I’m currently playing around with Debian on an old laptop of mine. If I can get the setup to a place where it feels sufficient for me to take my hands off, it could be the answer for this other computer.

(Thanks for DE recommendations. It does my head in trying to keep straight which ones are suited to which uses.)

I had Zorin on my own computer for a while and really liked it, but it was crashing every few days and I decided I didn’t want to put up with that. I’ll give it another try one of these days - the issue may have been resolved, or my hardware my be different by then. But I won’t use it on a computer whose user can’t do thryr own tech support.

98% of the time when they’ve had a problem with Windows, they just needed to restart the computer. (It has been impossible to convince them that computers need a full shutdown periodically, and Windows doesn’t cope with ‘always on’.)

When it’s something more than that, they either have to find someone closer to help or wait until we visit. Doing tech support long-distance for people who can’t adequately describe the problem is a losing game.

There were some broken package dependencies which I had to fix manually (a non-issue on my own device; a major red flag for this device). And after one set of updates, it needed about three tries to boot successfully (requiring hopping into recovery mode to smooth out the wrinkle - again, a non-issue if it were my own device, but…).

As best I can tell at the moment, it’s working fine with Mint installed. My concern is what happens next time something is updated or installed and I’m not there to resolve an issue.

I’m close to finishing my first exploration of Ginger Island. Trying to decide whether to pay the parrot for the last few Golden Walnuts, or look them up in the Wiki, or whether there’s realistically any chance I’ll ever find them on my own. (I am bad at deciphering in-game hints, so probably no. Have already looked up a few things I couldn’t figure out; so what’s a few more?)

Feed the hungry AI, I guess?

Thanks for the correction. I have only ever seen the point flagged by the smaller banks I’ve looked at, so I assumed it was a small bank thing. Maybe I’ve not looked in the right places on larger banks’ websites.

The linked page says several times “for each account holder”. But that doesn’t mean a joint account gets double the guarantee, does it?

Look into fees and structure of accounts at whichever institutions you are considering, from the angle of what fits your situation. Also consider whether you prefer a bank with a physical branch (in which case, your short list is whichever banks are convenient to where you live) or whether online banking is sufficient (some banks are online only). Some banks also limit how much money they’ll guarantee; so if your accounts might go over $249k you should make sure your chosen bank is good with that.

Over the years I have had accounts with: Westpac, ING Direct, Teacher’s Mutual Bank (formerly a credit union), NAB, ME Bank, Up, and a couple of others I don’t remember. None of them were especially bad, but they did different things for me at different points in my life.

When my parents (who are not citizens, have never worked in this country, and are here for a couple of months at a time) wanted a bank account to use while here, I set them up with NAB. That was the option with a physical branch nearby that wasn’t going to hit them with monthly fees for the privilege of having an account, when the account was not in regular use. (NAB has since closed the branch near us, so idk how much longer they’re going to have our business.)

Final thought: there is no contract with your bank unless you take out a loan or term deposit. Pick one to start, and if it’s not a fit you can move your money elsewhere. Don’t stress.

My brother-in-law is a doctor working for NSW Health. Here are a few of his comments when he told us about the strike:

Pretty huge. Never fancied myself a unionist. Never thought I would go on strike.

I told my boss I will be participating. I will not be doing anything elective, which given my current role is 95% clinics and elective day admissions, means on 2 of the 3 days I won’t go to work at all. I will continue to be on call for acute consults from the inpatient teams, so that acute care isn’t compromised. But for the 15 odd families who’s appointments will be cancelled it’s going to be mighty inconvenient. I hate that.

But I can’t see another way. NSW Health has given up even attempting to negotiate on our Award, their most recent proposal was a copy paste of our current award with a few areas in which they have enhanced their ability to sack people for a range of things (including if you get sick and are unable to do your job, without needing to have sick leave expire or anything), and zero concessions to any of the things we asked for.

But apparently we are greedy doctors who don’t care about people, or we would just accept it.

But here’s the thing. I did a double shift yesterday (8am to 10pm) because they can’t manage to hire enough people to staff our roster. Why? Because no one in their right mind would choose to work in NSW if they had the choice to work for any other state health service. Comparison of the awards makes the decision a no brainer.

This instance might help you: https://lemmy.world/c/keeptrack (Someone else doing similar.)

I need to get my lettuce seeds started… yesterday, or last week. Not sure I’m going to manage it with enough lead time on the cold weather to get them to a useful size. (southern NSW)

I would consider growing them in indoor pots if I don’t get them going soon enough, but I have a cat that likes to eat lettuce so I fear they would not survive.

As others have said, ketchup and tomato sauce are the same thing. Most of the time, the version of a product you get here will be just fine (if not better… no high fructose corn syrup!).

But there will be products where the local version doesn’t match what you’re used to, and they might not be things you think about ahead of time. My American parents are forever disappointed by Australian ranch salad dressing, for example.

This store imports US brands: https://usafoods.com.au/ It’s expensive because stuff is heavy to ship across the world. But it’s nice to have the option for occasional specific things you miss.

My brother-in-law just got a new computer and was excited that he again has a device functional enough to play Stardew, so we just started a new farm. This is the third farm I’ve played with him and we’ve never yet made it to Winter year 1 (together) as differing schedules always eventually get in the way. Going back to the beginning is grindy, but also a nice change of pace.

If it’s their original thought, or I’m including their comment on the thing they shared, then I include the username.

If they’ve just reposted an image with no extra commentary, I only share the image and not where I found it. Since “where I found it” is not the original source, no attribution is necessary imho.

Thanks for digging this up.

I was having a similar problem with another game, and I had a similar desire to learn general troubleshooting rather than have someone give me a specific fix. That said, I don’t know if I can help because for me it’s basically butt my head against a wall until I poke something enough that it works - usually I don’t know enough to understand why the thing works.

I was installing my games onto a secondary drive. The problem turned out to be that that drive had been formatted by Windows back when my computer was set up to dual-boot. Some games still ran fine in Linux, but this particular game nothing would happen when I clicked Play. On a whim I tried installing it on the primary drive with the OS, and it worked first time. So there was something about that game that didn’t work with the drive formatting.

(I’ve since reformatted the second hard drive so that everything should now play nice with Linux, now that I no longer have Windows. Game is fine now.)