paddythegeek

Sounds like a great experience! Congrats.

I switched from full-time windows to full-time Linux with Pop_OS and haven’t looked back. I’m very happy with it and enjoy finding FOSS alternatives to my former go-to apps. So far so good. I’m also keeping an eye on Vanilla OS as that sounds like a very cool project that is headed to beta by summer.

Absolutely worth checking into IMO. If your e-reader device does support library connections, so much the better, but if not, your phone/tablet will.

In addition to e-books, your library also likely offers access to other services including streaming. I have access to Kanopy, which has an interesting catalog of movies and shows that is well outside the mainstream. I've found some interesting stuff on there to consume even though I don't use it as often as Netflix/Apple/etc.

Regarding Libby and the Palace Project, I used Libby for some time but shifted to Palace after reading (here, here) about the e-book lending market space and how ripe for enshittification it is at present. (Overdrive, the company behind the app of the same name and the Libby app, was recently sold to private equity firm K.K.R., notorious for horrible business practices. Overdrive controls about 90% of the library lending market, so I'm a little fearful for what might come.) The Palace Project is a non-profit, so I'm supporting it as a competing platform in case Overdrive starts to tank. The Libby app is more polished, but the search, borrowing and reading experience on Palace is largely comparable and still just fine.

Not sure if your device supports connection to your public library, but I have been reading literally hundreds of books since Covid on my iPhone using Libby at first, and now the Palace Project. I still purchase the odd book if it’s one I know I will read repeatedly but I haven’t bought an ebook in some time due to using the library.

Good list, btw. I loved the Arkady Martine books. You might want to try Gideon the Ninth and the sequels.

Wish I could invite this more than once! My favourite series, hands down.

Agreed, great book. There is a second book in that series, The Boy On the Bridge, I believe. Also quite good.

I found the movie on Kanopy through my (Canadian) public library. I'm not sure how easy to find it is on other services, as it's not exactly blockbuster stuff. I discovered it quite by accident.

The Girl With All the Gifts was pretty good, based on the book of the same name.

For comedy, one of my faves is Stranger Than Fiction.

I think you could bring it a long way back by hitting the surface with some wd40 and light sanding to remove the surface rust. You could also go over it with a soft wire brush or drill attachment if there is rust inside the etching. I’m not sure how much more rehab it might need after that, other than a resharpening to restore the edge.

I’d be careful with chemical treatments unless you know how the finish will react. I have very little experience with them, so perhaps someone more knowledgeable will have better advice there.

Good luck!

Maybe not exactly what you’re looking for, but if you know of a program that already does the thing you want, you can search for a variety of alternatives on alternativeto.net. It lists paid and FOSS alternatives.

Fucking criminals.

Cool! But, uh, don’t they need to build a working fusion reactor before they build the ship? The ship kind of seems like the easy part, tbh.

I used to be responsible for the app portfolio in a 1000+ user company, and every 3 years or so I would go back out to the market and try hard to replace Adobe, just for PDF operations. Couldn’t do it because so many products were integrated with them, often in ways we could not reproduce with other products. The best we could do would be to pay for a different product for 1/3 of the cost for Adobe, and then still end up having to carry a significant number of Adobe licenses for cases when integration failed with the other product. No-win situation, and just easier to stay with the evil we knew.

I hate them.

Fwiw, as someone also recently new to Linux, I thought this captured part of the experience brilliantly, and without malice.

Of course op probably went on to google (and find) the answer, so I agree with you that getting the answer with this post was probably not the point. But it’s a quality shitpost, and I endorse it! 😀