Yeah, it’s a little confusing to look at but their pricing page does have “Starter only” next to the $55/100Gb on bandwidth for their “Free & Starter” tier overview.

Great call out! Thanks a bunch.

EDIT: Just a heads up, since that fiasco in Feb 2024 (where the user got a surprise $104k bill) Netlify has updated to offer a Free Plan in addition to the Starter Plan. The difference being, the Free Site plan shuts off traffic after 100GB, and the Starter Site plan will begin billing at a rate of $55/100gb after the first 100Gb. So the site should be safe from unexpected bills, but could be shut down by a malicious attack…

Thank you, I appreciate that!

And while you may just be “some stranger on the Internet,” the whole point of sharing the tool is to make it better – I’ll be keeping your loud, opinionated thoughts in mind as I look at the roadmap for what’s next for this tool. 😁

That’s always the hang up, isn’t it? 😂

I’m glad the tool seems useful, and the idea sounds fun! I’m always looking to improve it, so if you come across anything or need any help, just let me know!

A very valid point! An account is needed so that character data can be tied to you; your characters aren’t stored in a cookie or a file somewhere local, they’re stored in a hosted database, that way you can access them from your phone, a laptop, a library computer – anywhere, really.

Allowing use without an account would be possible, but would require either: storing character data locally (so, if you used the app on your phone, you wouldn’t be able to pull up that character on, say, a laptop) or forcing users to bookmark their characters and storing them without an associated account. Both are potential options I will explore.

In the mean time, though, I will gladly add some screenshots!

I can say with absolute confidence the data kept here is minimal: a username, email address, and password which are never used for anything more than authentication, and then your characters. There is an option to totally delete your account after creation, which wipes clean any and all data associated with your account from the database. No stored email, all your characters disappear, everything.

Thank you! I’ll post there, as well.

As much as people whine about it as a trend, “/s” goes a long way. 😂

There’s no winning… I get you, though. And you’re right, they do think they know best… Which is why I won’t use GNOME. I left Windows for the same reason. And I’ll catch a lot of hate for it, but IMO GNOME is far too opinionated about how the end-user “should” interact with their PC for my tastes.

We’ve explored that route pretty thoroughly, unfortunately… Neither of us are eligible.

I can’t offer much but to say I’m quite jealous, lol. My wife and I have researched just about every possible opportunity to do the same, just to find everything either doesn’t apply to us or is just out of reach at this time (and for the foreseeable future). Asking for help around this topic typically leads to an insane amount of backlash online, so I’ve found…

Honest answer: I’ve never had need of cutting edge repositories in Linux Mint, so I’ve never looked or tried. I would doubt that adding cutting edge repositories to Mint would be a good idea for system stability – there’s a reason “bleeding edge” distributions have a reputation for being a tinkerer’s playground. Look at the stability reputation of, say, ArchLinux as an example.

I love Arch, and have used it extensively over the last decade or so, but I would not recommend it or nearly any other rolling release to a newcomer to the space; if you aren’t comfortable getting your hands dirty in the terminal, it’s only a matter of time before you end up with an unstable system that may or may not boot without the confidence to fix it.

My one exception to the rule above, if you aren’t afraid of configuring some repositories for non-free software: OpenSUSE Tumbleweed was a wicked stable rolling release last time I tried it due to the way the organization behind it runs it. It tends to be a little heavier than what you’re asking for, but as far as graphical options for system configuration you can’t really beat OpenSUSE, IMO. YaST (their system configuration platform) has a tool to configure… Well, damn near everything, honestly. Even if the UI/UX feels a bit “dated”, everything you need is there.

Depending on how mission-critical your PC setup is, I might recommend doing a little “distro-hopping.” Back up your data, wipe your drive, install a distro and trial it for about a week or so. If one feels like it “fits,” just stay there.

I would not say Fedora is hard to install and maintain. The biggest issue by far is a setup hurdle for getting “non-free packages” enabled – Fedora (and a few other distros) is a “FOSS-only” distribution, meaning they don’t include anything by default that is not “free, open-source software.” That means media codecs for playing popular audio and video file formats, web browsers like Chrome (I would recommend migrating away from this platform if you’re using it) and anything else that’s “proprietary software.”

There are ways to enable access to this software, but it requires configuring your software package repositories to point to them. It’s not hard, just something to keep in mind.

Linux Mint is a great choice for newcomers to the space – it includes access to non-free software OOTB, has sane default applications on all of its “flavors” with their separate desktop environments, provides decent utilities for configuring your system graphically without blocking you from learning how to do so by config file or terminal should you want to learn. It stays decently up-to-date with packages, you won’t be on the bleeding edge but that’s not a bad thing. If you aren’t doing intense activities (gaming, video editing, etc) having the absolute latest packages won’t really matter to you. It still gets security updates, so you’re good there. It’s a well documented distro with a friendly community and forum if you run into trouble with anything. All around a really solid choice, and would be my first recommendation for someone not looking to do any heavy gaming or other specialized work on their PC.

XFCE is my desktop environment of choice. Not only is it lightweight, it also comes with some of the better desktop environment defaults, in my opinion. Linux Mint will theme it nicely upon install, but it’s a long-standing DE that has a huge backlog of support for customization and “beautifying” your install however you like. Lots of themes and cursor options for those who care, all without pushing your resources. It’s a traditional desktop paradigm, so it won’t try and force you to interact with your PC in new and unusual ways (looking at you, GNOME, you weirdo). It just… Gets out of your way and lets you use your PC the way you’re used to.

Linux Mint + XFCE is my recommendation, for sure.

I have the sneaking suspicion this was supposed to be sarcastic, but the Internet doesn’t carry “tone”… Am I correct? 😂

Agreed. It culminated in some elaborate multi-video click bait about him finding a fossil and stealing it, preying on the internet’s obsession with the idea that there are/were great apes native to North America (aka Bigfoot) that the whole crew swore up and down wasn’t a prank… Because it “wasn’t a prank, it was an educational fiction.” It was ridiculous, over the top, and annoying. Haven’t watched anything they’ve put out since.

UPDATE: I picked up the ARC A750. Been driving it around for awhile. Older DirectX games perform on par or often even better on Linux with ARC than they do on Windows. DX12 games had negligible performance boosts being run on Windows vs. Linux with ARC save some big exceptions…

Certain DX12 titles, one of which I own (Halo Infinite) WILL NOT RUN under Linux WITH the ARC card due to a lack of features in Vulkan. There are still some DX12 calls that have no equivalents in Vulkan, and while some games flag this feature set without using it and MAY be able to be tricked into running without it, any games that actually USE those features will not run under Linux with the ARC card, period. So… Research your newer AAA DX12 titles first.

That’s a logo, not a mascot. A logo is a mark that denotes a brand, the apple with the bite taken out for Apple, the footprint for GNOME, the stylized and colorized G for Google…

A mascot is a character that acts as a face and a voice for a brand. The gecko for Geico, Tony the Tiger for Frosted Flakes, Flo for Progressive.

Many brands looking to keep a serious, “sophisticated” brand aesthetic eschew mascots in favor of simple logos. GNOME follows suit with that trend. Nothing wrong with it, in fact I think it works quite well for them. If they were to adopt a mascot now it would be… Strange.

Yeah, that’s fair. Linux has been my daily driver for like… 8 years now? And I dabbled with it for some time before that. I’ve gotten to a point where I’m MUCH more comfortable doing things the Linux way than I am doing things the Windows way. I also have to admit I don’t do much modding for my games, and the little bit that I do is often either a.) Supported/managed by the game itself, or b.) Because I still install the majority of my mods by hand rather than through a mod manager.

As someone who dailied Linux for years and years and whose primary use of my PC is to game… I have to disagree with you. The only title in my entire Steam library that doesn’t work is Halo: Infinite, and that only because I’m using an Intel ARC card which has a known issue running Infinite on Linux due to an incompatibility between a specific set of DirectX 12 calls and Vulkan. If I had chosen to upgrade to a new AMD card instead, I’d still be running Linux. But I wanted to support Intel, so here we are. When I’m done playing around on Infinite, I’ll switch back and never think about Windows again.

Hell, some of my library runs BETTER on Linux than on Windows with the ARC card. The only game that runs better on Windows is Halo: Infinite, and that’s only because it literally doesn’t run at all on Linux. 😂

I worked up a custom template for a blood mage based on a homebrew I found and lost long ago. The basis was that the caster used spell slots as usual, but could expend hit dice for additional slots, or to use other class features or even boost some of their spells. It requires careful balancing, but is plenty of fun.

As I implemented it, it laid on top of their normal class, but it wouldn’t be too hard to work it up as it’s own class entirely. As another poster suggested, you could introduce a caveat that any health used to power a work can only be regained through natural means, or is only restored on a long rest, or something to that effect.

I switched to TIDAL. Same price, and they pay the artists better per stream.

My typical recommendation for anyone new to Linux looking to get their feet wet would be Linux Mint. As long as you keep the system updated, it should be a decent choice for gaming.

The following is not to discourage you, but to help keep expectations in check. Gaming on Linux is not perfect. It’s not comparable to gaming on Windows. A LOT of games (with the assistance of Steam’s Proton) “just work,” but things are not to a point where that’s ever a guarantee. I would recommend looking up your staple games on to review Linux compatibility, if the games run or need additional run options.

I say all this as someone who runs exclusively Linux, and is a gamer and occasionally streams. It’s perfectly doable, but expect to have to get your hands dirty at some point in the venture. And don’t be afraid to ask questions!