long, rambly wall of text, but I feel like for responses to be truly helpful, people should know exactly what it is I’m looking for.

absolutely! no reason to apologize

Remember when tech workers were treated this well by their employers?

Interesting interview with FSF’s new Executive Director Zoë Kooyman if you are curious about her/where the organization is at.

https://fossforce.com/2025/03/zoe-kooyman-on-post-stallman-changes-at-the-free-software-foundation/

https://fossforce.com/2025/03/zoe-kooyman-on-post-stallman-changes-at-the-free-software-foundation-part-2/

This is genuinely a new era in gaming, so exciting!

Hmm but it doesn’t force ads down your throat so can you really say it is part of Windows?

To be fair, we have to be that way to push back against the field of inveitability that omnipresent corporate marketing creates in our minds.

The extroverted nerdiness is an effective tool to communally deprogram our rheified way of looking at computers so we can envision a different future.

Yeah then I think it is a no-brainer thing for you to get the Steam Deck, the only situation I see someone like you being truly disappointed in your Steam Deck is if they REALLLLY wanted to play more graphically intensive games and the Steam Deck just couldn’t quite cut it. If you already own a gaming computer worst comes to worst you sit there and think “damn, I will have to play this once I get my hands on my desktop gaming rig again!” and move onto another game in your library.

Another note in the Steam Deck’s favor for gaming, the suspend feature where if you press the power button the Steam Deck instantly sleeps is incredibly useful for jumping in and out of games. Even if you don’t hit pause the way the Steam Deck runs games the environment the game is running in is paused when you press the power button… so you can jump in and out of games really easy that weren’t necessarily designed to be rapidly started and stopped.

I would recommend getting a dock so you can use a keyboard and mouse sitting at a desk with a larger monitor when needed. Bonus points you can use the steam deck dock for splitscreen local gaming hangouts with friends, normal ass bluetooth gamepads usually work fine connecting to the Steam Deck (xbox controllers are great) and with the dock you can bring a backpack with everything you need to set up awesome indie splitscreen gaming sessions. It is a blast and the Steam Deck is underappreciated in this realm especially given how many good indie local splitscreen games there are out there.

Yeah the Logitech k780 is a bit bulky, but it is by far my favorite keyboard ever. It isn’t a mechanical keyboard but the keys feel AWESOME (and yet are still nice and quiet unlike most mechanical keyboards) and I really like the typewriter-like circular keys.

The phone holder is amazing. I cannot live without it now lol.

Also, heck yes! I love hyping people up on the Steam Deck because even if you purchase one impulsively they are just so useful and flexible as fun handheld computers that you will find uses for it for years to come.

Do it!!!

I love my steam deck and regularly run all sorts of non-gaming software on it like Blender, QGIS, emacs, logseq, Kdenlive, Inkscape, Gimp etc…

You just gotta find a keyboard you like, for me it is the Logitech K780 because it is a large keyboard with superb feeling keys and an awesome built in stand for a phone so you can switch between using the keyboard for different devices quickly.

The Steam Deck definitely isn’t insanely powerful, if you are going to lean on it as your main gaming device you have to understand that but if you aren’t someone that needs the latest and greatest graphics on all the most processing heavy new AAA games, the Steam Deck’s advantages far outweigh the disadvantages.

The simple fact is that because the Steam Deck is handheld you end up using it far more than you would a non-handheld device (or even laptop) simply because it is comfortable to do so in more situations, and this fundamentally is the reason I think the Steam Deck is such a good buy. You will use the shit out of it in a ton of different contexts you don’t even expect going into getting the device.

A slight annoying thing is that people are still getting used to what a Steam Deck is, most people really have a hard time understanding they are looking at a general computing device not a disposable recreational toy like a Nintendo Switch. People act oddly about it because they weren’t told this was the future by massive corporations and that makes people confused and almost…uncomfortable? If you use your Steam Deck for a presentation or to demonstate something to someone else they will barely listen because they will just still be staring at it going “wait… so that is a… computer…? Like a laptop computer not a Nintendo Switch? Why though?”.

Congrats on switching!

facepalm I was mistaken sorry, I was sure 8vim had a word suggestion feature at least but I must have mixed it up with something else gah, I don’t tend to use word suggestion or autocorrect and haven’t felt I needed it in 8vim but I somehow got in my head it had it.

That being said I unironically use 8vim as my phone keyboard and have for quite awhile now. I bounced off it a time or two trying to get committed to it but the hump of “this is weird” wasn’t actually that bad.

What helps is as you say, 8vim is just more fun fluid (AND more precise) than normal touch keyboards.

I guess I am somewhat slower with it but also it is so much more precise and confident it is hard to compare directly. I can use keyboard heavy UIs like emacs perfectly fine with 8vim without getting frustrated about constantly mistyping inputs, I would never do that except as a meme with normal touch keyboards.

You can still use word suggestions/autocorrect, my point is they become optional with 8vim, not a necessity like with normal touchscreen keyboards.

Edit I am mistaken I just tried and I can’t find the option, my bad for giving misinformation.

There are four lines that intersect a circle. Starting with your finger in the circle you can input a letter by drawing a line out of the circle and then passing through one of the four lines in a loop around the circle, the letter inputted is determined by how many additional lines (if any) you pass through before returning to inside the circle. In the following example to make an “r” is just the same as to make a “c” but in reverse.

*example of inputting a “c”, if you wanted to keep typing “cat” as opposed to "c " instead of lifting your finger after finishing the “c” keep drawing an “a” and then “t” in one continuous motion.

Yeah Hacker for AnySoftKeyboard looks nice! https://f-droid.org/packages/com.anysoftkeyboard.languagepack.hackerkeyboardlayout

8vim

https://f-droid.org/packages/inc.flide.vi8

A very chaotic option but it is actually quite nice if you are patient.

You can be very precise with inputting letters, it is far more confidence inducing then normal touch keyboards are.

I have a phone with a large screen and I have the keyboard free floating which lets me easily move it around to utilize all the screen real estate without loss of accuracy from being too cramped.

Bonus points, this keyboard works great with a stylus too!

I am perfectly fine downloading emacs and spacemacs (evil/vim bindings with space leader key) in termux and just using 8vim for making and editing simple org mode files. 8vim is deceptively extremely capable if you can get over the hump of getting used to it. Vim modal editing with leader keys fits oddly naturally into 8vims basic control scheme given vim was designed for physical computer keyboards.

Also Flickboard looks really interesting.

https://f-droid.org/packages/se.nullable.flickboard

Yeah I know people say “Syncthing is not a file backup tool!” but when I am dealing with 99% text files and I can slam the “keep X amount of previous versions of file” up to 30 well… I mean it still isn’t the way Syncthing was meant to be used but it works, it is minimal and it is simple and that is LITERALLY a lifesaver for me given how much I struggle with executive function.

I hope the people that work on these tools understand that for some they literally have a lifesaving potential, organization is a massive struggle for me and my society provides no social safety net for just being bad at focusing no matter how much people claim to be accomodating and accepting of severe ADHD. I don’t mean this to place undue burden or weight on the developers but to emphasize the work they contribute is real and directly impacts people’s lives for the better in a way they should be proud as fuck about.

Most people who obsess about organizational tools, project management systems and thinking tools have no problem switching from one system to the next, it is almost a hobby for people into this kind of thing. Not me, I find it desperately hard to get myself to commit to even a single system longterm and not just randomly drop the habit and never go back. Critical for my quality of life are open source softwares like Syncthing that just do what they do with no company to become bankrupt and shut down the tool, enshittify the tool, require an account login, have all my organization locked in a proprietary format on cloud servers or any number of other things corporations attach to software tools that make them useless for my condition.

In the software development world “friction” is the thing you introduce to compel people towards your monetization scheme and “attention” is a resource to be harvested, meanwhile I try to use these tools while drowning in internal friction from task switching difficulties and constantly having my attention ripped away by my ADHD from the important things I am trying to get done. This is what I mean when I say open source tools like Syncthing are literally lifesaving for me.

Even other hobbiest DIY filesyncing tools like Nextcloud are mostly useless for me as they require a complex annoying fiddly maintenance of a central server that is a single point of failure, and the idea I will keep that fiddly and fragile of a system going longterm is downright laughable even though I think those tools are cool. With Syncthing I am able to just keep leapfrogging my important files from device to device, there is no central server I have to maintain with focus I don’t have even for the thing I am trying to use the organizational tool to help myself get done in the first place.

<3 devs of Syncthing!!!

edit I would like to add a personal “burn in hell” to the people who run Google Drive and Microsoft Onedrive. The entire setup of these services encourages you to get lost creating and uploading a bunch of files, run out of cloud space and then be so totally overwhelmed in trying to manage all the files you have created and uploaded that you just acquiesce and purchase the premium subscription to get more space instead. From my perspective this kind of monetization architecture is blatantly predatory and hurtful and is one of the reasons I see these corporations as enemies trying to hurt and entrap me for profit.

Obsidian seems great and the company seems genuinely very decent. I appreciate that the file format isn’t locked down and that it retains a plaint text philosophy. Do you use Syncthing for sharing Obsidian notes between devices?

Emacs Org mode (or Logseq) and Syncthing together are probably the only system I have found that works for my chaos, I am very thankful for how these softwares have allowed me to structure my organizational system in a way that is simple and I have direct control over.

Also, it takes years for me to integrate habits deeply into my life with many many many repetitions necessary to lock the habit in, so being able to organize things in plaintext gives me much needed assurance that I won’t have the rug pulled out from under me by the company behind the product enshittifying or going out of business.

Syncthing is critical to my organizational systems because it makes the sharing of notes between devices agnostic of the specific notes system I am using. Syncthing shares a folder and it has some text files in it… those could be .org emacs org mode files or logseq files… it doesn’t matter I can change my notes system and retain the same sharing mechanism.

From the bottom of my heart thank you to everyone who has worked on these tools, I plan to keep donating to and supporting these projects in the future!

I am not saying I don’t like battlefield, I don’t like EA and that has become a dealbreaker for me… or rather it did quite awhile ago.

I mean… compared to a call of duty experience i think they do. Even arcadey battlefield games have combined arms, naunced teamwork and battlefield awareness at play that most team shooters don’t have.

If you would like a really arcadey recommendation however Heroes Of Valor looks good though I haven’t tried it (and it is in early access).

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2504090/Heroes_of_Valor/

It isn’t worth the nonsense, check out the new community I started for battlefield-like indie games !indiefields@sopuli.xyz

A good alternative recommendation is Easy Red 2

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1324780/Easy_Red_2/

That developer deserves a measly $10 far more than EA does, and the game is better than any recent battlefields in terms of realism and depth of gameplay. The game has a full inventory system and extensive easy to use command controls for AI troops (that are actually tactically useful) that creates along with the polished gunplay and tank combat mechanics a very compelling gameplay loop.

ER2 is a blast on my Steam Deck!!

Give your money to artists and game developers so they can live decent lives, the executives of EA won’t know what to do with your money except fire more developers and buy an even bigger yacht.