If you could run all your apps (games too) on Linux?
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If you could run all of your apps & games on Linux… Would you switch to a Linux desktop? Why? Or Why not? I’ll go first. Yes. I would switch. I already switched back in 2019 & I’ve been happy. I couldn’t even run everything I wanted to run (a couple of games and Atmel Studio (embedded IDE which is a variant of VStudio, only runs on windows) Why? Updates are amazing on Linux (rarely do they cause any down time — no sitting & staring at update screen like Windows) I like development on Linux. I like hobbyist “family” of Linux where it is “us against them”. :rolleyes: I also do Android programming and Android Studio runs better on Linux. Linux typically uses a lot less RAM than Windows which is nice.
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If you could run all of your apps & games on Linux… Would you switch to a Linux desktop? Why? Or Why not? I’ll go first. Yes. I would switch. I already switched back in 2019 & I’ve been happy. I couldn’t even run everything I wanted to run (a couple of games and Atmel Studio (embedded IDE which is a variant of VStudio, only runs on windows) Why? Updates are amazing on Linux (rarely do they cause any down time — no sitting & staring at update screen like Windows) I like development on Linux. I like hobbyist “family” of Linux where it is “us against them”. :rolleyes: I also do Android programming and Android Studio runs better on Linux. Linux typically uses a lot less RAM than Windows which is nice.
I've had an HP Microserver (with 24Tb of disk!) running Debian for 10 years now. It still runs just fine but, on the desktop, I use Windows 11 (without TPM because I hacked it when I was on the Insider program). I spend a lot of time using WSL and VScode with remote SSH editing of files on the Microserver and several Raspberry Pis. I've also got a subscription to Microsoft 365 and 1Tb of Onedrive space. I haven't retired yet so still use Office and Windows at work. I'm tempted to switch but the 2 application I sue for my hobby of 3D printing (Fusion 360 and Ultimaker Cura) don't have Linux versions and I've not sure my (obsolete) 3D Connections Space Explorer Spacemouse is supported under Linux. If I knew I could run Fusion & Cura with the Spacemouse and use my Onedrive storage reliably, I'd switch.
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If you could run all of your apps & games on Linux… Would you switch to a Linux desktop? Why? Or Why not? I’ll go first. Yes. I would switch. I already switched back in 2019 & I’ve been happy. I couldn’t even run everything I wanted to run (a couple of games and Atmel Studio (embedded IDE which is a variant of VStudio, only runs on windows) Why? Updates are amazing on Linux (rarely do they cause any down time — no sitting & staring at update screen like Windows) I like development on Linux. I like hobbyist “family” of Linux where it is “us against them”. :rolleyes: I also do Android programming and Android Studio runs better on Linux. Linux typically uses a lot less RAM than Windows which is nice.
The first version of Linux that I used was on floppy discs (Soft Landing Systems) on a 386 machine in '92 (Kernel version less than 1) Since 2009 I write SDR software (C++, Qt framework) on Linux, there was a question to have it for Windows as well. So, using the excellent cross compilation facilities with M ingw64 on Fedora, I cross compile the software - and test is on a Windows box. After a while I decided to run windows and Linux on the same development laptop, using dual boot. I (almost) only use windows for testing my stuff. Someone complained about photoshop not running on Linux, I use gimp for that, use LibreOffice for office like things. One thing I am missing on Linux and that is the photoprinter software that goed with the canon inkjet printer. Once - just as an exercise - I installed mingw64 on Windows to be able to compile my applications locally, but using the tool(chains) on Linux works for me much easier. Interesting observation is that on average running the applications on Windows takes up to 5 times more CPU power than running them on Linux. While Qt has a "Qt-creator" I'm too old for that stuff so I am using a command window with manually given commands. Vim is the editor, qmake and cmake are the makefile generators, always generate dusiting development with the sanitizer libraries linked in and - if needed - debug with gdb. Applications are reasonably sized, somewhere between 40000 and 50000 lines of C++ and they support a varietyy of SDR devices. I also wrote a few plugins for SDRuno, an SDR framework that only runs on Windows. The SDRuno used nana for the GUI issues, so my plugins use it as well. I had to surrender to Microsoft MSVC and while the plugins work, I really dislike the MSVC environment. While the error messages are (more or less) reasonable, I really dislike the behaviour of the toolsset, it feels like a big brother that knows everythinh better than the programmer and is eager to take over control. I use fedora, it offers by far the best cross compilation facility for windows. The only drawback of using Fedora is the speed with which new releases are prepared: once per half year. Updating to the newest version is rather simple though. I use Ubuntu, always an older version, in a VM for creating AppImages (kind of containers for Unix) of the applications. With Windows I have problems (apart from using the MSVC) a. whenever I am in a hurry, the system starts updating and shouts "do not switch off the computer" b. The dependency of the dif
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If you could run all of your apps & games on Linux… Would you switch to a Linux desktop? Why? Or Why not? I’ll go first. Yes. I would switch. I already switched back in 2019 & I’ve been happy. I couldn’t even run everything I wanted to run (a couple of games and Atmel Studio (embedded IDE which is a variant of VStudio, only runs on windows) Why? Updates are amazing on Linux (rarely do they cause any down time — no sitting & staring at update screen like Windows) I like development on Linux. I like hobbyist “family” of Linux where it is “us against them”. :rolleyes: I also do Android programming and Android Studio runs better on Linux. Linux typically uses a lot less RAM than Windows which is nice.
The reason I might is, Microsoft want to push everything into the cloud and into a subscription for this or that, and I like to be able to work offline and not have to keep paying for the privilege of using my own kit. BUT. I've spent too much time in the past trying to figure out arcane commands, trying to get NDIS drivers working, reinstalling kernels, trying to get SAMBA going, and messing around with boot loaders, etc. etc. to really want to go back there again. Is linux really workable now, or do you still need to poke around in the entrails first? Anyway, are the apps really there now? Full compatibility with the MS Office suite, for instance?
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I've had issues with VirtualBox failing to capture certain USB devices.
Check out my IoT graphics library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx And my IoT UI/User Experience library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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dandy72 wrote:
What's primarily keeping me back is my own lack of familiarity.
Preach brother. The only reason I know it is because I had a buddy into it 20 years ago and have been following BSD and Linux since. We used to geek out about it. You can see if there's a Linux User Group (LUG) in your area. I used to go to those as a kid. Peeps were great. I can guarantee you if you wanna learn it, someone there will show you the ropes.
dandy72 wrote:
I've messed around with a lot of Linux distros, and even though it happens rarely, there have been occasions where I've somehow managed to completely make a mess of things, and the simplest solution has always been to repave. I can't afford that luxury.
There are beginner friendly distros. These two are closer to what you're used to with Windows: [Kubuntu](https://kubuntu.org/) [Linux Mint](https://linuxmint.com/) Kubuntu will use Wayland (newer display crap). Linux Mint still doesn't. But both are beginner friendly. There's also [Ubuntu](https://ubuntu.com/). It's a great, beginner friendly distro too. Its desktop experience is nothing like Windows though. It's more like Windows 8 meets iPhone. It's pretty nifty, but IMO it's worth installing an extension to give you a normal taskbar with it. Anywho, start with a beginner friendly distro man. Unless you enjoy pain. :laugh:
dandy72 wrote:
It's a catch-22. Because I won't dive in head-first, Linux is relegated to run in VMs and until that changes,
Yeah, immersion is the best way to really learn something. Having it tucked away in a VM makes it easy to not use it. IMO, if there's an interest, find some peeps at a user group. The right friends really do make all the difference.
Jeremy Falcon
Jeremy Falcon wrote:
There are beginner friendly distros.
I have an uncanny ability to mess up even the beginner-friendly ones, including (especially?) Ubuntu and a few of its derivatives, like Mint. If it's not a video or network driver, it's the file system, or grub, or... I currently have 862GB worth of ISOs (going back a decade or more) spread across 34 different folders (a different distro per folder), so I don't really need an introduction around which as best at what. It's more of a matter of making a commitment to using one daily, and finding out how to get things back up and running when (say) an update gets botched (it happens) and the system no longer boots...
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Oh btw, Linux isn't without its problems... especially with some drivers. Anyone saying otherwise is just lying. But, crap runs faster on it I'm convinced. And well, nobody's forcing peeps to give them all their data. So, ya know... there's that. :laugh:
Jeremy Falcon
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No. Why? In one word (or maybe two) - VisualStudio. There is nothing in Linux world that comes close to it; not by a mile; not by many miles. I've tried over the years a few times and all the substitutes were so poor, specially on the debugging side, that I was relieved when I got back to Windows. Another gripe I have with Linux world, this time as a user, not a developer, is the endless list of options where there isn't one that is obviously better. You could use GNOME or KDE or Xface or Cinnamon or (any other of 30+ desktop environments out there). Makes you want to go back to the command line but there are tens of distros, each one with it's own idiosyncrasies and slight incompatibilities. All that makes me use Linux only for small gizmos like the many RPis and BeagleBones I use for work and around the house. General rule is: find a working configuration and don't touch it unless you're forced to.
Mircea
> Mircea Neacsu wrote: > > In one word (or maybe two) - VisualStudio. Close but no cigar. Ditched that clunker the very second I found JetBrains Rider (but our relationship had already been toxic for a decade or so). Now I start Visual Studio only once or twice a year, to build/publish some legacy stuff - after having done all the development in Rider. What keeps me firmly rooted on Windows boxen is LINQPad. There's nothing even remotely comparable in the Linux world, and there probably won't be since JPad unfortunately seems to have died in its infancy. My LINQPad script tree currently comprises 3464 files in 709 directories; it is basically a knowledge dump where each piece of knowledge is packaged as a LINQPad script, opened with a single click and then executed with a single keystroke. This goes from how to call a certain API (one line, or a handful) up to POC implementations with many hundreds of lines and maybe dozens of includes and referenced assemblies or NuGet packages. Basically, I don't start coding tricky stuff in a C# project until I have it working perfectly in LINQPad. Also, I often write LINQPad scripts (read 'C# programs') where I formerly would have done battle with batch files or Power$hell scripts, because it is so much more convenient and so much more powerful. Plus, I get to use a language with palatable/sane syntax (C#), as opposed to all the shell languages that I've ever seen. Also, having programmed the Windows API since Windows 2.18 and the Win32 API since NT 3.51 I tend take certain amenities - e.g. threads, reliable file locking, interprocess synchronisation primitives, clipboard - for granted. That's why my mind really boggles when I find that Linux does not have interprocess mutexes, for example, and that people recommend farting around with disk files instead. That's not really a desktop/UI issue but it keeps me away from Linux and Mac for everyday work, because I cannot make them jump like a can even the newest, sh*ttiest iteration of Windows yet. And there's always the WSL if need arises ...
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Jeremy Falcon wrote:
But, crap runs faster on it I'm convinced.
I sitll remember some years ago in burning a CD with Nero in Windows XP around 15 to 20 minutes and that's going fast. Linux burned the same CD in less than 2.5 minutes
M.D.V. ;) If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about? Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
Nelek wrote:
I sitll remember some years ago in burning a CD with Nero in Windows XP around 15 to 20 minutes and that's going fast. Linux burned the same CD in less than 2.5 minutes
Well. To be fair, let's compare apples with apples; burning a CD isn't exactly a task that will overwhelm an OS, even during the XP days. Undoubtedly there's a burn rate selection that was not chosen. Or the burner itself, hooked up to XP, didn't support the higher speed - I remember the introduction of faster drives was a very gradual thing. OTOH, I've burned CDs at (say) 52x. No buffer underrun, no problem reported whatsoever, only for me to realize weeks/months later the disc was rather unreliable. I stick with burning at 4x, no matter what the OS. And better yet, these days I burn as few discs as I can...
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No. Why? In one word (or maybe two) - VisualStudio. There is nothing in Linux world that comes close to it; not by a mile; not by many miles. I've tried over the years a few times and all the substitutes were so poor, specially on the debugging side, that I was relieved when I got back to Windows. Another gripe I have with Linux world, this time as a user, not a developer, is the endless list of options where there isn't one that is obviously better. You could use GNOME or KDE or Xface or Cinnamon or (any other of 30+ desktop environments out there). Makes you want to go back to the command line but there are tens of distros, each one with it's own idiosyncrasies and slight incompatibilities. All that makes me use Linux only for small gizmos like the many RPis and BeagleBones I use for work and around the house. General rule is: find a working configuration and don't touch it unless you're forced to.
Mircea
Mircea Neacsu wrote:
Makes you want to go back to the command line
Bourne? Bash? ksh? zsh? (your point is well made) :-)
Mircea Neacsu wrote:
but there are tens of distros
"Tens"? If only. [DistroWatch](https://distrowatch.com/) maintains a top 100 list, and there's many more.
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Jeremy Falcon wrote:
Oh, and Windows Update is more a virus than anything else
Once you experience the smooth updates of Linux you will be astonished by the terrible-ness of windows updates. But, that is the trick for windows users — they have no idea that updates could be better, I guess. MS contributes to the cloud of curses that floats over the world (due to their terrible updates).
raddevus wrote:
Once you experience the smooth updates of Linux
Until it's not. I've had a few VMs in the past, and a laptop still to this day, that won't complete the update I've launched from a command prompt, because the background task that drives the GUI version of the updater had already been initiated, and now complains about a file being locked (I forget the name - I'm sure most Linux users have seen it - it's always the same file, in the same folder). If I manually delete the file and / or its container folder and retry, too late, it's already been re-created and locked again. And now both the GUI version and command prompt get stuck because of that locked file that keeps getting recreated as quickly as you can delete it. Or some distro that won't update itself because the ISO you've installed from is now too old, and the only way to get it working again is to manually change whatever repo it's fetching its updates from. And that process is never the same even for two different distros, and your googling results in instructions that don't apply to yours...
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I typically main linux on mothballed desktops, or at least I used to, but now I tend to give them to family. I've gotten pretty familiar with it, and yet still I won't main it for billable work if I don't need to. The reason is simple - it's really easy for something to go sideways with linux (depending on what you're doing, but I do a lot of dev, so it's a frequent issue) and when it does, it takes a lot of fiddling to fix. I can't afford that - or at least, I don't feel good about billing clients for troubleshooting my dev machine, so it's lost money. Sure, with Windows things blow up too, but having even written a (small) part of windows for Microsoft, I'm pretty familiar with the soft underbelly of it, and I can cajole it into at least limping along to do what I need even in the worst case, without having to go down a rabbit hole like I would with linux. So part of it is familiarity. Also there's one distro of windows I use. There are a million distros of linux, each with their own quirks, so knowledge of one doesn't go as far as it does with windows.
Check out my IoT graphics library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx And my IoT UI/User Experience library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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If you could run all of your apps & games on Linux… Would you switch to a Linux desktop? Why? Or Why not? I’ll go first. Yes. I would switch. I already switched back in 2019 & I’ve been happy. I couldn’t even run everything I wanted to run (a couple of games and Atmel Studio (embedded IDE which is a variant of VStudio, only runs on windows) Why? Updates are amazing on Linux (rarely do they cause any down time — no sitting & staring at update screen like Windows) I like development on Linux. I like hobbyist “family” of Linux where it is “us against them”. :rolleyes: I also do Android programming and Android Studio runs better on Linux. Linux typically uses a lot less RAM than Windows which is nice.
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I switched my main machine to Linux a few months after the Windows 8.0 release. I do keep a Windows VM for games (that don't work under Linux), Affinity Photo and TurboTax. I'd love to be able to get rid of my Windows VM.
Hi, One suggestion I do have for Linux distro providers is to create a windows interface. Not the code, just the UI. Most of the people I know don't want to learn another interface. They are interested in another OS aside from Windows but have 0 interest in another UI. Windows-like UI's hasn't worked for them. They want a Windows 7 type UI or even a windows 10 UI.
Cegarman document code? If it's not intuitive, you're in the wrong field :D Welcome to my Chaos and Confusion!
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No. Why? In one word (or maybe two) - VisualStudio. There is nothing in Linux world that comes close to it; not by a mile; not by many miles. I've tried over the years a few times and all the substitutes were so poor, specially on the debugging side, that I was relieved when I got back to Windows. Another gripe I have with Linux world, this time as a user, not a developer, is the endless list of options where there isn't one that is obviously better. You could use GNOME or KDE or Xface or Cinnamon or (any other of 30+ desktop environments out there). Makes you want to go back to the command line but there are tens of distros, each one with it's own idiosyncrasies and slight incompatibilities. All that makes me use Linux only for small gizmos like the many RPis and BeagleBones I use for work and around the house. General rule is: find a working configuration and don't touch it unless you're forced to.
Mircea
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Jeremy Falcon wrote:
nobody's forcing peeps to give them all their data
This is big part of why I only have Win11 on one VM or two. Otherwise I'd probably have migrated to it within a few days of its original release.
On my Win11 box (23H2) I bypassed the account creation, but... now they're literally nagging me to create one with every thing I do in it. You change a setting... nag. You use the start menu... nag. It doesn't take a genius to figure out if they care that much, then there's a reason.
Jeremy Falcon
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I guess it comes down to what kind of computer work you do. I was a firmware engineer for my whole career and hardly ever used VS. I've actually never used C#.
sasadler wrote:
I've actually never used C#.
Me neither. I've always used C++ :laugh:
Mircea
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raddevus wrote:
Once you experience the smooth updates of Linux
Until it's not. I've had a few VMs in the past, and a laptop still to this day, that won't complete the update I've launched from a command prompt, because the background task that drives the GUI version of the updater had already been initiated, and now complains about a file being locked (I forget the name - I'm sure most Linux users have seen it - it's always the same file, in the same folder). If I manually delete the file and / or its container folder and retry, too late, it's already been re-created and locked again. And now both the GUI version and command prompt get stuck because of that locked file that keeps getting recreated as quickly as you can delete it. Or some distro that won't update itself because the ISO you've installed from is now too old, and the only way to get it working again is to manually change whatever repo it's fetching its updates from. And that process is never the same even for two different distros, and your googling results in instructions that don't apply to yours...
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If you could run all of your apps & games on Linux… Would you switch to a Linux desktop? Why? Or Why not? I’ll go first. Yes. I would switch. I already switched back in 2019 & I’ve been happy. I couldn’t even run everything I wanted to run (a couple of games and Atmel Studio (embedded IDE which is a variant of VStudio, only runs on windows) Why? Updates are amazing on Linux (rarely do they cause any down time — no sitting & staring at update screen like Windows) I like development on Linux. I like hobbyist “family” of Linux where it is “us against them”. :rolleyes: I also do Android programming and Android Studio runs better on Linux. Linux typically uses a lot less RAM than Windows which is nice.
switched so many years ago it isn't even funny. I run linux at home and as much as I am allowed at work. Since I am the IT manager(essentially director) very small shop. I get to use it alot.
To err is human to really elephant it up you need a computer
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If you could run all of your apps & games on Linux… Would you switch to a Linux desktop? Why? Or Why not? I’ll go first. Yes. I would switch. I already switched back in 2019 & I’ve been happy. I couldn’t even run everything I wanted to run (a couple of games and Atmel Studio (embedded IDE which is a variant of VStudio, only runs on windows) Why? Updates are amazing on Linux (rarely do they cause any down time — no sitting & staring at update screen like Windows) I like development on Linux. I like hobbyist “family” of Linux where it is “us against them”. :rolleyes: I also do Android programming and Android Studio runs better on Linux. Linux typically uses a lot less RAM than Windows which is nice.
Linux needs a Driver API so 3rd parties can make drivers fast and people can install what they want even if it doesn't follow some Linux ideology. DKMS isn't what I'm talking about. You need an actual API like Apples DriverKit etc. Every OS has this except Linux. It makes mix and match hardware not practical with Linux and it makes someone like me not want to contribute to drivers because it takes to much of my time. And it makes companies not interested in making official drivers as its to hard to maintain.