This is the first Tildes Book Club Discussion for 2026 and the twentyfirst overall. We are discussing Fire on the Mountain by Bissen. At the end of February we will discuss The Truth by Terry Pratchett.

This is the first time that I as your coordinator have not finished the book myself. It was not my cup of tea and I might or might not add my impressions to the discussion.

I don't have a particular format in mind for this discussion, but I will post some prompts and questions as comments to get things started. You're not obligated to respond to them or vote on them though. So feel free to make your own top-level comment for whatever you wish to discuss, questions you have of others, or even just to post a review of the book you have written yourself.

For latecomers, don't worry if you didn't read the book in time for this Discussion topic. You can always join in once you finish it. Tildes Activity sort, and "Collapse old comments" feature should keep the topic going for as long as people are still replying.

And for anyone uninterested in this topic please use the Ignore Topic feature on this so it doesn't keep popping up in your Activity sort, since it's likely to keep doing that while I set this discussion up, and once people start joining in.

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

I'm currently running Kubuntu in VMware on a Windows 11 host. I was on Windows 10 but was getting lots of display/graphical issues after pulling my desktop out of storage and I didn't qualify for extended support updates and just felt like I needed to eliminate all driver and software issues by reinstalling OS clean. At that point I figured I might as well go to Win 11, so I used rufus and did a clean install without a Microsoft account.

I feel like I need Windows for gaming, even with Proton compatibility on Linux I still expect I'd have some issues with some games and my desktop is my primary gaming system so I just want something that works. But like many others I don't like the direction Microsoft has gone with Windows so I'd really like to adapt to using Linux otherwise. I considered dual booting but I did have an issue with my system where the motherboard had 30+ second long boot times. Like it had nothing to do with my SSD or OS install, the Asus AM4 TUF x570-Plus motherboard boot time was just excessively long and seems other people reported that as well and there was no UEFI/bios update that fixed it. So I really didn't want to dual boot and wait 30+ seconds switching between OSes, that's just not fluid enough for how I wanted to use them. I really want the Windows install to just be gaming only basically or anything I can't get working in Linux.

So that's how I arrived to running Kubuntu in VMware Workstation Pro. I tried Hyper-V first but had issues and bailed on it. Initially I had audio issues with it in VMware but I found a reddit post that linked to the fix, prior to that, ChatGPT was happy to lead me down rabbit holes to nowhere. I do have a few browser issues with video playback, tried in Vivaldi and Firefox, video and audio are in sync but video is choppy and can't keep up with fast motion. It's otherwise acceptable for basic video playback so it's not really a huge issue for me. I tried playing videos in VLC and did not experience any issues so it is capable of smooth video playback in some circumstances on this setup. I have my own Plex server installed on another system but the Plex Linux application just won't work for me, at best it would produce choppy video if I installed from snap but the flatpak install just won't play anything back properly.

The other thing I couldn't quite resolve but mostly resolved is that in my Win 11 host, I have resolution set at 2560x1440 but I can't get that option in my Kubuntu VM. I currently have it as 2048x1152 which is as close as I can get while keeping 16:9 ratio. It will offer resolution options above my host system but not 16:9. I then stretch this to fill screen and run it in exclusive mode so it's basically like my primary desktop interface, but it would be nice if the resolution was better as I can tell it's slightly stretched, text isn't as crisp as it should be.

I will say, I'm quite impressed with how far Linux has come from when I last tried it as a daily driver 10-15 years ago. I added flathub as part of the app discovery repository so I can get many applications through that. I've had a few that I couldn't, scrcpy was outdated there so I had to follow some command line copy/paste script to install that and Vivaldi wasn't available either. Vivaldi did have a .deb file which I guess works like an .exe in Windows, because I just had to click to install, so that's nice. I still think I had to run something to add Vivaldi to app repository so it would keep it updated if I understand how that worked anyhow.

The Kubuntu VM does seem to destabilize quite a bit over time, it's already locked up on me a couple times, but I think it could be a RAM issue, so I've dedicated 12GB of RAM to it right now (it was at 8GB before). If it continues to happen then I guess that reinforces I'm doing something wrong or need to go in a different direction.

I've noticed my boot times have improved, I don't know when this happened, but now the boot times are about 15-20 seconds (I check the BIOS boot time in Startup tab on Windows task manager, but I've timed it and it matches actual time). Still seems kinda long to me but maybe it's fast enough to dual boot now, not sure.

I guess before I commit to anything too heavily, I was curious if what I'm doing now is not very wise or if there's something better I should try. With my bios boot time where it is now, I'd possibly consider dual booting as then I could probably just set up games that work in Linux. At that point, I wonder if I could/should use SteamOS or stick with Kubuntu or something else? Is SteamOS capable of being used as a daily driver OS or is it better just to use for gaming machines?

Also my PC specs are
Asus AM4 TUF x570-Plus motherboard
AMD Ryzen 5 3600 6-Core Processor
32GB RAM
AMD RX-580 8GB

This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.

Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.

If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.

Hey, I'm headed to San Diego in March after getting selected for a work conference. The last time I was in California was San Francisco more than a decade ago with my dad, so I'm excited to be visiting again.

The first few days will be the conference (which includes a recreational afternoon for networking, I picked the San Diego Zoo). I purposely scheduled my plane flight to be a few days after the conference ends to I can explore the city, but it'll be my first real solo trip; originally, my sister was going to tag along in my hotel room, but she had an injury and needed to drop out.

I fly in on March 18th, check out from the conference is the morning of Saturday the 21st, and I fly back home on the morning of the 24th. That gives me almost all of Saturday, and all of Sunday and Monday to explore the city.

Definitely, one of the things I want to check out is Balboa Park, though I would appreciate advice on specific museums, since I can't imagine it's possible to see even half of them in a day.

Another thing I've considered is a day trip to Tijuana to walk around. It's been a while since I had a good opportunity to practice my Spanish. Worst case scenario I can get a dental cleaning if I can't come up with any other ideas 😂.

Eating out alone isn't really something I've done before either. I think I want to do a nice sushi bar Omakase one night just to treat myself, if people have suggestions on where, and I'd love other suggestions for places to try where it wouldn't be too weird eating solo.

Does anyone have any suggestions for other things to do, places to see? Where I should stay after leaving the Marriott Marquis, since at >$500/night it's a little expensive for me? I won't be renting a car, so ideally, something either in walking distance or easily accessible via transit. I'll probably do a mix of ride shares and public transit for travel.

I'd love to hear ideas, along with what anyone else here has done in San Diego. Worst case scenario, I'm sure I'll figure it all out, but it's nice to poll the crowd sometimes.

I’ve been meaning to switch streaming platforms from Spotify for some time now, for many reasons. To me, it seems like good alternatives are challenging to find, so I figured I’d solicit some discussion here on Tildes to see how people like other platforms.

My Only Requirement:

• Mobile App for iOS with Offline Capability

I Strongly Prefer:

• Good Search Functionality
• Niche Artist Availability

Alternatives I’m Considering:

• Apple Music
• Bandcamp
• Tidal
• Deezer
• Qobuz

If anyone has used any of these applications, I’d love a review of the pros and cons. I’m leaning towards Bandcamp right now, but am concerned that I will fail to discover new artists because of the need to pay for albums.

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

Me and my girlfriend will be in Paris for 2 nights soon. Since this is such a short trip, we'll mostly be visiting the most popular "essential" tourist attractions - so we will generally be around the center of the city. However, most advice I found online seems to agree that you probably shouldn't just enter a random restaurant in the center of Paris, because it is very likely to be a tourist trap with very high prices and relatively low quality.

So, if any of you have suggestions on good places to eat for a reasonable price, I would really appreciate that!

Also, the end of our trip happens to fall on valentine's day, and we were thinking about having a nice early dinner (late lunch? around 15:00) before we leave, preferably in a pretty place. I'm fine with spending a bit more (~50€ per person) on that one. So if you know any places that fit, please suggest those as well.

Thanks!

Does anyone have any idea on how different online translation "services" actually rank now? I was thinking about this today (after I saw the TranslateGemma announcement) and realized that I had not really updated my view on translation apps/services in quite a while.

There is Google Translate, Apple Translate, Kagi Translate, DeepL, etc., but I have no idea how these would rank, especially if it comes to different use-cases.

This is the fifteenth of an ongoing series of book discussions here on Tildes. We are discussing A House with Good Bones by T Kingfisher. Our next book will be the Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride at the end of July.

I don't have a particular format in mind for this discussion, but I will post some prompts and questions as comments to get things started. You're not obligated to respond to them or vote on them though. So feel free to make your own top-level comment for whatever you wish to discuss, questions you have of others, or even just to post a review of the book you have written yourself.

For latecomers, don't worry if you didn't read the book in time for this Discussion topic. You can always join in once you finish it. Tildes Activity sort, and "Collapse old comments" feature should keep the topic going for as long as people are still replying.
And for anyone uninterested in this topic please use the Ignore Topic feature on this so it doesn't keep popping up in your Activity sort, since it's likely to keep doing that while I set this discussion up, and once people start joining in.

My wife and I are having a baby just 1.5 months from now (hooray!). And our insurance provider, Anthem Blue Cross, is cutting coverage to our local hospital network and maternity services in 10 days (boooo!). The entire process of finding out about this (via the news, not our insurance or the hospital) and getting continued coverage has been an absolute nightmare. We jumped the hoops, sent in all the required paperwork, and even got the billing department at the hospital involved. We're still only covered if we happen to be lucky enough that the doctor who is named on the continued coverage agreement happens to be on call at the time of delivery, otherwise it'll be out of pocket to the tune of $10,000 of dollars. At this point it feels like we're betting it all on red.

The response to the United Healthcare shooting illustrated just how frustrated people of the US are in their healthcare system and I'd like to do my part to continue to keep that topic front of mind in the American psyche. I've written up a little op-ed on our experience and I was wonder if any Tilderinos have managed to get one published before. Any insight would be very welcome.

Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.