Thinking on switching to linux
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Approaching the end of window 10 and have no plans on upgrading to 11.
I am trying to find alternatives to applications I regularly use before jumping ship (it is mostly a gaming focused pc) any suggestions?
There are a lot of software alternatives depending on your needs and preferences. You may want to take a look here or there.
Linux is full of options to let you build the best system for you. That means you'll have to invest some time to decide what you want (starting with the distro). Moving to Linux is discovering a brand new world where it's easy to get discouraged and flooded by the freedom you're given.
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I would check out Pop OS instead of mint. But you can easily boot both of them from usb stick and look around and get a feeling before you choose.
I would say pop is is not the right choice right now, until they release the version with Cosmic. It is very outdated because of that.
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Speaker brand, they may be looking for some software for managing it. Probably gonna need to run it in WINe.
I’m familiar with the speaker brand, but OP is not clear what they mean. Is there software or do they just want to make sure their BT speaker works with Linux? Or are they using some other abbreviation and we are way off base.
I can guess but better to ask.
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What is this table from?
Is it from some website?80% sure it’s Google Sheets. If not it’s very very close.
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I,,, don't think that's what they meant, but I could be wrong.
They didn’t say, we can only read what they wrote and ask if unsure.
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Approaching the end of window 10 and have no plans on upgrading to 11.
I am trying to find alternatives to applications I regularly use before jumping ship (it is mostly a gaming focused pc) any suggestions?
I self host sunshine and use the moonlight client on iOS for my remote desktop. It’s meant for in home game streaming, but using Tailscale I can connect from anywhere.
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Lol that table is pretty strange
What does "Windows 10" mean? XD
Also btw dont expect all games to work in Wine. You should use Steam if you want a pain free experience.
Nortan Antivirus
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They didn’t say, we can only read what they wrote and ask if unsure.
I mean, I did read what they wrote. Remote desktop to iOS. Sending the desktop of the computer, to an iOS device. Nobody calls the home screen of a phone a "desktop".
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https://cider.sh/ is an Apple Music client for Linux.
Closed source. Who's to say it ain't credential sniffing and spyware?
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- AMD Drivers: Good news! They work even better on Linux. Bad news, you're probably referring to the AMD "control panel" type application instead of the drivers themselves, which doesn't have a direct equivalent. The drivers should come pre-installed, though depening on distro you may need to select/install "radv" or "vulkan-radeon" manually. Most of the control panel functionality can be found in other applications, like OBS for recording or CoreCtrl for clock speeds.
- Chrome: Although Firefox is pre-installed in most cases, you have full freedom of choice here. Most people find that Firefox works basically the same after using it for a bit, but if it doesn't fit you, there's other options. Google Chrome is most likely available in your distros app store, but there's also less "spying" options like ungoogled-chromium.
- Gmail: You can access this on the website, or through a mail client like thunderbird. You can switch if you want to, you're not limited by any means here.
- Office 360: Though LibreOffice is a great alternative, some find themselves forced to use MS office for compatibility reasons. This is still possible, buy only in a webbrowser.
- ITunes: This is a hard one to find alternatives for, depending on what you use it for. For managing iPhones from a PC, you essentially need Windows or macOS. For playing music, there's plenty of options.
- JBL: I'm unsure as I don't use any of their products, but assuming you mean audio related "control panels", there's many options available. Though they may need a bit of tweaking and searching around to get things to sound the way you want.
- Musescore: I also don't use this, but it's available on Flathub, meaning you can (and probably should) use your distros "App Store" to install this.
- Norton AV: Not many AVs targeting Linux exist, and they're not the greatest quality. Though it's doable to go without one, as long as you don't download and run random files off the internet. Stick to the app store, and you should be totally fine.
- PyCharm: This is available on Linux, also in the "app store". There's other IDEs available too, like vscode.
- Remote Desktop to iOS: I haven't owned an iOS device since 2019, so I don't know which protocol they use. It's possible this isn't supported at all.
- Star Citizen: It looks like this is playable through Proton. You can use Steam (add non-steam game), Lutris, or Bottles to launch non-steam Windows apps/games.
- Steam: Works great
- VPN: As you didn't put a previous VPN provider here, I'm not able to tell you if it works on Linux. Personally I have a hard time recommending any VPN service, but Mullvad stands out as being the least untrustworthy. Almost all others like Nord, Express, etc. share some common traits that make them very untrustworthy to me.
- Windows Games: This is a bit more complicated. Games from the Microsoft Store are very unlikely to run, and require messing about to even try in the first place. Other games made for Windows likely work (even outside Steam), using management tools like Lutris or Bottles is often easier than manually using Wine.
If a tool (or distro) works well for you, it's a good option. Everyone has different opinions on the "best" distro, but since it's very subjective, there is no single "best" distro. There's only 2 distros I recommend against, that's Ubuntu (and close spin-offs) and Manjaro, because they have major objective downsides compared to equivalents like Mint or Endeavour. The distros I generally recommend to new users are Mint and Fedora, but feel free to look around, you're not forced to pick a specific one.
You noted you were likely going to choose Linux Mint, great! It's a "stable" distro, as in, it doesn't change much with small updates. Instead, new release versions (23, 24, 25, etc) come with new changes. Linux Mint comes with an App Store that can install from Flathub, which should be the first place to check for installing new applications.
As for VR, it depends heavily on which exact headset you have, and is not always a great experience on Linux right now (speaking from experience with an Index). The LVRA wiki is a great starting place: https://lvra.gitlab.io/. If you're on a Quest, WiVRN and ALVR exist, though they both have their own downsides. If you're on a PCVR headset from Oculus, your options are more limited. You might also want to consider a different distro, as VR development is moving very fast. Many VR users choose to go with a "harder" rolling release distribution, like EndeavourOS, to receive feature updates quicker.
Also of note, if you have the storage space, you can choose to "dual boot" (even with just one drive). This will give you a menu to choose between Windows and Linux when starting your computer, and will give you time to move stuff over. I generally recommend this, as it provides an option to immediately do a task you know how to do on Windows, when it's absolutely required to do the task asap.
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Approaching the end of window 10 and have no plans on upgrading to 11.
I am trying to find alternatives to applications I regularly use before jumping ship (it is mostly a gaming focused pc) any suggestions?
Software Linux support AMD driver 
open-source drivers for CPU and GPU are included in the Linux Kernel and work very well. If you have bleeding edge news hardware, check online in which Kernel version they are supposed and choose Linux distro accordinglyWeb Browser Chrome/chromium, Firefox. All are commonly available in your distro software repository by default, or otherwise with FlatpakWeb-based email not dependent on OS. Local Email client software are available, one exemple is Thunderbird.Office suite LibreOffice, or anything web-based such as Google Docs will work independently of the OSItunes Many music players/library managers are available on Linux, I don't have any specific recommendations here, I am self-hosting Jellyfin for my music needs JBL not sure what you mean here ? Your headset/speakers ? Don't see why it wouldn't work Music score reader/editor MuseScore, I also use Guitar Pro (7, 
inside Bottle (wine) and it works with some tweaks needed for fixing font bugAntivirus ClamAV, arguable if you need an antivirus at allPython many IDEs are available, a scary amount of Linux distribution rely on Python under the hood 
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Approaching the end of window 10 and have no plans on upgrading to 11.
I am trying to find alternatives to applications I regularly use before jumping ship (it is mostly a gaming focused pc) any suggestions?
someone got oculus software to work through wine with access to hardware a while ago and they’re working on something called Oculus Ameliorated which might be simpler to get working
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Gmail: any paid hoster
pycharm is on linux
Star Citizen runs in Proton, no?
Yup, Star Citizen runs perfectly under Proton. There's even a script to get it as set up for you.
https://github.com/starcitizen-lug/lug-helper -
Cider has gone proprietary. Use Apple Music PWA instead.
Oh sorry. Did not know that.
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Yup, Star Citizen runs perfectly under Proton. There's even a script to get it as set up for you.
https://github.com/starcitizen-lug/lug-helperYes it runs fine I played it a lot on my system. It was unplayble when I tested on Hyprland due to interaction click being unusable but worked fine on sway
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AMD drivers: Native, will auto-install as the mesa library, AMD is tits in Linux, it just works.
Gmail: Thunderbird works with Gmail accounts and can sync the calendar.
iTunes: Rhythmbox has a very similar layout to iTunes and so should feel pretty familiar.
Anti-virus: Linux doesn't really need antivirus in the same way Windows does because it's more locked down and doesn't have the same vectors of attack. If someone is hacking a Linux machine, it's a corporate server, not your desktop PC.
Py-Charm: As others have noted, Python is installed natively and is usually already implemented "out of the box" on a fresh install. No need for a program to run it, Python is just... there already.
Remote Desktop: Whatever distribution you have will likely also come with a Remote Desktop client. I am unaware of whether or not they will connect natively to iOS.
Star Citizen: You should be able to add this as a non-Steam game to Steam and use Steam's Proton compatibility layer to play it. A few years ago they were literally asking for Linux players to test it with Proton and Easy Anti-Cheat.
VPN: Linux has extensive VPN support including "roll your own" through either OpenVPN or Wireguard.
Windows Games: Steam, using the Proton compatibility layer, which is essentially WINe, just made a little easier. As with Star Citizen, just add it as a non-Steam game and viola.
Windows 10: The Distribution of your Dreams is just around the corner... Mint isn't a terrible place to start.
I think the biggest thing about itunes is that it can be used to write music to iphones and do OS restores, I couldn't get the usb functionality to work with wine so I just use it in a vm personally
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I mean, I did read what they wrote. Remote desktop to iOS. Sending the desktop of the computer, to an iOS device. Nobody calls the home screen of a phone a "desktop".
That wasn’t a criticism, I’m not saying you didn’t read what they wrote.
“Remote Desktop” (and Microsoft’s RDP Remote Desktop Protocol) is a common term, regardless of what the actual destination device is.
OP was not clear what they mean, so we just guess and ask.
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It is somewhat related, I’m sure installing pyCharm on windows also provides Python. But yeah, not everyone wants to use a plain text editor.
OP is asking how to install an IDE. People are telling him Python is preinstalled. It’s like someone asking for a terminal emulator and people saying „but zsh is installed“. It’s being obtuse, is what it is.
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i think he wants a rec for a linux distro
Hannah Montana Linux is always a good start
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Approaching the end of window 10 and have no plans on upgrading to 11.
I am trying to find alternatives to applications I regularly use before jumping ship (it is mostly a gaming focused pc) any suggestions?
Antivirus is completely unnecessary and terrible on windows and linux... and on linux it's uniquely useless. Everything is installed from a centralized repo, antiviruses won't be of any help at all. antiviruses came about because windows let executables just be run easily and simply and used them as the default way of installing software, this was beyond idiotic and the reason that OS became infested with malware. Linux never made that mistake from the start, and so antivirus is unnecessary.
