I‘m personally very happy with kagi when it comes to features and, most importantly, the quality of search results. But, as they don‘t have ads, it’s pretty expensive to use.

I‘ve played GW2 a lot and pretty much exclusively on Linux for a few years now and it‘s been pretty smooth.

For the best experience, make sure your graphics driver is up to date (as of now it should start with 550, 555 or 560).

I‘d also recommend installing the game via Steam, as this makes the whole compatibility stuff far easier. The Steam version also works if you want to log in with an Arenanet-account. Just add this launch option (note the capitalization; it has to be exact) and you‘ll be able to log in with your existing account:

-provider Portal

Just make sure not to buy anything via Steam as purchases won‘t be associated with the correct account.

You‘ll also want to make sure (although it‘s probably set as default by now) to use Proton 9.0 or above, as the game‘s launcher is really stuttery in previous versions.

There‘s a great video on that topic by Matt Parker (Standupmaths) which I‘d wholeheartedly recommend.

TLDW: No, terrain elevation isn‘t generally taken into account when calculating a country‘s surface area, though the actual method differs slightly from country to country. Switzerland would be around 7% bigger, if its mountains were to be taken into account.

While that‘s true right now, a big patch called „Economy 2.0“ is expected to drop this week (more on that here and here).

I really hope this will be a successful first step of making the game actually better than its predecessor. Unfortunately the economy simulation is only one of many issues which make me want to play something else after a few minutes of gameplay. I think it‘ll be at least another year until they‘re able to fix all these minor annoyances, which sum up to one very big annoyance. Like not being able to place stuff sometimes without any obvious reason. Or those ugly, steep pathways on lots, when the connecting street isn‘t completely flat. Or missing animations for firemen, which currently only have to drive up to a burning building in order to stop a fire.

Cities Skylines was a better Sim City (2013) and was justifiably loved for that. For now, Cities Skylines 2 is unfortunately just a worse Cities Skylines.

I think it’s important to remember that LiMux, the Linux project in Munich, didn’t really fail because the software didn’t work. The city had commissioned a study that blamed bad implementation, bad internal cooperation, and bad administration. It explicitly did not recommend that the project be shut down. Unfortunately, this recommendation was ignored by the mayor, who was previously responsible for convincing Microsoft to move its German headquarters to Munich and who calls himself a “Microsoft fan”.

So it’s probably worth noting that the success of such large projects doesn’t only depend on the viability of the software. It’s also very much dependent on the lobbyists the project is up against, especially in the public sector.