The answer is “yes”. Especially for noobs, they are a life saver. My distro’s repository is missing a lot of things that I can easily get with flatpak.

Floorp and librewolf, among others.

Please no, no more shitty electron apps

Maybe someone else will take that livelihood and make a better game.

This doesn’t get talked about much but in my experience gaming on a Mac is often worse than on Linux despite the market share.

https://9to5google.com/2025/02/05/nvidia-shield-tv-9-2-update-changelog/ Still being updated too.

https://9to5google.com/2025/02/05/nvidia-shield-tv-9-2-update-changelog/

No, it’s smoother than even my brand new Google TV chromecast that it replaced. I replaced the default launcher with something easier for my elderly mother to understand because she kept getting confused with other devices. It’s snappy, has all the apps I have needed, and was easy to set up. New apps are still developed and updated for it too since it’s so popular, and ostensibly the best pre-built streaming device short of manually configuring a mini pc. I don’t see software support officially or from the app developers dropping any time soon because of that.

Yep, all 5 years old. I don’t see a need for another one quite yet when even the newest streaming devices still don’t measure up.

I’ve used both, still prefer the shield. Hardware-wise they’re about the same insofar as I never had trouble with any lag at any point on either. This is what sets both of them apart from all other streaming devices. Chromecast, roku, fire sticks, they’ve all had trouble with some of the higher bit rate media on my jellyfin server. Apple TV and shield did not.

I prefer the shield remote.

The main difference comes down to software. Android TV is simply better. I can get the interface exactly how I like it, and run all manner of apps in the background, making the remote more useful among other things. Apple TV doesn’t even have access to the jellyfin app, you have to use swiftfin on the app store which has issues. You can sideload apps super easily on the shield. (Though for the jellyfin example, you don’t have to. It’s on the play store.)

Developer mode is also a great thing to have on the shield. I can now transfer apps and media from my pc super easily, speed up animations to make it feel snappier, (a feature sorely missed on apple TV) or even remote control the shield (which I haven’t found a need to do yet so I’m not counting that as a plus).

It’s still the best streaming device hands down. There’s not even any competition.

I’ve found the shield pro is better, especially for customizability.

Shield pro is the best, end of story

Have you tried running those things in wine or something like bottles?

Has saved my life. I find myself disabling it for an entire tab several times per day to do things like make a purchase or log in, but I’d still rather that than not have it on the rest of the sites.

Yes yes yes. Ever since I set up my arr stack on my home server, I’ve been blown away by just how easy getting everything I want in minutes is. It’s all automated. It’s actually insane.