Not to minimize your plight there, but that sounds like a fairly uncommon situation. The last version of OpenGL 3 was released in 2010, which was 16 years ago, so if you have a recent card that’s unable to use a version newer than that, then your driver is strictly to blame, not Blender (If Blender supports OpenGL 4.0, which was also released in 2010, that would mean it still supports 16 year old cards, such as a Geforce GTX 460, which would be pretty spectacular support and backwards compatibility. IMHO, the opposite if expecting users to constantly upgrade).

May I ask what card you have that suffers from this issue?

I think how good of a GPU you need is almost entirely dependent on the complexity of the scene itself.

You could use the GPU to help host a peertube instance.

For XMPP, the Movim client is currently the best option as a discord alternative.

It has group voice and video calls, screensharing w/audio (need a chromium browser to share the audio for now), and just added discord-like channels with rooms (though it’s not as smooth as Discord). The Dev plans to implement drop-in voice rooms at some point as well.

I’m sure there’ll be lots of bugs and I don’t think it will scale well.

The lack of scaling and even more critically, lack of federation, unfortunately makes this not a viable alternative, at least not for Discord as it is used today. As a smaller self-hosted option that is just for use between a friend group, it’d probably be fine. It just won’t be able to replace the exact use-case of Discord, such as allowing for easily bringing new randos you meet into a call without them having to sign up to your specific server.

The Discord-alternative landscape is filled with people vying to take its place, but I think we would be better served rallying behind Movim and XMPP, IMHO. Or Fluxer, if they eventually can enable federation.

I think it’d be better if we stuck with Movim instead, which is already built on a proven scalable and most importantly federated back-end (XMPP), and also already offers text, group audio and video calls, screensharing w/ audio (have to use chromium based browser for now to stream the audio), and even some pretty decent encryption.

It’s our most promising Discord alternative out of many.

Donate to PostmarketOS so they can support more phones and polish it up. It’s based on upstream Linux, and once polished would give us a true and permanent alternative.

I’ve found that Ubuntu still has by far the easiest one-click Nvidia driver installer of any distro, and switching between driver versions (such as rolling back if a new driver is buggy) is also far easier on Ubuntu.

I say that as someone who does not like Ubuntu in most other aspects.

Hope it works well for ya! Also should mention that if you want to screenshare an application’s audio, you have to be using a Chromium based browser currently, due to it still being pretty new.

Movim is a very full featured client that supports group voice and video calls with screensharing, and it’s about to get discord-like spaces in a week or two.

Otherwise there’s Dino and Dinox.

Whether or not XMPP is a Signal or a Discord replacement is dependant on the client.

For a Discord replacement, there is the Movim XMPP client, which has group audio/video calls, screensharing (w/audio using chromium based browser), support for gifs and videos within the chat, and very soon Discord-like servers with rooms, after which the dev plans to work on drop-in voice chat rooms.

I tried a lot, I think it has the most feature parity.

Have you tried Movim? It has most of the essential features, like group video calls, screen sharing, and a better E2EE method than matrix (IMO, anyway). It’s also much easier to set up and host since it uses XMPP.

Unfortunately we’ve allowed ourselves to use proprietary venture capital built apps, which inevitably will bring with it enshittification that makes continuing to use it against our own interests, but by then the network effect makes it like being caught in a sticky web that’s hard to escape.

We can only avoid this from happening again and again by using open-source libre software that allows for self-hosting and federation, just like Lemmy and Piefed, which makes them virtually immune from enshittification.

In this case, we need to migrate our friends and family one last time to something that will let us relax almost permanently for once.

Right now, our best option for a Discord alternative is Movim, which uses XMPP as its back end, an old, open, and proven framework. It has the essentials like group video calls and screensharing (without audio, yet), and is currently working on implementing discord-like channels with rooms.

The Dev has been working on it since 2010, and only receives $41 a month from their patreon. If you’d like to support the development of a truly federated, E2EE discord alternative, I’d highly recommend anyone reading this to consider helping out with a donation, if you can’t contribute with coding help.

It doesn’t really pass OP’s criteria if you need to install Nvidia drivers, though. It does not have a 1-click graphical installer like Mint and Ubuntu do.

(Image source, for those who missed it)

i loathe the idea of giving google more money

If you don’t mind used or open-box phones, you could pick up a used (and more critically, carrier unlocked) Pixel off ebay, if you want to deprive them of revenue.

Unfortunately some carriers like verizon will not automatically unlock the bootloader even after unlocking the carrier restriction, so buying a used one that wasn’t factory unlocked from Google could be a slight gamble.

Ah, wasn’t aware they were so far behind, thanks for the heads up.

Hadn’t heard of IodeOS either until seeing that chart. They also seem a bit slower than Lineage for certain updates, but for the more privacy minded, may be the best option for non-pixel folks.

What alternative OS you adopt depends on your phone and needs.

If you just want to mostly degoogle you phone, but aren’t that concerned about privacy or security, LineageOS is basically that. It’s as close to a stock android experience as you can get, minus the pre-installed google apps. It supports a wide range of android phones.

If you want more security and privacy, GrapheneOS is currently king, but the downside is it only works on Google Pixel phones, and it’s possible certain apps won’t work (banking apps can be hit or miss, and the Uber app I believe blocked it). It otherwise functions just like a regular android phone and can install sandboxed google play to use any app you could need, making it just as easy to daily drive. It’s the best choice if you’re an activist, journalist, or fear state actors. But even if you’re not, I’d say it’s the best choice if you already have a pixel phone.

CalyxOS has paused development, so not currently an option.

eOS has a bigger focus on security and privacy than LineageOS, but isn’t as secure as Graphene. The advantage is that it supports more phones than just the google pixel.

PostmarketOS is not based on Android, and instead is a real Linux Distro made for mobile. It’s still very much in an alpha stage, with varying levels of support for different phones, many of which cannot take calls or even use their camera properly. I would only recommend it to developers or people who want to tinker with a project phone.

Ah! Totally misinterpreted your comment then, sorry 😅

I thought its discussion of how much Civilization focuses on conquest, colonization, and combat over most other systems, to the point of it becoming a bit ridiculous if you try to go pacifist, was interesting. The year it was written didn’t seem a detriment.