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?
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Foobar2000.
By far the best, most customizable local music player app ever. Plus it’s
open sourcefree.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.
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.
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.
Lol, Snap.
Wish Canonical would just kill it already
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.
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.
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
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.
wsl
I wonder what the state of wsl on wine is
… wine on wsl on wine
confused noises
SolidWorks, fusion360, codesys (plc programming) and many other enterprise grade software sadly only really work on Windows. They do however work okay through a VM but annoying to deal with.
Games now work surprisingly well on Linux so i have no problems there except Sims4 that my girlfriend plays seems to be windows only when bought through origin gamestore
And dont suggest frecad for cad work. Sadly It’s seriously not even close to being competitive.
You can get Fusion360 to work okay-ish in Wine. Probably not good enough for professional use but for my hobby use case it works well enough (sometimes a bit laggy but usable). this does most of the heavy lifting in getting it installed.
Hell, it’s a bit laggy in Windows so that might not even be a Wine problem.
Thanks I’ll check it out
Unsurprisingly it is the gigantic EA application which breaks Sims 4 most of the times. It crashes, Steam notices non zero exit and gives up.
EA isn’t so managed so they don’t even reach MS to stop pushing alpha/beta updates to stable version of their apps via Winget. So you can guess how much they will care about Linux issues. I mean Steam guys won’t really hack their binaries to fix it so it is up to them.
Anymore, Wine can run anything I care to run.
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.
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.
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
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.
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! :)
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.
I’m still very much a Linux newbie so although I am familiar with some things on the terminal, I never even knew you could bulk-rename files with it. I knew you could rename them, but not bulk-rename them, I mean.
I use Sound Juicer now, used fre:ac before.
Thanks, I’ll check that out!
I used Mp3tag on Windows and switched to Picard, I like it even more than Mp3tag now: https://flathub.org/apps/org.musicbrainz.Picard
Thank you!
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
Yes, it takes a bit longer, even on higher-end PCs, to load up, than Paint.NET. Pinta used to be a good equivalent, but I think that’s long since been abandoned, though I could be wrong. It also has way more functions than I need, frankly, and that leads to a cluttered UI. I’ve tried to use it before, and that always ends up being the case.
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
I’ve heard about it, but from what I’ve seen it doesn’t seem to be very close to a 1:1 comparison. Though admittedly I’ve only read about it, but it seems to not be as good. Again, I’d be willing to try it out, but there doesn’t seem to be many Linux equivalents as good.
Also, it’s not that I don’t like Lutris, but compared to Playnite, it’s very bare-bones.
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
Nice! Thank you again!
Edit: Fixed quote markup.
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!
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 actually didn’t even notice that one. I guess all the recommendations sort of blended together! xD
Thanks for the heads-up! Haha.
Thank you! I was not aware of this!
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 an audio tagger I use Kid3
That looks promising! I’ll check it out! Thanks!
Does it work only on audio files or can I use it to tag video files too? Despite the name, mp3tag can work on a large handful of both audio and video files, not just mp3 files.
Have you tried Asunder for CDs?
I have not! I may have to check that out! Thank you!
For MakeMKV you can just use the flatpak.
I didn’t know it was on Flatpak. Thanks! :)
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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.
I use Foobar2000 for music. It is feature packed and so customizable. It’s available as a snap using Wine (I think it’s the only snap I have installed, in fact).
I really wish there were a Linux binary available but it has been Windows-only forever. The closest Linux player I’ve seen is Deadbeef, but Deadbeef’s library plugin does not work at all like Foobar’s (the later stays updated by monitoring the music folder and shows things by tags, not folder structure). Apparently the Deadbeef plugin is being updated to be more Foobar-like, but it isn’t there yet.
I did try running foobar under wine but it just sucked, I have also tried deadbeef but its really lacking features and the GUI sucks. I ended up using musicbee through wine, it was a hassle to setup but now it just works for me and I like it better than foobar.
Have you tried Strawberry? It’s not gonna be a foobar replacement, but I’ve found it very capable.
I have, I didn’t like it that much but its better than deadbeef.
How’s performance on MusicBee for you? Mine is slow for the components (AMD 7900XT/Ryzen 7950X), but I suspect it might be because of the high resolution album artwork (1200x1200).
I haven’t noticed any performance issues (2070 Super/Ryzen 3600). I dont have that many plugins though.
For work I heavily rely on the Adobe creative suite (Photoshop and Premiere Pro specifically). I maintain Linux servers (and develop for them) and maintain Linux desktops at both home and for work, but the lack of any alternatives to Photoshop specifically has resulted in me still daily driving Windows (VMs really hamper workflow with regards to GPU passthrough and although I’ve successfully set up Looking Glass on my workstation in the past, running 2 gpus isn’t practical). Yes I’ve tried the alternatives and while Premiere Pro has usable alternatives, Photoshop does not. GIMP is incredible given that it is FOSS but the UI and feature set is almost unusable (for me at least).
I found photoGIMP helped a bit on the UI aspect, but it still does have a lot of weird quirks that are just easier on photoshop
thanks, I’ll check out photoGIMP. been trying desperately to make GIMP work as I wanna ditch Windows before they stop supporting 10, sooner if I can. I made the switch on everything else already.
yes, but I don’t use VMs or dual boot. I’ve been able to get everything I need working in Wine, which is a lot more seamless
The only reason I have windows is to test apps that I write.
The apps are cross platform. I use it in Linux. But I also have users in Windows, so I just fire up a windows VM for testing releases. Thats it.
Games work quite well in a VM, with GPU passthrough. I use a Windows VM for VR games. The non-game program here being the drivers for my VR headset, which only work on Windows. The games themselves would probably work fine on Linux, so that’s not the issue, but without drivers it’s a no go.
I have a copy of Microsoft Office 2013 on a Windows 11 VM.
the ghost of libreoffice is calling your name…
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.
