Linux @lemmy.ml DidacticDumbass @lemmy.one 1y ago

Back to linux!

For like a month or two I decided, screw it, I am going to use all the programs I cannot use on Linux. This was mostly games and music making software.

I guess it was fun for a bit, tries different DAWs, did not play a single game because no time.

Basically, it was not worth it. The only thing I enjoyed was OneDrive, because having your files available anywhere is dope, but I also hate it because it wants to delete your local files. I think that was on me.

Anyways, I am back. Looking at Nextcloud. Looking at Ardour. I am fine paying for software, but morally I got to support and learn the tools that are available to me and respect FOSS. (Also less expensive... spent a lot on my experiment).

Anyone done this? Abondoned their principles thinking the grass would be greener, but only to look at their feet coverered in crap (ads, intrusive news, just bad UI).

I don't know. I don't necesarily regret it, but I won't be doing it again. What I spent is a sunk cost, but some has linux support, and VSTs for download. So, I shall see.

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103 comments

Running FOSS is practical for the long term, even beyond moral judgments. Proprietary software starts strong with lots of funding, but it only gets worse and worse as it goes along. Open source starts slower but plays the long game. You can take a look at something like Windows itself for an example of the gradual infestation of ads and user-hostile features/tracking. It's never going to get better. The only hope for proprietary users is for a new proprietary app to be created and start off more user-friendly because they need to attract users. Once they have the users they'll restart the cycle again.
- That is what I am starting to realize. Every paid program that I used to desire is now subscription based.
  
  Also, I am coming to terms with how truly powerful FOSS programs are. People seem to pay for the workflow, the user interface, more than the capabilities. At least I feel that way with DAWs. Ardour does everything. Vital makes every sound. I can be happy with that. I need to focus on making music.
  
  The term you and @Yote are looking for is enshittification. Cory Doctrorow wrote a blog post about this.
Okay, lots of other comments I didn’t read, and this might have been mentioned.

👏Syncthing👏

You mentioned OneDrive. I also jumped around storage solutions as I explored the FOSS world, and nothing hold a candle to Syncthing (in my opinion, but I want/need to try nextCloud). I won’t drone on about it, but if you’re looking to ditch another big data company that’s probably scraping your files, check out Syncthing
- Yes, Syncthing seems like the right solution. I don't need to have files in someone elses computer, I just need certain files in all of my computers.
I do gaming and music production on Linux without much issue at all these days.

Most games are pretty easy to work with these days thanks to Steam, Lutris, and Bottles.

As for audio, there are 4 key ingredients to my setup: Pipewire, Bitwig Studio, Wine and Yabridge.

Pipewire is pretty easy to use and works in a low latency setting just fine, so imo you no longer have to juggle PulseAudio + JACK.

Bitwig isn't open source, but it's fantastic and inspiring and supports Linux natively. They've also been great about stuff like the new open source CLAP plugin format.

I've found that Wine (staging) does a pretty reasonable job handling any Windows VST I've thrown at it, but it's a bit of work getting it setup, especially if you're new to the concept.

And finally yabridge is a great CLI tool for turning all of your Windows plugin .dlls into Linux .so, that you can easily use in your DAW of choice.

So if you want to do music production on Linux then definitely check out Bitwig and Reaper (along with Ardour, like you mentioned). And personally, I think that if you have a decent chunk of Windows VSTs it's worth investing a bit of time learning how to getting them working in Wine and then bridged with yabridge.
- Studio1 is now running on Linux (using Distrobox at least). Ambisonics and Binaural stuff are what I am mostly interested in, the IME Ambisonic toolkit poorly is not available as a Flatpak, otherwise Ardour would be awesome!
  
  I've heard good things about Studio1, but I haven't tried it myself.
  
  Oh yeah, and speaking of Distrobox...
  
  I also happen to have all of my audio production software (DAWs, Plugins, Wine, Yabridge, etc.) living in an Ubuntu-based distrobox container, which has the added benefit of allowing me to ~~export~~ save the entire container and drop it mostly painlessly* onto a different machine. It's really cool to be able to pick up my entire music making environment and bring it with me, but it might be a bit overboard for some people. I don't have much of a choice other than to use distrobox since I run Fedora Silverblue as my daily driver. lol
  
  *It doesn't work flawlessly, because I sometimes have to fix some important Wine symlinks that break when doing this.
- This is solid. I am so happy for this advice, never heard of Yabridge. I am willing to mess around if it actually means I can use my plugins with Linux!
  
  Be sure to check out the README if you're having problems with certain plugins (Kontakt for instance).
  
  Yeah! Don't sleep on it! I can say without reservation that yabridge is essential for me. :)
  
  The basic yabrigde workflow is:
  
  Install wine-staging and yabridge on your distro of choice.
  
  Use wine to install all of your Windows VSTs somewhere. (I prefer to use a separate WINEPREFIX for each plugin maker, but that's probably not fully necessary). If you don't know much about Wine this can be a bit hard to wrap your mind around, but that's another story.
  
  Then you run yabridgectl add where all of your various Windows VST dll files are (instead of whatever Wine prefix you installed them in).
  
  And then when you run yabridgectl sync yabridge will create a .so bridge library for each of your Windows VSTs and spit them out into ~/.vst3 or whatever.
  
  Finally you point your DAW of choice to ~/.vst3 or whatever, and your WIndows VSTs should hopefully show up and work just like they do on Windows (with the usual caveat of Wine being pretty great but not always perfect).
  
  Sadly there's no good GUI frontend for it (that I know of at least), but as far as CLI tools it's pretty easy to learn and use. Also, you may want to make sure that you've got realtime privilages setup on your system, and you can find guides to doing that in the yabridge wiki.
  
  But yeah, I've got a bunch of Windows VSTs from Native Instruments and IK Multimedia and a bunch of others too, and they are work very well when bridged these days, so I'm able to use Linux for music without sacrificing anything.
- Check out Zrythm (currently in beta) as a FOSS Bitwig alternative.
  
  https://www.zrythm.org/en/index.html
  
  Nice!! Linux has so many options for DAWs I never realized.
Welcome back. Good decision.

What you have learned about Linux is that the most important thing is FOSS/Libre computing.

Namely, that the user is no.1 and everything that the software does must always respect the freedom of the user and be to their benefit, and NEVER harm them.

THIS is what makes GNU/Linux special. Not the fact that it's generally free of charge.

Now you've learned this, you will know why it's impossible for any true Libre Linux user to ever go back to proprietary software. It doesn't respect him or his freedom.

Now that you're back, you have a ton of distros to choose from. Personally I use LMDE 6 but regular Mint is also great.

As for software, you may have to give up on some proprietary stuff if there is no FOSS equivalent but it's worth it because you get your freedom in exchange.

If you depend on that software to make a living, simply install Oracle Virtualbox and run Windows in a VM just to run that software.

At least it can't affect your Linux system and your main OS will be FOSS and when you're done using your proprietary program, shutdown Winblows and it goes away until next time you need it.
- Everything you typed out was a painful rediscovery on my part. I basically had to ignore my principles at every moment, but using Windows eventually became too gross, I had to get out.
  
  For the money I spent experimenting with proprietary software, I could have donated to projects making the alternatives.
  
  This is not a lesson I will need to learn again.
  
  Don't be too hard on yourself. The Linux path can be frustrating because you just wish the stuff was there that you need. And the pull of proprietary is the seeming ease with which you can get that stuff over there.
  
  But it's a bitter sweet trap. We all go though this until we realise we aren't willing to take that crap anymore and we'll just make due without that program/app and find another way to get stuff done.
Same, I switched to windows for a while for work and it was hell. None of the kde window management (using mod key for moving and resizing windows) and the Adobe and autodesk softwares wanted to take over my computer with their genuine, license, desktop "service" apps. I felt like i broke my kneecaps on purpose to walk on crutches. And pressing mod key opens the fucking ad start menu every single time, I hate it. Went back to Linux using photopea and inkscape.
- Never heard of Photopea! I will check it out. GIMP sucks at text boxes for some reason, and honestly is kind of unacceptable the way it handles it.
  
  Gimp sucks for me in general since I like to edit non-destructively. Photopea is a Photoshop clone but better. It don't need to be installed and since it's on the web you can get fonts directly on it.
Technically, I've done as you've described several times over. Did it with IOS and Android - I approached both with an open wallet and open to doing things differently than I was used to. Could say the same for several gaming consoles and Chrome. ALL have required concessions on my part that left a bad taste in my mouth - speaking strictly from a User Experience perspective.

The worst of it has been all the apps that dissappeared from the IOS Appstore - apps I paid for and now all that's available are pale imitations full of ads and demanding subscriptions.

I'm not asking the same apps to work across multiple decades either - the gap between my first iPad and my second was less than eight years.
- Delisting should be a crime.
  
  Nope, I am starting to see software like books. Maybe the author has more to say, but barring any grammatical or logical errors, they are basically evergreen.
- That's probably the number one reason I will never use iOS on my phone, I couldn't imagine not having backups of the best version of the apps I paid for, and not being able to stick to that version, and keep using it on newer phones.
  
  I use an iPad and I got screwed of course as you mentioned, so now I only use it for streaming apps and that's it.
I think Windows does some things well, that are just worse in KDE

Ctrl+Alt+Delete, Taskmanager is actually privileged and can force close running apps. On KDE the same apps exist but they are not privileged enough. EDIT: of course it is privileged, but it doesnt even open if the "Desktop" hangs. There seems to be no privilege isolation, nothing left as security space for these tasks.

The UI is more stable, the bars dont weirdly load, App Windows just open in full size and not fly around. When an app crashes I can still use the cursor (often)

The Rest is crap, like everything. Updates are horrible and intrusive without a single reason. Immutable updates are so much better, regular Linux Distros probably cant compare regarding security.
- Taskmanager is actually privileged and can force close running apps. On KDE the same apps exist but they are not privileged enough
  
  You can right-click on a process and select Send Signal → Kill. It will then ask for elevated privileges, if you're trying to kill a process not directly started by you.
  
  If you mean that some program really hangs your whole session, well, the last-ditch option is to switch to a TTY and kill it from there. But yeah, that one isn't equipped with a nice GUI...
- I have tried to use and like KDE so many times... I always go back to XFCE or GNOME.
- Press ctrl+alt+esc. The cursor will change into a red skull and when you click a window, the process running it will be instakilled. Press esc again to cancel. That's much better than going through task manager, finding the right process and then killing it.
  
  This is X11 only.
I'm running windows and others craps at work.

Like this, its working as a daily vaccine for me 🤣

Daily Linux user since 2013, specifically since the Snowden's leaks.
- I think I started using Linux way before that. I think I was just curious about whether I was missing anything. I really am not!
  
  I did too, but with dualboot to keep windows next. Since 2013 its as monoboot, or if I have an dual its 2 linux/BSD but not an msdos system. 😊
Eh, I can't use windows for any longer amount of time. I am WAY too paranoid. I always get the feeling of being spied on when I use windows. Like this slight nagging feeling in the back of my head. Never at ease as I am with linux.
- Fixed this issue with Windows 11 Ameliorated. Now I can play VR in peace and also scroll through firefox without feeling this terror. Usually I felt very soon disgusted and booted up my usual Linux OS as soon as I stopped playing, but the ameliorated version fixed this feeling.
- I had the same feeling too, like I had to strip off all my clothes just to enter a the party.
  
  I will not be doing that again.
When I was still new to Linux I also had these phases from time to time where I went back to Windows, used mainstream software, like Microsoft Office, etc.. I was still undecided if Linux was really worth all the hassle and I wasn't quite settled on either side.

But I always returned to Linux for whatever reason. Probably because using Windows just didn't feel right ... The times where I returned to Windows got rarer and shorter the older I got. The last time I used Windows for an extensive amount of time was during the Windows 10 beta period. I even had a Windows Phone for a year! I returned to Linux roughly once Windows 10 was released as stable (funnily enough).

I believe that you are likely in a very similar situation at the moment as I was. I think you might just need some time to settle with something and get comfortable. ;)
- Nowadays switching to Windows isn't really an option for me anymore, as I am just too invested into the Linux ecosystem.
  
  It's always funny hearing about how difficult it is to switch from Windows to Linux, because you have to relearn how to use a computer and all your favourite software isn't available.
  
  But for me it's the same, but the other way around! I would have to relearn how to document my installation (scripts, etc.), what program to use for which task or how to force a game onto a certain monitor (the last time I looked into this, the only way on Windows was switching the primary monitor before starting said game; on Linux I can just tell KWin how to make the program behave).
  
  It would be a lot of work with little or no benefit to me and I'm not even sure if all my hardware is compatible with Windows, as I did all my software and hardware purchases in the last decade with only Linux in mind and I usually didn't purchase something if the manufacturer offered no support for Linux (money talks).
  
  For the forcing games in monitors, loading the game in window mode, dragging it to the monitor of choice and making it fullscrern back usually works. And games remember the screen usually, some even have a selection panel (PoE).
- I just wanted to see if I was missing something, but the programs I trialing are either way too expensive or do not do anything better than what is available to linux.
Have you considered Bitwig Studio? It has native linux support.
- Reaper as well.
- Yes. The cost is reasonable, and think it is worth it!
  
  Right now I am using Tracktion Waveform, but I do not love it.
  
  I am looking at Reaper, and I do like the workflow, but the way it loads plugins puts me off. Not horrible, I just need to do extra work to make it work.
  
  I am a Bitwig fanboy, big time. The DAW is beyond everything else!
  This video was a game changer for me. Turned my vanilla Linux Mint into an audio production powerhouse with a single script. Bitwig, Reaper, Windows VSTs, low latency. Incedible!
Nextcloud or a samba server are good options. But if storage is not a issue I'd recommend checking out syncthing. I run it on my server and sync some directories to my phone and other directories to my desktop. And one directory between phone and desktop(obsidian notes). I don't think you can run sycthing on iphones though.
- I will try syncthing. I don't actually want cloud storage, I just want to be able to mirror files to my different computers for easy access without messing about using flashdrives or bluetooth.
You and I are in similar situations. I discovered Linux around 15 years ago and I wanted to fully switch over to it but found I couldn’t run games or photo/video/sound editing software the way I knew how (grew up with sailors discounts on the Adobe Suite).

Nowadays most of my previous hangups are solved. Almost all of my steam games work in Linux without any issue (1 or 2 games needed a single google search to paste the change needed to fix something), GIMP and Inkscape have way more extensions that increase QOL (not to mention Photopea being a literally photoshop clone with the exact same keyboard commands so your workflow doesn’t need to be relearned).

The only computers running windows in my house are my server (cause I just repurposed it and it’s working for now) and my VR computer (and that’s just because I’m lazy too since the Valve Index is fully Linux supported).

I use Windows at work and have no other choice. I don’t want any of my other computers to feel like my work computer. Feels like I haven’t left work.
- Using Windows made me appreciate Linux harder than I ever have. Windows just feels gross now.
Insync supports OneDrive on Linux, been using it for a long time although I don’t touch cloud storage that much. I like having local copies of everything that does happen to be in the cloud.
- I will check it out! I do enjoy the redundancy of local copies, which is why OneDrive sucked.
  
  But you can keep your files locally with OneDrive. You can do it on a per folder basis even. I'm sorry, but this is on you.
- I second Insync, used to use it before moving to my own Nextcloud instance and it works pretty well
Studio One is coming to Linux. It is imo one of the best DAWs.
- Studio One looks amazing! I am super interested in spatial audio.
  
  I have so much to learn.
I'll say it again: https://tadeubento.com/2023/linux-desktop-a-collective-delusion/

Linux has made significant strides, and in 2023, it’s better than ever. However, there are still individuals perpetuating a delusion: that desktop Linux is as user-friendly and productive as its mainstream counterparts. After a few discussions on Lemmy, I believe it’s important to provide a clear review of where Linux falls short as a daily driver for average users.
- Great article, have a few issues with it though:
  
  Google docs are free (as in beer) and collaborative and just about as good, and Minihard's web interface also works. This still doesn't account for all use cases, bur that should be about 80% of people who think they can't live with LibreOffice.
  
  KeepassXC is cute, but not modern because of it's lack of cross-device sync. I use Bitwarden and it works great. Having options is great. I get their frustration with flatpaks self-contained package formats have only ever given me headaches. Also flatpak isn't a feature that windows does either.
  
  I have no clue what their problem is with virtualization, but I've used virtualbox, vmm, and just the CLI for qemu, and I've never had the issues of cumbersome installation or a virtualization disabled error
  
  Speaking of virtualization, I've run old software and games with wine all the time. I'm sure there's some performance hit, but it's pretty negligible unless you're one of those people that meticulously tracks performance metrics instead of just relying on feel (cough "5-15% performance hit in games boohoo cough)
  
  *some developers and sysadmins. I know people who act as counterexamples and use linux personally and professionally
  
  Windows licenses are cheap and you get things working out of the box. Software runs fine, all vendors support whatever you’re trying to do and you’ll be productive from day zero... It all comes down to a question of how much time (days? months?) you want spend fixing things on Linux that simply work out of the box under Windows for a minimal fee. Buy a Windows license and spend the time you would’ve spent dealing with Linux issues doing your actual job and you’ll, most likely, get a better ROI.
  You can buy a second hand computer with a decent 8th generation CPU for around 200 € and that includes a valid Windows license. All computers selling on retail stores already include a Windows license, students can get them for free etc.
  
  Aaaaaaaaaaaand all the previous examples go out the door. All of the aforementioned "benefits" of windows cost money. Adobe is all SaaS, MS office is SaaS, AutoCAD is SaaS, windows itself is arguably SaaS, that hypervisor that isn't jank is SaaS; those annoying janky hardware solutions that have drivers only for windows charge for those drivers and the bespoke UI programs that control the hardware, the securitybrisks of running XP for the aforementioned costs money, those sysadmin and developer solutions cost money (usually also on a subscription). If you want the well-documented and supported software that brings the streamlined experience that fanboys prattle on about, you don't go with freeware; windows freeware sucks just as hard in the UX sense while also being proprietary and spying on you/designed only to upsell you to paid. And don't make me get into the monetary worth of all the data the above programs and windows itself harvests. This rose-tinted windows experience isn't "cheap" unless you're in the global top 10-20%, the rest of us make do with freeware that sucks harder than linux. I'm one of the few who are lucky enough to be able to save 25% of my monthly income and some dick behind their keyboard is trying to convince me to throw 2 months worth of that away every year on software that doesn't do the job better, just more conveniently.
  
  Not to mention the spying! What is this? Stockholm syndrome? Battered user syndrome? Blink 3 times if Windows hits you!
  
  As far as I can tell, most of the actual arguments that hold weight boil down to "For desktops, Windows is superior for businesses and jobs" and that's not a failure of linux. That's fine by me if it isn't profitable, that's not the point of FOSS. In fact that misses the point entirely.
  
  Google docs are free (as in beer) and collaborative and just about as good, and Minihard’s web interface also works. This still doesn’t account for all use cases, bur that should be about 80% of people who think they can’t live with LibreOffice.
  
  For what's worth I think LibreOffice is way superior to Google Docs and in Calc documents can even be shared. Maybe we'll see more of that in the future?
  
  KeepassXC is cute, but not modern because of it’s lack of cross-device sync.
  
  This is right and wrong at the same time. KeepassXC does allow for cross-device sync, the keychain file is saved and created in a way to handle real time syncing across devices. Most people use Synching or some even public clouds for it. There are also multiple features to share items across users https://keepassxc.org/docs/KeePassXC_UserGuide#_database_sharing_with_keeshare.
  
  KeepassXC is simple, secure, audited and reliable and unlike Bitwarden it doesn't require a service running and wasting resources in order to get the job done. It is all filesystem based very portable and bullshit less. Also unlike Bitwarden it doesn't require 4GB of ram and 25GB of storage to host a simple sync service. I'm aware there's an alterative implementation of the Bitwarden written in Rust that is way more reasonable but still what kind of garbage software requires that amount of resources just to sync passwords?
  
  All of the aforementioned “benefits” of windows cost money
  
  Yes, so what? All of the aforementioned “benefits” of Linux cost time that is guess what, money.
  
  windows freeware sucks just as hard in the UX sense while also being proprietary and spying on you/designed only to upsell you to paid
  
  Unless that freeware is WinSCP that is effectively better from a UX and performance standpoint than any similar client for Linux as described ahah
  
  trying to convince me to throw 2 months worth of that away every year on software that doesn’t do the job better, just more conveniently.
  
  As you said, you're one of the lucky ones, maybe your workflow can be 100% productive under Linux + alternatives as it is, but it doesn't change the fact that for everyone else that works with other people who use the proprietary solutions can go that route. There are a ton of cases listed on the article.
  
  The point of the article is to consider ROI above all instead of being a blind follower that worships Linux desktop as religion and a solution that will fit all and everything.
  
  Not to mention the spying! What is this? Stockholm syndrome? Battered user syndrome? Blink 3 times if Windows hits you!
  
  There's group policy to fix that and W10Privacy if don't want to spend the entire afternoon... Not perfect yes, but guess what Ubuntu also snitches on you, Firefox includes unique identifiers on each installation and contacts Mozilla's servers frequently and at least a 3rd party analytics company - even after manually disabling everything known and suspicious under settings and config editor.
  
  that’s not the point of FOSS. In fact that misses the point entirely.
  
  What's the point of FOSS if it can't properly and actually replace proprietary stuff in the job in order to free our "2 months worth" of work? You yourself use it like that.
- Nah, for all the pain, I still rather be on linux.
- Linux is as user-friendly and productive as its mainstream counterparts.
  
  Windows lately: The office and SCADA machines I work with are the most obstructive systems imaginable. Randomly logging users out while running a machine, blue screening despite only running a single 2mb .exe for more than a week. Surprise, bitch, you gotta update even though this is a mission critical machine that is in use!
  
  In all seriousness I would really love to see how you people are using Windows and how good is your hardware. I don't get it, been using Windows both at home and work since ever (alongside Linux) and I can't complain since Windows 10. Instead of spending around 2 months tweaking a Linux DE and Wine to get something somehow working if you just spend a single afternoon configuring Windows properly it will run fine for years.
  
  And btw if you're running mission critical systems / SCADA and Windows nags you with updates and whatnot maybe that isn't Window's fault, its yours because you decided to cheap out and instead of getting Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC you went with Windows 10 Home or Pro. At least get a regular Enterprise edition and hire a good consultant that knows his way around group policy. :)

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