I have 5 days left to complete my new year's resolution of switching to Linux. How do I do it as smoothly as possible?

I have 3 things I need to do before it.

  1. My school project. It takes place inside a native game but it’s map editor is not native. I heard it can be run with Wine but I’m unsure of it’s reliability.

1.5 Winrar. To use the game’s editor I need Winrar because of the zip and store options. No other zip software for Linux works with it. I get corrupted map upon loading it.

  1. Skyrim and modding it. Skyrim can be run but not all mods will work. That worries me because Skyrim is my favorite game and a type of game that once you try mods you realize how bad vanilla game is.

2.5 Mod Organizer 2. I heard it got full wine support in 4.21 but I still need to confirm that.

  1. Toon Boom Harmony. An animation software. Some people claim it has a Linux version some don’t. On their website it says Windows and MacOS. There is no alternative mainstream animation software for Linux.

If it fix all of that I can say goodbye to Windows.

Dude just use a VM. I have a feeling you think Linux is going to be this majestic experience and it really isn’t.

If you want a real experience run a headless VM and remote into it, configure it, learn it, run software with it.

Your use case above is exactly why you shouldn’t use Linux full time.

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I tried VM and it just sits there unused.

He’s talking about a windows VM in linucks

How can I get 100% performance with a VM?

Sounds like you don’t need to use Linux then.

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The first Linux tech I ever used was Ubuntu, back in the 2008 time frame. Back then, it was the most user friendly, minimally invasive, operating system my circle liked.

Since then, I still believe it’s the most user friendly, but I’ve heard a lot of rumors that it’s lost tremendous amounts of trust with the community in general due to the incorporation of closed source flim flam embedded tech which was the impedus for moving away from the major OS producers in the first place.

Still, if you are looking for an easy transition OS, I would still bet that would be an easier place to start.

Once you start removing or trying to remove junk modules from it’s interfaces, you’ll get an idea of what’s been going on and how these OS’s are different from the modern versions of Linux as yet un tainted by these forces.

A while ago, Wendell was recommending POP OS. I’ve never used that, but I hope this is one of those “clean” OS’s.

You can’t, but it’s better than 0% performance from the applications you have that aren’t compatible and have no wine support.

Couple of things…

  1. 7zip is cross platform and does .rar
  2. There are games other than skyrim

Will your other software requirements work in a Windows VM? Can you migrate to other software or are they a hard requirement?

If those are hard requirements and won’t work in a virtual machine then until you can migrate off them Linux won’t work for you 100% of the time.

If they aren’t hard requirements and something else that does the same or a similar job will work then its time to start looking.

Why did you make a resolution to switch to linux? Is it related to privacy, security, or something else?

edit:
depending on what particular software does, you can get “close enough” to 100% of bare metal performance in some software. Some other software it’s a shit show. It really depends…

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No one here is going to be able to tell you what works and doesn’t. You’re going to have to do the grunt work and test it out, see what works, and what doesn’t.

Go to the distro forums and post error messages, or strange behavior. Post your error messages here.

You’re going to get a lot of “I use Wine and it works great” or 'Use distro X" or “I run Linux and it’s fine no issues”, none of which are relevant to your use case because they don’t know anything about your setup or what you’re running.

Run Linux Mint, if that doesn’t work, figure out why or try Ubuntu. Rinse and repeat.

You want to use Linux without learning how to use it or putting in the effort. Linux is work. It’s hard. It’s not Windows. You’re going to have to learn a lot.

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Real in the context of servers. Given that he is not going to be administering servers or other such systems, a headless virtual machine is not a good idea for a first-timer, especially if he wants thing to be as close to smooth sailing as possible.

My suggestion is to try Linux out on a secondary computer (laptop) so as to not interfere with your points above and to also see what it’s like outside of a virtual machine. As far as virtual machines for Windows go, I’ve had the best performance on my laptop with VMWare, but you should try QEMU first and see if it has satisfactory performance on your machine.

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

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Hesrightyouknow.exe

The sooner you realize Linux doesn’t do windows things very well because it’s not windows, the happier you will be with Linux. Find alternatives or use windows. It will be much easier than endlessly trying to run your windows workflow to Linux.

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I agree with the rest of your post for the most part, but sometimes people forget that Windows is work as well. No one grows up just knowing how to use windows and the antimalware, av software, etc. isn’t performance-impact free either.

All of us spent a great deal of time learning to use windows since we were kids.

You can’t expect to just instantly shift to ANY other platform without work. macOS is an easier jump, but the flip-side is you’re stuck in mac hardware land (to do it legally) and you don’t have an open platform.

Depends what you personally value.

Personally i’ve settled on ipad + linux desktop i think. iPad for the artsy crap. Linux for the techy crap.

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Agree, but the expectation seems to be, especially in the last few years, that the skills are transferrable. That’s only half true.

But yes, Windows is a lot of work. Especially when you want to PowerShell all the things or play a game from 2007

Definitely.

The reality is there’s a lot more that say macOS and Linux or FreeBSD have in common vs. say… Windows and anything else.

Windows is probably the most difficult platform to shift from, and that’s at least partly by design…

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Agreed… Just to add an empathetic tone to the overall topic…

People have been pushed to using linux as a last resort, because of the lawless attitude the greater business environment has been complicit in, and the destruction of personal liberities that have arisen as a result.

AdminDev’s frustrated responce is a rersult of this very same phenominon. We all think it’s unreasonable to not be able to trust foundation tech’s we’ve all “grown up” using, such as Apple and Window’s OS’s. The false economies that they create jeopardizing peoples very survival.

We’re all frustrated by the endless undermining of the core systems we rely on for the REAL economy, rather than the fake economy of “danger by design” operating systems.

It isn’t reasonable for us to have to go to such great lengths to achieve basic morality from our home devices.

People like myself WILL give you answers if we have them, but be prepared to share everything you can about what you’re looking to use otherwise the responses you get will be incorrect or incomplete.

Linux is great because it’s not overflowing with vulnerable interfaces, but it also sucks because it’s not practical in so many ways. It’s far better, in my personal opinion, as a server system than a client side system, unless you are a web developer that can benefit from it’s native compatibility with web dev interfaces.

If not, it’s real pain when things don’t work because the drivers or functionalities just aren’t there.

Best wishes with your work on this!

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@GardenData61371

As people have always said, try finding Linux alternatives before trying to put a square peg in a round hole (running Windows software on Linux). I’ve actually gone so far with that that some computers in my school have LibreOffice purely because I needed to do a few presentations and it was not possible to connect my laptop to the VGA projectors (there are only two HDMI projectors in the entire school…). Also, I ran my computer in computer science class off of a Kubuntu LiveUSB. Alas, computer science only lasts until third grade (secondary school, machine engineering, Bosnia and Herzegovina).

What? How is it far inferior as a desktop system? I mean, there are annoyances, but it’s not like you’ve attached KDE or GNOME to a server (unless one thinks of the X server) and the software selection is not that limited, even on a relatively niche distribution like Gentoo (I’m on it).

So, to sum what I and others have said, get a secondary computer if you absolutely need what you outlined earlier, avoid Windows software like the plague and try your hardest to find alternatives (I’d suggest at least until the end of January), struggle, struggle and then enjoy what you have achieved, assuming you haven’t given up half-way.

It might seem like we’re not being very empathetic here. I suppose that’s because we aren’t. This user has been making threads like these for a while. Each time we get a little less patient I suppose. At this point it’s just tough love because they seem to be trying to migrate to Linux with no real reason to need it and no idea how to work with it. I think it’s cool he wants to learn to use Linux but this is the wrong way to do it. I know this because I tried doing the same stuff. I spent hours making my gnome 2 desktop look like windows, and getting wine to run winamp. I didn’t appreciate Linux for what it could do, but instead focused on what it couldn’t.

A user who has this expectation and mindset will only become frustrated with Linux and quit using it or worse speak poorly of it from their experience. That’s why we say what we say. It’s many combined years of experience having done it the same way and hoping to keep them from the same frustrations.

Mainly because windows gets too much hate.