I don’t know how widespread it is outside of metal, but I’ve been seeing more and more bands offering tapes. Sometimes a release is only on tape, other times the tape might be $6, the CD $15 and the LP $25, so there are different ties available for those who want a physical copy. I probably got 10 tapes or so within the last year.

Even running Arch for the last decade or so, I largely don’t have issues that wind up being any more complicated than downgrading a package every so often. Most of my config editing occur in one of three situations. First and most common, initial setup of a program to telling it where to find any files it needs and change any default settings I have a different preference on. Second, it’s a program I use constantly and want to tweak it to work just so, adding to it as I discover new features that catch my interest, like tweaking my ncmpcpp and tmux setups. The last case is procrastination, where I get obsessively focused on something because, clearly, the reason I haven’t written my 5 page paper due tomorrow has nothing to do with the fact I’ve been screwing around and not keeping up with my coursework for the last week, and can instead be squarely attributed to the fact that I have discovered some aspect of my emacs setep that needs to be refined, like realizing I dislike how biber formats my references in Auctex and needing to spend hours finetuning my reference style to m’ exact preferences.

For most general use cases, like browsing the web, listening to music, watching movies and maybe firing up a word processor, this is entirely unnecessary. To give an example, I got tired of having to periodically spend a night purging my elderly mother’s laptop of myriad viruses and uninstalling the dozen or so IE toolbar she kept infecting her system with. Clearly not a techy person. I put Linux mint on it, changed the desktop shortcut for Firefox to the Internet Explorer icon, ditto for Open Office’s word processor with Ms Word, and she was happy as could be without really noticing a difference. I would just remote in and periodically update it. Worked fine for her until she got a new new computer, by which point she’d realized she could, in fact, live without all that malware taking up half her screen in IE.

I have a TV for when I have time to play games on my PS3 or PS4 these days, but I watch the vast majority of my stuff on my computer. Unless I’m watching something that’s available in 4K that I feel is worth it, why would I bother going to another room just to watch stuff that is streaming off my NAS and accessible on my computer anyway?

I feel like a lot of people just don’t have much reason to turn on their TV to watch stuff unless they still have cable and want to watch live sports.