I’m really curious what things people can’t get running or didn’t have good enough alternatives for in Linux? Obviously, if you are a professional in X field and you need a specific program that will not work on Linux for your job, then Linux is not for you at that job. You didn’t choose MS Win or MacOSX, the company that makes the software that you need to do your job made that choice for you.
If you are not a professional, and you pirate Adobe XYZ (or whatever), and feel like you must have it on Linux, and that GIMP or Krita (or whatever) are not good enough, I don’t know what to tell you. Ask yourself, if MS and Adobe found a way to require you to pay full price for that software, or you could not use it at all, would you pay? Or would GIMP or Krita (or whatever) suddenly be good enough? Is having that software (when you are not a professional) really a good reason to stay on an operating system with so many other drawbacks?
In my experience:
MS Windows Explorer is crap. I ended up buying Directory Opus to get a decent file manager. Too many good ones to mention in Linux (though I admit, most are not as powerful as DO; maybe Dired in emacs comes closest?). (DO is awesome - if you are stuck on MS Windows, I highly recommend it.)
KWallet (and similar security apps such as KeePassXC), the various clipboard apps, the various text editors, the media players, etc. are excellent in Linux and don’t have alternatives in MS Windows that are as good or as easy to install. Actually, I guess it comes down to the repositories having everything, and much of it being installed by default. (Of course, if you are just streaming stuff through your browser, media players matter much less.)
The choice of window managers and desktop environments is a killer feature for Linux. MS Windows barely even has virtual desktops.
I am not a graphics professional, so for me, GIMP and Krita are fine. And Inkscape. And Scribus. (And, for many people who are not me, LibreOffice Draw.)
I do do a lot of writing. LaTeX (several types) and all supporting software is super helpful, but must be found and installed separately in MS Windows. Will pandoc run natively in MS Windows - you have to install python first, right? It is python, right? I’m not sure, because I didn’t need to worry about it when I installed it on Linux, from the repository. On MS Windows, you’ll probably have to worry about it.
Sure, as mentioned above, you can install many of those on MS Windows. Are they in the MS Windows store? Do you have to update them all individually each time there is an update? I don’t - they get updated when I update my system, along with the rest of my system.
One little observation sort of sums up the Linux / MS Windows debate for me: in LibreOffice, no matter which program I am using, I can open or create a new office file of any sort. Last time I used MS Office, you couldn’t create or open an MS Word file while in MS PowerPoint, nor the opposite. Instead, you had to open MS Word separately. MS Office is a ‘suite’ in name only. LibreOffice is a suite, designed to go together. Linux distros sort of feel like that too. MS Windows (last I used it), not so much.
(Obviously, I have feelings about this. Been using Linux since 1998, so yeah, feelings.)
Plenty of video games that will not run on Linux simply because of stuff like anticheat. Like Apex Legends (ran fine for a while but got blocked again recently) and Valorant, just to name 2 I’m personally aware of that’s stopping some of my friends from going to Linux.
You can say that dual booting would fix that, and my bf actually does that, but that’s obviously not a workable solution to the vast majority of people.
As long as games like that won’t run on Linux it’s simply impossible for a lot of people to switch.
CoD, Fortnite, basically any major multiplayer games are case by case basis. While most of them have turned to microtransaction shit I thought others should know a few big names. Check out resources like Arewewanticheatyet and The protondb.
I just installed Mint on my gaming TV table. I’m currently struggling to install a driver that works with my displaylink adapter. I’m also having an issue with my VTT (Arkenforge) where it fails to update and crashes.
I’m really curious what things people can’t get running or didn’t have good enough alternatives for in Linux? Obviously, if you are a professional in X field and you need a specific program that will not work on Linux for your job, then Linux is not for you at that job. You didn’t choose MS Win or MacOSX, the company that makes the software that you need to do your job made that choice for you.
If you are not a professional, and you pirate Adobe XYZ (or whatever), and feel like you must have it on Linux, and that GIMP or Krita (or whatever) are not good enough, I don’t know what to tell you. Ask yourself, if MS and Adobe found a way to require you to pay full price for that software, or you could not use it at all, would you pay? Or would GIMP or Krita (or whatever) suddenly be good enough? Is having that software (when you are not a professional) really a good reason to stay on an operating system with so many other drawbacks?
In my experience:
MS Windows Explorer is crap. I ended up buying Directory Opus to get a decent file manager. Too many good ones to mention in Linux (though I admit, most are not as powerful as DO; maybe Dired in emacs comes closest?). (DO is awesome - if you are stuck on MS Windows, I highly recommend it.)
KWallet (and similar security apps such as KeePassXC), the various clipboard apps, the various text editors, the media players, etc. are excellent in Linux and don’t have alternatives in MS Windows that are as good or as easy to install. Actually, I guess it comes down to the repositories having everything, and much of it being installed by default. (Of course, if you are just streaming stuff through your browser, media players matter much less.)
The choice of window managers and desktop environments is a killer feature for Linux. MS Windows barely even has virtual desktops.
I am not a graphics professional, so for me, GIMP and Krita are fine. And Inkscape. And Scribus. (And, for many people who are not me, LibreOffice Draw.)
I do do a lot of writing. LaTeX (several types) and all supporting software is super helpful, but must be found and installed separately in MS Windows. Will pandoc run natively in MS Windows - you have to install python first, right? It is python, right? I’m not sure, because I didn’t need to worry about it when I installed it on Linux, from the repository. On MS Windows, you’ll probably have to worry about it.
Sure, as mentioned above, you can install many of those on MS Windows. Are they in the MS Windows store? Do you have to update them all individually each time there is an update? I don’t - they get updated when I update my system, along with the rest of my system.
One little observation sort of sums up the Linux / MS Windows debate for me: in LibreOffice, no matter which program I am using, I can open or create a new office file of any sort. Last time I used MS Office, you couldn’t create or open an MS Word file while in MS PowerPoint, nor the opposite. Instead, you had to open MS Word separately. MS Office is a ‘suite’ in name only. LibreOffice is a suite, designed to go together. Linux distros sort of feel like that too. MS Windows (last I used it), not so much.
(Obviously, I have feelings about this. Been using Linux since 1998, so yeah, feelings.)
edit: spelling error / typo
Linux is the best OS. Thanks to Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds and the Linux community.
Plenty of video games that will not run on Linux simply because of stuff like anticheat. Like Apex Legends (ran fine for a while but got blocked again recently) and Valorant, just to name 2 I’m personally aware of that’s stopping some of my friends from going to Linux.
You can say that dual booting would fix that, and my bf actually does that, but that’s obviously not a workable solution to the vast majority of people.
As long as games like that won’t run on Linux it’s simply impossible for a lot of people to switch.
CoD, Fortnite, basically any major multiplayer games are case by case basis. While most of them have turned to microtransaction shit I thought others should know a few big names. Check out resources like Arewewanticheatyet and The protondb.
I just installed Mint on my gaming TV table. I’m currently struggling to install a driver that works with my displaylink adapter. I’m also having an issue with my VTT (Arkenforge) where it fails to update and crashes.
Welcome to the Linux experience :) Good luck, have fun!
Firefox likes to crash with the nvidia driver