this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2026
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Damn. I think it's time for me to finally try Mint. Currently using 98% Ubuntu and 2% Windows because unfortunately there's always some sort of Windows-only software I need for one reason or another. Yes I've tried Wine, I haven't gotten it to work.
your saying snap-packages arent enough of a cluster-fuck to turn you off of Ubuntu?
Do yourself a favor, do Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE). It's got all the slickness of Mint, but the core is based on Debian instead of Ubuntu.
Would installing KDE plasma on LMDE be beginner-friendly.?
For the most part, that's literally no different than just running Debian with KDE. Not sure about beginner friendly, but incredibly awesome.
What Windows software do you find that isn't working on Linux?
I can't speak on behalf of him, but all my old CD-ROM games from the late 90's and early 2000s don't work on Linux, even with Wine. I'd love to get them working one day, so I'm watching this thread
Perhaps you could try bottles? I can't speak on it's usefulness or not, but something else to try. https://usebottles.com/
Thanks I'll give it a go!
For me it's Adobe. Stupid government and other forms I need for work. No available third party software will work on some of them, and I've tried them all. And for some dumb reason even having an Acrobat subscription won't let me fill them out on their (extremely buggy, by the way) web app.
Was never able to get it working with wine.
That, and the compatibility between Libreoffice (or other Linux office software) and MS Word is still terrible. I'm quite sure that's mostly due to shenanigans by MS. So if you have to swap documents back and forth between people (e.g. with track changes) it just doesn't work as well. And, like Adobe, the web app version of Word seems to be kneecapped in a few key places.
Primarily Solidworks, Fusion360, Altium, and Traktor Pro. Planning to start learning about video editing soon. Also games, though I'm planning to try Bazzite soon.
Not him, but I almost never boot windows, but the other day I had to change a part of a a stupid powerpoint presentation that only could be done using Powerpoint desktop app. Wine has not done so well with it, Libreoffice wouldn't do the thing right, and browser based office can't touch 'master slide' content.
Mint is based off of Ubuntu
There is a Debian based version called LMDE.
What's the software? Maybe a simple VM would do the job?
Solidworks, Fusion360, Altium, and a few others
I refuse to use Fusion360 because of what Autodesk did to Eagle (and my forever licence)
Autodesk are awful.
I hate it too. I use it to generate gcode for my CNC milling machine. Yes, Solidworks can also do that but it has a much steeper learning curve.
Pretty sure FreeCAD can also do that using the CAM workbench
Fusion360 actively attempts to block wine usage so you have to use a VM (or a single application VM like Winboat) for it to play ball. I haven't had experience with any of the others though.
How does winboat work?
Makes a container windows install.
Do you have to see if the application you want to host is supported, or is it pretty compatible?
There are some windows softwares i want to run, but they don't work in wine.
Its a full VM so the main downside is that GPU acceleration is 0 but you have full CPU speeds.
Also expect the VM to eat the typical 60gb + the applications of storage
Solid Edge is what had me keeping a Win10 instance for a while, but finally gave up on it after the OS kept corrupting itself. Started learning Onshape instead, which is web based and works under Linux. It's a passable replacement for doing basic 3d sketches.
Could we find Open Source alternatives? I've gotten good use of blender for these but I don't know your use cases
Blender is world class, but the CAD softwares are leagues behind, unfortunately.
Whilst FreeCAD certainly doesn't have feature parity with things like Creo, I firmly believe it is good enough for most people. I switched to only using that for all my contract work and personal projects and it's generally been fine
That's awesome! Do you have any videos you'd recommend for someone getting into it?
I wish there were open source alternatives to Autocad, but freecad is doing its own thing and as someone who uses Autocad as part of her career it's so much easier to keep a partition for when I need to throw something together than to learn how to make freecad work
Very different use case. I make parts to 3D print and CNC mill. Lots of brackets and other mechanical parts.
Sony DSLR apps are all non Linux. Some folks like me are forced to use Windows or Mac.
Depending on the software, Winboat might be what you need.
People love it for some reason but I cannot recommend. Newer laptops are trapped between no support under X and a half baked version under Wayland. And I didn't find the community supportive enough.
May I recommend something fedora based? No dealing with Ubuntu or arch problems
I don't see how a hat can fix that problem