I’ve run Linux for years on servers and in VMs in VMware Workstation, but not my main OS because of games. I’ve tried before but games just didn’t work well. Tried again recently and the games I’m playing now worked with no issues with Lutris and Steam. I could already do “everything else” on Linux so this is the longest I’ve gone without booting back to my Windows disk. Already have a Kali VM in virt-manager and will add a Windows VM if I hit an application snag. But so far haven’t had any app issues. If this continues I’ll be wiping the Windows disk to make more space for Linux.
Yes because Valve maintains their own compositor. You can enable that HDR support on desktop as well through some workarounds but it’s not really usable outside the SteamDeck yet.
Every single piece of software i need for my job is only available on windows. No getting around it, there are literally no alternatives. I’m not working with anything government-related.
If it’s RGB stuff OpenRGB is a revelation. For mouses try Piper which is great too. Both unify the configuration of a lot of different brands in professional grade FOSS applications. There’s also the commandline app Headset-Control for which some small GUI frontends exists.
Know nothing about graphic tablets, trackballs or steering wheels but I heard from good experiences. When it comes to VR though…
I’m talking more about force feedback peripherals, head tracking stuff, and especially plugins that work with telemetry from all the different game APIs.
Most FFB steering wheels will function at a basic level, and you can get something like a StreamDeck working with 3rd party software for basic button pressing but getting the whole ecosystem going is currently not possible but may some day work!
At least FFB for my basic saitek gamepad works out of the box in proton games and even in some emulators like dolphin. Haven’t had steering wheels or pedals but always wanted. They are surely a different beast to reverse engineer. I have no doubt racing gear manufacturers will increasingly take care of linux compatibility with the momentum in linux gaming. And then there are all these OSS wizards already working on the most exotic HW. SteamDeck I don’t know. I don’t see that many linux steamers sadly.
I’m a bit of a reverse engineer myself (insert william dafoe meme) and had a successful pull request for controlling rgb lighting on my headset. Nothing compared to steering wheels or the like but I never did reverse engineering before and knew just a little C and it worked and was fun. Thing was I needed Windows to monitor the USB data when switching stuff in the OEM software.
I wish I could wipe my windows drive, but I have to use adobe shit, maya, unity and unreal. those are either too hard to install on linux, too expensive to buy a linux version, or works far inferior or not at all on linux.
hopefully I can be forgiven because I game almost exclusively on linux now.
Same. I’d give anything for viable Linux native Adobe alternatives. I’m trying to force myself to use Inkscape but it just cripples my productivity. I need to find an emotional support group for people who can’t leave their abusive windows relationship.
Same. I’m a graphic designer and I use Adobe and Corel soft. Alternatives suck. Even if they wouldn’t suck, learning to use new software (that does same thing that older software does) after using old soft for 15+ years S U C K S.
The kinda funny thing about Corel is the fact that they once had their own Linux distro, but they don’t have Linux versions of their programs.
should I spin up a matrix space? maybe we can support eachother /hj
honestly I just want to be able to use adobe programs on linux. I need to use substance painter the most, which does have a Linux version surprisingly but it isn’t part of the subscription and only comes in form of a steam program for that specific year of update, so like substance 2022 or whatever. and better yet, it costs like $250.
The problem is mostly a lack of competition in specific fields. And the companies that own the monopoly in their respective niches make it so that any form of competition is either…
immediately acquired and killed
handicapped by market dependencies on pantented features
unable to generate business because customer processes are completely dependant on proprietary solutions
Most of these applications have codebases that are FUCKING ANCIENT. Let’s take a look at Solidworks for example, which is the industry standard for Computer Aided Design for the manufacturing industry. Under the hood, it’s still the same software from the 1990’s. And there is no incentive for Dassault Systemes to rewrite the codebase.
Lots of these giant monopolistic software products have turned into frankenstein-esque monstrosities over the years. I often tell people they are built like backyard playhouses that have been expanded over the years by building an extra story on top, adding a swingset, adding a slide, extending the roof and attaching a rope ladder to the side.
All of this makes for more functionality, but they haven’t really thought about the structural integrity of the original playhouse. In a direct parallel many of these programs have unmaintainable code that no one dares touch because “hey it works, and we need to keep it that way because if we break it we’re no longer getting payed”.
These companies unintentionally hold their businessmodel hostage by choosing profits over innovation and investment in an adaptable codebase.
Which is why it is near impossible for them to support technologies that are different from their original install base. And this is also why they have incentives to make sure they stay in the lead becuase they know damn well that open source movements that get some support and take flight are dangerous to their market share, and by extension their profits.
Blender is probably one of the best examples of what good open source software will do to an industry. The day someone develops a parametric CAD solution that’s platform agnostic and based on open standards we’ll see a lot of engineers ditch Windows for Linux.
And when KiCAD gains enough features to make it able to compete in the enterprise space.
Altium still just has a ton of features that people use every day.
Cloud libraries, multi-channel design, flexpcbs, some good high speed tools, output job files, better curved traces for RF (though kicad melting + teardrop is ahead of altium in my opinion, though more clunky).
I have hope for FreeCAD now that Ondsel is on board pushing the community/enterprise split that OnShape does. They are shooting for a 1.0 next year. Though I think it will take until 2.0 to get it professionally usable.
I haven’t dabbled that much in PCB design but I have seen some good things in KiCAD. All my electro engineer homies assure me Altium’s the way to go for now though. Most of them also happen to be big F(L)OSS nerds so I’m curious to see where KiCAD goes in the future.
FreeCAD is an awesome attempt at building a parametric CAD modeler, though it will need a lot of polish to be usable. Especially on the UX side of things the software could do with a lot of improvement. As far as I know the most difficult part to program for parametric modelers is the actual geometry kernel, which is why so many modelers are based on Parasolid, including the recent hybrid modeler Plasticity. For a F(L)OSS parametric CAD modeler to truly succeed some genius needs to build an open geometry kernel that performs at least close to on par with Parasolid. But that takes a special kind of autistic in order to achieve. Either that or the engineering world needs to collectively decide this needs to happen.
As much as I hope FreeCAD becomes the open source alternative everyone is looking for, it is trying to be everything at once and that might be too ambitious for the current state of the project. I’m secretly hoping we also get a new project sometime soon with a smaller scope.
Most of the games I play don’t run on Linux sadly. Even Lethal Company, which is perfectly fine on Linux, couldn’t be captured by OBS, so I had to switch to Windows before I could stream.
Game compatibility is getting better but still not good
What about with the new… thing. Um. There was a thread about it recently. It did… a thing. A Wayland thing.
Somehow, my exhausted brain managed to turn that into a reasonable search string.
Gamescope. A Wayland compositor that lets you define virtual displays that run overtop of your regular desktop.
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