He pointed out a bunch of JavaScript plugins don’t work in WINE but I’m not following what it does that Picard + ffmpeg + many other audio players can’t do. It seems worth losing a feature or two or having to adopt a small composition of tools …or building it yourself / paying a bounty for a feature.
If people ever wonder why people don’t use Linux they should just read the comments here. People are so obsessed with blaming users for not using Linux rather than trying to make Linux meet their expectations.
Most people will go to a shop and buy a laptop with Windows preinstalled and ready to be used, and even if they’re brave enough to install the OS themselves (most aren’t) they will still expect pretty much everything to work automatically after the install.
I don’t know what the solution is here but it’s not to blame users.
Linux isn’t a product. You can’t think of it like a product. It is simply a piece of software and doesn’t care if you use it or not. It’s not “competing” with Windows, it’s not even playing the same game.
Kidding of course. Have to admit I agree. I’ve used Linux since the late 1990s. So long long before it was usable by most folks standards.
I started because my university had HPUX machines that we needed to submit work on. So wanted a unix like enviroment at home I could work on. This was a tim when linux was basically slackers on 50plus floppy disks. Xwindows needed configuring for every monitor. Honestly by current standards usability was non existant compared to windows.
But honestly I spent so much time on the system. And watched it improve. To the point I find windows an utter pain in the arse now. And will avoid it under all circumstances.
But the idea of convincing folks who have no interest. Where the hell do folks find the time.
Some people will never be willing to move to Linux. Even if Linux was 98% compatible with their needs, they would stay on Windows for that remaining 2%.
There are folks who would let Windows punch them in the groin or slap them across the face once per month as long as they could play their favorite kernel-level anticheat esport trash.
There are a few people who make their living using evil software like the Adobe suite, and for them I truly feel sorry that they are trapped in the dystopian hell of modern proprietary software, but we do live in a society I guess.
The tough truth is, many people don’t really give a shit about privacy, consumer rights, software freedom, or transparency, even if they say they do. They will huff and puff about how terrible Windows has gotten. They will rant and rave about how ridiculous the ads are in their OS or how they think it’s wrong for their OS to spy and track their actions constantly.
But when the rubber meets the road and they can sacrifice a few things to gain their freedom, they won’t do it. I know, because I have multiple friends and family that have been acting like this for years.
Whenever I suggest Linux or FOSS alternatives to their proprietary apps, they initially are interested. But of course they will always find the one or two things they like to use/play/have that doesn’t work or is a pain on Linux, and they bail.
I had one friend who was saying they were “totally serious about switching to Linux soon.” But they bailed when they found out that Valorant doesn’t work on Linux. Do they play Valorant actively? No, they haven’t played it in years, but they, “wanted the possibility to play it just in case they decided to get back into it again.”
Personally, there isn’t a single game or piece of software I would ever give up Linux for. I just flat out refuse to use Windows or MacOS on any of my personal computers. It’s a pledge I made years ago and I will forever stick to it.
Hot take: If you claim to be against all the big tech abuses and value software and computing freedom, but a handful of PC games is enough to stop you from leaving an abusive proprietary OS, you weren’t very serious about it to begin with.
Hot take: If you claim to be against all the big tech abuses and value software and computing freedom, but a handful of PC games is enough to stop you from leaving an abusive proprietary OS, you weren’t very serious about it to begin with.
The guy in the video actually talked about how FL Studio isn’t on Linux, and that’s how he makes his living. He then goes on to say he has spent thousands of dollars on plugins and samples that only work on Windows. The first segment was about how not all mods work on Linux. The last segment was about how Foobar2000 doesn’t work on Linux and even through Wine some of the features are broken, and there’s no true replacement for it but “if you’re not as fussy as me, any of these native Linux software are great”.
He also runs Debian 12 on his laptop part-time and seems quite knowledgeable about how Linux works, and is willing to invest the time.
He makes a point about he “wants to make things better, not sacrifice things”.
I thought the video was pretty reasonable. I wasn’t criticizing him with my hot take.
It will always be a balance of what you’re willing to do for what you believe in, vs pragmatism and comfort.
Some things are better sacrificed, because they aren’t actually very good to begin with. But other things are better adapted or emulated into a FOSS framework.
On a more personal note, I was prepared to give up far more than I actually needed to when switching to Linux 100%. Linux has gotten so good in most areas, it’s pretty incredible.
What most people forget: you can spend small amounts to actually improve foss software if you need it to „just work“. There are hundreds if not thousands of hobby devs that will help you for a tip! :) if he spent thousands of dollars on plugins, I bet he could sponsor a small dev so that he and others can become independent of windows. Which by the way might deprecate his software anyway at some time.
As a side note, there’s a multiplatform Qt6 clone of foobar2000, called ‘fooyin’: github.com/fooyin/fooyin.gitI’ve never been a foobar2000 user, but I’m really impressed by this program; especially the customizability of the UI with respect to custom tags.
I heard of that one a while back. Not being someone who enjoys music often or has very demanding needs, I just use Amberol. But fooyin might be nice to look into for my KDE desktop.
I think the “Valorant” mind set also applies to other software, like Photoshop or Excel etc. The vast majority of people don’t really need to use Photoshop professionally, or the advanced capabilities that only desktop Excel can provide, but they like to think they do. It’s a comfort zone thing, the devil you know and all that.
The important part here is that if someone is willing they can add these features to foss software. Either by learning/doing the work or by helping fund someone to do it for them.
Libre office (no idea about open office, sadly) works in the same way excel does. A lot of the „advanced“ features of excel can also be achieved in other ways or by other software. Of course I‘m willing to get schooled by someone who has advanced knowledge of both and says its insanely different. But from my perspective the differences are marginal.
Your argument is that if someone can use an “advanced” excel feature, they should also be able to code up that feature for a foss alternative software?
Obviously not. I said if a feature is so advanced that libreoffice doesnt have it yet, they can either help building it (by code or by reporting the missing feature or helping advance the discussion) or they can use additional software if such exists or they can pay someone to do it.
What i find to be extra stupid with the games situation is I have the same gripe, and my solution is to dual boot for the rare games that dont work or if i want to use gamepass. I am almost exclusively using linux now, but Windows is there just in case
Even if you cant be bothered to figure out gaming on Linux, a dual boot works like a charm. I do all my gaming on the windows partition to keep it separate from work, to avoid distraction.
I am very serious about using Linux exclusively. I have ported/rewritten all of my university’s course materials in my past two years of gamedev studies and made them available for others. But the time has come to do an internship and I have yet to find a single studio I could be at while still using Linux. I feel like I reached a dead end tbh
Yeah, IT is in a similar boat. Not as bad, but still where I live, Linux environments are super rare. So if you are going into IT, you are going to be working in Windows environments, and most firms use software that isn’t compatible with Linux.
Stuff like their remote management software, or their inventory management software. Plus, unless you’re the guy in charge of the IT department, almost nobody wants or even knows how to administrate a Linux endpoint.
So they don’t want one of their sys admins to be running around on a Linux machine that they don’t have as much visibility on or understanding of how it works.
I’m lucky that the company I work for is small enough that I am the entire IT department, so I can use whatever OS I want. Debian 12 with Plasma, love it.
But out in the world, you’re going to find a bunch of situations like you are in, where so much of the defaults use Windows and proprietary garbage, you’re stuck running exactly what they are.
Long term, you could start trying to build your own indie studio that is FOSS-based. Maybe years down the line you can make it on your own. Do that full time and make supplemental income as an outside contractor or something. IDK, that also comes with its own set of issues. It’s a shitty tech corpo dystopia all around us.
Wow yeah, your position sounds awesome. I guess if I were in an indie studio I could be in charge of the engine or like, dev environments. I’ve found such benefit in doing gamedev on Linux, even if targeting Windows via cross-compiling, it’s so much faster and nicer. But what company would be willing to hire an intern to move over their whole workflow… not happening lol.
Not all programs can be run easily in a VM or wine/etc., several apps/games I use will not run without a bare-metal windows OS or at the very least a dual-GPU system with a passthrough VM.
I understand there are real difficulties. This response was just a meme. Even though, I think there is some truth to it, but lets discuss it in the other thread (which is meant more on the serious side).
One way to avoid looking like a fool is to look beyond just the headline- This video starts out by saying they have more Linux installs than windows, across various VMs on SBCs.
Not all programs can be run easily in a VM or wine/etc., several apps/games I use will not run without a bare-metal windows OS or at the very least a dual-GPU system with a passthrough VM.
Many teknoparrot games will not run on linux under wine, and a VM without a passthrough GPU cannot do any hardware accelerated rendering on Windows, so without a second GPU or dual-booting into Windows I cannot play them. Recent adobe suite apps also won’t work on wine, and many functions use the GPU now like in Photoshop. There’s so many things that still don’t work in wine or a non-accelerated VM it’s not even funny.
Gaming? Fair point. Creative Apps? There are alternatives, even if they are not as good as your Adobe closed source stuff. The change to Linux is worth it in my opinion. Foobar2000? A music player? That is a reason to stick to Windows? Really?
Often for professional users, that makes it a non-starter already. Nobody who is making good money from Photoshop has ever said “I just use gimp instead, it works for me”.
GIMP is not the only thing that exists (look at Krita). My point is, sacrifices can be made. Even professionals can do it. The question is, if it gets the job done, if someone wants to learn new things, change habits, change workflow. One could keep an old pc with old applications like Photoshop, if you can’t import your files to other systems and need it for work or is required by professional work.
Either you make changes, or you will keep being a slave of Adobe and Microsoft forever.
My point is, sacrifices can be made. Even professionals can do it.
You mean like, they risk losing their job, reducing their profits significantly during the training period, and then likely there are a few algorithms that don’t exist in Krita, and most are slower with less optimization. If Adobe releases a new killer feature those professionals who transitioned to OSS are fucked, and also they sacrifice a significant of time on additional training for using Linux, replacing their professional NVIDIA GPUs, tweaks wayland, then they spend time on fixing boot problems, their printers don’t work anymore, they have compatibility issues with everything Adobe and MS Office, lose business competitions just because their files can’t be opened by Windows, etc. etc. I’ll trust you Linux-is-easy people after you converted a few Windows / Apple / Adobe-dependent enterprise businesses.
Adobe never released a killer feature professionals missed out on, that they got fucked. It’s a hallucination of people who spend their entire life under Adobe. Look if you are not willing doing these changes, fine. It’s not my life. So just keep getting fed and keep being a slave.
And I did not say everyone has to change. If you had read the rest of my reply, then you would know. For people who literally cannot make the switch (which is their own fault, because they are the ones who put them in the position of being a slave), in example for professionals job is in danger of not able to produce the content, they can still keep an alternative PC only for these specific tasks. And they can switch to Linux for all other things, and put the rails for the future.
The easiest and laziest way is to just keep doing this. Most people aren’t in that situation anyway. Most people just search for reasons not to switch, without realizing it.
I’ll trust you Linux-is-easy people after you converted a few Windows / Apple / Adobe-dependent enterprise businesses.
Maybe you should read carefully. Nobody said Linux-is-easy in my reply. But with that attitude you will never be free.
I’m sure it’s not possible for everyone - but I essentially did this some years back - though more with Premiere than Photoshop - and therefore more Cinelerra/Kdenlive than Gimp/Krita.
I ran a dual boot system from about 2008 until about 2015. If it could be done in Linux/FOSS, it was. If it couldn’t, it was done in Windows/Adobe software.
I was self-employed, though I often did subcontracting work for a handful of media/umbrella organisations - so sometimes I had to use Premiere or Sony Vegas to carry on half-done projects I was handed.
Bear in mind this was when you bought Adobe software and didn’t rent it - and you could also keep running an older version for years.
Anyway, over time I used the Windows partition less and less, until I got rid of it entirely when I got a new computer.
I had to work a bit harder one year, and I did miss out on a few projects - but mostly, I could do everything I could do previously, but it took a bit longer for a while until I adjusted to a different workflow.
After that, you’re just saying “That’s a £2000 job”, “That’s a £200 job”, and meeting a deadline. Nobody really cares if it took 7 minutes longer to do, and I saved a lot of time not using Windows any more.
Editing (and other design stuff) is a far smaller part of my overall work these days, but I still do a good chunk of projects over the year, and I’ve been 100% Linux for almost 10 years. No regrets.
I mean, Foobar2000 is pretty cool when we only had winamp5 and windows media player, and it was great for huge media libraries. But what the dude showed he used Foobar2000 for… who does constantly convert media files, or reconfigure their media player?
I run foobar2000 to transcode music, apply ReplayGain and edit tags. Except I do all of that on Linux through Wine, I have no clue why someone needs Windows for foobar
Unless it’s for games that use shitty anticheat solutions probably not a good reason anymore due to the SteamDeck, a LOT of games do work and it’s possible to check before hand via ProtonDB.
So it was a fair point 5 years ago, now most AAA games, including VR games, do work without tinkering.
That’s disingenius towards people who want to play and have problems with it. Lot of popular games, such as some modern Call of Duty games, Fortnite, League of Legends (recently), Destiny 2, PUBG, Siege just to name a few. These are some of the most played games on PC and its even more of a problem if you can’t play with your friends (I know what I’m talking about, because I’m on Linux since 2008). And that’s not the only problem. Games are also on other platforms than Steam, which adds to the complexity too or do not work, especially on Deck.
And that is only the gaming side itself. There are other things attached to gaming which are not fully resolved as a 1:1 replacement without hassle, like Discord in example, which is widely used by players and is popular. And other things like driver support from Nvidia (which gets better now, but Wayland is still not perfectly supported) with feature parity over their software. Let’s not forget about everything else attached to it like modding, which is a big part for some.
Gaming on Linux is still a huge problem for some. There is no denying it. But like with the other things listed, its some sacrifice I personally going to make and accept limitations. And you should not hide that, otherwise you may disappoint people.
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