Number one thing, don't get a "Pro" controller from Nintendo. 8BitDo, GameSir, Gulikit, etc. all have excellent options that undercut NIntendo by a lot (you have $20 controllers that perform nearly as well), and they all use hall-effect sticks (or TMR with the fancy ones) so you won't suffer from the same stick drift. You could also get a Gulikit mod kit for the Switch 2 joycons and replace the sticks with TMR ones, but at least from my experience with the original Joy-Con, it is incredibly annoying to open it up (and you always need to do it multiple times, because you didn't seat the ribbon cable properly, you are pinching a cable, etc.), and I doubt the new ones are any more repairable.
As for specific controller recommendations, from 8BitDo you have the Ultimate 2C Bluetooth (C is for cheap, I think it's $25 or something, but no gyro and other bits) and the Ultimate 2 Bluetooth (has gyro, trigger lock, dock, etc.), from Gulikit you have the TT Max (symmetrical stick layout!) and the KK3 Max (the TT Max but with hall-effect instead of TMR, older version of the 2.4 GHz dongle, and asymmetrical), and from GameSir you have the Nova 2 Lite (cheaper, no gyro) and Supernova (rubber grips, gyro, trigger locks, dock, etc.)
Next, the Switch 2. That is a big asking price, and I personally don't think it's worth it, especially since there is no pack in game. If you do want a Nintendo console, you can easily find original Switches used online for very cheap (unless you already have one, which is even better!), and unless you want to play some of the Switch 2 exclusive titles, those are definitely the best from Nintendo in terms of value. Almost all the original Switch games will play exactly the same in the Switch 2 unless you get the upgrade packs (some of which are free, others are paid), which is incredibly stupid in my opinion, paid or not.
If you are not interested in any Nintendo exclusive games and want to play cross-platform titles only (like Hades II, Silksong, etc.), I would definitely suggest getting a used Steam Deck (if available + you need a handheld) or building a PC (with AM4, DDR4 memory, and the used market if you have one, you can definitely build something decent that will outperform the Switch 2 in every metric, but the value will depend on the cost of components where you live!!).
If you just want to play Nintendo games (or Playstation, Xbox, Sega, etc.) but don't care for the latest and greatest "Mario Kart World" or similar, you could always go the emulation route! There are a lot of good handhelds right now:
the RG XX line is great for anything under PS1 (I particularly like the 34XXSP for the clamshell)
the TrimUI Brick is another one in that price bracket and relatively small
the Miyoo Mini is even smaller!
the RG DS is decent for DS w/ Rocknix (but it will be replaced with the RG DS Plus soon, so you might want to check if you want the better screen in exchange for a third of the memory. The new one will have the same chip though)
Retroid's Pocket line is always awesome (the 5 uses the Snapdragon 865 and is good for everything up to GC and PS2, while the 6 uses the 8 Gen 2 and can do more Switch and PC emulation and will handle every GC and PS2 game with upscaling)
Ayn has fancier devices ($300-400 price range) like the Odin 2 Portal (beeg screen Pocket 6) and Thor (3DS champ), which both use the 8 Gen 2
Stalactites are the ones on the ceiling pointing down, while the stalagmites are the ones on the floor pointing upwards. A lot of people have good ways to memorise it, but my way is by imagining sta lagmites are slow little bugs crawling on the ground, and stalactites are therefore the opposite.
Fish is setup out of the box while ZSH is minimal OOTB and can be extended with all sorts of themes, plugins, etc. They both offer syntax highlighting, tab completion, fuzzy search, as well as many other QoL features over bash. The main upside of ZSH is that it's compatible with the same POSIX scripts bash supports, while fish uses their own scripting thing (that can be easier to read and simpler, yes, but you lose compatibility with a lot of existing scripts!)
In my opinion, I would say fish and ZSH are awesome for most people, while ZSH has the edge when if you use a lot of scripts, and fish is better if you don't want to configure anything (though oh-my-zsh, which is very simple to install, puts ZSH nearly on par with stock fish)
I'm not going to preorder it anytime soon, I would rather see (independent) reviews of a finished product first. ON their website, they note that it could be good for retro gaming (though that price for the chipset isn't great compared to the competition, but you get open hardware + modularity!), as a music player (audio jack!), and sysadmin / networking diagnostic stuff (where Linux is preferred over Android or iOS), but obviously there are better devices for each of those use cases. Few devices can do it all though, and you would be supporting open hardware and all that jazz. They also say that it could be useful for testing Linux mobile apps and that sort of stuff (since it's an ARM chip w/ optional LTE support), but won't be too good as a daily driver phone (no earpiece speaker, LTE being an optional upgrade).
I probably won't get this, as I already have a computer (which does run Linux!) and smartphone and don't need/want another fun Linux device (my OnePlus 6 running postmarketOS fulfills that role already).
This looks really neat, and it's awesome to see more open hardware! And the price seems pretty reasonable too for what you're getting, especially given this is a smaller company. The modular plates are also open, meaning you can design your own ones! It looks like it starts at 2GB / 64GB eMMC, and goes up to 8GB / 128GB. It has display out support too, and the super long software support (7 years) is very nice. The device is apparently repairable too, with spare parts to be easily available too! It's definitely a computer first, phone second, since LTE support is an optional upgrade, and there is no earpiece speaker (so calls will be very bothersome to others). It also supports M.2 SSDs, but it's in the more esoteric 3042 B-Key form factor (and an adapter for more standard 2230 SSDs will be another separate upgrade). If the Comet actually comes out and orders are fulfilled, I think this could be an awesome device!
What, so you want microtransactions? Unless you mean user-created games, in which case Luanti is pretty awesome for that. There are Minecraft-likes (e.g. Mineclonia), but there are other games that do their own thing: Asuna is more creative focused with mechanics inspired by Terraria, NodeCore is the opposite where it's very technical, etc. They just share the same voxel core, but otherwise they are pretty different to each others. There are even some story driven games, arcade games, etc. that are kind of neat too. Luanti is cross-platform and you can easily setup multiplayer (which can be easy peer to peer LAN or a server)
Linux support for M3 series SoCs and the machines powered by them is now in a state where almost everything supported on the M1 and M2 series machines just works. This includes the webcam, internal microphones, USB (up to the hardware limit of USB 3 10 Gb/s), hardware accelerated video decoding including support for AV1, WiFi, Bluetooth, and much more! The only major exceptions remain full DCP support and the GPU, which we will have more news on in the coming months. Do not expect performant or power-efficient 3D acceleration right now.
I believe that the "Lite" version with the 865 is able to run most 3DS games, you'll only need the 8 Gen 2 if you want to play things above that (Switch, PC emulation, etc.)
The RG DS Plus will run an version of Linux OOTB (the correct decision, since Android ran horribly on the original RG DS)
And I would guess Rocknix will be supported soon after release due to the use of the same chip (as long as there isn't weird stuff going on with the new displays)
Again, interpolation is how Drastic and other emulators scale up their images (this is to reduce jagged edges I believe), and you also have the upscaling of 3D textures too (which can be significant in some DS games)
I don't think that's how scaling works. I believe Drastic (and other DS emulators) use interpolation for their scaling (i.e. linear, bilinear, etc. instead of nearest neighbour). You also have the difference between the scaling of 2D and 3D elements, meaning sprites and textures are handled separately (and therefore they need to be stored somewhere: RAM!)
But the original RG DS already underperformed when it came to DS (I believe Russ was able to run 2x with Drastic on the original in some games), having a third of the RAM certainly won't help for playing 4x integer scale DS. I highly doubt that Anbernic will make it work with their "NNDDSS" emulator
An articles by Retro Handhelds mentions this, it looks like they spoke to people at Anbernic. They also mention that GammaOS Nano will be able to run with 1GB of RAM, and that Gamma is working with Anbernic
The KeePass ecosystem is awesome, you can sync databases between devices (you can have multiple with different passwords!) with SyncThing (no self-hosting required, just peer to peer).
KeePassXC on desktop (+ has an excellent browser extension for autofill), KeePassDX on Android (system-wide autofill), KeePassium on iOS (system-wide autofill, note: no official SyncThing client, so it's jankier), and Secrets for mobile Linux if you ever get into that! I know KeePassDX and KeePassium also (optionally) support biometrics too, not sure about KeePassXC though.
KeePass doesn't require self-hosting! You can just use SyncThing, which is peer to peer (e.g. between my phone and laptop) to sync your database (a single file by the way, nothing complicated)
Bitwarden is the other option, but it's another cloud service. It seems to be better, and you have the option of self-hosting Vaultwarden if they ever go bad, but I personally like the KeePass ecosystem to KeePassXC (desktop), KeePassDX (Android), and Secrets (mobile Linux, yay!). KeePassium is a good option if you use iOS (though, there is no official SyncThing client, so it's a little jankier if you want sync)
I don't think the RG DS Plus is a bad device, it's just a little limited (through factors that Anbernic can't really control without jacking up the price). It also looks like it will be the same, if not lower, price than the original RG DS, which is good. I think the lack of RAM is not great but isn't too bad (though it puts into question the feasibility of 4x integer scale DS)
Given it uses the same chip and has less memory than the RG DS, I really doubt it can play 3DS. The original already struggled with DS, although CFW did help it a bit.
I heard that they are stuck with the chip because they were limited with choices for dual screen support. More powerful chips (that support dual screen) are much more expensive and would've put the device far outside the price bracket Anbernic wanted
But yeah, that doesn't make it a good deal. If you like DS, it seems like a neat option that is relatively affordable, albeit flawed, particularly without CFW
Number one thing, don't get a "Pro" controller from Nintendo. 8BitDo, GameSir, Gulikit, etc. all have excellent options that undercut NIntendo by a lot (you have $20 controllers that perform nearly as well), and they all use hall-effect sticks (or TMR with the fancy ones) so you won't suffer from the same stick drift. You could also get a Gulikit mod kit for the Switch 2 joycons and replace the sticks with TMR ones, but at least from my experience with the original Joy-Con, it is incredibly annoying to open it up (and you always need to do it multiple times, because you didn't seat the ribbon cable properly, you are pinching a cable, etc.), and I doubt the new ones are any more repairable.
As for specific controller recommendations, from 8BitDo you have the Ultimate 2C Bluetooth (C is for cheap, I think it's $25 or something, but no gyro and other bits) and the Ultimate 2 Bluetooth (has gyro, trigger lock, dock, etc.), from Gulikit you have the TT Max (symmetrical stick layout!) and the KK3 Max (the TT Max but with hall-effect instead of TMR, older version of the 2.4 GHz dongle, and asymmetrical), and from GameSir you have the Nova 2 Lite (cheaper, no gyro) and Supernova (rubber grips, gyro, trigger locks, dock, etc.)
Next, the Switch 2. That is a big asking price, and I personally don't think it's worth it, especially since there is no pack in game. If you do want a Nintendo console, you can easily find original Switches used online for very cheap (unless you already have one, which is even better!), and unless you want to play some of the Switch 2 exclusive titles, those are definitely the best from Nintendo in terms of value. Almost all the original Switch games will play exactly the same in the Switch 2 unless you get the upgrade packs (some of which are free, others are paid), which is incredibly stupid in my opinion, paid or not.
If you are not interested in any Nintendo exclusive games and want to play cross-platform titles only (like Hades II, Silksong, etc.), I would definitely suggest getting a used Steam Deck (if available + you need a handheld) or building a PC (with AM4, DDR4 memory, and the used market if you have one, you can definitely build something decent that will outperform the Switch 2 in every metric, but the value will depend on the cost of components where you live!!).
If you just want to play Nintendo games (or Playstation, Xbox, Sega, etc.) but don't care for the latest and greatest "Mario Kart World" or similar, you could always go the emulation route! There are a lot of good handhelds right now:
Stalactites are the ones on the ceiling pointing down, while the stalagmites are the ones on the floor pointing upwards. A lot of people have good ways to memorise it, but my way is by imagining sta lag mites are slow little bugs crawling on the ground, and stalactites are therefore the opposite.
I dunno, just stuff I've heard before. For 99% of people both are awesome, it's just preference!
Fish is setup out of the box while ZSH is minimal OOTB and can be extended with all sorts of themes, plugins, etc. They both offer syntax highlighting, tab completion, fuzzy search, as well as many other QoL features over bash. The main upside of ZSH is that it's compatible with the same POSIX scripts bash supports, while fish uses their own scripting thing (that can be easier to read and simpler, yes, but you lose compatibility with a lot of existing scripts!)
In my opinion, I would say fish and ZSH are awesome for most people, while ZSH has the edge when if you use a lot of scripts, and fish is better if you don't want to configure anything (though oh-my-zsh, which is very simple to install, puts ZSH nearly on par with stock fish)
That's really neat! I personally use ZSH, but Fish is great too, and it's always nice to see improvements!
I'm not going to preorder it anytime soon, I would rather see (independent) reviews of a finished product first. ON their website, they note that it could be good for retro gaming (though that price for the chipset isn't great compared to the competition, but you get open hardware + modularity!), as a music player (audio jack!), and sysadmin / networking diagnostic stuff (where Linux is preferred over Android or iOS), but obviously there are better devices for each of those use cases. Few devices can do it all though, and you would be supporting open hardware and all that jazz. They also say that it could be useful for testing Linux mobile apps and that sort of stuff (since it's an ARM chip w/ optional LTE support), but won't be too good as a daily driver phone (no earpiece speaker, LTE being an optional upgrade).
I probably won't get this, as I already have a computer (which does run Linux!) and smartphone and don't need/want another fun Linux device (my OnePlus 6 running postmarketOS fulfills that role already).
This looks really neat, and it's awesome to see more open hardware! And the price seems pretty reasonable too for what you're getting, especially given this is a smaller company. The modular plates are also open, meaning you can design your own ones! It looks like it starts at 2GB / 64GB eMMC, and goes up to 8GB / 128GB. It has display out support too, and the super long software support (7 years) is very nice. The device is apparently repairable too, with spare parts to be easily available too! It's definitely a computer first, phone second, since LTE support is an optional upgrade, and there is no earpiece speaker (so calls will be very bothersome to others). It also supports M.2 SSDs, but it's in the more esoteric 3042 B-Key form factor (and an adapter for more standard 2230 SSDs will be another separate upgrade). If the Comet actually comes out and orders are fulfilled, I think this could be an awesome device!
What, so you want microtransactions? Unless you mean user-created games, in which case Luanti is pretty awesome for that. There are Minecraft-likes (e.g. Mineclonia), but there are other games that do their own thing: Asuna is more creative focused with mechanics inspired by Terraria, NodeCore is the opposite where it's very technical, etc. They just share the same voxel core, but otherwise they are pretty different to each others. There are even some story driven games, arcade games, etc. that are kind of neat too. Luanti is cross-platform and you can easily setup multiplayer (which can be easy peer to peer LAN or a server)
OK this is pretty awesome.
from their article:
I believe that the "Lite" version with the 865 is able to run most 3DS games, you'll only need the 8 Gen 2 if you want to play things above that (Switch, PC emulation, etc.)
The RG DS Plus will run an version of Linux OOTB (the correct decision, since Android ran horribly on the original RG DS)
And I would guess Rocknix will be supported soon after release due to the use of the same chip (as long as there isn't weird stuff going on with the new displays)
Again, interpolation is how Drastic and other emulators scale up their images (this is to reduce jagged edges I believe), and you also have the upscaling of 3D textures too (which can be significant in some DS games)
I don't think that's how scaling works. I believe Drastic (and other DS emulators) use interpolation for their scaling (i.e. linear, bilinear, etc. instead of nearest neighbour). You also have the difference between the scaling of 2D and 3D elements, meaning sprites and textures are handled separately (and therefore they need to be stored somewhere: RAM!)
But the original RG DS already underperformed when it came to DS (I believe Russ was able to run 2x with Drastic on the original in some games), having a third of the RAM certainly won't help for playing 4x integer scale DS. I highly doubt that Anbernic will make it work with their "NNDDSS" emulator
An articles by Retro Handhelds mentions this, it looks like they spoke to people at Anbernic. They also mention that GammaOS Nano will be able to run with 1GB of RAM, and that Gamma is working with Anbernic
The KeePass ecosystem is awesome, you can sync databases between devices (you can have multiple with different passwords!) with SyncThing (no self-hosting required, just peer to peer).
KeePassXC on desktop (+ has an excellent browser extension for autofill), KeePassDX on Android (system-wide autofill), KeePassium on iOS (system-wide autofill, note: no official SyncThing client, so it's jankier), and Secrets for mobile Linux if you ever get into that! I know KeePassDX and KeePassium also (optionally) support biometrics too, not sure about KeePassXC though.
KeePass doesn't require self-hosting! You can just use SyncThing, which is peer to peer (e.g. between my phone and laptop) to sync your database (a single file by the way, nothing complicated)
Bitwarden is the other option, but it's another cloud service. It seems to be better, and you have the option of self-hosting Vaultwarden if they ever go bad, but I personally like the KeePass ecosystem to KeePassXC (desktop), KeePassDX (Android), and Secrets (mobile Linux, yay!). KeePassium is a good option if you use iOS (though, there is no official SyncThing client, so it's a little jankier if you want sync)
Wireguard is a really neat set up! I personally don't often use KeePass on two devices simultaneously, so I don't come across that issue much.
I don't think the RG DS Plus is a bad device, it's just a little limited (through factors that Anbernic can't really control without jacking up the price). It also looks like it will be the same, if not lower, price than the original RG DS, which is good. I think the lack of RAM is not great but isn't too bad (though it puts into question the feasibility of 4x integer scale DS)
Given it uses the same chip and has less memory than the RG DS, I really doubt it can play 3DS. The original already struggled with DS, although CFW did help it a bit.
I heard that they are stuck with the chip because they were limited with choices for dual screen support. More powerful chips (that support dual screen) are much more expensive and would've put the device far outside the price bracket Anbernic wanted
But yeah, that doesn't make it a good deal. If you like DS, it seems like a neat option that is relatively affordable, albeit flawed, particularly without CFW