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?
Proton mail has an email and VPN together as a package.
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I mean, he's joking, but:
AMD Drivers: yeah, this one's not a thing
Chrome: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/EWW.html
Gmail: https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/CategoryMail
Office 360: https://orgmode.org/
I-Tunes: https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/itunes.el (although this one probably doesn't work)
JBL: I have no idea what it is
Muse score: https://github.com/piercegwang/staff-mode
Anti-virus: I don't know of any, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone listed a plugin for checking files
PyCharm: This is the one he said to use Vim
Remote desktop: Emacs can natively open remote files or directories
Star citizen: obviously not
Steam: Obviously not, because it's proprietary, I really wouldn't be surprised if there's a GOG plugin
VPN: https://github.com/anticomputer/ovpn-mode
There's some truth to the joke that emacs is a very complete Operating system.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=urcL86UpqZc&pp=ygUTT2xkIHByb2dyYW1lciBlbWFjcw%3D%3D
This is all I thought about when I read the comment.
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Apps, iOS if finiky when it comes to that, though I've been looking for a way that works on Linux
There is AFAIK no way to do this.
Apple's never open-sourced the APIs and interfaces and it only works on Macs and Windows. For this you will need to have either a Windows install (recommend separate drive so it doesn't break Linux bootloader) or a persistent or not Windows VM with USB passthrough. I'm not even sure how well the VM situation works but it probably should. You don't even have to have a license for Windows, you can just run it in the VM for this purpose alone but it does mean oh at least 40GB set aside on your drive for the VM image plus more if you want to do things like back-up the phone.
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Off the top of my head:
Gmail or any email: Thunderbird is pretty sweet and I need to use it more, but mostly just use the web clients anyway.
If you own GoG games, you can use Heroic Launcher instead of GoG Galaxy. It's gotten amazingly good, really fast.
I'd recommend Lutris over Heroic both because it runs locally where Heroic is Electron, and because Lutris allows community-based native Linux ports for games where applicable, eg. for Ultima VII: The Black Gate + The Forge of Virtue, Lutris gives you the option of installing that game with Exult instead of DOSbox, for Tomb Raider and Tomb Raider II, you have the option to install those with OpenLara, for Doom 1 and 2, you have the option to install those with ZDoom, etc.
Also, at least for DOS games where you don't have the option to install a community-based modern port, you can use native DOSbox as a runner instead of Windows DOSbox as well through Lutris.
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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?
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For anyone who uses Apple Music, I recommend the Cider app. I believe it costs $3 and you get versions for Linux, Mac, and Windows.
I haven’t found any MP3 players on Linux that I’m totally happy with. All of them have some trivial issue (eg not displaying Album Artist correctly).
As I pointed out, if you have an older iPod, eg. like an iPod Video or Classic, or any other player that supports it, Rockbox is a thing you can flash onto it.
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As I pointed out, if you have an older iPod, eg. like an iPod Video or Classic, or any other player that supports it, Rockbox is a thing you can flash onto it.
I do have one and I have a Mac with iTunes Match (iCloud music syncing for iPhone). That said I keep most of my actual files on my Ubuntu machine and might want to experiment with the iPod at some point.
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I do have one and I have a Mac with iTunes Match (iCloud music syncing for iPhone). That said I keep most of my actual files on my Ubuntu machine and might want to experiment with the iPod at some point.
You'll need an original iPod, iPod Mini, or iPod Video or Classic for Rockbox compatibility. iPod Touch is just an iPhone without the phone, so it's locked into iOS.
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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 
There might be some cases even for single-player games where DRM platform-locks you into Windows but that's rare from my understanding.
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Bazzite, a gaming-focused Linux distribution, is designed to work really well with Steam. One drawback is that if you have a game installed in Windows on a Windows drive, you can't use it from Linux steam. But, there is a way to have games accessible to both operating systems. I haven't done this, yet, but I'm probably going to try it this week.
It involves installing a Windows driver that supports BTRFS partitions.
Here's the video guide I found.
An alternative is to bind mount the appcompat folder from your linux steam into the steam library on your windows drive.
I really hope Bazzite manages to smooth out the last few snags and use cases for dual-boot so that I can recommend it to more non-techy people without needing to explain stuff like this or the unintuitive process of importing installed windows games into Lutris.
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There might be some cases even for single-player games where DRM platform-locks you into Windows but that's rare from my understanding.
I haven't encountered this problem myself.
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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?
Remmina for Remote Desktop, awesome piece of software.
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I haven't encountered this problem myself.
Like I said, it's rare especially for games, it's more common in productivity software though.....
cough Adobe... cough
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This isn't exactly what I recommend. Only in the case the hardware is bleeding edge, as in, it was released less than 6 month ago, then check in which Kernel version it starts to be supported, as well as check the Kernel version shipping with the distribution you are interested in installing. Distro Kernel version >= Kernel version where the driver starts to be included, no problems. Otherwise, check a distro that has more frequent upgrades.
Things to check: GPU, CPU, WiFi chip, Ethernet chip. In windows you can find the information in the device manager. On Linux (e.g: test with a live USB) the command
lspciwith display the information.A common case would be: I am interested in Debian because I heard it's the most stable, will my AMD 5070XT work with that ? Probably not very well, better Check Ubuntu non-LTS or Fedora.
I am not recommending op to modify the Kernel from the Linux distro, just consider this point in choosing the distro.
Even on older kernels, if anything hardware like GPUs will benefit more from running newer drivers than a newer kernel, ie. AMD cards from GCN1 up to present-day RDNA3 are actively being supported by Mesa and the dev branch generally tends to have more optimizations especially for newer cards but also older ones as well, than the latest stable branch.
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An alternative is to bind mount the appcompat folder from your linux steam into the steam library on your windows drive.
I really hope Bazzite manages to smooth out the last few snags and use cases for dual-boot so that I can recommend it to more non-techy people without needing to explain stuff like this or the unintuitive process of importing installed windows games into Lutris.
Maybe we're now at a point where it's a good choice for more techy people to use, and that adoption will mean more work gets done on it.
I installed it because I wanted to see how well it would run games. But, I haven't actually played many games on it, not because they don't work (they work great), but because I've found it's so good at everything else too. It made it easy to get around to some projects I'd been putting off.
My machine plays all kinds of fairly recent games extremely well, but Microsoft is ditching Windows 10 support in less than a year, and has decided this machine doesn't qualify for Windows 11. I bet there are lots of other people in the same boat. Bazzite doesn't have to be perfect, but if it can be better than throwing away your old machine, there could be a lot of people switching soon.
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You'll need an original iPod, iPod Mini, or iPod Video or Classic for Rockbox compatibility. iPod Touch is just an iPhone without the phone, so it's locked into iOS.
It’s a 120 GB Classic
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Remmina for Remote Desktop, awesome piece of software.
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AMD drivers: use the built-in MESA drivers that include the official AMD support.
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Gmail: ProtonMail for the service, Kmail for the desktop client.
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Chrome: Firefox, or Librewolf if you care about privacy.
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Office365: LibreOffice for full FOSS or OnlyOfficr for less freedom but more comfort.
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iTunes: depends entirely on what you use it for, but I buy my music mostly off of BandCamp these days.
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MuseScore: MuseScore
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Norton: Why were you using Norton in the first place? It's practically a virus itself. If you need an antivirus on Linux, you might want ClamAV/ClamTK for something that runs locally only, or Microsoft Defender for Linux.
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Py-Charm: Py-Charm, VSCode, Vim, Kate/KWrite
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Remote Desktop to iOS: I got nothin'
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Star Citizen: Star Citizen
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Steam: Steam
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VPN: Wireguard
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Windows Games: install locally using Wine and then add to Steam as a non-Steam game to use Proton for better support.
Windows 10: run it in a VM if you still need it, or keep it on a separate SSD and dual boot into that.
Nice list. Why KMail over Thunderbird, I wonder?
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It’s a 120 GB Classic
Then it'll support Rockbox. I would recommend flash-retrofitting it for long-term reliability if it hasn't been retrofitted already, though, the spinning rust is a known weak point on older iPods.
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Nice list. Why KMail over Thunderbird, I wonder?
Kmail is simple and to the point, and at least in my experience is easier to set up. Bonus, if youre on KDE, it integrates very nicely.
It's also more performant than Thunderbird.
