Proton is great, but getting non-steam games on it is about as fiddly as the rest of Wine/Lutris/Crossover/etc. Especially with older games, alternate launchers, etc.
If you're fine with having a slightly smaller selection of games (mostly AAA suffers), then it's great. If you're into mod-heavy games, Windows still fares better IMO.
I put Win11 on my new machine to get more bang for buck with gaming, but I despise the OS in its current state. Purely from a DE UX perspective it doesn't seem very productive with its more limited shortcuts.
If your last experience was 20 years ago I would sincerely recommend looking into it again.
I could give it a try (not gp but periodically interested), but not sure if my GSync display will work correctly. Last time I tried desktop linux, it couldn’t decide which video driver sucks more after another update, and that was on a pretty dumb graphics card. Thinking of something deeply proprietary like GSync I don’t even know if it’s worth trying.
And I’m not a linux newbie, used it and freebsd since around 2000 on daily basis periodically. It is amazing, but just like Linus, “I still need desktop” that allows me to play my hardware. So when there is a >$100 graphics card I resort to windows + msys2 by default.
Part of your issue is having to wrangle with Nvidia drivers. I am just using the default open source driver for AMD that comes built into the kernel and the experience is seamless. I know the nightmare of getting graphics on Linux working right which is why I avoid Nvidia.
Prior to 2018, there were only a handful of native ports, skewed towards indie games. Now 4,582 are classified by Valve as being 'Verified or playable', with 73% of the top 100 games on steam having an out-of-the-box-flawless experience and a further 14% that will work with some tweaks.
Steam baked this new technology into their client, so the installation process for a Windows game on Linux is identical to Windows (click 'Install' then play. There is one additional popup to inform the user that a translation layer is being used).
In addition to this, Easy Anti-Cheat and Battleye have now (as of Nov 2021) announced anti-cheat support for Proton - both technologies require the developers to enable support either with tweaks (EAC) or by emailing for the supplier to enable support (battleye).
And that's only gaming. In the last 12 years (with the 20 year limit specified by OP) we have seen a transformation in web technologies which have moved from proprietary codecs and add-ons to open standards. Video, streaming and all other things that Windows users take for granted are now available on Linux. This also means that the trend in apps moving to electron also implies that by-and-large Linux is also functional (with notable exceptions e.g. Discord audio).
There's also been a large development of drivers included in the kernel, most peripherals including game controllers etc all now work out of the box. Bluetooth and Wifi - the traditional enemies of Linux users, now work flawlessly and don't come up at all in support requests anymore. AMD drivers have improved, even Nvidia have open-sourced the kernel-land components of their proprietary driver which will help the development of nouveau and other open source alternatives (plus make the Nvidia driver much easier to install and maintain in server set ups, which I think was their goal).
Vulkan was released in 2016 which has driven a whole new raft of graphics capability, providing a strong alternative to the clunky OpenGL. Wayland is making serious progress against X, with Gnome-wayland and KDE-wayland both becoming default on some distros. Valve also have a minimalist wayland compositor that is used in Game Mode on the steam deck.
And that isn't even to mention the plethora of usability improvements to Desktop environments or helper apps such as Heroic, Lutris, Protonup, Nobara which have improved the Linux desktop experience immeasurably.
So yes, in short a lot has changed. When I hear someone say 'I have heard the same for 20 years' they are either ignorant or ignoring the progress that has been made in bad faith.
If you know about gsync and/or fps tax on linux, I’d be glad to trust and try. Otherwise this comment looks like yet another marketing booklet that doesn’t address any of my doubts and creates no reason to find out, cause last few times I fell for, it was the waste of time.
Edit: I don’t want to downplay this tech, you or anything else. Currently I just want to play Witcher 3 with gsync and have no time for fixing the issues longer than 10 minutes under my expertise.
And for what it's worth, I'm not writing off your concerns as ignorant or bad faith, but aimed at OP's "That's what I'm hearing since 20 years". That comment is either ignorant or just trying to bash Linux from a point of prejudice.
I have no experience with the issues you raise so I'm unable to address them specifically.
It is still the case that if you have recent bad experience with Linux then Windows may still be the best option for you.
are you sure this is covered?
There's definitely still a mindset that the command line is much easier from a documentation/support point of view which means that forum responses and tutorials will still refer to the command line a lot.
However, compared to when I started in 2011 there isn't a need to use the terminal like there was back then. The terminal is only really needed if you're doing something new or niche
Debian is a nice snapless alternative bc it'll generally run anything meant for Ubuntu. The only major downside is no PPAs
It is.
https://linuxmint-user-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/snap.h...
Does anyone have up to date knowledge on mint's security situation?
For new users the CLI stuff is usually less important. I don't categorically hate snap, but for new users it's bad long-term, too, since it is only controlled by Canonical and therefore a bad reliance. Nobody can add repositories for snap beside Canonical.
If you are an avid CLI user I recommend using containers instead of snap. This way you can even keep the sandbox with dotnet for example.
> flatpack seems to be same RedHat/GNOME crap, pushed by force and not be it's quality.
However it is not controlled by RedHat (and also not solely developed by them). At least everyone can add repositories to flatpak. Which is probably my biggest gripe with snap.
Anyway IMO flatpack and snap are different things, you can't just tell people to replace one with the other. AppImage could have been better but is ahrd to improve if there is no big money behind to force push things.
Btw if you or anyone knows, does any of thios tech solves the issue where your system has an old glibc and you want to try some new app/game that needs a new glibc? For a video game performance is important access to GPU driver is needed. I had a bad experience with a game that updated and stopped working and from my reading there is no way to have 2 glibc on your system(complex shit about how executables and libraries loading works).
In flatpak, the glibc is part of the runtimes; i.e. org.(freedesktop|gnome|kde).Platform. This allows you to run apps on old CentOS/RHEL that you could not natively. Or you can have runtime-less package or use your own runtime, where you put libraries you want. Similarly with snap, you have core18 or core20 runtimes (that correspodents to ubuntu 18.04 or ubuntu 20.04).
Drivers are more interesting. GPU driver has two parts - kernel mode, that shuffles prepared command buffers between userspace and hardware, does mode switching, etc. -- and user mode, which is shared library that implements user APIs like OpenGL or Vulkan, and based on commands from these APIs builds commands buffers, that are then sent to kernel part. The user-mode part may or may not be compatible with multiple versions of the kernel part; the AMD and Intel drivers usually are, as the kernel driver is part of the kernel tree and the user mode driver has to work with any kernel it is run under. Nvidia on the other hand assumes that both user mode and kernel mode are in sync, so packaging specific user mode driver version into container might be problematic.
Flatpak usually ships latest (n or n-1) Mesa and keeps Nvidia driver in sync with the installed kernel mode driver. They are shipped as addons to runtimes.
Arch is a better middle ground IMO.
I tried Arch and found the divide between distribution packages and AUR to be strange. I assume distribution packages are trustworthy, but a lot of things aren't available there, so you have to use AUR. But my understanding is that AUR is all user contributed and unvetted, so it's essentially like the olden days of downloading an exe and hoping for the best. Unless you go to the effort of scrutinizing every script, I guess.
Updates seem to be hit or miss too. I had some AUR packages that suddenly failed with circular dependency issues and later a full system update made the machine unbootable, which wasn't tons of fun. That's when I went back to Gentoo. :P
To be fair, though, I stopped using Arch after about a couple of months. I could be remembering things wildly incorrectly when it comes to the package management stuff. Unbootable update, though, I remember vividly!
I used Gentoo around 2002 or earlier and it was everytime an adventure to emerge anything, mostly due to the time it was taking. A kernel rebuild was taking hours.
I was not interested in fine-tuning the binaries so I was emerging with the default configuration, which makes it more or less equivalent to installing something from a repo.
The immense advantage of Gentoo is that you had to install it from the very scratch and it gave you finally an understanding of what was going on, instead of just next next next on install screens. I had everyone from my team go though an installation just for that.
> and found the divide between distribution packages and AUR to be strange
Wasn't this the same thing with Gentoo, where there would be "official" sources, and then the others. With colliding names? (it may have been another distro, sorry if this is the case - my memory is not that good 20 years back). I know that it took me a while to understand that philosophy (but again, maybe it was not Gentoo)
> To be fair, though, I stopped using Arch after about a couple of months.
After having had used Debian/Ubuntu for years on my server, I got fed up with the upgrade cycle and moved to Arch a year or so ago. I did not have any problems and the documentation is top notch. I use my server in a very basic way: an Arch installation, then docker and borg and this is pretty much it. Everything I run is in docker containers (except for borg (backup) for more or less sane reasons - probably less than more)
Edit: Ubuntu version 18.04.xx (point release) or 20.04.xx and above does not contain the Amazon web app.
So LO Calc is OK for basic spreadsheets, but any power user will gravitate to Excel due to functionalities.
If by extension that provides similar support for PowerQuery you mean QueryConnector, then no. QueryConnector is similar to the MS Query, not to the PowerQuery. And MS Query was Excel built-in, not extension...
Tables do not exist in LO calc. Dataranges do (and imported excel files with tables are converted to dataranges). Dataranges do not have functionality like Tables do. You cannot even create above mentioned pivot table from a datarange, only from named range or selection.
I even had to google how to create them (the build-in help didn't... help), after I've seen that the import did create something, and not just convert to named ranges as it used to. So much for discoverability.
---
This is not to put down LibreOffice Calc or anything. It is about being honest where the weaknesses are, and how to address them. Sweeping problems under the carpet won't address them, and Calc won't become better.
Also, Excel is the crown jewel of MS Office. Not Word, not Powerpoint, but Excel. Of course it is best of the best that money can buy and competing with it is not easy. But 15 years? Come on.
I'm now reconsidering if I'm a power user of spreadsheets! For these extra features I'll use R as it's more powerful and reproducible.
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Macros/Python_Guide/Intr...
You're kidding, right? LibreOffice Calc does not have:
- tables
- powerquery
- dynamic array formulae
- XLOOKUP, LET, FILTER, and the rest of the extremely useful new formulae
These four things completely dominate my Excel workflow. Opening Calc is like stepping back into the dark ages.
When you’re a heavy user of excel, almost nothing else compares. Tho Google sheets does give excel a run for its money, because it has scripts (javascript) to do everything else.
I'm a heavy user of LO calc, but my usage is of course different from yours. For true data wrangling I use R so this statement. I can't imagine the data wrangling and transformations that I perform in R being done in Excel. Its a nightmare waiting to happen!
Which is why windows ships WSL, to keep people who can't work on windows using it. Better yet, to allow their managers to force them to use windows even though they need linux.
I install ubuntu on old laptops to utilize them and as VM on my current windows machine.
Macbook is sluggish (mouse moves) and very limited customizations/options. None of the communication software I use work all at the same time on either on ubuntu nor macos. For example, I use Skype, RingCentral, WhatsApp, Teams, Discord open in one 32" monitor. I must communicate with multiple people everyday for business purposes. I can't fanboy and go for Mac or Ubuntu and ruin my businesses. (I have 4 x 32")
Another monitor has KeePass, putty, and winscp running. If a client sends me an excel file for a reason and it has macros in it, office is the only way to open it. OpenOffice or Libre sucks. I also occasionally update company blogs and must edit photos and videos. Adobe works flawlessly on Windows and has many advantages using it on Windows compared to MacOs edition.
For my security cameras, I use the camera system's only supported windows software. There is no other platform supported. SonicWall VPN sucks on mac and unsupported. I won't spend 2 hours each time VPN fails on Ubuntu. Windows works flawlessly and I tried on Ubuntu. Can't connect to client servers remotely with Ubuntu or crappy mac vpn software called MobileConnect.
I use FreeCad but tried AutoCad in the past, only works on Windows properly. FreeCad sucks on Ubuntu, AutoCad is not supported. This is for my another business unrelated to the other software.
I have more computers than I can count but I am always ending up using Windows for work. To make everything work on one computer, I must use windows. If something new comes up, I won't spend hours and days to try to make it work on Ubuntu or feel sad for not even having it for MacOs.
Office on my M1 macbook air is noticeably more stable and responsive than the dell xps13 bought in January, and the mackbook was like half the price. That XPS is probably the last windows machine we buy ever.
Also most of our employees have fully migrated to libreoffice now.
It's not a "Linux can't do it" problem though.
Business founders/entrepreneurs are not exactly a large part of the userbase either...