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this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2023
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Technology
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Well if you're tired of Microsoft, you can install any of the many Linux distros completely free
I will when I can install all the programs I need that exist on Mac and Windows.
You can. Just install them through WINE or Valve's Proton compatibility tool.
WINE and Proton are great, but it really depnds on what programs in particular are needed. Even one unsupported application can be a dealbreaker when no alternatives exist or are acceptable substitutes.
You can run them in a VM...
If you're doing things like music production that require fast access to the hardware, a VM isn't going to cut it. If you're deeply invested in a particular DAW or if you need to work with an industry standard tool, you may have to use Windows even though there are perfectly good DAWs available for Linux.
You can dual-boot in that case. VMs are pretty good these days though - you may be surprised how well things work.
My solution so far is just to use a Linux computer for all my regular computing and a Windows one for music and some photography stuff. I also have to use Windows for my job.
VMs have their own drawbacks. There are some projects to integrate a Windows VM with Linux (WinApps), but it won't quite integrate fully. Graphical performance is bad without a GPU to pass through (Intel GVT-g kind of works, but is a massive pain to get working).
There's a kernel module to get SR-IOV (the replacement for GVT-g in newer Intel GPUs) working on Linux, and Intel are working on upstreaming it.
For non-tech users I think the problem is momentum, for technical users it's (IMO) Stockholm Syndrome a good percentage of the time.
Really as a technical user I'm moreso afraid of how much time and how much work it'll cost me. And I know a lot of distros are 1 click installs. That doesn't matter to me. It's more the transferring files and getting things set up and settling in again. I'm already settled in on my windows 10 computer. Everything is where it needs to be. I changed to Firefox earlier this month and just that was mentally painful. I can't imagine the whole OS.
I'm in university too so this would be a day that I could be doing homework etc
As someone who hopped over to the Linux side of the fence... same. Dual-booting somewhat eased the transition though, since I could do it more gradually and fall back to Windows whenever I needed it. Now that I primarily use Linux, I love how swapping to a new computer is 99% done by just copying homefolders. Even apps copy over, using user installed Flatpaks.
Switching to a new browser was mentally painful?
It's a bit of an exaggeration but I'm glad that of the many things I said, that was what you took away. Very insightful commentary.