219: New World Unlocked: GOG Charts a Linux Frontier | Linux Out Loud 121

February 21st, 2026  |  1 hr 1 min

age verification, backups, cold storage, community podcast, cubicle nate, data recovery, discord, drm‑free gaming, exfat, foss, gnu/linux, gog, gog galaxy, heroic launcher, home lab, linux, linux gaming, linux out loud, linux saloon, moderation, online communities, open source, polls, privacy, proton, self‑hosting, show notes, tech podcast, tuxdigital, wine, wordpress

In this level of Linux Out Loud, Nate takes player‑one controls with Wendy and Matt as co‑op buddies for a run‑and‑gun through data disasters, platform drama, and hopeful Linux gaming news. Matt kicks things off with a catastrophic cold‑storage failure that turns into a hard‑earned reminder about backups and the limits of data‑recovery tools on both Windows and Linux. Wendy then opens a side‑quest about Discord’s upcoming age‑verification changes, why that’s a problem for community privacy and moderation, and what it might mean for the future home of the Lobby of Loudness. Nate rounds out the host updates with Linux Saloon going fully independent, moving show notes and polls onto CubicleNate.com so he controls the platform and the ad dollars. For the main mission, the crew dives into GOG calling Linux its “next major frontier” for GOG GALAXY and hiring a senior C++ engineer to help make Linux a first‑class gaming citizen instead of an afterthought. Along the way they talk heroic launchers, Proton and Wine, and what a “good citizen” GOG client on Linux should actually look like for home‑labbed and multi‑PC setups.