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I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

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Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#111

Post by rasur »

Gaming is all well and good, but I'd be interested to hear of experiences with moving and using Audio apps (Ableton Live, Cubase and other Steinberg apps, plus many VSTs) from Windows to Linux.

I see Wine, YABridge and LinVST mentioned in searches, but while I've got plenty of Linux experience, I'm time-poor and would prefer to make computers make noises rather than spend my time making things work. I have Reaper which is cross-platform but again, getting the VSTs working would be great (at a bare minimum).

A Mac is not an option here. Any pointers gratefully received!

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#112

Post by ndepoel »

IshKebab wrote: post #81
Saoshyant wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Valve (Steam) spent more than a decade building and refining a translation layer called Proton. Nearly 80% of the vast Steam library is now compatible with Linux to the point they are releasing actual Linux consoles (Steam Deck and Steam Machine). For your regular PC, you can install a gaming-focused distribution like Bazzite to get everything sorted out automatically.

80% is really impressive, but another way to state it is that 20% of the games you try won't work. I don't think I'd put up with that if I was a gamer. I guess maybe it's not evenly distributed. Do a higher percentage of the most popular games work?

That 20% is mostly covered by competitive online multiplayer games that use kernel-level anti-cheat systems which will only work on Windows. There's not a whole lot Valve can do about that, other than continuing to push Linux for gaming and hope that it gets popular enough to create an incentive for anti-cheat providers to start targeting Linux as well.

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#113

Post by louthy »

ExpertAdvisor01 wrote: post #62
louthy wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing is quite as slick as Apple, but companies are popping up doing pretty sleek Linux-first laptops, I have a Starlabs notebook [1] and am waiting for their new Starfighter [2]... [1] https://starlabs.systems/pages/starbook-horizon [2] https://starlabs.systems/pages/starfighter

Batter life claims are very bold. Also the starfighter launches with a 3 year old CPU . Doesn't seem to me like a good deal especially price wise.

Don't buy one then.

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#114

Post by sva_ »

saidinesh5 wrote: post #83
dividedbyzero wrote: post #23

Not saying I'm not considering it given the current political climate, but I'm spoiled by my Macbook Air. The Thinkpad I've been issued for work costs about the same, runs hot like crazy, always has fans running, is cheap-feeling plastic, thicker, heavier, garbage touchpad, weird keyboard layout (printscreen right next to the arrow keys, what were they thinking?), mushy keys, barely serviceable display ... what do I…

I really like my HP Omnibook 14 with the Ryzen AI HX 370 chip.. it's sleek, well built (so far, at least).. insane battery life.. the standby time on Linux is in weeks and the battery life when light browsing/YouTube viewing is easily 9+ hours. Even the finger print sensor finally just works. The touchpad gestures with kwin input actions are as smooth as, if not better than os x. The only thing my work 16" MBP does b…

You can get more than double that battery time with an ARM

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#115

Post by [deleted] »

wbshaw wrote: post #94

Even though the author trivialized the problems he had getting his laptop up and running, there were enough obstacles to keep 90% of non-techies from actually getting it working. How many normies have a USB ethernet laying around and understand enough to uninstall drivers that are interfering with the UI?

[deleted]

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#116

Post by pbalau »

anta40 wrote: post #96
everdrive wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think anyone will build as nice hardware as Apple anytime soon, so I think if that's your primary requirement then any other choice will be a compromise. I don't really like Apple, but it must must acknowledged that even a few basic things (the monitor turning on immediately as I open the screen, the touchpad quality, etc.) seem totally elusive to other manufacturers. Apple's pretty imperfect, and it's sad to…

I'm pretty sure Apple is unavoidable if you work as a mobile app developer. I mean, no iOS SDK for Windows/Linux. If your work area is anything other than it, perhaps the Mac isn't necessary.

> If your work area is anything other than it, perhaps the Mac isn't necessary.

How about photography and video production?

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#117

Post by nickjj »

rasur wrote: post #111

Gaming is all well and good, but I'd be interested to hear of experiences with moving and using Audio apps (Ableton Live, Cubase and other Steinberg apps, plus many VSTs) from Windows to Linux. I see Wine, YABridge and LinVST mentioned in searches, but while I've got plenty of Linux experience, I'm time-poor and would prefer to make computers make noises rather than spend my time making things work. I have Reaper whi…

I can't speak for DAWs but in 2019 when I tried switching to native Linux my Scarlett 2i2 3rd gen USB audio interface did not play nicely with Debian at the time. I'd get an endless amount of crackles and pops during recordings / playback and I spent days going over tons of audio configs / tools (Jack, Alsa, PulseAudio, etc.). They weren't xruns, at least Jack wasn't reporting them as that. Buffer sizes were normal too.

The good news is the same interface today works fine with PipeWire, without needing to tweak anything. I am using Arch this time around.

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#118

Post by ndepoel »

wbshaw wrote: post #94

Even though the author trivialized the problems he had getting his laptop up and running, there were enough obstacles to keep 90% of non-techies from actually getting it working. How many normies have a USB ethernet laying around and understand enough to uninstall drivers that are interfering with the UI?

Windows is not exactly free of this sort of nonsense either. Just recently I built a new PC for a friend, and we wanted to keep using his old SSD and Windows installation. After messing about with Bitlocker recovery keys which was already cumbersome enough, we ran into a catch-22 issue where we needed internet access to be able to log in and verify his Microsoft account, but we needed to install a driver for the new motherboard's networking chipset first, for which you need to be able to log in to an account first. Eventually we found that you can use USB tethering from a phone to gain internet access, for which no special driver is needed, which got around the issue but it was not exactly an obvious solution.

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#120

Post by [deleted] »

Jackknife9 wrote: post #42

I tried to leave Windows 11 for Linux - it just didn't work for me. I installed EndeavourOS onto my main gaming desktop. It worked great for a while and ran all the games I played with my friends. However, one night when I went on to play a game I ran a system update and it seemed to completely break my nvidea drivers - I tried reinstalling them and also using the open source driver. This meant I just couldn't play a…

[deleted]
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