That’s not to say any other OS effort is not also a soap opera. I bet Microsoft has its fair share of drama, too; it’s just that no one sees it because the development effort is proprietary.

Even with experimental it hangs…

Ok, currently, Timberborn will launch but will hang hard after a short time. I used the wrong engine (?) so I will try “Experimental” and report back.

btw, I am a he/him : ^ ) But thanks for being inclusive.

the i7 was originally mean to be a my take away bridge over tailscale when I am away from home, and a programming machine (or perhaps a look up machine while I program on the i5 desktop)

I have loaded the laptop i7 laptop up with Debian 12, next is Steam so I will try it there. The machine I was going to run it on would not complete a launch and just sat there with the fans going full blast and a black screen…

The issue so far is that I bought the Windows version of Timberborn on Steam, so it won’t install on my Linux box. Do you suppose since I own the Windows version, the makers of Timberborn would allow me to download the appropriate files for Linux? I thought I had gotten it working last night, but instead I was just streaming it from the windows box.

Ok I finally bit the bullet - Windows is blown away. I have not played Timberborn in over 2 months and having a windows machine on my network has always kinda made me feel like I had a spy in the house. Unfortunatly the wife works from home so there are still two windows machines I can’t do anything about. My ASUS Vivobook i7 15" laptop is getting Debian but no GUI installed. I don’t need a GUI to setup tailscale do I? Anyone know of a good settlement or city building game that is free and runs under Linux?

I really just want small and light, and Cheap. 11" is fine. I have a 15" right now. If I decide to give up on Timberborn (I rarely play it and it is the only thing that keeps a windows machine on hand) then this could get re-installed with probably debian with no GUI… I play it rarely, but I still play it. I wish I could get it to run under Debian 12 on my main machine.

I would not be running a gui - this is strictly for text stuff unless I can do pixel/plot graphics in some BASIC or other language (a framebuffer?)

Is coreboot that system where the machine basically boots into a FORTH interpreter that has vocabulary words to read and boot from various media. That would be sweet - Forth is a hoot once you get used to it.

Yeah, This sounds like the thing… I really have to limit the cost to “Recycle cans and bottles” money because we (wife and I) recently bought me parts for a mini-ATX workstation ~$500.00 i5 8gb memory and an SSD I already had.

The hard part is tiny: 10" diagonal screen and really cheap: like milk money cheap - - Perhaps a netbook would work, some of them were Linux based right?

Perhaps Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, etc are either pre-built homes delivered complete by truck or a stick-built home built to specifications provided by an architect.

In any case, remodeling is a possibility.