I wont be using it but something I want to say is that it’s weird that it took this long. The normal version of Opera has been available on Linux for a very long time now, I don’t know exactly how long but it’s been at least since prior to May 15, 2001, from what I could find (I saw a claim that it was released for Linux in Dec 31,1997, but there’s no proof). Ever since the release of Opera GX, there was a lot of discussion about when/if GX would be available for Linux and, from what I understand, a lot of the people who used Opera on Linux wanted GX. I just don’t understand why it took them this long to release a Linux version.

After trying vmtouch, it only seems to be partially helping. I’m not sure if I’m just using it incorrectly or not but if I remove the files from RAM and then use vmtouch to add them back in, the hitching issues are still partially there.

To fully explain what my issue is, I currently using the Linux version of the Cyber Lancer demo from Itchio as it’s small enough to fit onto my 128 MB SD card, which is very slow. I can easily run the game from other storage devices that have much higher read speeds but I want to get the most out of my older and slower storage devices. What’s happening is when the game first loads when it’s files aren’t stored in RAM, is the game essentially freezes for a split second every time it has to load an asset that wasn’t previously loaded.

vmtouch isn’t making the hitching go away, it just making it load a little faster. This does mean that it’ll help but if you’re aware of a better solution, I can try that out as well.

That wont be necessary, after doing more “extreme” tests with preload, it seems like I was wrong about preload. I used sudo sysctl vm.drop_caches=1 to make sure that none of the game’s files were loaded in RAM before using preload like I did yesterday, but the game still has hitching issues. This means that the game’s files were probably still loaded in RAM when I was testing it yesterday.

For context, what I’m trying to do is find a way to run smaller games more smoothly from some very old storage devices that are very slow. I thought that preload would be the solution but since it doesn’t seem to actually do what I thought it did, I’m going to need a different solution. I will try vmtouch and respond back if it works.

After doing some more “extreme” tests, it seems like I was wrong about how preload works. In fact, it didn’t seem to actually preload the files at all, so I’m not sure what it actually does. I ran sudo sysctl vm.drop_caches=1 to make sure that none of the game’s files were loaded and then used preload like I did yesterday, but the game still has hitching issues. This means that the game’s files were probably still loaded in RAM when I was trying it yesterday.

When I used preload, it let me manually add files to ram. I used sudo preload filename for each file (the game I tried it with only had two) and it seemed to add them to ram. I know this because the game had hitching issues even after just adding the main executable but the hitching went away when I added the second file.

I mean, as long as they don’t require an ID that’s fine I guess, even though what they’re proposing can be easily circumvented. But my biggest, and everyone else’s, concern is that, as with what’s been going on with age verification, it’s possible that it’ll just snowball into something worse. It doesn’t help that there are people, like me, that currently can’t get IDs. There are already several websites that I have to use through a VPN, so if these age verification laws keep getting worse, people like me might completely lose the ability to use the internet entirely, unless they make getting IDs easier.

When you say “remove”, do you mean completely remove or move them to swap/zswap/zram, depending on what the system has enabled?

I know that we do need better regulations for protecting children online but I don’t think we’re ever going to get that. It seems like the government that we have now just wants to have full control over everyone. In fact, the FTC made a statement saying that they’re basically giving companies a loophole that allows them to partially ignore COPPA, which is one of the best protections children had online. It’s obvious that they have no interest in protecting children online, if they’re making statements like that.

I saw the developers of MidnightBSD state that they are going to block users in California when this law gets put into place. I hope that more OSs do the same. Especially Windows, it could be devastating to California’s economy and make them, along with other states and countries, reconsider their decisions on age verification.

I don’t live in California but I’m interested in seeing if there are any other OSs that will be blocking California users. I’m probably fine to just continue using Linux Mint but I’m open to trying other distros/OSs in order to participate in this protest if Linux Mint doesn’t.

I forgot who made it because it’s not the type of music I listen to but there’s an album called “Tentacle Induced Intestinal Displacement”. I just like how specifically absurd it is and It’s album art is equally as extreme. Assuming it hasn’t been removed, it was on Spotifiy when I found it, if you are curious about it for some reason.

There’s two I couldn’t settle on, so I’m just going to put both.

イドラ・デウス ‐The Creator‐ by 暁Records公式, it has an editing style that I don’t think I’ve ever seen in a music video before.

ちまみれダンシンパーリナイ ～きゅっとしてドカーン♥ also by 暁Records公式, I just like how wacky and deranged this music video is.

For both users and content creators to actually use alternative platforms. Platforms like Odysee and Rumble exist but, for the most part, only “certain types” of people actually use them at the moment, which currently turns off most of the people that would be otherwise interested in using them.

There are some good content creators who use them, like how both SomeOrdinaryGamers and Louis Rossmann have channels on Odysee, but having only a few content creators isn’t going to be enough to make the platforms pop off over night.

This is my first time hearing about zram. I tried looking into it myself but there’s still some things I could find answers to. Are there any downsides to using zram, or is it something that I can set and forget about? If I were to be using compression tools, like 7zip, would I be able to use a higher dictionary size than I normally can, or would zram cause problems outside of potentially slower compression speeds?

Edit: I think I’m just going to test this myself. I’ve been reading more about zram and alternatives and it seems like there’s conflicting information.

I don’t know what most of those numbers mean but most of them are 0 and the overall assessment says “Disk is OK”, so I guess it wasn’t used much in the past two years. “program-fail-count-total” has a value of 94669670143499 but I’m not sure if that’s actually bad or not because “program-fail-count” is 0.

Also, as I stated before, I’m still going to prioritize my slower hard drives so I’m not stuck with them if the SSD fails before I can buy a faster drive.

I know it would be better to move Linux Mint to the internal hard drive but I’m keeping it on the external hard drive just because I don’t know how stable the SSD is. On top of the fact that I’ve heard that SSD are less stable than mechanical drives, I don’t know if the hard drive was replaced when it was refurbished and if it wasn’t, I don’t know how much it was used. I also want to prioritize my slower external hard drives so that way I’m not potentially stuck using these older hard drive, or even my much slower USB storage devices, several years from now.

Also, I ran a benchmark test on the SSD and it’s nowhere near as fast as I though it would be. The read speed is only around 520 MB/s and the Write speed is around 470 MB/s. This isn’t much faster than my current external hard drive which has somewhere around 300 MB/s for both, it’s been a while since I last tested it.

I just realized that my post is missing context if you only read just this post and not the one I linked to in the post. I have Linux installed on an external hard drive and Windows was installed to the SSD which is in the laptop. I’ve added this information to the post but I don’t need help with this anymore. I’ve already removed Windows from the SSD and have reformatted it to ext4 so I can run games from it.

Why?

If this is meant for the other user, you replied to the wrong comment.

If you meant to respond to me, I don’t need this. I’ve already removed Windows from the hard drive and I plan on using either Tiny10 or Tiny11 on this computer when I get a new computer to run Linux on in the future.

I didn’t need to do this. I never used Windows on this computer, so I didn’t have data to backup. I’ve already removed Windows from the SSD and reformatted it. I’m also keeping Linux Mint installed on the external hard drive because it runs fine from the external hard drive and I just want to run games from the SSD.

I already checked the other day, it’s on my external hard drive. Also, I’ve already removed Windows from the internal hard drive and reformatted it, so I don’t need help with this anymore.