I’m a student, and I play games. So mostly I’m doing MS Office and Steam, but I’ve got a lot of random niche stuff I do too. Like I’m using Unity to develop a HoloLens app for a research lab, and I just use VSCode as my IDE. I use Bitwig Studio for audio production, Blender, Freetube, and some proprietary software from my University.
I guess I’m just wondering about compatibility issues I might face, and how to approach those. Are there just some programs that I won’t be able to use on Linux? I’ve heard about Wine, but it all feels conceptual. Like you ‘use’ wine to run windows programs but what does that mean? Do I run it like a VM? But it’s not an emulator?
I’m used to going to the internet, finding an .exe, and installing programs. But Linux has a package manager that you should do that through instead? But I’ve also seen a bunch of download links for Linux software online, so is there a difference in downloading something from the internet and installing a ‘Linux’ version of it, or installing that through a package manager?
Sorry I’m all over the place, i think my brain is a little scattered trying to figure everything out at once haha
you wont be able to use ms office, so either use alternatives or the web version(or through a vm)
for most software you want to use the packages provided by your distribution maintainers, as that removes the need to deal with conflicts, often provides some sane defaults and makes it so that for the most part you only have to trust the team of maintainers rather than every software developer in the world.
also you wont be able to play valo and some other shooters, though eac and battleye are both supported and besides native and wine/proton support u can play most games on kvm passthrough vms with little performance loss
No worries, it’s a lot of details to take in having never been part of it. The thing about the open source world is that there’s no central authority figure to say “this is what we’re doing, stop doing that other stuff”. So instead, anyone can do anything without consideration for what else is out there.
So yeah, package managers are one way to install software, there are many different package managers out there, and virtually every distro ships with the one that fits their design philosophy best. Package managers tend to point to a set of repositories (servers full of packages) that are managed by your distro maintainers. Depending on the package manager, a “package” may be a pre-built binary, or it might just reference some source code and scripts to build it. Either way, the purpose is to make it easy to install packages that someone has theoretically taken a look at and given a thumbs up to, indicating that it should work on your distro, in combination with the other packages in the repo (theoretically).
But not every single binary out there has been inspected by every distro maintainer. There are often licenses that prevent them from re-hosting proprietary binaries on their servers, and even if the license is permissive, it’s not uncommon for maintainers to disallow packages that aren’t open source. So ex. Discord has a Linux binary you can download and use, but it’s not commonly served from a package manager.
“Wine Is Not an Emulator” because it’s not emulating hardware. At the end of the day, windows and Linux are both running on your x86-64 CPU. In theory you should be able to point the Program Counter at the first instruction in a binary, and the CPU won’t care which OS it’s running on…until it tries to make a system call, or jump to a windows-specific dll. Wine basically tries to create an environment so that when a binary tries to do something that is normally only offered by the windows runtimes, there is code loaded to do what it expects.
These days, I recommend trying out Bottles to run arbitrary windows apps. It’s user-friendly, you create “containers” for specific windows apps, and it uses wine under the hood.
And then you have things like “flatpack” which are kind of like package managers where the package is a bottle/container, but the software it runs could be for any platform (Linux or windows). There are pros and cons to this (pros usually being stability, cons usually relating to the size of the containers on disk).
There are people who are adamantly for/against each thing, which is why distros exist in the first place. That’s just how the open source world works. I recommend finding something that works for you and not feeling obligated to worry about the 10 other ways people have gotten it working.
so is there a difference in downloading something from the internet and installing a ‘Linux’ version of it, or installing that through a package manager?
Installing with a package manager is easier, since it handles stuff for you. You’ll usually only download software from your browser if it’s not available in your distro’s package manager.
Package managers may have multiple repositories, these are like lists of packages, and may differ from distro to distro.
A good analogy is thinking of a package repo (short for repository) as a library, and the package manager a librarian helping you search for a book.
‘use’ wine to run windows programs but what does that mean? Do I run it like a VM? But it’s not an emulator?
It’s a compatibility layer, to put it simply (since I’m not a WINE expert) it converts Windows stuff to Linux stuff, instead of straight up running a Windows VM.
None of the comments here explain how WINE works, so allow me to elaborate a bit.
WINE is like a translator or a compatibility layer. When a Windows program tries to perform a function that would normally require Windows, WINE steps in and translates that request into something the Linux system can understand and process.
As you may know, Windows programs work by making API calls (eg using Win32 APIs) to operate and perform basic tasks. WINE takes these API calls and translates them to their Linux equivalents (POSIX calls, to be specific, which means Wine can run on several Unix-like systems). This way, when a program asks to say, open a file, or display something on the screen, WINE converts these requests into a form that Linux can execute.
WINE’s approach is about providing compatibility for user-level applications rather than replicating the internal workings of the Windows kernel. It includes various libraries and components that mimic the behavior of those in Windows. This helps in executing the Windows applications as if they are running in their native environment.
The core of it is NTDLL. NTDLL.dll is a core Windows library that provides low-level system functions to interact with the Windows NT kernel. In WINE, ntdll.dll is adapted to work with the Linux kernel instead.
Then you have the Win32 API libraries, providing the basic APIs that Windows applications use for functions like window management, text rendering, and system calls. Examples include user32.dll (for user-interface functions), gdi32.dll (for graphics device interface functions), and kernel32.dll (for basic system functions).
Shell32.dll for handling Windows Shell API functions related to file operations and the user interface.
DirectX Support, for running games and multimedia applications. WINE implements parts of DirectX, like Direct3D for 3D graphics, DirectDraw for 2D graphics, and DirectSound for sound processing. Note that WINE’s implementation converse Direct3D calls to OpenGL, whereas there are community projects like DXVK and VKD3D which translates these calls to Vulkan.
Finally there’s a Registry Implementation, so that applications that need to read or write to the registry can function correctly.
Of course, there’s a LOT more to it, the above is just an example of some key components. Basically Wine has reimplemented (coded from scratch) various libraries and executables that, on the outside, look like standard Windows dlls/exes, but internally they use POSIX APIs to talk to the Linux kernel and other POSIX components. This, along with the Syscall translations, bridges the gap between Windows programs and Linux.
Now naturally, this is neither a perfect, nor a complete implementation of Windows APIs; plus there are some things which Wine will never implement (such as ntoskrnl.exe), so not every program will work as expected - so check out the Wine AppDB for compatibility reports with various Windows apps.
Bitwig and Blender work great on Linux, as well as most games. MS Office and the proprietary apps will need a separate Windows install. Wine is a compatibility layer that essentially translates the Windows files into something that your Linux OS can use. It works great for some things, like games, but isnt recommended/doesn’t work for others, like Office or Adobe suite. Personally I’d recommend finding the alternatives for the programs you need on Windows and trying them out, while keeping the original programs in your Windows install. You can get used to the workflow of the new programs and decide if switching is a viable thing for you. And if not, hey now you’re comfortable with another set of programs just in case you need them in the future.
How can you even use a system with only 3 browsers installed? Quick, install edge! Also don’t forget brave, the famous crypto scam that looks like a browser and is run by a homophobe asshole.
I don’t like Brave a lot, but it’s ok if other people use it, I don’t like the way it integrates cryptocurrency too :c I prefer physical money!!! Also I dislike homophobia, if the creator is homophobic, then please change u.u
My big question would be why are you starting with a dual boot? I would recommend trying each one with a liveUSB or in a virtual machine and simply do a single boot with the one you like better. There’s likely little need for you to actually maintain two distros unless you have a very niche use case that one distro can’t solve.
My advice would be to just relax and realize that the underlying OS is 90% the same regardless of what distro you choose. All the discussion you see on different distros, package managers, snaps, wayland, etc. are all the other 10%. It really doesn’t matter what distro you start on as long as it’s a general purpose distro (both of the ones in your OP are): once you learn the first 90% of linux, you’ll develop your own tastes, and then you’ll be able to decide on the remaining 10%.
That’s an even worse idea imo. If you’re not very familiar with bcd and grub you will find it hard to boot into Linux once windows decides to “fix the boot issue”.
Better to have a separate drive so you can select by picking boot device on startup.
I know it’s possible to dual boot, but it will be some issues at some point
I have an SSD I’m using for windows and a separate one that I want to install Linux on. I want the ability to remove one of them and keep using the other. From what I understand I can set the BIOS boot order to load Linux first and use the Grub to select which OS to boot?
I realize now I should have been way more specific with how I worded things in the beginning.
Yeah that’s exactly how I do it. Never had a problem with dual booting Windows, just make sure your Linux drive is the default boot drive and then you can select Linux or Windows in GRUB/systemd-boot
I want to maintain my Windows 10 install for now as a sort of fallback. I have a lot of random software installed for my university classes, and I don’t know about all the compatibility issues I might face with those. And letting it sit there in the background in case I need it for something feels safer than jumping head first into a new OS.
Trying out liveUSB or VM stuff seemed like it would be an extra hurdle in transitioning to Linux. Like, I want to get settled in and actually use it as a daily thing, not just browse the internet a bit here and there. If I don’t like the distro I choose, I can always just install another one, right?
You can indeed always install another distro. You can also run many distros in “live cd” mode, just boot from the install media and choose the live option without installing. It’s actually a great way to see if a distro will play nice with your hardware and LAN and peripherals out of the box.
Oh, my misunderstanding, I thought you wanted to dual boot OpenSuse and KDE Plasma. Dual booting Windows 10 and one of those makes way more sense, especially if you have niche university software that was probably written 20 years ago for Windows XP service pack 2, is already barely compatible with Windows 10, and almost certainly never had a linux version. You definitely don’t want to gamble on abandoning Windows completely until after you graduate.
And yes, once you get comfortable installing a distro, it gets pretty easy to just install a new one.
Can you easily switch drives in your system? I’ll often do that on my computer because little m.2 SSDs are so darn cheap now. It’s easier and cheaper to pick up a little 64GB drive for one off projects than it is to do a proper backup and restore.
Also, I’d just go with Tumbleweed. I don’t distro hop like I used to, but that’s because as everyone else is saying, most of the distros have gotten really good. Most of the time, my little projects are trying out specific features of a different distros. So I’ll just pop a new drive in, test drive it, then either switch back or not.
A live USB would let you play around in a desktop environment for a bit to see if you like it before jumping in the deep end with it. But if you’ve already tried out KDE plasma and know you’ll like it, then you’re probably fine. I agree that you won’t become familiar with a full distro without data persistence and repeated use.
Maybe at least live boot gnome if you haven’t tried that one yet. Gnome and KDE are the most fully featured desktop environments, so they’re natural choices for users coming from win/mac.
Yeah, you can always install another, but if you are going to do that every day or two before settling on one, maybe consider installing virtual box and trying out the distros like that first. Of course, if you’re in a VM, it can be a challenge to get proper hardware acceleration if you’re going to try out gaming.
At the end of the day, I think dual booting is a good idea, as long as you only use windows when it’s your only option. That’s what I do. It’s easy enough to reboot if I need to play a game or use a windows specific app. More consistent than dealing with QEMU or something.
This is the sensible thing to do. Try a bunch of distros using either USB or as Virtual Machines.
It’ll save you a lot of heartache when you eventually kill the bootloader, the display driver or both (and you will, it is part or the learning process).
I don’t understand the issue here. Does that mean I can kill my BIOS bootloader somehow? Or the display driver? And how would screwing up drivers on one SSD with Linux affect my other SSD with Windows? Sorry if these are dumb questions, I’m just trying to get my head around as much of this as I can.
Windows likes to pretend it’s the only OS in the world so it can overwrite the bootloader and you lose access to the Linux install.
But if you use separate disks for each there’s a simple solution if your BIOS has a quick boot selection: install each bootloader on its respective disk and use the BIOS selector at boot.
Alternatively, install the Linux bootloader on the Linux disk; it will autodetect Windows and offer it as a boot option, but Windows won’t be aware of Linux. In BIOS you set Linux as permanent boot disk in this case.
I'm also a beginner and I noticed that debian let me install a lot of possible desktops. So I installed all of them, and I can switch on the password screen which one to open. I'm trying some stuff this way.
If you notice issues with Wayland screen sharing or flatpak file manager not opening, try uninstalling Gnome/KDE. The xdg-desktop-portals for different desktops sometimes don’t work correctly while concurrently installed. If you don’t notice issues, it should work fine.
My writing instructor always tells us to use the grammar checking in Word and there’s the occasional formatting or compatibility issue. Nothing that I haven’t been able to get through but it has resulted in a couple marks every here and there
I want to write a script for this app config backup stuff once. Also working on Windows, but maan I have low motivation on that one haha.
You can use your configs, relevant for me are
firefox: ~/.mozilla/firefox can stay if you keep using Fedora Firefox
thunderbird ~/.thunderbird/ copied to ~/.var/app/org.mozilla.Thunderbird/.thunderbird
libreoffice from somewhere to the flatpak directory (useful if you have a custom dictionary, autocompletions or interface)
qgis, element
Many other apps use the same structure with a profile folder so easily transferrable.
In firefox and thunderbird you either delete the whole contents and replace everything, or you only paste the contents of your *-default-release folder in the new default release folder, after deleting its contents.
Flatpak apps need to be ran once, to create the ~/.var/app/ subfolder. After that you can close them and replace everything. If you delete that folder, or move it somewhere as a backup, the settings are reset to default. Pretty cool.
If you want to try the new image-based distro model, I can highly recommend ublue and their installer. It has all the codecs out of the box and also an nvidia version which will never break basically, if it should, you can roll back to your previous system that worked.
It is a very cool distro model, and ublue has loots of customizations. If you never tried KDE I recommend their kinoite-main (do not use any -nokmods, these images are outdated as they removed kmods from -main !)
Great tool! Funny that after removing snapd all those mounts appear. Afaik a reboot solved this for me, did it on a Ubuntu install already, and everything works fine
In general, no. Better way is to download packages with that tools from your distro repository, transfer them via flash key and install. You also have to download dependencies, but CLI tools usually have few of them and there are good chances they are already installed.
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