Yep, Adobe software still phones home even when it's cracked. But there's supposedly a list of hosts you can block to stop this behaviour: https://a.dove.isdumb.one/list.txt

KDE. Been using it since v3, tried various other systems like Gnome, Enlightenment, XFCE etc. and I've always been coming back to it. KDE just feels very intuitive and easy to use.

Similar experience: One guy was seeding all of the old uncensored episodes of The Three Investigators and I'm so grateful for that. It's pretty popular here in Germany, but despite that, no one seems to share it. There are episodes on Spotify, but they are censored and some of the music has been replaced with a modern rendition.

Commander Keen 4. I still love the whole series and play those games from time to time.

After that, my dad got me Doom, Wolfenstein and Duke Nukem 3D. Giving hookers money as a seven-year old in a video game was glorious, the old man has good taste.

Shake it, baby!

When I was in my 20's, I always gave 200% at the jobs I worked at. I was young and naive and believed I would eventually be rewarded for all the hard work I put in, even on weekends and night shifts.

Then I got burnout, because I was working at a pace my body just couldn't sustain anymore.

It changed my life drastically. I learned to value my health and free time and to prioritize that over the needs of my employer. I learned that hard work doesn't neccessarily bring you any benefits, it mostly benefits your employer. I also learned that nobody cares when your health is fucked up - for your employer, you're just a cog in the machine that can be replaced.

Nowadays I only work four days a week and I don't give a shit about what happens on Fridays anymore. Server is down? Not my problem, get someone else to fix it.

I also learned to stand up for myself. I'm not getting paid like a monkey anymore and if you promise me a raise and then pretend like that never happened afterwards, you'll have my resignation on your desk, printed out by the company printer right in front of you.

• Shadow Man
• Turok 1 + 2
• Quake 2 (that OST kicks ass)
• Duke Nukem 3D
• Descent 3
• Commander Keen 4-6
• PowerSlide
• Ubisoft POD (Planet of Death)
• Terminal Velocity
• Tron 2.0

The biggest part of my childhood was Shadow Man. It was the first game I ever played that built a big world to explore with excellent narration and a good sense of progress. It felt rewarding to finally play all the way through to the end after many months. Some of the levels and music gave me nightmares as a child, but it was worth it.

I enjoyed a lot of story-driven games since then, but this one will always have a special place in my heart. It's so cool that NightDive remastered it recently.

This made me laugh so hard. I was also born on the 11th. 🤣

2001 sure was a weird birthday.

Windows 95

Suse Linux

Yoper Linux

Windows XP

Slackware

Windows 10/11

Fedora Linux

"Relapsed" to Windows for a while because I became a graphic designer and running a somewhat current Adobe suite on wine was impossible (it works now).

Slackware has been amazing, but having to built so much stuff from scratch takes too much time nowadays.

And those first Suse years were too rough to keep using it as a daily driver.

Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQ_M67xVI9M