Can someone PLEASE do some reviews of the Strix Point CPUs running Linux on notebooks?

I had a Maths Prof who used Mint so this kinda checks out

Just finished my Master's this year.

I belonged to the Department of Computer Science at a university in the UK so granted there's a lot of bias here:

I will point out a few observations, without going into much detail or reasoning:

1. Microsoft's Office suite was a non-requirement. For collaboration, everyone was using Google's Office suite (Google Docs, Sheets) or Overleaf (Premium if we signed up with our university email).
2. Around half (maybe more) were MacOS users, maybe 25-25% split between Linux and Windows.
3. Lots of iPads, particularly in any Maths classes.

Anything else to keep in mind? Yes, that people are ignorant. Even in our CS department people used to actively avoid using Linux, a lot of people will buy Macbooks because of reasons I would attribute more to the demographics of CS students, i.e. primarily from Asian countries where Apple is seen as a economic symbol.

Be prepared for people to judge you (not saying they should, but that they likely will). If you want to avoid this judgement, get an Apple silicon Macbook Air or something. However, I commend you for going out of your way to learn and wanting to reduce your dependency on Windows. I think that learning to be comfortable with the machine will help you in the future, most likely indirectly.

Lastly, keep in mind that when we have discussions about privacy or Linux or not supporting big tech companies who we might not agree with (e.g. Microsoft, Google, Apple etc) it's never a binary problem. You might find that you will end up relying on teams for internal communication or that your university email is with outlook/office365.

Try and do your bit, but don't be too harsh on yourself. :)

Needless to say, if you're looking for a laptop that runs Linux well plenty of people will tell you to buy a used thinkpad (great from a value perspective), or if you'd prefer some of the new kidz stuff then a Tuxedo notebook.

Do not make the mistake of buying a notebook which doesn't have a reputation of good Linux support. I bought a HP notebook (can't quite remember the model number right now but can get back to you) and still no sound without manual kernel module patch :D

Having skimmed through this article, the article actually sucks. Like, actually.

Why would game demos set unrealistic expectations? That's only the case if they spent 90% of dev time in the first 10% of the game and use that as the demo. This happens, but this is bad design, this is not a case of a demo hurting a game.

I remember playing the Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker demo a long time ago and it did not spoil the story (which is a big aspect for MGS), it did not take away from the experience, and it introduced me to some of the fundamental mechanics of the game.

A more recent example is perhaps the demo of Enotria: Last Song. Do you think I know the lore and story just by playing the demo? No. Did it introduce me to the core mechanics of masks and a few other things? Yes. Was it good to get player feedback and fix bugs? Hell yeah. Sure, you might not like the game, but that doesn't change the fact that the demo had a successful impact i.e. it gave both parties (us and the studio) a significantly better understanding.

Don't put peak content in the demo and it will result in it actually playing like a demo.

Design the game with the demo in mind, don't make it an afterthought. Demos are very valuable and I'm sure lots of gamers pirate games before buying them, instead of actually buying them, because 2 hours for a Steam refund just isn't enough! I spent around 6 hours playing the Enotria demo (just for 1 complete playthrough). Why so many? I had to familiarise myself with the mechanics, switched between keyboard and mouse multiple times, tried to see why I was getting frame rate drops despite my RTX 4070 renderring at 1080p 120 fps.

**Game demos do not hurt a game! ** Abusing game demos as purely a form of marketing by making false promises or setting false expectations hurt the game.

This is not exclusive to a game either. Consider a recent release like Elden Ring, absolutely massive map, they did not try to over-sell it. They said it's around 30 hours of content iirc. You can hurt this game with social media, with interviews, with false trailers, with many things.

TLDR; Angry old man starts raging about "back in my day we had game demoz".

Is there any good news for the x elite laptops?

Sorry for the noob question, but are you able to access your banking apps with GrapheneOS? If so, how?

Honestly, whilst I would not recommend this at all, I find CutefishOS (you could argue it doesn't even need to be a distro) incredibly visually appealing.

Perhaps I will get downvoted for being a sucker for modern visuals, but the theme is consistent, simple and easy on my eyes.

Although I like GNOME, the consistency bothers me and some of the design choices are inconsistent and don't make for a great user experience, looking at Nautilus for example.