Ever got that feeling that your PC doesn’t do what you want and that it seems malicous and intentional?
Switch to Linux where at least you know that when you hit a brick wall it’s an honest bug!
Just making some fun ;) But seriously the main reason is switched to Linux is that it at least tries to be the best os for the user, unlike windows or mac os, which tries to be tge best os for the company that is selling it, which just happens to include not pissing of it’s user too much, but a little bit is ok from ms and apples point of view.
Piper is also used by Torsten-voice and many other models are available. Its brilliant and like 2,5 steps away from implementation in screen readers and TTS engines. I hope this happens soon as the current engines are unbearable.
Espeak on Android for some reason is better than on KDE
If I'm being totally honest, my primary use-case is gaming. I only have linux installed on my device, and if a game doesn't work, I simply play other things and hope it will eventually work.
Sometimes, with some effort, you can get windows programs to work using wine. For example, I was able to run Mod Organizer 2 to mod skyrim without issues. If that fails and your software won't work in wine, you could either find alternative native linux software or just dual-boot. I used to do that to play VR games in windows 10 since I've had issues running them in linux. Another option is to run a windows Virtual Machine whenever you need whatever software you can't get working, but there's pretty bad performance limitations unless you can get hardware passthrough working.
What is a reliable yet affordable option to get started?
Unfortunately, good affordable hardware on which Linux is properly supported is hard to get by. I’m personally fond of vendors like (in alphabetical order) Framework, NovaCustom, Star Labs, System76, Tuxedo. But other vendors like ASUS, Dell, HP and Lenovo are known to sell devices that do a considerable job at supporting Linux; consider to check the compatibility/support for their devices through resources like linux-hardware.org.
Are my concerns based in reality or is Linux going to be able to handle everything windows does without issues?
Regarding video types; I don’t think you should have any problems regarding those; on some distros it might not be supported by default, but that should be solvable with a single command. Relying on flatpaks^[1]^ instead is another viable solution and is enabled by default on a lot of distros. Moving on to word document templates; I suppose the suite of cloud-based services found in Microsoft 365 should work regardless. As for the question if the templates would work on LibreOffice, ONLYOFFICE and the like; I simply don’t know. On to familiarity of OS and using it for business purposes; most distros that are friendlier towards newer users have been setup with sane defaults. Therefore, I don’t think there’s a lot that could go wrong as long as you’re interacting with a GUI. When interacting with a command-line interface, note that information found on the internet is often times outdated. Therefore, if you’re hesitant or unsure; consider interacting with the community for some help. We’re all in this together!
is Linux going to be able to handle everything windows does without issues?
You should be totally fine aside from some software that’s known to not support Linux at all.
What else might I need to know to use Linux comfortably from the get go?
Ask yourself the following questions:
To what degree are you interested to learn how it all works and to experience what Linux offers?
If you see it primarily as a means to an end, then pick a distro that does an excellent job at accommodating your workflow without requiring you to relearn more than necessary.
If instead, interest in Linux itself is the main driving force behind the switch, then please be mindful that the Linux rabbit hole is very real.
Is it going to take a lot of time and effort to get Linux running how I need it to?
Somewhat related to the previous question*. Like, there are distros out there that I can install for my grandfather and he wouldn’t even notice the difference. But even some (relatively) mainstream-distros can be daunting for so-called power users of Windows. E.g. I would argue I was your average Windows-user; play games, browse the internet, email, write documents, video-editing, run software required for my studies etc. It took me about two weeks before I was ‘comfortable’ on Linux. And even then, some of the software I used for e.g. video-editing just didn’t want to play nice^[2]^.
So, yeah, sell me on Linux, please.
If you want freedom and control over your devices, there’s simply no viable alternative.
Software management on Linux -at least on the surface- is closer to Android/iOS than to Windows. You should rarely (if at all) feel the need to find software through your browser. Instead, you should interact with so-called package managers. This can be achieved through either a command-line interface or a storefront with a GUI that behaves like those found on Android/iOS etc. Coming back to Flatpak; this is an (upcoming) universal (read: (mostly) distro-agnostic) package manager that tries to solve a lot of problems that traditional package managers have had. There’s still a lot of ongoing work for it to achieve its design-goals to the fullest, but even in its current iteration it works excellent and therefore it’s unsurprising to find it enabled by default on a significant chunk of the Linux landscape. Software that are packaged using this technology are referred to as flatpaks (or flatpak if singular).
In retrospect, this seems to be primarily rooted in the fact that my machine isn’t that powerful in the first place. On Windows, it managed because it was better optimized for it. Unfortunately, on Linux, this was not the case.
What software are you using that is keeping you on windows?
FWIW, the last version of windows I’ve run was WinME circa 2001ish… I’ve been on Linux since '99 or so. You can certainly get by for day to day stuff. The only thing holding you back is going to be pretty niche.
Ill do my usual name drop of zorin os linux distro. its maine thing is windows compatibility and comes with play on linux and wine preinstalled and setup. Also comes with many linux applications installed out of box. I think its the best shot for an easy move over but if it does not work that does not mean it can't be done but its gonna be a bit of work more than likely.
I’m a CPA and my PC runs Linux, but also has a Windows VM for when I need Excel (unfortunately the open source alternatives just don’t cut it, and I’m guessing it’s similar for someone who relies on Word the way accountants rely on Excel), and my work laptop runs Windows.
If you ever edit PDFs with Acrobat Pro, there’s no good Linux equivalent that I’ve found for that either. It can be done, but you’ll need a couple of different programs depending on what you need to edit in the PDF.
In general I’d say that you can run your business in Linux, but it is probably not the best choice.
I love Linux since switching nearly a year ago. Yet, I still once in a while find myself in situations where I screw up and I think to myself “Oh, I’m glad this is not my work computer”. If you have no experience with Linux from before, maybe you should consider getting a personal laptop, install Linux on that, and get comfortable using it before transitioning your business to it. That way, the first time you accidentally uninstall your desktop environment (I managed to do this not once, but twice…), it is not 10 minutes before an important client meeting.
I generally just avoid it, otherwise I use it on windows, I still use dual boot with windows and Linux, will probably stop after w10 stops getting security updates since I don’t really care all that much about windows specific stuff
As far as video types are concerned, Linux’s multimedia codec support is much wider & more flexible than Windows via Windows Media Player. The app Celluloid for Linux (based on MPV) supports everything under the sun
I don’t think every distro comes with this. How is it a positive in that case? I could install VLC on just about everything (including Windows) and have a similar experience.
VLC isn’t a native Windows app, as it isn’t a native Linux app. Celluloid uses native styling on GNOME systems & is super easy to install with any package manager GUI that supports Flatpak. Installing apps on Linux is always easier by a long shot compared to Windows, especially with Flatpak.
I don’t know what is default on most distros, but it is so easy to change in this case that it is hard to even consider the default media player relevant compared to on Windows where there are fewer options for apps like VLC that actually give you a native experience
Unfortunately alternatives for everything don’t exist. Adobe products, CAD and certain games just will not run under wine. I tried dual booting, but it became too much of a hassle to have to reboot my computer 4-5 times a day
I have a 2TB SSD and a 1TB SSD. My Windows VM is allocated 100GB, so it really isn’t bad at all. I use VirtualBox and it starts up basically instantly.
I just realized I have an oldish laptop with Windows on it though so I’m thinking maybe I should just remote into that instead…derp
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