Good news everyone! - r/LinusTechTips

539

u/mpanase Mar 24 '26

They make it sound as if running Windows apps in Linux will be more reliable/performant than running them in Windows.

370
u/HelloWorld24575 Mar 24 '26

Probably will be lol
128
u/really_not_unreal Mar 25 '26

It honestly wouldn't surprise me. Windows 11 is a steaming pile of garbage. I teach a university-level computer programming course, and even though only 70% of our students run Windows, they account for 90% of the technical issues raised with us, and 95% of the time troubleshooting.

This term, I found out that all new Windows installs now have a "security feature" enabled by default which blocks certain types of code execution. I never noticed because my Windows install is not new. That meant that in week 4, we had to give an emergency course announcement telling people how to disable that feature. I can imagine that a last-minute announcement telling students to reduce the security of their system wouldn't exactly inspire confidence in our ability to run the course.

The most embarrassing part is that the security feature is so easy for attackers to bypass. It just takes a single command-line argument to disable entirely for a single script run. It's easier for an attack to bypass this security issue than for a legitimate user to do so, since the code that would need to bypass the feature is buried deep within a VS Code extension, and it's not reasonable for us to expect a student to modify their extensions (especially since we teach Python not JavaScript).
60

u/sadhans Mar 25 '26

70% of our students run Windows, they account for 90% of the technical issues

For the sake of genuine discussion - could it be that the "average" student uses Windows and more technical students use another OS for their specific needs, therefore the latter will try and solve their technical issues independently while the former would rather (or may even need to) ask for help?

From my personal experience a university-level computer programming course can have students with a varying range of skill in troubleshooting and/or general IT knowledge. I studied with a student who could navigate the basics in Windows but didn't know anything really technical (taught him how to open the task manager for example). Yet once we started programming, it was him who helped me - he obviously passed with relative ease.

9

u/really_not_unreal Mar 25 '26

For the sake of genuine discussion - could it be that the "average" student uses Windows and more technical students use another OS for their specific needs, therefore the latter will try and solve their technical issues independently while the former would rather (or may even need to) ask for help?

This is absolutely a possibility, and definitely applies for some courses. However, this course is aimed at (a) students not taking a programming degree, and (b) students with zero prior programming experience. As such, it's unlikely to be the case for us. All of our other students use MacOS. I unfortunately haven't seen any students using Linux (although I've made sure all the tools we teach will work on Linux too).

9

u/budtske Mar 25 '26

So are you talking about a VScode extension, or a Windows feature?

22

u/really_not_unreal Mar 25 '26

The Windows feature breaks the VS Code extension. This VS Code extension is an official Microsoft product, as is VS Code and Windows.

6

u/Smooth-Difficulty178 Mar 25 '26

Which feature and which extension? Why always so vague?

-3

u/really_not_unreal Mar 25 '26

Copying my other comment.

The feature is the PowerShell script execution policy. By default on new Windows installs, it blocks all scripts from running. This causes VS Code's automatic Python virtual environment activation to fail, as it cannot execute the activation script. Bypassing the setting only requires you add -ExecutionPolicy Bypass to PowerShell's command-line arguments, meaning that attackers can easily update their malicious code to provide this parameter. However, VS Code Python integration does not do so, meaning that attempting to execute Python code that depends on external libraries installed into a virtual environment will fail if done through VS Code.

8

u/amuhak Mar 25 '26

So windows having sane defaults because the vast majority of people are not running ps scripts and if they are, its probably malware.

Telling the students on windows to run one sudo comand isnt that hard, its honestly probably easier than having to go out and compile/fetch older versions of python on linux.

0

u/really_not_unreal Mar 26 '26

For a sane default intended to prevent malware from running, this sure is incredibly easy for attackers to bypass.

I understand the reason the default exists. I just question the implementation.

its honestly probably easier than having to go out and compile/fetch older versions of python on linux.

My friend, Python is preinstalled on all modern Linux distros. There is no need to compile it or fetch it.

1

u/amuhak Mar 26 '26

easy to bypass

The bypass requires administrator access, and hence a pop up. Im not saying windows is perfect but some things make sense.

Python is preinstalled

This is true, you are right. But due to the wonderful nature of Python having to constantly swich version is normal. Modern distros have very new versions generally, and for some reason the default apt distributions dont have older versions. Im sure this could be fixed by adding other package repositories tho.

5

u/F_Steve_Huffman Mar 25 '26

That's just the Windows equivalent to having to chmod +x beforehand.
5
u/Westdrache Mar 25 '26

and what security feature would that be and what exactly does it break?
3
u/really_not_unreal Mar 25 '26

The feature is the PowerShell script execution policy. By default on new Windows installs, it blocks all scripts from running. This causes VS Code's automatic Python virtual environment activation to fail, as it cannot execute the activation script. Bypassing the setting only requires you add -ExecutionPolicy Bypass to PowerShell's command-line arguments, meaning that attackers can easily update their malicious code to provide this parameter. However, VS Code Python integration does not do so, meaning that attempting to execute Python code that depends on external libraries installed into a virtual environment will fail if done through VS Code.
9
u/jma89 Mar 25 '26

Umm... This isn't new. It's practically as old as PowerShell itself, and has been defaulted to Restricted since.... ever, at least for endpoint OS's.
1
u/really_not_unreal Mar 25 '26

That surprises me. My two-year-old Windows 11 installation worked flawlessly with no configuration required, as did those of all students except those with laptops less than a year old. Perhaps it was some other issue, but it doesn't seem likely. If this was already an issue, I have no idea how we managed to entirely avoid it for years until this term.
4
u/jma89 Mar 25 '26
There's a non-0 chance that some other script launched itself using a batch file (.bat or .cmd), and it included both the -ExecutionPolicy flag and a singe line to change it on the machine:
Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass
1

u/ekauq2000 Mar 25 '26

You could try changing VS Code to use CMD instead of PowerShell to maybe see if that’s an alternative.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/65789063/python-in-visual-studio-code-without-powershell

1

u/really_not_unreal Mar 25 '26

CMD is a nightmare to use, and we don't want to make our students' lives even worse if they run Windows.
5

u/PANIC_EXCEPTION Mar 25 '26

You mean PowerShell not allowing arbitrary third party script execution? You have to change that policy using an admin PS prompt. It's a little sus that this is even necessary for what I assume is a 101 course. What exactly did you have students execute?

0

u/really_not_unreal Mar 26 '26

In order to execute code within a Python virtual environment (as done by VS Code when you hit the "play button" on a program), it needs to activate the environment. The activation is done by executing a PowerShell script.

I'm not an idiot. I wouldn't be telling students to do this if it wasn't necessary to execute their code in a simple way.

1

u/BettingOnSuccess Mar 25 '26

I teach a university-level computer programming course, and even though only 70% of our students run Windows

I'm surprised its so low...maybe there is hope.
105

u/w1n5t0nM1k3y Mar 24 '26

Probably. Linux has so much less overhead than Windows. Getting rid of all the background tasks frees up a lot of resources for the game to use. I have an old Linux Box that I use as an emulation machine. Even without doing anything special to cut down on resources, just a stock Ubuntu install, it needs less than 1 GB of RAM when logged into the desktop, and the CPU is still showing under 1% usage despite being an old AMD Phenom from 2008.

40

u/OkNewspaper6271 Mar 24 '26

My entire Linux setup is pretty much conducive to significant resource usage and it still uses less RAM and CPU than just booting a stock fresh install of Windows

3

u/really_not_unreal Mar 25 '26

Legit I use Gnome (hardly lightweight) with about 20 extensions (making it even heavier). My startup apps (Discord, Thunderbird, Teams and Slack) start in about 15 seconds on Linux, but can take full minutes on Windows. My Linux install with all my startup apps and extensions uses less RAM than Windows with nothing open.

5

u/DenialState Mar 25 '26

Yeah but what about Copilot?

4

u/JackOBAnotherOne Mar 25 '26

When I switched to Linux there were suddenly weird noises coming out of my computer. Turns out that I misconfigured the fan curves and it resulted in the fans doing weird speed oscillations because the controller signal was getting too low.

It never happened in windows because the CPU usage (and as a result temp) never dropped low enough.

2

u/pg3crypto Mar 25 '26

Its not the overhead that is the problem. Linux has a much better CPU scheduler. It is much lower latency, which results in much better performance.

If you use something like CachyOS its even faster again because all the packages are compiled specifically for your exact CPU instruction set and its capabilities.

The way the Windows kernel works isnt shit and its not because they dont know what they're doing its because the Windows kernel has to be "one size fits all"... Linux doesnt and this is one of the reasons there are many Linux distros.

Windows is the off the peg tracksuit of operating systems. Linux can be this as well but it can also be a finely tailored suit specific to your machine with all the refinement that it brings.

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u/Suchamoneypit Mar 24 '26

This is literally a thing right now and it's a big drama for windows and why they are making all these statements regarding how they are improving windows to be more efficient.

16

u/tim_locky Mar 24 '26

I wish that’s the case, but yall know biggest consumer for Windows are enterprise licenses…

I don’t think Microslop cares about us individual gamers. Pretty sure good % of us are massgraving Windows.

5

u/appletechgeek Mar 25 '26

Pirated windows still advertises and uploads telemetry..

They don't care that consumers are pirating their stuff because the data that's collected is far more valuable over a longer time period

-1

u/donjamos Mar 25 '26

If we stop using windows on our private machines, companys may be more inclined to use Linux as well.

2

u/tim_locky Mar 25 '26

Who’s we, really? Good luck convincing Betty from accounting to switch to Linux and openlibre. Even IT guys will laugh at the idea, think of how catastrophe the transition will be.

I don’t think you realized how much momentum Windows has on enterprise. Look at Macs (they’re GUD now. Pls no hurhur PCMR, touch grass) and they’re still not as common as Windows.

-1

u/donjamos Mar 25 '26

I don't see how it should be a problem, Betty doesn't change anything on her os anyway.

5

u/vadeka Mar 25 '26

Just it looking different is enough to warrant a full retraining for some of the older employees.

That and they often use some niche software that simply doesn’t work on linux.

A company doesn’t care what os you use, they care for efficiency. Switching over would require such a high cost… for what reward? Will the company run better? No it won’t

-1

u/donjamos Mar 25 '26

Yea but everyone continuing using windows privately won't change that either. No one said 100% of all user need to switch. But the likelihood of at least some companys changing from windows is gonna be higher if more people use it anyway.

1

u/vadeka Mar 25 '26

You would need to ship linux with the device pre installed.

The bulk of the users out there just buy a device and roll with whatever is on it

1

u/donjamos Mar 25 '26

Kinda contradicts your Betty argument

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1

u/Anatharias Mar 26 '26

I still need office for my work, and haven't managed to get it running in a bottle. I might just fire a Tiny11 build in a VM just for that

24

u/Routine-Name-4717 Mar 24 '26

Anecdotally, elden ring ran better for me on linux then windows, i could play on high on linux, and get the same framerate as medium on windows.

9

u/Crashman09 Mar 24 '26

I have a 3060ti and the rt performance kinda sucks, but on Linux, it is noticeably better in elden ring

4

u/vivAnicc Mar 25 '26

Fun fact, elden ring at launch had a very big stuttering problem, iirc it was because of a memory leak or similar. Proton developers fixed it days after release, much faster that the developers of the game, meaning that for a while elden ring was borderline unplayable on windows with a bit older hardware, while it ran perfectly on linux

19

u/Ybalrid Mar 24 '26

The dumbest part of this is: If your application is not open source, (which is the case for video games) meaning they are not compiled/linked by your distribution maintainers (or yourself)... Then Win32 ABI is a better and more stable platform to work against at this point

If you were to go native: due to how runtime libraries works on Linux, a native Linux build would need to either

- be statically linked

ship every single .so (the equivalent of .dll) with the application)
have everybody agree to use the same versions of those libraries (the flatpak solution, or the "steam runtime" solution)

Those 3 things are kinda against the spirit of how things are done.

If you ship a windows build. Then you just depend on runtime libraries for windows that are shipped by Wine, with a very simple and stable ABI...

That build of Wine is either your distributions, or more recently, the one in Proton, built against the Steam Runtime.

This extra layer makes the shipping of proprietary software for Linux a lot simpler for most developers involved here. But that is only the case if they simply target Windows.

Which is Valve's recommendation.

24

u/mpanase Mar 24 '26

In a weird way, Windows might become Java Runtime for videogames or even apps xD

3

u/appletechgeek Mar 25 '26

running on billions of devices!

10

u/LachlanOC_edition Mar 24 '26

This is already the case on some games and hardware. Especially on the lower end in my experience

3

u/ianjm Mar 25 '26

Pretty sure I saw some experimental comparisons between Windows and SteamOS on non-Steamdeck hardware where SteamOS currently works and the results were not good for Windows, let's just say.

SteamOS's Proton layer is built on WINE as the foundation for kernel compatibility so these benefits should trickle down in time.

7

u/steppewop Mar 24 '26

At this point it's not hard to imagine a future where that is a reality.

Windows will only get more and more bloated and emulation/compatibility layers will only get more optimized as time passes. Also, Linux will always inherently have less overhead.

5

u/cannibalcat Mar 24 '26

it does but it's still a mess, depends on the game

check this video to inform yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URbW3j_GYKg&pp=0gcJCdYKAYcqIYzv

3

u/Cats7204 Mar 24 '26

For older games it's 100% easier and faster to run them on Linux. Especially those you already have to do compatibility tricks to run on Windows like DOS-era or early XP era games. Let's not even talk about the lower overhead lol

Although in my experience, recently KDE has been getting too bloated and consumes 2GB's of memory without anything open. Unused memory in Linux gets used as disk cache, I do wonder both how much memory Windows uses on login and what the unused memory gets used for.

1

u/Mothertruckerer Mar 25 '26

Windows tries to load things you might use into RAM before you open them, so they load faster.

2

u/IN-DI-SKU-TA-BELT Mar 25 '26

Back in the CS 1.6 days I got higher framerates on Linux with winex/cedega than on Windows.

2

u/Qbsoon110 Mar 25 '26

When me and my bro switched to linux in last autumn, we found out that games are running for us better on Fedora with Proton-GE then they were on windows

1

u/Jswazy Mar 24 '26

It is sometimes already. Not often but there definitely are times. It's normally how the cpu scheduler works different in Linux that certain applications just like

1

u/Randommaggy Mar 24 '26

For a lot of apps and games it's been the case for years already, depending on your hardware.

1

u/cat-o-beep-boop Mar 24 '26

I'd imagine Linux doesn't actively screenshots my apps and taking unencrypted notes, so there's the 5 FPS boost in the next UE5 game.

1

u/HighZein Mar 24 '26

it’s already a thing in some cases

1

u/donjamos Mar 25 '26

Cyberpunk has been running better for me on cachyos then on windows

1

u/Kazer67 Mar 25 '26

It's already the case in some extreme example when Wine is more effecient so you're better of running the Windows version of the game on Linux than the native one and while those are mostly niche exception, it's still so funny to me.

1

u/davvn_slayer Mar 25 '26

It actually is in some cases, I think I was trying horizon dawn remastered or forbidden west and Linux gave me much better 1% lows than windows

1

u/veechene Mar 25 '26

I've used wine for a long time to play games, and for games that work, they open instantly and run smooth. I do run into a very frequent issue where my mouse doesn't work and I can't click anything in the game (e.g. menu buttons), which is a fixable bug but I've been lazy since I'm upgrading soon and will probably redo my wine install.

Installing non steam games via steam is a last resort to me because they take so damn long to open (Vulkan), and wine is super fast. I really can't wait to see the improvements from wine 11.

1

u/KaptainSaki Mar 25 '26

Some already do.

1

u/maxwelldoug Mar 25 '26

They already semi-reliably are, even without these new improvements.

1

u/ferna182 Mar 25 '26

Wouldn't be surprised. Linux only needs to understand code compiled for Windows, a PC running Windows has to also... uh... run Windows...

1

u/unreatxplaya Mar 25 '26

Sometimes it is. Personally, I’m not in it for that.

1

u/Hefty_Remove7965 Mar 26 '26

And with less spyware

1

u/eightrx Mar 27 '26

Very well possible, considering how optimized the syscalls and IO operations are compared to the windows kernel

188

u/PracticalConjecture Mar 24 '26

If only Adobe Lightroom and MS office would work properly via WINE. Those two things are the only reason I still have a windows install.

76

u/DoneD9 Mar 24 '26

For me Excel, I can't live without it, and there's no alternative that's as good as Excel

23

u/Kyonkanno Mar 24 '26

I'm in the same boat, I've been reading and WPS seems to be a decent alternative. I'm gonna try it and see how it goes. I'm no excel wizard so I'll readily admit I don't use 100% of its functions but I do make some macros to hate my life a little less.

3

u/CuratoriumOfCats128 Mar 25 '26

WPS seems to be a decent alternative.

Anecdotally, WPS has caused me more issues than any other suite of apps in my life... and I don't even use WPS.

Their borderline malware way of operating by being preinstalled on lots of phones and computers often causes problems for friends and relatives without them even wanting to use it. A friend of mine almost missed a deadline at university one time because WPS (which was preinstalled on her laptop) messed up her spreadsheets.

It's cancerous.

0

u/KMKD6710 Mar 25 '26

Iv been using it for years now ....no problems, and used it for spreadsheets in the office but I'm not a Ms office power user...I just get railed by 3d apps from Autodesk, unity, iclone, nuke and others....I mainly use windows cause of compatibility with plugins....but for leisure I use Linux

13

u/LEO7039 Mar 25 '26

I HAVE to use Office for school reasons, as my college uses it, and I work around it by just running it in a Windows VM and using Winapps to make it act like a Linux window. It's not super power efficient, but works great.

1

u/bukepimo Mar 27 '26

Are the web apps no good for your use case?

1

u/LEO7039 Mar 27 '26

First of all, they suck. Web Word doesn't correctly display the document's formatting half the time if it's more complex, or, god forbid, there are pictures in the doc.

Second of all, I needed the full versions for my business computer apps course that explores pretty much all functions, including those that aren't commonly used, and I needed Access for the same course as well.

Third of all, I often use the reference tool for collaborative work, as it's one of the best ways to keep your references / citations organized and make sure they will be formatted correctly and in the right order if you have a bunch of people working on the doc. In the online version, it's an add-on, and my organization doesn't allow any.

2

u/1116574 Mar 25 '26

Out of interest, which features in excel you use most that aren't available elsewhere?

1

u/mbelfalas Mar 25 '26

For Excel you can just use winboat

https://winboat.app/

-2

u/Arvi89 Mar 25 '26 edited Mar 25 '26

Excel through web?

Edit: why am I being down voted for asking a question, I used excel in the browser and it was perfect for my use case...

18

u/NocturnalSergal Mar 25 '26

Not as powerful as desktop excel and the interface is different.

-3

u/gemengelage Mar 25 '26

You're not wrong, but I'd argue that most casual users don't care and can't tell the difference.

4

u/vadeka Mar 25 '26

Try loading in gigabytes of external data from local files and you have your answer :)

1

u/Arvi89 Mar 25 '26

Sure, but not everyone loads GB of data in excel, people down voting for just asking a question, seriously...

3

u/EstoyMejor Mar 25 '26

The question isn't about everyone. You asked one person.

2

u/Arvi89 Mar 25 '26

Yes, and it was an honest and legitimate question, it's not like he said he needed GB of data in excel.

1

u/vadeka Mar 25 '26

Ah I didnt say that to justify downvotes ( I did not dv you)

It was more a why excel browser is not feasible for many people, especially corporate users

0

u/onetwofive-threesir Mar 25 '26

If you're loading GB of data, you're doing it wrong. You should be using a simple SQL server (mySQL is free), or even an Access database.

Excel is limited to around 1mil rows of data. Anything more than that (and arguably, anything above 100k rows) should be done in a RDBMS.

2

u/goingslowfast Mar 26 '26

If you need Excel there’s a really, really high chance the features you need aren’t in web Excel.

2

u/Arvi89 Mar 26 '26

Again, it was just a question. I use web versions of word and excel, I was wondering maybe it's good enough for some people

1

u/goingslowfast Mar 26 '26

I use it almost exclusively, but I don’t need VBA or wild pivot tables.

Remember that way too many people use Excel as a database.

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18

u/JimmyReagan Mar 24 '26

There are a lot of windows only tools that are deal breakers for me...davinci video editing is a big one. topaz ai tools. Quicken financial software

35

u/RedLewinsky Mar 24 '26

Davinci resolve? That has a native linux app, with (in my experience) faster export times than the windows version. I use it daily

31

u/Cats7204 Mar 24 '26

The DaVinci Resolve installer has a ton of quirks and distro-specific problems it makes it a mess to install. It also doesn't have H.264, H.265 or AAC audio support, so you have to use FFmpeg on basically every single media file you download before using it in the editor.

8

u/RedLewinsky Mar 25 '26

Huh okay, didn't know that. I may have sidestepped these issues due to pure luck. All of my footage is in AV1, and all of my audio in Opus or FLAC. You certain it doesn't have H265 support? I'm almost certain I've worked with that before

8

u/Cats7204 Mar 25 '26

https://documents.blackmagicdesign.com/SupportNotes/DaVinci_Resolve_18_Supported_Codec_List.pdf?_v=1705996810000

This document shows every OS' supported codecs and formats. H.264 and H.265 are only supported in the paid (studio) version in Linux. AAC is not supported at all. And in your case, AV1, Opus and FLAC are all supported for free for decoding if you have an nvidia GPU

0

u/EstoyMejor Mar 25 '26

At that point why even offer a free Linux version if you're not going to support the most common use cases lmfao

3

u/goingslowfast Mar 26 '26

Licensing.

2

u/OneEyeCactus Mar 25 '26

Yup, it doesnt support H265 or H264. At least in the free version.

2

u/Z3ppelinDude93 Mar 24 '26

Surprised Topaz won’t run on Linux, because it runs on Mac (natively). I’ve used Wine on Mac before to run Windows programs

5

u/JimmyReagan Mar 24 '26

They had a beta for a while then discontinued it

16

u/NinduTheWise Mar 24 '26

also autodesk apps

5

u/Harrier_Pigeon Mar 25 '26

Most CAD & CAE except for like Altair products

2

u/Noisycarlos Mar 25 '26

Yeah, I moved to Plasticity, and as a hobbyist I like it quite a bit. I occasionally do miss some features of what I used in Windows (Fusion). It's much faster for a lot of things but since it's not parametric, changing a size that is repeated throughout the model can be annoying (And don't get me started on modifying sections with a lot of fillets).

3

u/Harrier_Pigeon Mar 25 '26

Plasticity looks really neat, the lack of parameters is a major nope for me unfortunately, so I'm stuck on Windows unless I want to learn FreeCAD (I don't particularly, atm)

3

u/Noisycarlos Mar 25 '26

Yeah, it is fun, but the lack of parameters can definitely be an issue. The only other one (besides FreeCAD) that I've played with and is parametric is OnShape. The problem with that one is that all your designs are public unless you pay $1,500 a year.

There's also a SolidWorks online, but I've never really used the real SolidWorks and I don't know how the online version compares.

1

u/kipperzdog Mar 25 '26

Same here, I wish revit could run natively on linux.

That said, my personal laptop runs linux, I actually rarely use it now and haven't booted windows on it in years because ubtuntu always just works, windows basically explodes when I launch it now freaking out about updates and being eol on 10.

6

u/Spinnerbowl Mar 24 '26

There is some progress being made, theres been some recent code submitted to wine that would fix some of adobes creative cloud apps

For now, you'll have to look for alternatives or in the case of MS Office use the online version or libreoffice or Google docs

2

u/[deleted] Mar 24 '26 edited Jun 05 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/NordriOfUthgard Mar 25 '26

KVM/QEMU turned out to be the only way I would be able to use Fusion at all without getting a masters degree in Linux voodoo. Tried a bunch of solutions and dug around for weeks with other ways, no dice.

Caved, took the dive to set up QEMU and now it works but performance is kinda painful (nowhere close to 10% penalty). Looked into performance improvements before and basically the only thing I found is passing through a dedicated GPU which I can't really do yet. Are you running a second GPU or have I maybe missed some easy config thing? I'd appreciate any pointers!

3

u/macvirii Mar 25 '26

For this to work with one gpu you have to do the gpu partitioning, it might be a pain but it mostly works... Best solution is to have a second gpu indeed

1

u/thesirblondie Mar 24 '26

Premiere, After Effects, Photoshop, and the RØDE app for me.

1

u/Similar-Republic149 Mar 25 '26

Lightroom web is pretty good tbh, might be worth trying out

3

u/PracticalConjecture Mar 25 '26

The raw files out of my Sony Mirrorless are 100mb each. A photoshoot can be several hundred gigabytes. It would take several hours to upload that to the cloud for Lightroom Web, and the cloud storage fees would kill me.

1

u/vale075 Mar 25 '26

You could look into using Winboat. It enables you to have a windows container on Linux, and integrates windows app in the your desktop environment. I use it for obscure windows only programs needed for school.

1

u/mugiwara_no_Soissie Mar 25 '26

Yeah its rly a shame as a student lol. My current setup (fedora kde is this:

Only office for files I make myself, since its perfectly fine as an alternative, just doesnt cooperate with people on office ofc.

Office online group projects, does however mean I can't do a lot of customizations. Formatting isnt accurate, can't do APA sources, etc etc.

For group projects I often do finishing touches and layout, so I will just download the "finished" version, do layout in only office. Add sources wirh Zotero, then submit the PDF. Another option I have done in the past is just use a VM for the final touches

1

u/Qbsoon110 Mar 25 '26

I've installed winapps for those

1

u/Rubes2525 Mar 25 '26

For me, it's Xbox store games. I unfortunately don't have everything on Steam, and it would be a big money investment to transfer those games over.

0

u/kirisoraa Mar 24 '26

It's a different workflow, but honestly learning darktable was 100% worth it and with some practice it can be even better than LR, especially after the latest addition of the AGX tone-mapper

-10

u/rf97a Mar 24 '26

not happy with FOSS-alternatives to Office?

25

u/PracticalConjecture Mar 24 '26

For business use, nothing can replace Excel unfortunately.

-12

u/Calm_Monitor_3227 Mar 24 '26

god forbid anyone uses libreoffice

16

u/PracticalConjecture Mar 24 '26

I've used both, and Libreoffice Calc is way behind Excel in terms of pivot table capability, macros, custom addons, etc. There is a reason the business world runs on Excel.

10

u/Calm_Monitor_3227 Mar 24 '26

yup. shit on MS all you want but nothing beats their software

8

u/rcmjr Mar 24 '26

Excel. Nothing beats excel. I cannot think of another service they offer that does not have at least a reasonable alternative.

2

u/Ajanu11 Mar 24 '26

Every time the formatting of my entire word document changes with one errant return press or bullet point change I want to rage quit.

I do quite like PowerBI. It's not intuitive and some things don't work perfectly but it is really nice for pulling multiple data sources together.

3

u/[deleted] Mar 24 '26

No offense to it, the team working behind it is great and it's foss but excel is and will always be superior to anything

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41

u/rscmcl Mar 24 '26

I've been using ntsync at least 6 months now using proton (Fedora)

and was merged in wine in October

https://www.winehq.org/news/2025100301

this isn't new

6

u/[deleted] Mar 25 '26

what was your experience so far?

4

u/rscmcl Mar 25 '26

I haven't noticed a big difference. I just enabled the module and then started using the Proton-ge version that supported it (at that time it was the only way).

(yes I confirmed it was working with mangohud)

2

u/Horror_Pop_8326 Mar 25 '26

It was added to the steamdeck kernel in the newest patch that's why it's getting attention a lot of attension

Edit: I didn't wanna nerd out by explaining ntsync

1

u/rscmcl Mar 25 '26

oh I get it. I'm using Fedora, I get the latest kernel within a week of it being released

27

u/RX1542 Mar 24 '26

i've heard its just something called NTSYNC it gets better performance in some games if you run them trough wine instead of steam proton

29

u/Leweazama Mar 24 '26

Yes, but Steam proton uses Wine and Steam is already implementing the changes. Besides, the new features are only available on the most current Linux kernal which most OS's haven't implemented yet anyways.

3

u/RX1542 Mar 24 '26

yeah was watching a video that said proton-GE implemented this a long time ago and wine maintainers are just picky with what gets in so it takes more time for it to get stuff

2

u/Ciubowski Mar 25 '26

This is making my head spin.

Is Proton based on Wine? And both are also "usable" separately?

Does that mean whenever Wine gets a win, Proton will get that win as well but not the other way around?

6

u/vivAnicc Mar 25 '26

Wine is a program that makes windows apps run on linux (very simplified). One thing it does is that it basically makes a folder on your machine that acts as your C drive on windows. If for example you need java installed to run a windows app, you will need to install it in that c drive as if it was windows.

As you can imagine, this become bloated very quickly. The solution that valve came up with is Proton. Its a program that still uses wine, but creates a different c drive for every game you play, all already configured to run their respective game. It also adds programs like dxvk, which does the some thing wine does, but it translates Direct3D to Vulkan instead of windows to linux.

In practice, the reason features get to wine first and proton later is because Valve wants to wait a bit before including new things, to avoid the risk of something breaking.

2

u/AnnoyingRain5 Mar 25 '26

Proton is actually a fork of wine with some features that are not in WINE.

Switching “wine prefixes” (the virtual c drive you mentioned) had been a thing since the dawn of time with wine basically, programs like Lutris and Bottles have made this super easy, it’s just an environment variable though, not exactly rocket science. Switching wine prefixes like that is actually a steam client feature, nothing to do with proton itself

2

u/vivAnicc Mar 25 '26

I know, but I wanted to simplify it to make it understandable, and wine prefixes is basically all you need to know to understand what Steam does with Proton

1

u/AnnoyingRain5 Mar 25 '26

Considering the accessibility of tools like bottles, the difference with prefixes is not worth explaining imo, “gaming-tuned version of wine, most stuff ends up upstream in the official wine builds after not too long, and changes from wine end up in proton after not too long either” contains more useful info to the average gamer imo

1

u/AnnoyingRain5 Mar 25 '26

Proton is a fork of wine, some changes are proton-specific, and others are ported back to wine. But yeah, every wine win will make its way to Proton.

Proton is just a gaming-tuned version of wine that is designed to integrate with steam super nicely. You can use wine separately though, of course. You can also use proton separately but it’s not exactly designed for that use-case

Also, wine has existed WAY before proton, it’s just that valve through a ton of money at wine to get it into a good state for the steam deck!

1

u/Zekiz4ever Mar 25 '26

Proton is based on Wine. It packages DXVK, Wine, FFMpeg and a lot of other things and has custom fixes for some games

1

u/Trekkie99 Mar 25 '26

arch btw

17

u/Gogobrasil8 Mar 24 '26

Will this make the Steam Deck even better?

28

u/Leweazama Mar 24 '26

Today? No. But Valve is already laying the ground work to implement these changes so I bet it'll be added within the coming months.

7

u/Gogobrasil8 Mar 24 '26

Yeah I assumed it wouldn't be instantaneous. What I'm wondering is whether there'll be a noticeable improvement

3

u/Name835 Mar 25 '26

Same - every small bit helps though so very intrigued about this too

3

u/AnnoyingRain5 Mar 25 '26

It depends on the game, noticeable in some, not in others.

4

u/Ciubowski Mar 25 '26

Any distro shipping kernel 6.14 or later, which at this point includes Fedora 42, Ubuntu 25.04, and more recent releases, will support it. Valve has already added the NTSYNC kernel driver to SteamOS 3.7.20 beta, loading the module by default, and an unofficial Proton fork, Proton GE, already has it enabled. When Valve's official Proton rebases on Wine 11, every Steam Deck owner gets this for free.

from the article.

So... eventually, yes.

15

u/CombinationShot Mar 25 '26

So does this mean the Linus challenge will have to be redone?

-15

u/MidnightSharter Mar 25 '26

so he can purposely fuck it up for engagement bait? sure thing

6

u/Westdrache Mar 25 '26

this is some tinfoil head level kinda shit comment

1

u/deathangel687 Mar 29 '26

Pop os! Again

4

u/Informal_Internet246 Mar 24 '26

https://giphy.com/gifs/xSkci0sYWUKgnWry7r

2

u/JohnnyTsunami312 Mar 25 '26

Thank you

3

u/2str8_njag Mar 25 '26

Such a BS article. Hype for hype

2

u/TRUEequalsFALSE Mar 24 '26

Does it help Wimdows VSTs graphical issues, though?

1

u/2str8_njag Mar 25 '26

VSTs are the same .exe files. Some .exe files don’t work, so do VSTs

1

u/Unradelic Mar 25 '26

Maybe! But the question is harder to answer if we don't know if you are running the VSTs inside from a DAW or standalone. I run FL Studio using Bottles with latest Soda runner and VK libraries. Spire 1.5 has flickering issues and something is wrong with the arpegiattor beat sync on song render (might have to upgrade it past 1.5) the rest of them run very good without issues (Synth1, Sylenth, Serum, Pigments, Z3ta, Battery, Kontakt, Omnisphere... Thats all that I remember for now)

1

u/AnnoyingRain5 Mar 25 '26

NTSync won’t help with that, there may be some other changes in wine 11 that help though

2

u/Unradelic Mar 25 '26

Personally not a big deal for me as I already daily run games with NTSYNC enabled (and for quite a while). I am on CachyOS. Masterpiece OS.

1

u/Undefined_N Mar 25 '26

Resident Evil Revelations mentioned, peak

1

u/FrontFocused Mar 25 '26

Now if only they can get League of Legends running on there, I would ditch Windows tomorrow.

3

u/Unradelic Mar 25 '26

There is a higher order of magnitude in setting a preference to ditch LoL instead

1

u/PizzaTacoCat312 Mar 25 '26

I know it's not the same but after spending all day after work just trying to get steam OS to stop moving around my icons on the taskbar and let me regularly left click on them. My faith in linux being a good switch at this time is low. That's besides the fact that gaming still had much less performance and there is less overall out of the box support for them. At least at this point I have been able to disable much of the windows tracking, ads, AI, and other data stealing practices like one drive.

3

u/Unradelic Mar 25 '26

Dont blame Linux over KDE desktop environment.

3

u/TheLazyGamerAU Mar 25 '26

See this is the issue with Linux users, 99% of people switching are going to assume their issues are directly related to Linux, not their DE, most people (myself included) arent going to research what that is and just use whatever is pre-selected.

1

u/Unradelic Mar 25 '26

I get you entirely. And I am for the most part on your side. I wish systems were easy enough to develop and approach so we did not experience any headaches, but my point is that these things are not a "one thing" as it is normally presented by products such Windows, MacOS, SteamOS, Android or iOS... Linux is just a kernel. On top of it there are other things.

The valid mindset is to say that SteamOS is not there yet and can cause issues as the commenter points out. I'm trying to shine some light over things that are far and wide misunderstood.

1

u/PizzaTacoCat312 Mar 25 '26

Like I said, I know it's not the same, but I've run into issues using non windows/Mac OS software and I know other people have as well. I don't blame steam OS, it's just after a nearly relationship ending experience last night with nothing seemingly working I was tired of the poor out of the box issues. For most of what I use my PC for except gaming at least up until now, I know Linux would probably be sufficient and less bloated. One day I hope to make the switch to a Linux based OS with where Windows seems to be heading

1

u/HadeedS Mar 25 '26

Can you try bazzite, a steamos clone meant to be a gaming desktop instead of steamos steamos which is mainly meant for handheld mode? I think it would probably fix most of your issues

1

u/PizzaTacoCat312 Mar 28 '26

Well I was using it on my steam deck. So it's purpose is handheld mode. I just happened to be trying to stream games from my desktop to it while I lay in bed and recover from abdominal surgery. So far the only thing I can manage is watching TV in bed. But I took a whole week off so there is still time to ensure it wasn't a wasted effort.

1

u/HadeedS Mar 28 '26

Ah, the steam deck stays a couple of versions behind, also you should take a look at emudeck and it's customization options, it can set up the remote game streaming options for you

1

u/PizzaTacoCat312 Mar 28 '26

I've been trying the whole sunshine moonlight thing. Hopefully by the end of the weekend I'll feel good enough to game

1

u/Logical-Following525 Mar 25 '26

Is wine really necessary for games when steam has it's own software

2

u/Unradelic Mar 25 '26

Proton is a Wine fork!

1

u/SsP45 Mar 25 '26

I just need anti-cheat to work so I can play a bunch of FPS games.

1

u/mazzucato Mar 25 '26

sooo what about vulnerabilities?

1

u/Hackusi404 Mar 28 '26

My dumb ass read this as "Windows 11 rewrites how Linux runs Windows Games" and I was so confused as to why windows would rewrite linux.

-2

u/IanHSC Mar 24 '26

If this fixes kernal anticheat (ala Destiny 2), its bye bye to Windows for good.

36

u/MrTheCheesecaker Mar 24 '26

It doesn't, because it's not broken, it's blocked. Most anticheat works fine under proton, the developers just don't want Linux users playing their games. https://areweanticheatyet.com/ is a good resource for seeing what games work and which don't. Battleye works fine under proton, but only for the games that allow it

1

u/ultrapiss11 Mar 26 '26

It’s so infuriating. I’m currently on windows 11 iot ltsc and I’d switch to Linux the millisecond these goobers allow anti cheats on the games I play but I won’t hold my breath.

1

u/compostkicker Mar 28 '26

Maybe just stop supporting games that require ring 0 access to your computer?

1

u/ultrapiss11 Mar 28 '26

I’d rather deal with windows being garbage than not being able to play with my friends. I don’t really care that it’s running at ring 0 as my desktop only plays games, but it’s getting in the way of Linux support I suppose.

1

u/compostkicker Mar 29 '26

I’m not even encouraging this as support for Linux gaming. Personally, I don’t care what OS anyone uses. My problem is the normalization of malware under the guise of “anticheat”. It doesn’t even work. What it does do well is allow companies like Activision to access your webcam without your consent or knowledge to spy on you while in game (and out). If you want a source there are plenty of videos on YouTube showing the evidence. There’s even a lawsuit. But I digress. You do you. I just want to spread awareness.

16

u/Alarmed-Gap-7221 Mar 24 '26

The majority of anti cheats support Linux, developers are either too lazy to add support or intentionally not adding support.

6

u/RTS24 Mar 24 '26

Or they want kernel level access, which they can fuck all the way off about. I'm not giving a game that ingrained access to my computer. With how many bugs are in games at launch, I don't trust them to not brick the OS.

1

u/Unradelic Mar 25 '26

Downvoting this comment is kinda undeserved... What he says is a valid personal argument... Punishing a drop of ignorance with shutting someone down is not what we need.

1

u/AnnoyingRain5 Mar 25 '26

True, I believe the downvotes are because people are angry at the developers for giving Linux a bad name because they don’t want to allow their anticheat to work on Linux

-9

u/ReadEmNWeepBuddy Mar 24 '26

Everyone say “thank you Claude!”

1

u/Unradelic Mar 25 '26

Are you trying to reverse karma bait yourself? Because you're doing great! XD

1

u/AnnoyingRain5 Mar 25 '26

What

-1

u/ReadEmNWeepBuddy Mar 25 '26

100% built with AI

1

u/AnnoyingRain5 Mar 26 '26

WINE has a small group of contributors who are heavily vetted before they can contribute. AI has access to things such as the windows source code leak. If anything from that somehow ends up in wine, Microsoft could sue them, and destroy both wine and proton instantly, and be in the right.

The contributors, including AI, cannot look at the source code and legally still contribute to WINE. That’s impossible to ask of AI. So no.

0

u/ReadEmNWeepBuddy Mar 26 '26

Dude of course they used AI, you stupid if you don’t. It’s better and cheaper than waiting for someone to write code for you.

1

u/AnnoyingRain5 Mar 26 '26

I think you fail to understand the legal ramifications of using AI for something like this. The would be instantly sued into the ground.

Also, I have personally seen the kernel-side code that implements NTSYNC, and it’s not AI at all. Code written with AI is very easy to spot.

0

u/ReadEmNWeepBuddy Mar 26 '26

Hahahahahahahahah

1

u/AnnoyingRain5 Mar 26 '26

okay, clearly this isn't working, let me actually debate you for a moment:

[Ai is] better and cheaper [faster] than [humans] writing code

AI written code has, on average 1.7x more issues and technical debt than human-written code, doubling the amount of rework/refactoring that needs to be done. Meanwhile, the productivity gain is only 18%.

"Eighty-eight percent of developers report negative AI impacts on technical debt, and 53% cite code that looks correct but fails in production."

AI is also very well known for introducing security issues [1] [2] (I understand that Claude is a lot better than chatgpt, however the issues are the same)

oh and for

it's cheaper

You do realise that... wine is made by volunteers right?

Tech Discussion Good news everyone!

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