No, it is not dumb. My second link was just an example to a fix of one particular laptop where this issue occurred. I mentioned all this just to point to the issue that might be causing your problem. I’m afraid this probably does not fix it for you. Maybe it has been fixed with a more recent kernel. You could check which version you are running (by running uname -a from a terminal) and maybe update to a newer one if your distro allows that. Alternatively you could downgrade the kernel to a version before this issue was introduced (a 6.10 kernel should work okay). Of course downgrading should only be a stop-gap solution.

Yes. Apparently the issue happens with both internal mics and mic connectors where you attach your own mic. The seconds link I provided points to a fix for a specific laptop that fixes a non-working internal mic.

It is probably due to this change in the Linux kernel. That broke analogue microphone inputs on lots of systems. After that change, there were quite a few additional patches fixing those problems on individual systems (e.g. this one), but there are still lots of broken setups around. I have no idea what the original change was about exactly. It appears to have broken more things than it has fixed, but what do I know.

All this is correct, but keep in mind that you still leak domain names until ECH (encrypted client hello) is in wide-spread use. It is of course still a good idea to use encrypted DNS, just don’t assume your ISP can’t see which websites you are accessing.

I’ve always wondered how close to reality those tracks were. They certainly look nice. Same with the Dirt Rally games. Good to know they put in the effort to actually make them accurate.

No worries! That’s okay! :)

I would love to give Hypnospace Outlaw a try! Thanks for the giveaway! Every once in a while a take out an old PC to play some DOS or early Windows games. Recently i played Lotus III on DOS. I still like the game’s soundtrack. :)

Yeah, that’s mostly because performance is so poor without it.

and that your cpu might not be able to provide enough data.

That also depends on the settings and resolution you plan on playing with. The higher the visual settings and resolution, the more demand is on the GPU. So when you plan to play on very high visual settings at a high resolution, a higher end GPU might make sense even with an older CPU.

I am pretty sure that this is not true. While Intel Arc GPUs really should be paired with a mainboard with resizable BAR for performance reasons, they will still work without it, although with pretty bad performance.