A quick demo for you to show this isn’t some weird unintuitive process, at least once you have everything configured (and that’s half the fun). This kodi skin won’t show me bitrate per video/audio track but this example is approx average 47mbps video, 4mbps audio. Similar results for most movies released this decade.
Well for convenience I pay 1.99 pmth to torbox to stream stuff on Kodi using add-ons like POV or umbrella, links scraped with cocoscrapers (there are better scraper modules out there but cocoscrapers has never done me wrong). I think most people just use stremio add-ons for this but I’m very picky about UI/UX.
Fundamentally all that’s really doing is searching public torrent sites. Paid access to a debrid cache just streamlines the process
Screw free, is it possible for paid content? I mean, I’m sure there’s some out there, but probably not much you’d actually be interested in watching. Most of the movies I stream are about 40mbps average, I think that’s really good. It’s often significantly better than watching the same video on a paid streaming service, and I think it’s as high as you’re likely to find across a broad range of content (at least, content which isn’t AI upscaled, which creates more issues than it solves).
It’s hard enough finding 8K content of any bitrate - I think your parameters would need 16K res or higher to make any real difference. Almost every AV device on the planet would need a significant upgrade to play that - it’s just not likely to be distributed, at least in the next decade.
HiRes (up to 24-bit/192khz) lossless audio averages around 5mbps, it wouldn’t even peak at 10mbps. Standards like TrueHD Atmos or DTS-HD are already redundant - audio master tracks for video content are usually inherently lossy.
If you’re saying you play files like I described and the quality is average, I’d suspect you’re either dealing with issues with the production techniques inherent to the masters or just lossy transcoded video.
IIRC that’s been a known function of Edge ever since its redesign around 5-6 years ago, regardless of whether you’re signed in all URLs go to Microsoft in plaintext
I guess the main issue i’d encounter is syncing watched progress metadata with YouTube servers, which Grayjay & Smarttube both optionally do
Yup that’s what they did, article is out of date
Many cracks rely on underlying mechanisms of Windows that end users don’t really need to think about. So if “better for piracy” is purely about ease of applying cracks and successfully executing them, Windows is definitely better. That doesn’t mean it offers the best possible experience though.
Any old-school cracks (anything that isn’t a hypervisor bypass for games with denuvo, which isn’t recommended for most users anyway) will run on Linux, with varying levels of required tinkering. A lot of the time you can just add a cracked game or app to steam and run it there, but sometimes it isn’t quite that simple. It depends entirely on the game/app and how the crack functions.
If you’re willing to learn the tinkering part, it’s good knowledge to have and gives you more flexibility over how software/games are run. This is particularly useful for mid-tier machines that can’t max out all settings on all games, for example with forcing specific resolutions, display modes, virtual displays, upscaler presets, global upscaling, gamepad config.
Given there are very few roadblocks with Linux I don’t think there is an OS that is “best for piracy”, rather the best choice depends on user preferences and expectations. Certainly if your top priority is the least amount of effort to get things running, choose Windows. But you’d also need to accept dealing with Microsoft’s bullshit, and forego performance improvements you’d potentially get with Linux.
broadly, gain flexibility, lose familiarity. just try it and see.
one thing i’ll spell out, you’ve likely never had to consider the logic by which windows loads dll versions. essentially, if you put a modified dll file in the same folder as an executable, when the executable calls for it that modified dll will be loaded instead of the system’s builtin version. game and software cracks sometimes rely on this principle. but on linux via wine/proton, that isn’t the case. so you’ll need to configure wine/proton to do a “dll override” in some cases (i.e when your game/software crack utilizes a modified dll). the process is pretty straight-forward, the main thing is knowing you need to do it.
Lineage is privacy focused, not security focused (other than security through obscurity etc). Graphene is more secure but may require tinkering for NFC payment / banking. Graphene is partnering with Motorola for their new phones, but old/current Motorola phones won’t be compatible. IMO best bet for daily driver is a used/refurb older pixel or pixel A, like pixel 6a or pixel 7a are sub-$200 even brand new sometimes. e/os is another option but I haven’t used it (don’t have compatible device) so can’t comment on it.
Catima for passes/tickets/loyalty cards etc. There’s nothing for NFC payments, which need bank certification to work.
Phone case with a card holder