Stable, in this context, just means “point release”. If you meant “doesn’t break”, that describes most rolling release distros.

…unless you’ve used KDE in the last month. Holy cow, just let me alt-tab into a fullscreen window without throwing a fit.

I don’t hate flatpaks, but flatpaks require more disk space than the same apps from traditional repositories, and they only support a handful of the most common default themes. Since I only ever use older and slower computers, my disk space is limited, and I like to rice my desktop, I personally avoid them. But your use-case may differ.

You’re thinking in reverse. Walled gardens keep you in, not out. Without logging into your Steam account (pretending you don’t have one), try to download a mod for a game you bought on GOG and see how it goes for you.

This is silly. Valve is already a profit driven company. You don’t see the walled garden? The DRM? Valve supports proton because it’s in their monetary interest to do so.

Disclaimer: I’m incredibly ignorant. Wouldn’t wireless necessarily mean high-latency?

If you like arch but want a plug’n play distro, just do a plug’n play arch-based distro. Garuda is braindead easy.

It’s the micromanagement. When earlier games became tedious, I could just pick a quicker game speed, and I would suddenly feel like I was playing with more momentum. But in VI, it actually kills momentum, as if driving the slightly faster route to work at the cost of particularly frustrating traffic, since the most tedious micro isn’t turn-based, but city-based. You only have to plan districts/improvements once per city, so I find I can still have fun with VI if I play suboptimally (i.e., tall) on tiny maps and with mods that let me cram more civilizations into the game. I’ve probably put in a few hundred hours this way.

But I’d rather just play IV or V.

Having seen a total eclipse before, I know solar eclipses are in danger of being overhyped. IMO, they probably aren’t worth driving across the country. But if all you need is a 3 to 5 hour drive to get to the path of totality, I think you should absolutely do it. They’re legit. Not, like, life changing, but legit. Find a place with a few trees so you can watch the crescent shadows and maybe hear some wildlife freak out.