This program is a client for the very solid Tvheadend TV streaming server. Tvheadend supports pretty much any source you can think of, but is a little more complicated to setup.

Tvheadend is a selfhosted service meant to be run on your own server with your own TV dongles / IPTV channels / etc.

If you only want to watch TV on your PC, doing so with something like Kodi is probably a better idea, as Kodi also supports USB tuners and is simpler to setup (doesn’t require a separate server).

I really like Pop!_OS, AFAIK it doesn’t have any telemetry. It’s basically a Ubuntu fork but without the stupid Ubuntu stuff, and they’re currently even working on their own Desktop Environment.

i use miracast where I can (my TV and Samsung phone support it natively), as it pretty much just works and is a decent protocol. Sadly every phone manufacturer that isn’t Samsung seems to have abandoned it right now, but it is still widely supported in TVs. On Linux, there is the app gnome-network-displays (yes it also works on KDE) to cast your screen over miracast.

Miracast is an actual local streaming protocol (closely related to WiFi Direct). For content streaming the only FOSS standard I am aware of is FCast, but sofar it only is implemented in the GrayJay Android app.

Edit: There is also Deskreen for casting a PC screen.

For casting mobile to PC there is also scrcpy.

This isn’t really casting, but I often find that an HDMI cable (often paired with a USB-C to HDMI dongle) is the simplest and most reliable way to display a phone screen on another monitor (as long as the phone supports DP altmode).

From reading the Magic Earth FAQ, I believe the user data actually isn’t used for traffic at all (at least the manually reported events certainly aren’t).

Edit: never mind I missed a later part in the FAQ:

Do you share data with third parties?

We send position data to our traffic provider to generate real-time traffic information. The data is anonymized on the phone, using a changing key (so it’s not linked to you), and it is deleted after 5 minutes.

The first quote is taken out of context:

Not only are privacy and data protection founding principles for both Mobifree and F-Droid, the use of tracking-based in-app advertising poses a moral dilemma as well. If someone wants to gain access to an app, but does not have the financial means to purchase it, they can use it at a different kind of price - their user data.

For me this reads as them explaining and condemning that dilemma, instead of considering it as an option for F-Droid.

Yes definitely, here’s my Steam ‘Local Multiplayer’ collection:

• Biped
• Move or Die
• Overcooked! 2
• Party Animals
• (Portal 2)
• Rayman Legends
• Screencheat
• Stick Fight: The Game
• Tetris Effect: Connected
• Ultimate Chicken Horse
• Unrailed!

Nintendo also has some great couch co-op games,for example:

• Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
• Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
• Nintendo Switch Sports
• Super Mario Party

I also very much agree with the other commenter here, it’s such a shame that couch co-op is dying. The only ones still believing in it seem to be Nintendo.

Another game that’s fun to play is Unravel 2, but for me the Steam version had all sorts of problems so I ultimately ended up refunding it again.

If the main battery isn’t “meant to be replaced”, it will often act as the CMOS battery (e.g. MacBooks have been doing this since roughly 2008).

+1 on OnlyOffice, it has 1:1 formatting compatibility with Microsoft Office. Unlike LibreOffice, it doesn’t have to translate documents between odt and docx in the background.

In the same vein, OnlyOffice has poor compatibility with odt files etc.

Yesss fcast looks incredibly promising. Sadly the only app implementing it seems to be GrayJay, I really hope it will catch on more.

Not OP, but this instantly made me think of the worst-case scenario PDFs I stumbled upon on Lemmy recently.

TVHeadend is the way, I’ve been running it with a USB satellite tuner for 5+ years. Setting it up can be a little confusing, but once it’s running you pretty much never have to touch it again.

As for clients, there’s a Jellyfin plugin, however it seems to not work for me right now.

My client of choice is Kodi with the TVHeadend plugin, and that works great. If you still want Jellyfin integration, you could just add your recordings folder as a library in Jellyfin.

Could I purchase two different brand drives and use them with btrfs?

I don’t quite remember the source for this, but I believe I read some time ago that it’s actually a good thing to have separate drives. The reasoning is, if you buy two identical drives (at the same time), the likelyhood of both drives failing around the same time is severely higher.

This is then amplified by the fact that rebuilding a RAID puts a lot of strain on the non-dead drive, so if ie. drive 1 dies and drive 2 is about to die, the strain you put on drive 2 in order to rebuild your RAID onto drive 3 might kill drive 2 before you even finish rebuilding your RAID.

Again, this is just from my memory, it might be worth doing some more research on.

The Pixel 8 and onwards technically support DP alt mode again. I’m not sure about stock, but I believe I read about some people having it just work in Graphene OS.

I’d assume it won’t, you can always just test it out though. There might be some setting for those timeouts in the Steam-steamdeck settings.

I haven’t done this myself, but I assume you can turn off the display in Desktop Mode. I assume somewhere in the “normal” Linux settings there will be the usual Turn Screen Off after … and Go To Sleep after … You could just set the screen to turn off after 5 mins, then set sleep to never and that should do it.

Check my edited comment, I’m pretty certain my limit was wrong.

• Bloons TD 6: this plays great on the deck, especially with the touchscreen
• Euro Truck Simulator 2: mostly just got it as it was super cheap and I saw some of my friends already have it
• Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy: looked super fun when I saw my friends play, but I don’t really like the controls on the deck

For anyone looking for some other nice games for the deck, I can heavily recommend:

• Stray
• Dave The Diver
• Celeste

I got Euro Truck Simulator aswell, for the same reason lol

I assume the tablet gets its video through standard HDMI/DP over USB-C, hence a USB-A to C adapter wouldn’t work.

If you still want to use the tablet with the official dock, there may be HDMI+USB -> USB-C adapters capable of inserting the HDMI signal into the USB-C connection. I’m not too knowledgeable on this topic, so you may want to resort to some more research of your own.

Also keep in mind (as far as I’m aware) there’s a hard limit on 2 external monitors, unless you use some “trickery” like DisplayLink.

Edit: I’ve done a bit more research and I’m pretty sure that more than 2 monitors are supported. There are two limiting factors here:

1. The GPU in the Steamdeck (custom APU which I didn’t directly find a spec sheet for), will typically have a max of 2-4 displays
2. The physical connection, AFAIK as the Steamdeck only has one USB-C port, this means it has one DisplayPort 1.4 link available. This link can be divided into multiple video streams. I couldn’t find a table for DisplayPort 1.4, but this website has one for DisplayPort 1.2, suggesting you should be able to run four 1080p60 signals at the very minimum.

Now with all this information, as long as your Steamdeck can output to any three screens (ie. two external ones and the internal steamdeck screen), it should also be possible to output three 1080p60 signals to external monitors.

Hm there must be some other problem on your end then. Doing a clean reinstall of Yuzu EA 4176 and then using the newest keys, firmware and update for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe should pretty certainly fix it.

It runs great for me on Steamdeck, with the Yuzu EA 4176 AppImage, firmware/keys version 18.0.0, MK8 Deluxe NSP + Update 3.0.1 + DLC.