I would check out Recallbox. It’s quite polished feeling and looking. It can run on a raspberry pi, or something more powerful. You mention accessing the files and I liked the SMB access because I could just cut and paste my new ROMs over from the PC or phone. I imagine you could set up a script to do this automatically or just expose a read only SMB server for your friends to access. If your games are older, like Atari or Sega Genesis this would work great. If you have big ROMs like Gamecube or Xbox, then you’ll probably need a different solution since copying entire romsets to the device itself may not be practical.

I have seen a DIY Steam-ish software floating around, hopefully someone pitches in to get you that link as well.

I hope your project goes well!

Same, once I got PWM set up right on my fans, my desktop former gaming PC server has been 90% silent. Even when under load, it only kicks up a notch or two. I’m under the roof, so my summer temps will be the real test.

Thanks for the reply. At this point, I’ve decided I’ll need to try both. Fortunately my old router still works. I just need to make some hardware decisions now as I don’t have any hardware with multiple lan ports to try it out on. I don’t want to buy twice, so I’m trying to figure out what I’m going to need to overshoot my requirements a bit but not go crazy overboard and overspending for unused specs. My current router is the GliNet Flint 2 which has an open-WRT advance mode that I’ve messed with a little bit.

Sounds like you are pretty far along in your networking journey. I can appreciate the vLans and the 10G backbone, but a lot of the hardware you mention is over my head. :D I’d take the miniPC route, but like you, I’d like to attach my 4g router as a failover.

Glad to know I’m not alone! Sometimes it feels like everyone else has either figured it all out, or I’m charting new (and potentially silly) territory and nobody knows wtf I’m doing.

I’ve been doing Linux stuff for a long time, but I was still living under my parent’s roof back then so I never had to network anything, I just had the wifi password. After school, out in the world, I still didn’t have my own network for quite some time. Only in the last few years have I really started to grasp how it works well enough to actually do something useful with that knowledge. I’ll take a look at ipfire too. Luckily my current router is still functioning okay, so I have time to play around and see what software will work for me. Right now I have to make some sort of decision about hardware because I don’t have anything with dual ethernet on hand.

I have the fiber ONT straight from the wall. The tech support guys at my ISP gave me all the details I needed to configure my own current router (GLInet Flint 2). I’ve just been not trusting corporate solutions lately. I’m almost completely degoogled on my phone and the recent router banning drama is encouraging me to do this now instead of later when I had originally wanted to do it.

This is good info. I remember hearing a little bit of that and someone set me straight on DDWRT vs OpenWRT as well. I think I’ll take OPNsense for a spin.

Thanks for the reply.

I have devices I could use, but they’re earmarked for other projects. I’m looking at acquiring hardware specifically for this project. I could acquire it at a garage sale or a classified ads site. I don’t really want to spend more than $350 if I can help it and even then, I have to be able to justify that to myself somehow. (since that almost enough to add another 2TB of SSDs to my server). Having said that, if the features I want are only present in pricier hardware, I want to find that out now.

I have a 4g WiFi router I carry around when I travel that I call “the hocky puck”. It also has an ethernet port, so when I’m home, I take the battery out and attach it to my router as a backup in case the fiber fails. If I want to do the same thing on OPNsense, I would need to add an expansion card with more network ports, right? That would steer me from miniPCs to barebones router hardware or a small-form-factor PC build where I could add as many NICS as I have PCI slots.

Does wanting a 2nd WAN pretty much rule out mini-PCs for me?

Even in my God Tier build-dreams, I only have 2WANS a LAN and a management LAN. :D

Agreed. To elaborate:

Sure, the developer is a bit of a Judas for complying in advance, but our anger should be aimed at the people with power and reach promoting these laws in the political sphere (the metaphorical Pharisees).

To those saying “it’s just a field”, please consider that the timing is a more significant statement than the addition of the field itself. Why now? If you don’t support fascism, don’t build the frameworks that support it and don’t let fascists use YOUR platforms or software to make THEIR point, make them fork it and let them fail. I don’t think many members of the senate or house would be capable of adding this themselves. I’d be surprised if they could code hello world in TI-83 BASIC. If they ask you to do it, stub your toe and call in sick. Make it really shitty. Leave in a bunch of bugs that crash the program then blame the age attestation feature to turn users against it. Use copywrited code that they’ll have to remove later due to license incompatibilities. Report your boss to HR for every indiscretion that you might have normally overlooked. Or do nothing; that’s still better than complying in advance.

We have to break the narrative that this is inevitable. There’s enough of us, with concentrated enough knowledge and influence (aka, you folks are a bunch if nerds and I love it!), that if we collectively stop, the whole train stops or derails.

I hear you 100%. This sort of shit comes back with a different name each year. I am SOOOO sick of voting down abortion bans every election cycle.

26 US states, including mine, have initiative or referendum processes allowing citizens to place an issue on the ballot. In some states, that’s how the anti-abortion laws are ending up on the ballot, but we an use their own tools against them. In many states, these initiatives failed so we know we have a minimum of 51% support if it’s a law, and at least 33% support if it’s an amendment (depending on that state and their rules). Polling shows, an even larger percentage, most Americans, do not support these laws. The numbers are on our side.

https://ballotpedia.org/States_with_initiative_or_referendum

If we can collect enough signatures, the voters can put an end to this. If we add it to the state constitution, where the process allows this, we can completely prevent laws doing this from being considered because the only thing that can overrule a constitutional amendment is another constitutional amendment.

I’m gauging interest to do this in Colorado to foil age attestation laws, but we could potentially end the back and forth bullshit in multiple states.

I am a Coloradan; I have already called all 4 cosponsors of the bill here. What can I do now? Does anyone know which orgs are fighting against this? We have a petition process to get constitutional amendments on the ballot. My dream would be to collect enough signatures to get this constitutional amendment on the next ballot but I think the deadline for submitting the text (prior to collecting sigs) is late this month:

“No form of AI or ID-based age verification shall be used as a condition for granting Colorado residents access to a website, internet service, or operating system. Age gates that rely exclusively on user-reported age may continue to be used in their current form to inform users that a website may not be appropriate for all users. Colorado recognizes that parents are the responsible party for what their children access online and that requiring ID verification for access to computing resources or digital resources is a violation of free speech and freedom of inquiry.”

Thanks for the suggestions. I’ve tried minetest, but I’ll have to take a crack at she others. If it was just a game I played by myself, I would absolutely use those alternatives. I’ve played on a string of “civilization” servers for a decade or two now. Hundreds of people forming nations and interacting with real economies, diplomacy, and wars. A few key mods create the conditions of scarcity and balance destroyability/defensibility of the buildings. All of it is perched on a stack of custom mods. I’m not sure how hard porting them to Minetest would be. Some of these relationships are longer than my IRL friendships at this point.

When I started, we were using FOSS tools like Mumble to communicate, then they used Reddit and Team Speak, then eventually most nations moved to Discord for voice and text. I HATE discord. Maybe it’s because I’m too old, but I can’t follow a conversation for shit on there. At least everything is Linux compatible.

If I could find some interested devs to make the mods compatible, I’d gladly pitch in to help run a fully FOSS mineman civ server.

While the players can span all ages (a few grandparents on there), most are Gen Z and for some reason, Gen Z seems to care less about FOSS and open software. They’ve been propagandized fully by the proprietary web 2/3.0.

The only reason I still have a Microslop account is Minecraft. I have to assume that’s one of the reasons they bought it.

They haven’t fessed up yet that that’s part of their plan. I expect to hear from them after they’ve passed the first half.

That’s it! >:-( I’m going back to init. /s

It launches from a submenu in the game, but the exe comes from steam workshop and I think it sots in the game folder. Interesting stuff and I’m excited at all the love Linux is getting from gamers this year

It’s interesting to read you guys discussing proton. I’m getting ready for an epic Cities Skylines build, potentially the most advanced and detailed I’ve ever built. I was previously playing on Windows, but cutting it down to “gaming only” doesn’t accurately reflect how much I hate Windows. I need to eliminate it entirely.

I’ve been trying to decide if I should use the proton version or the native Linux version of Cities Skylines as both exist. This thread makes me think Proton will likely result in the most playable game. I’ve used both native and proton in the past.

That said, while most mods will work on either, there are a few that launch as separate programs and would have to be run under wine. If I launch coolmod.exe by clicking an in-game menu would it try to run it with proton like game itselfor would it just default to my OSs standard behavior (probably opening wine)?

Uggh, I just got to the point where I’m as familiar with TrueNAS as my old Synology, but I want to move towards more freedom. TrueNAS beats Synology, but where is this going?

My wife laments the fact that my laptop, desktop, and the family PC all have different desktop environments and the text is so small you need a magnifying glass, and yet, I have never seen her struggle to use any of them. Her Windows work PC however…

This is a great explanation of what drove me away from Gnome into the loving arms of KDE. I used to be a Gnome 2 die hard. I don’t like Gnome 3, but I’m still glad it exists because some of you guys do.

I need a certain level of customizability.