I had to test/fix something at work and I set up a Windows VM because it was a bug specific to Windows users. Once I was done, I thought, “Maybe I should keep this VM for something.” but I couldn’t think of anything that wasn’t a game (which probably wouldn’t work well in a VM anyway) or some super specific enterprise software I don’t really use.
I also am more familiar with the Apple ecosystem than the Microsoft one so maybe I’m just oblivious to what’s out there. Does anyone out there dual boot or use a VM for a non-game, non-niche industry Windows exclusive program?
Acrobat Reader. There are a handful of fillable forms that only really work properly in the official Adobe reader.
There are alternatives
For the life of me, I tried every single pdf reader on Linux, none gets close to Adobe reader, in terms of compatibility, tools and nice UI. Every time I found the perfect one on Linux, days later I realised my collaborators couldn’t see my highlights (or something of the sorts).
After trying 6 or 7 different alternatives for some very important government forms, I gave up and set up a VM. I do use other PDF readers whenever I can, but if someone is using features specific to Adobe Reader (outside the PDF standard), it’s effectively a closed spec and there aren’t alternatives for those documents.
Anymore, Wine can run anything I care to run.
I use LTspice and some ham radio software. Everything runs on wine, so I don’t bother with a VM.
I used to dual boot for some games back before wine worked well.
non-game, non-niche
Nope, that’s actually strictly my reason for having a dedicated Windows rig. Games, and niche homebrew apps.
Same. I went through all the trouble of converting my server machine to debian and then found it’s crazy convoluted to host an Arma server from Linux.
I made a VM to host it.
excel for vba support
Yeah, that makes sense. I’m not an irrational hater of Microsoft — maybe a little — but Excel is very good. The people who need Excel, often genuinely need Excel, specifically.
And Numbers on the macOS ecosystem is shockingly bad. Like, I’d rather barebones Gnumeric from 10 years ago for my purposes.
I ain’t no hardcore Excel user so can’t speak for others, but I’ve been able to completely switch to Excel Online and use Office Scripts and Power Automate for tasks for which I used VBA previously. In fact, Power Automate has been great for doing stuff like updating workbooks through scheduled or event-driven flows, without even having to open Excel. I can see VBA going away soon with these technologies.
With the state of O365 these days, there’s zero need for me to have a native MSO install, and this no need for a Windows VM either (for day-to-day/personal stuff). The only reason I still keep Windows VMs though is for occasionally testing random things for work.
Why don’t you use calc?
These are work files and shared between teams, so I’d rather maintain 100% MSO compatibility. :) Also, most of the time these files are on Sharepoint or OneDrive, so it makes it convenient to edit with M365 - don’t need to save files locally and re-upload/sync them.
Oh that makes sense if it is for work. I though you were just using it for personal use.
The only thing I need on Windows is the Adobe suite for my uni graphic design stuff. I could use GIMP, darktable, Krita, etc, but my lectures teach us how things work on the Adobe suite. I use FOSS when it is for personal stuff though.
https://github.com/Gictorbit/photoshopCClinux
I have been using this on linux during my studies. But there are also newer versions “packaged” by other people on github.
I’m sure the rest of the adobe suit can be installed in the same way with some tinkering.
Adobe CS is the industry standard in some fields. You should absolutely learn them if you’re in school for that.
The FOSS equivalents sadly aren’t quite up to par with Adobe for professional work yet.
We keep saying that but part of me wonders if it is a skill issue
It’s very clunky. I could see you jumping through 10 different hoops to get it half right. Maybe in the future adobe ports it over or there’s a good open source competitor
I have a copy of Microsoft Office 2013 on a Windows 11 VM.
the ghost of libreoffice is calling your name…
Only for very specific terrible chip vendor software which I hate but have no choice but to use because certification reasons.
Lots of firmware and driver updater programs seem to require Windows or Mac and I can’t get them to run with wine. For example, I need Win to update the firmware on my car stereo and my 8bitdo game controllers. I also need it to run the tax software my CPA uses.
Yeah needed it for my monitor. I didn’t want to figure out USB passthrough so I just installed Windows on a > 50,000 powered on hours HDD and booted from that. Then once I was done I put it about as far away as I could from my PC.
USB passthough is a single click for future reference. Just make sure you install virtio from the fedora project for windows VMs
I don’t know about car stereos, but at least for 8bitdo controllers, you can update the firmware via fwupd. And if the firmware isn’t available on LVFS, you can download the blob install it manually using fwupd: https://ladis.cloud/blog/posts/firmware-update-8bitdo.html
I did this for my 8bitdo Ultimate Bluetooth controller, and it worked great.
It’s a requirement for my Business Comms course to use Word, to the point where the prof will walk around to ensure you have Word open. The online version is awful and often drops sentences when I type so I dont use it. I could never get the darn thing working over WINE or Cassowary, so I have a VM that basically just runs that.
I hate to be a widows advocate but they do keep improving the online version all the time so if you have not tried it in a long while maybe try again to see if some of the issues have been fixed. I feel like it gets better and better every time I (accidentally) open documents in the browser. It’s still crap in general but that’s more of a general word thing.
Family tree maker. https://www.mackiev.com/ftm/
Why not Gramps which is open sourced and works flawlessly in Windows, Limux, and macOS? 🙂
Sadly, a few. I’d love to know if anyone knows any excellent Linux-equivalents for these:
- MakeMKV1: For ripping DVDs & Blurays
- Bulk Rename Utility – For bulk-renaming files
- Exact Audio Copy – For accurately ripping audio CDs
- Logitech G Hub2: *For controlling peripherals’ LED profiles & DPI presets
- Mp3tag3: The best fucking metadata editor ever made, that’s what!
- Paint.NET: For raster image editing (more feature-complete than MS Paint but less complex than GIMP).
- Playnite4: Platform-agnostic game launcher/manager
- Star Wars: The Old Republic: Star Wars MMO that was better pre-7.0.
- Mod Organizer 2: A mod management software that is open-source but not available on Linux? Heresy, I say!
1 Technically, it does have a Linux version, but you have to compile it yourself, and I don’t know shit about that kind of stuff. Lol.
2 I know OpenRGB exists, and it’s good enough for my needs when it comes to LED management, but it doesn’t seem to be able to control DPI presets like G Hub.
3 I tried it back in like 2016 in Ubuntu 4.x and it worked just fine in Wine, but I’m unsure if it still does as I haven’t tried it since then really. Still, any Linux-native software that can do shit just as good is something I’d love to know about. :)
4 Yes, I know there are alternatives like GameHub, Lutris, etc. but frankly none of them seem to come close to Playnite in terms of UI, UX, and sheer functionality.
Have you tried Asunder for CDs?
I have not! I may have to check that out! Thank you!
I’m old and don’t really sail the high seas these days but does Handbrake not rip DVDs and BluRays?
Handbrake will rip DVDs, but not Blu Rays. That’s were good ol’ MakeMKV comes in.
I rip with MakeMKV (which will do DVDs as well) and then convert/encode the MKVs with Handbrake.
I do the conversion/encoding because the ripped files can be 35-50 GBs for regular Blu Rays (UHD Blu Rays are even bigger!) and I can get them down to 3-8 GBs with minimal quality loss.
I then toss the smaller MKVs on my jellyfin server.
EDIT: Handbrake CAN rip Blu Rays but only if they arent copy protected. MakeMKV is able to rip protected Blu Rays and DVDs.
Exactly. I do the same thing: rip with MakeMKV then re-encode with Handbrake. :)
For MakeMKV you can just use the flatpak.
Thank you! I was not aware of this!
For an audio tagger I use Kid3
MakeMKV: For ripping DVDs & Blurays
MakeMKV is available on Linux as Flatpak and works out of the box: https://flathub.org/apps/com.makemkv.MakeMKV
Bulk Rename Utility
Probably a tough one since most people will use the command line to bulk rename files. I do use ChatGPT sometimes to create rename commands for me that are more complicated.
Exact Audio Copy
I use Sound Juicer now, used fre:ac before.
https://flathub.org/apps/org.gnome.SoundJuicer
https://flathub.org/apps/org.freac.freac
Logitech G Hub I know OpenRGB exists, and it’s good enough for my needs when it comes to LED management, but it doesn’t seem to be able to control DPI presets like G Hub.
Piper can do DPI presets: https://flathub.org/apps/org.freedesktop.Piper
Mp3tag
I used Mp3tag on Windows and switched to Picard, I like it even more than Mp3tag now: https://flathub.org/apps/org.musicbrainz.Picard
Is GIMP really that complex for this use case? I use GIMP to do simple stuff like paint, rescale images, blur things, fill things, … https://flathub.org/apps/org.gimp.GIMP
Playnite
I don’t use anything out of Steam often but If you don’t like Lutris, maybe Heroic for GOG and Epic? https://flathub.org/apps/com.heroicgameslauncher.hgl
Mod Organizer 2
r2modman has native support for Linux: https://github.com/ebkr/r2modmanPlus
There’s also support for one-click installation of Mod Organizer 2 with steamtinkerlaunch: https://github.com/sonic2kk/steamtinkerlaunch/wiki/Mod-Organizer-2
MakeMKV is available on Linux as Flatpak and works out of the box: https://flathub.org/apps/com.makemkv.MakeMKV
I was not aware of this. Thank you! :)
Just because I didn’t see you respond about it, Piper is great, so I second that user’s recommendation! I highly recommend you check to see if your peripherals are supported, as I use it on my Logitech mice to edit my mappings, DPI settings, and profiles (and while I don’t use the function, you can edit your LEDs in Piper as well). https://github.com/libratbag/piper
I tried Lutris first and it was okay but left something to be desired. I switched to Heroic and am in love with it. It works so well and the UI is great
Same with my multiple attempts at Lutris.
And ooh, Heroic has a Windows client! I can try it out now! Thanks!
Edit: So, after a couple hours of fiddling around with it, Heroic Launcher seems really great! Only a few flaws that I can see so far, like not being able to sort by category (you can filter by category, though) or being able to edit any metadata fields for a game unless it’s been manually added, like any of these for instance (screenshot from Playnite):
Not deal-breaking by any means, but it can be very annoying, especially when you get instance like BioShock 2 being listed before Bioshock 1 in the game library. Lol.
Edit 2: Yeaaaaaaaah I don’t know what the hell just happened, but I refreshed my GOG library and all of a sudden like 2/3rds of my games are now listed as “uninstallable”. …Yeah, I’m going back to Playnite. I hope it’s better by the time Windows 10 is unsupported because there’s no freaking way I’m downgrading to Windows 11. Lol.
Interesting. I use it on Linux and haven’t had the issue of uninstallable games. I wish Playnite had a Linux client
I do too! Playnite is AMAZING. I’ve been using it for a couple years now and it is incredibly stable and so versatile. AND it’s got community plugins!
Microsoft Word for my resume. I’m not sure what I can do to change that, I don’t want to risk a(n accidentally) badly formatted resume losing me an opportunity…
Libre Office is pretty good on Linux now. That is what the family uses now. No complains. Points for not being Microsoft’s data mill slave.
Onlyoffice is even better for me. Super compatible with MS
Convert to PDF before submitting a resume. PDFs aren’t vulnerable to that kind of version difference messing things up.
Its definitely possible some other word processor would mess up the PDF conversion, but moving the formatting issues to before you submit anything lets you fully control the problem.
You should submit resumes as a PDF. This both guarantees it will look the same everywhere (regardless what you made it in, whether it’s Word or Latex or Google Docs), and it will prevent shady recruiters from editing it, which sadly does happen.
Use libreoffice and export as PDF if you can. If you can’t most if not all online applications have a preview feature
Foobar2000.
By far the best, most customizable local music player app ever. Plus it’s open source.
Plus it’s open source.
no it’s not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foobar2000
The core is closed source, whereas the SDK is licensed under the Three-Clause BSD license.
My bad, thanks for the correction.
I loved Foobar2000 back in the day. I’m glad it lives on.
Yep. A couple of years ago they released the 2.0 version, which supports 64-bit architecture and allows for dark mode support as well.
Oops, I just commented about Foobar2k before seeing this comment.
Just want to mention that it does run on Linux as a Snap (though then you have to have a Snap installed, lol). I’m sure it runs fine with regular Wine too.
I haven’t had much luck installing via wine or bottles at all. Hasn’t ever worked properly for me. I’m not bothered enough to install the Snap either, lol.
I have a Windows VM that I run it in instead, please deadbeef is good enough for my Linux system.
Lol, Snap.
Wish Canonical would just kill it already
This is the one Windows app I just cannot find a good alternative to. Deadbeef comes the closest, but even it is laggy when searching my library, sometimes crashes when I add too many files, and has a mediocre search function.
Tell me about it.
I also use deadbeef because of the plug-in support, although I haven’t experienced much lag myself.
The media library management definitely doesn’t come anywhere close to FB2K, though, sadly.
The media library is the ONE reason I haven’t switched to Deadbeef. Everything else seems close enough.
Annoyingly, there is apparently an updated Medialib plugin for Deadbeef, but only on the Mac, since the dev is a Mac person.
!boinc@sopuli.xyz if I am donating GPU power to science research. There is a BOINC client for Linux but packaging is a hot mess (though getting better) and compatibility with graphics drivers is hit-or-miss. So any crunching rigs I have w/ GPUs all run Windows.
That seems inefficient
