Steam has joy-con support built in! Depending on the game you want to play, you might be able to get away with two half-controllers.

the ds4 kit I linked is also a usb-c conversion kit! and eXtremeRate also sells replacement sticks, mine are metal now!

unfortunately most controllers with back buttons don’t let you re-bind them in the host OS, with the Dualsense Edge being a notable exception. I’ve bought a Dualsense Edge, and, unfortunately, I can’t recommend it. You’re paying $80 too much just for 4 extra buttons.

my controller of choice is a pre-owned Sony Dualshock 4 (like $30 on ebay) plus this $30 DIY Back Buttons kit from eXtremeRate. This new and improved kit allows you to save up to 6 different “profiles”, so you can have different mappings for different games. the mappings are saved on the controller itself, however, it won’t sync them with Steam. and they don’t function as “function buttons”, they’re limited to acting as a “clone” of another button on the controller.

at first I was unsatisfied with this – what’s the point, if I can’t use all eight face buttons and both stick clicks and four more back buttons, all at the same time, right? except… in hours of playtime, I’ve never run into a situation where that mattered. Most games either keep your thumbs on the sticks, in which case you can have the back buttons act as ABXY, or else you keep your thumbs on the face buttons, in which case the stick clicks and trigger clicks are available. plus you have the touchpad click, which really is a separate button that Steam recognizes.

I’ve never had any problems using this controller with linux. as far as the OS is concerned, it’s just a ps4 controller, and the support for those is quite good.

any luck?

Ask him to export the modpack from curseforge. This should create a small zip file. You can import that zip file into prism, and it will re-create the modpack.

I think the biggest culture shock for a lot of people is “fewer surprises, more options.” On my machine at least, updates don’t run automatically – I might get a notification that “updates are available” but that’s it, I still have to say “okay, now is a good time to update”, it won’t surprise me with them.

Similarly, if I want to set a hotkey for like “take a screenshot of the current application”, I can do that! But the downside is that it might not be set up by default, I have to go to settings -> hotkeys or something similar.

Linux “gets out of your way” and lets you solve problems, but that also means it’s not always going to solve them for you. It’s getting better at this over time – if lots of people have the same problem, the solution might get merged “upstream”, but a lot of things are still “well, how do YOU want it to work?”.

is this available in text form?

Thank you, that makes some sense.

the closest thing on android right now is an app called Termux, it simulates a linux scripting environment with several languages (including C, python, and javascript), and it can be programmed to do anything an app can do (including blink the LED).

but c’mon, that should be standard. also phones should come rooted.

how about pocket computers with the power of a smartphone but the common sense usability of a goddamn graphing calculator? i’m sitting on a magic rectangle with more computing power than the apollo mission and it doesn’t even let me blink the LED without installing an app?? these things should legally have to come with a scripting environment.

this is my sticking point with fish. I still need to know bash for writing portable scripts, so its hard to justify scripting in fish.

I still use firefox despite their questionable leadership, for one major reason: it prevents Google from setting whatever web standards they want. Sites that aren’t standards compliant will usually still work in Chromium-based browsers, but they will break in Firefox, and then I can report the bugs.

maybe something like a Raspberry Pi and set him up with html? html and js is still a great way to learn, you get immediate feedback!

Probably Emacs. /j

Yes, we have ghost communities. No, it’s not a problem. We’re not here to entertain you 24/7.

The Reddit communities that drove the most engagement were also the most toxic. The good part of Reddit was, and to some extent still is, the slow-moving communities that act as magnets for scraps of obscure knowledge.

Have patience.

I carry a spare usb stick and some low-capacity microsd cards, because sometimes its just easier to hand someone a file the old fashioned way.

Sometimes I do play games on my phone, but whenever possible I use a usb or bluetooth gamepad, because touchscreens aren’t supplanting buttons any time soon.

And of course the Steam Deck is my favorite gizmo, not just because it can run every PC and emulator game, but also because it doesn’t have any bullshit preventing me from installing mods. If phone modding was easy and accessible i’d be willing to spend more on a phone.

I’ve written about this on my blog: https://nycki.net/blog/2024-09-21-01-ethics-of-reuploading/

in brief: I think the right to keep one’s memories should usually come first over another’s right to be forgotten, but its ultimately a consent issue.

We need to build a space for them to migrate into. Most of what I see on Lemmy is, frankly, whiny. If we want to grow we need to set a better example.

I remember downloading grainy Quicktime video files from people’s homepages. We didn’t need YouTube then and we don’t need it now.

I like to say that Star Wars is to fantasy what Discworld is to sci-fi. Star wars is swords and sorcery in space, and Discworld is ethics and robotics in middle earth.