Approaching the end of window 10 and have no plans on upgrading to 11.
I am trying to find alternatives to applications I regularly use before jumping ship (it is mostly a gaming focused pc) any suggestions?
There’s oculus software for my vr but don’t know what I’m going to do with that
Small update: probably going to do Linux mint as that appears to be the most beginner friendly
Update two: that’s a lot of comments, and Thanks for all the info
Regarding oculus software: If you need the actual oculus software for some reason (say, if you’re using a rift S) your only option is a windows VM with full access to your GPU (and possibly your USB controller), either via looking glass or single GPU passthrough. Both options are a little hard to wrap your head around and annoying to set up but I’m sure your favorite search engine can help.
As other comments have mentioned, ALVR and SteamVR are solid options of all you need is the “screen sharing” part.
Gmail as in email client? Thunderbird
Anti virus? Just need common sense. Dont visit shady site and download random executable
Windows? Try linux mint if this your first time. I heard PopOS is good if you play games.
Honestly, Mint works well for games too. Been running it for the last year. :)
My bad. I run linux mint myself but i dont play games on it. I heard popos was great for gaming but glad to hear linux mint is great too.
Remmina for Remote Desktop, awesome piece of software.
oculus software for my vr
Check https://lvra.gitlab.io/ for plenty of options. I’m playing VR on Linux but it’s using SteamVR with the Index.
Proton mail has an email and VPN together as a package.
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AMD drivers: use the built-in MESA drivers that include the official AMD support.
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Gmail: ProtonMail for the service, Kmail for the desktop client.
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Chrome: Firefox, or Librewolf if you care about privacy.
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Office365: LibreOffice for full FOSS or OnlyOfficr for less freedom but more comfort.
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iTunes: depends entirely on what you use it for, but I buy my music mostly off of BandCamp these days.
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MuseScore: MuseScore
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Norton: Why were you using Norton in the first place? It’s practically a virus itself. If you need an antivirus on Linux, you might want ClamAV/ClamTK for something that runs locally only, or Microsoft Defender for Linux.
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Py-Charm: Py-Charm, VSCode, Vim, Kate/KWrite
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Remote Desktop to iOS: I got nothin’
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Star Citizen: Star Citizen
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Steam: Steam
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VPN: Wireguard
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Windows Games: install locally using Wine and then add to Steam as a non-Steam game to use Proton for better support.
Windows 10: run it in a VM if you still need it, or keep it on a separate SSD and dual boot into that.
Nice list. Why KMail over Thunderbird, I wonder?
Kmail is simple and to the point, and at least in my experience is easier to set up. Bonus, if youre on KDE, it integrates very nicely.
It’s also more performant than Thunderbird.
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To start, I’d recommend checking out Flathub and seeing what’s available there. Flatpaks are relatively new but anything there can be installed on basically any Linux distro. It’s organized by category so you can see your options.
Chrome is available on Linux if you’re worried about switching. Firefox is usually the default and what I use just because I’ve always used it (plus, it fully supports ad blockers whereas Chrome now cripples them). Also, Chromium is essentially the exact same as Google Chrome. Both are made by Google and Chrome is just Chromium before Google adds all its branding and stuff.
Don’t worry about antivirus. ClamAV is there if you want to run a scan but you don’t need anything like Norton.
VPN: check your provider. Most work with OpenVPN or have a Linux client.
Gmail obviously works in the browser but there’s a ton of desktop email clients. To give three examples I’ve used:
- Geary is a simple, clean email client that just does email does it well. Not very customizable, though.
- Thunderbird (made by Mozilla) has more features/options and supports extensions. If Geary is too simple, Thunderbird is a good middle ground.
- Evolution is like the Microsoft Outlook that comes with the paid Microsoft Office Suite. It has a calendar and all that enterprise-focused stuff. Probably overkill but it’s there if you need it.
Windows 10 is listed and I’m not quite sure what you mean but you can always run it in a virtual machine if you need it. I use Gnome as my Desktop Environment. Gnome Boxes is super simple. VirtualBox is more complex but has every option I’ve ever needed.
Don’t worry too much about the Desktop Environment thing. KDE and Gnome are the biggest two and both are pretty much equally capable. (You can also always install stuff made for the other if you want. It just might not match the theme.) There’s loads of desktop environments but don’t be intimidated by all the choices. Some are stripped down and designed for older or low-spec computers. There’s one focused on Chinese users. You can ignore most while you get your feet wet.
for a remote desktop app that also works on ios there’s Rustdesk. everything else already had great suggestions in this thread
Off the top of my head:
Gmail or any email: Thunderbird is pretty sweet and I need to use it more, but mostly just use the web clients anyway.
If you own GoG games, you can use Heroic Launcher instead of GoG Galaxy. It’s gotten amazingly good, really fast. :)
I’d recommend Lutris over Heroic both because it runs locally where Heroic is Electron, and because Lutris allows community-based native Linux ports for games where applicable, eg. for Ultima VII: The Black Gate + The Forge of Virtue, Lutris gives you the option of installing that game with Exult instead of DOSbox, for Tomb Raider and Tomb Raider II, you have the option to install those with OpenLara, for Doom 1 and 2, you have the option to install those with ZDoom, for Little Big Adventure, you can install that with the ScummVM runner, etc.
Also, at least for DOS games where you don’t have the option to install a community-based modern port, you can use native DOSbox as a runner instead of Windows DOSbox as well through Lutris.
Oh, and one more bonus particularly for GOG games in Lutris’ favor over Heroic, is Lutris uses the offline installers so that if anything ever goes wrong with any given GOG game, you can just reinstall from the offline installer where Heroic operates more like GOG Galaxy or Steam in that it’s always downloaded from scratch.
Hey, points for Lutris! Thanks for sharing!
I’ve had issues in the past installing stuff with Lutris, although for advanced scenarios like using community engines and stuff, that’s really cool. I definitely have both installed on my machine for different reasons. Lutris handles EA / Origin stuff pretty well. (Titanfall 2 and Sims 2 Ultimate (not the Steam one) run beautifully on Linux, truly glorious!)
Electron annoys me as well, but I will say that I appreciate how Heroic hooks into GoG APIs. It handles auto-updates, cloud saving, play time logging, that kinda stuff that made Galaxy decent and had a degree of convenience-parity with Steam.
(Maybe Lutris does this too now?)
For a complete newbie , I’d say Heroic has a bit of a smoother and expected ramp to just “Download game and run.” But if you want more control, Lutris definitely has more options!
I also can’t recommend Bottles enough for other games that aren’t from distribution platforms. Shockingly simple.
Even for Doom3, both vanilla and BFG, and RTCW, Steam versions included, Lutris allows you to install native community ports for those pretty easily too.
VR on linux is scuffed. https://lvra.gitlab.io/ refer to this site for vr on linux. If you play VRchat, its pretty much unplayable in vr on linux, its literally somehow a better experience on quest standalone
I had tried ALVR in the past, on my Quest 2, but it sucked. A couple of months have passed and I should probably test again.
Try WiVRN, it’s not built on SteamVR, and doesn’t have the same issues SteamVR does. You can get it through a flatpak or by using Envision, as described on the LVRA wiki.
I don’t play VRChat myself, but I have to disagree. I’m in several Linux VR groups, and the general sentiment is that it’s not as easy to set up, but works well for the more popular games, including VRChat. This is similar to my experience. There’s good resources (like LVRA) to help people set things up, or when they’re running into issues. I’m also not saying VR on Linux is flawless, far from it, but to describe it as just “scuffed” without context doesn’t explain the whole state of it.
Just how will you manage to open gmail on linux?
People have been trying for decades, there is just no way
I haven’t checked lately but on GNOME you add Google account to your Online accounts and gmail is automatically added to your email client (Evolution in some diatros).
I hope someday they are finally able to create a web browser that can run on Linux
what ? Thunderbird exists…
What is this table from? Is it from some website?
AMD DRIVERS - Linux’s built in drivers Chrome - Chrome gmail - gmail Office 360 - Office 360 (web) Norton - You don’t need such piece of adware in Linux Py-charm - py-charm Star citizen - Star citizen though steam VPN - Proton VPN (my suggestion) Windows 10 - Fedora KDE
My suggestions if you want a smoother transition, repeated ones have Linux versions
At least get clamAV setup. No OS is virus immune. And if wine is installed without proper sandboxing …
SELinux, wine (and other apps) installed via user flatpak with proper permissions configued, coupled with ufw or firewalld, secure boot enabled and an immutable system should be fine, no?
You need to double up your newlines :)
Linux has native AMD drivers, no need for anything extra!
Awesome had heard issues with drivers and both my Gpu and cpu are amd so wanted to be safe
Talking about desktops, there may be some issues with Radeon RX 7000.
If your hardware is that new, please stick to a distro with the newest kernel, like Fedora. There is a gaming oriented distro based on Fedora, called Bazzite, but I don’t know how big its community is, and how much it differs from vanilla Fedora.
There are also a lot of choices in the Arch family, like Garuda, Endeavour, and Manjaro. However, please stay away of those since you probably don’t have any experience on Linux. Manjaro is not really Arch, and can face issues with AUR packages, and the rest may break during updates.
Try the distro of choice in live mode. If you have enough RAM (like 16GB+), you can try to download Steam and some small game to see how it works. Keep in mind that, while in live mode, all files are stored in RAM.
there may be some issues with the Radeon RX 7000
I assume you mean the just released 9000 series? My setup has a 7000 card and has been running for 2 years with out issues
Its only nvidia GPUs that’s have trouble
And even they are starting to work better now. Running a 4070 SuTi here without major issues myself.
Yeah their has been a lot of work on foss drivers for nvidias new GPUs. I believe because servers run Linux and servers need to do ai now and a foss driver enabling that would be mutually beneficial for all people in the industry similar to how Linux could never have become so dominant and universal in the server space if it was some special proprietary thing.
The linux ecosystem, depending on which distro you choose, has anywhere from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of packages. There’s only select software that you can’t virtualize from Windows to Linux, so you may not even be required to find alternatives.
But without listing any software at all, it’s hard to tell you definitively…
Wdym software, it’s what the left column is for
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