If you have privileges from corporate IT and it doesn’t get reverted, or overridden to push more AI.

Super simplistic view: Malware detection is kinda like having a motion sensor in your house. Doesn’t do much to prevent but can help you catch something. If it notices right away it might prevent something being stolen.

Firewall is like having locks on your windows and doors. It helps keep out the curious and respectful, but not the dedicated.

Security updates aren’t necessarily for either of those things. It might be that someone discovered a way to steal your keys, or cut open a window bypassing a lock, or sneak into your basement, or crawl through the pet door. Patches “fix” those vulnerabilities. The longer software (Windows in this case) goes unmaintained the more of those are discovered, revealed, and generally accessible for people to use and exploit your system.

Highly recommend trying a live Linux USB just to poke around and see if it’s as much of a hassle as it seems at the time.

Privacy, UI/UX, admin controls, ads, pop ups or notifications, nagging about online services, AI, forced account creation, not working with older hardware.

Might be worth testing Linux with a separate drive. I know people still have trouble with Nvidia, but there are a lot of people (myself included) that just had to install the drivers and have had zero issues thereafter. Mine is a slightly older gaming laptop.

I have a desktop with an AMD card that I tried to put Linux on and couldn’t get the drivers to work. I’m going to try again in the summer and hope they’ve caught up.

It’ll help for the legit abandoned.

Unfortunately for the developers trying to exploit the early access system we’ll either get half finished games released (maybe with a quadruple A warning), or monthly updates that do nothing more than change the version number.

It’s a little like surgery but much easier than removing your own appendix (depending on the laptop).

I think the dual boot problems are generally associated to using the same drive. If you have one drive for each you can use BIOS to control boot order instead.

Nope, sorry, didn’t think about that for an RTS. Is definitely designed for keyboard and mouse.

I think any fan of the genre should check out

https://store.steampowered.com/app/334920/ZeroK/

Active development, amazing and customizable controls (seriously, is you’ve ever been frustrated fighting controls in an RTS, they’ve thought of solutions), and an extensive campaign that serves as a unit tutorial (not the most engaging story is my only regret).

They have quite a few posts that are primarily about design philosophy. It’s clear they put a lot of time and effort into it. One of my favorites that has driven a lot of innovation in you can interact with the game is

https://zero-k.info/mediawiki/Cold_Takes/3_-_Fight_your_opponent,_not_the_UI

One that I find myself coming to a sort of grudging agreement with is (veterancy for units isn’t good):

https://zero-k.info/mediawiki/Cold_Takes/15_-_Experiences_With_Veterancy

Thank you, zero k interface is amazing, and their “cold takes” show a design philosophy I constantly find myself wishing I’d find pretty much everywhere else.

Especially co-op, Torchlight was fantastic. Basically all of the right QoL implementations so everything was just about having fun.

Grim Dawn; ARPG from 2016, currently on sale for a few $ on steam. Very well rated with solid story, mechanics, and campaign focus (instead of more on seasons and grind).