Thanks for the rec! I also love that you presume that there will be a next time, cuz, uh, that’s accurate. These little boxes are powerhouses, I probably want one for a TV set-top box now that all the TV boxes (Roku, Amazon Fire, even Android TV and soon Apple TV) are riddled with ads.

Beelink and Minisforum are legit

I wish I knew a lot of this when I first started shopping for a mini PC. I ended up with a Beelink model that I’m quite happy with, but it seems almost luck that I didn’t pick another one, and I would have liked a “reputable brand” search function.

Anti-Cheat is a bitch

Seriously, I don’t know how this one is solvable, to be honest, without major investment and support from the game companies themselves.

performance issues are definitely not universal

Agreed!

Don’t @ me too hard, but I think @luciferofastora has some good points on sound and anti-cheat. They don’t affect me, mostly because I don’t like PVP games that need anti-cheat, but they represent a huge chunk of the market and I do wish they worked better on Linux. I’m fully on Linux for my daily driver and generally have good experiences, I’m not even considering going back to Windows, I just wish things worked better for everyone.

It looks quite usable, to be honest. I would have loved to use it back then.