Sweeney has been known to manipulate public sentiment (read: impressionable children) to his advantage

This is just standard behavior for game companies. Look at Valve’s strategy – actively work to get children addicted to gambling and then cry foul at any regulation.

Oh, good call out. I’m also running OPNsense which is a BSD system.

Whoa, that’s completely untrue buddy.

Some people here use BSD-based systems.

I actually agree, I just broke it out for this discussion.

Arch on user PCs and Debian on anything else. This is with the exception that our big server is on Proxmox and the NAS (as well as off-site backup) are on unRaid.

Well, Stoat sucks and has no vision or history of reasonably paced development. So, it’s more of a vaporware wish then actual software.

That is hacking.

I’m pretty certain I know how you feel about systemd, too.

I really with EndeavorOS or Garuda would replace Manjaro on that list.

decent NUCs are much pricier than old discarded hardware

This can be true for some, but for a lot of labbers the increased energy cost of enterprise hardware will exceed the cost difference of the NUC over the expected life of the equipment. That doesn’t mean it’s an obvious choice to go the other way; it’s just something you should consider.

I’m curious about this one. Most people I know have used it, but eventually stopped. Journalists and public figures use it, and I think that gives it an outsized presence in our culture.

At its peak it had 70 million active users. It’s just widely used in media and press, so there’s a perception that it’s actually popular.

Used on eBay and flashed with the Unleashed firmware. It’s the same price range as Ubiquiti stuff.

Ruckus APs with wired backhaul OpnSense box runs the network.

Former attorney who now consults for corporate compliance departments/programs. I have zero formal training or professional practical experience, but tech has always been my strongest hobby. I decided to self host as much as possible almost 20 years ago starting with media libraries and email; it stemmed from a deep distrust of the tech industry.

I have been extremely happy with Unraid. It is by far the most beginner-friendly option and there isn’t an easier solution when it comes to expanding capacity. I run my nzb client and all of my *arr containers on it. My media server is on a used SFF PC I grabbed for cheap — so QuickSync can run on the bare metal. It’s been a great stack for years.

Yeah, that response email is an excellent example of why you should have an attorney at least review all such correspondence prior to sending.

I don’t recall. I was able to use Discord on my phone and play Helldivers 2 on my Steam Deck with friends without issue, though.

I just spent a couple weeks 2,000 miles from my physical PiHoles and was connected to them via StarLink. The latency was not perceptibly different from that when I am on site with the boxes.

That place was hilariously terrible

So this is basically just a recurring donation like a lot of us do for other projects? That’s fine. If it’s testing the waters for a product-line bifurcation, a la pfSense, that’s not fine at all.