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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Adobe Lightroom Classic. I have darktable installed on Linux, but I haven’t mastered it yet. Lightroom is the software for photo editing, unfortuntately.
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.
I haven’t been able to get Vectric Aspire to work yet, even under wine. It’s used to layout tool paths for CNC operations, so it may be a little on the niche side, but it’s pretty popular there.
Visual Studio (Not VS Code), C# is fantastic these days cross-platform wise and a pretty solid general language
But the non-ms IDEs for it…are lacking…and MS just terminated MacOS support for VS (Not that it really mattered the macOS version was a bastardized version of VS anyways) so I don’t think their flagship is coming (officially) to Linux anytime soon.
Yeah I second Jetbrains Rider. It’s fantastic on Linux and dotnet development has never been better with it. The only lacking thing is WPF but there’s open source alternatives that are actually cross platform and integrate just as well (AvaloniaUI).
Really? JetBrains Rider is great IMO. Though you do have to pay for it.
You have to pay for visual studio too if it is for business use (the license is also SIGNIFICANTLY more expensive than rider)
My coworker uses VS and it seems like the IDE is doing nothing - every time I open one of his projects in rider 85% of the code is highlighted with suggested optimizations and refactors that VS thinks is fine
Admittedly it’s been awhile since I last checked on it, when I last checked it was missing a few of the hot nice features like hot reload (Which, you’ll need to take from my cold dead hands, because I love it lmao)
Rider has just been better in every way imo. I haven’t touched VS in years.
It does cost but you also get a permanent licence for the version you paid for so you can pay for a year and keep that version.
My experience has been very much the opposite. Windows is terrible for any development, even windows applications.
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.
WSL2 is pretty good. j/k
I used it a lot while developing a Linux program for a raspberry pi with a colleague and was blown away how fun and easy it was to use… Untill I started daily driving Linux and realised how much stuipd window wsl setup and work I could have skipped by just using Linux directly… Lol I was missing out. Now I just daily drive Linux and never looking back to wsl
Mah man! The only people recommending WSL for Linux development are the ones that have bought into the Microsoft ecosystem, don’t know any better and crucially also dont care to know any better
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.
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).
wsl
confused noises
I wonder what the state of wsl on wine is
… wine on wsl on wine
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.
I have a Windows VM that runs Visual Studio and a small number of developer tools so I can test my code on Windows. And another windows VM that runs Daz3D, Clip Studio Paint and the Epic Launcher (to download stuff from the Unreal Engine Marketplace).
Sometimes I misuse either VM by creating a snapshot and installing Garmin Connect so I can update the music library on my watch :)
Anymore, Wine can run anything I care to run.
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.
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.
Adobe CS is the industry standard in some fields. You should absolutely learn them if you’re in school for that.
I have a copy of Microsoft Office 2013 on a Windows 11 VM.
the ghost of libreoffice is calling your name…
