Oh, I like this idea because I don’t know Linux [or windows for that matter].
I found you post somewhat confusing,
sounds to me your pretty much tied to the windows workflow.
and with the details im surprised your not using edge, because of the extra effort needed to test chrome vs firefox vs edge vs vivaldi vs opera vs brave.
even more so is the advocacy of how great ltsc is , givin the fact it does not have the windows store, and with more applications becoming windows store only (the maxon cine bench release for example) how do you plan on ‘being productive’
when you have to start jumping through those hoops ?
just interesting, while im not big on linux, either the whole post just seems out of place
and more targeted rather than informative.
as for gaming its a knows fact gaming on linux still has a way to go. and honestly a win 7 box makes a better gaming machine than a linux or win 10 machine. be damned the win 10 exclusives but since your ltsc, you cant download those win 10 titles anyhow …
so it just sounds like your no longer tolerating alternative work environments and have settled on windows only . good luck in the long run but i feel you will be stuck in the same boat soon enough when your faced having to jump through hoops to get a win store application running on ltsc and what ever acts that microsoft will have you performing while trying to maintain your workflow.
Then you end up with oddballs like me that want to play games from early 80s up to today, and games from 95 to early XP work in wine but not newer Windows versions. I have hundreds of Windows games that I have to run in Linux or on my K6 machine, but at some point hoops shall be jumped through. Something about running a Windows 95, 98 or XP VM inside Windows 10 makes me cringe.
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I use cool-retro-terminal because i’m a cathode addict on my mac/ipad.
I used to dual boot, but then ended up just using one OS at least 80% of the time. I wonder if people that dual boot actually switch back and forth often. I found it to be a pain, even with the relatively quick boot times nowadays.
GPU passthrough is the only thing that got me to stick with Linux. It isn’t a perfect solution and admittedly to get it running well there was a decent amount of work at least on Threadripper. Hopefully the process gets easier for newbies in the future.
I appreciate the effort that Linux folk go to when they engage in such “holy wars”. All of the pros and cons of the various options are laid out for me. All of the assumptions are challenged. All that I need to do is sit down with a cup of tea, absorb everything, and pick what best suits my needs. I don’t need to engage in the “holy wars” myself to benefit from them. I look at them the same way I look at product reviews — incredibly helpful.
I don’t change software unless I know I will substantially benefit from doing so. I couldn’t care less about “best”. I just care about “good enough for my needs”. I’ve used nano as my text editor for years, and used its predecessor pico before that. Do I lose any sleep from the emacs vs vi holy war? Not at all. I’m happy with what I use so am not looking for a replacement. I’ve essentially been using pico/nano since the VAX/VMS days.
One of the many good/great things about Unix/Linux is that once you settle on something, that tends to be valid and will continue to work for years — if not decades — before you are encouraged (or are forced) to re-evaluate your decision. In my case I only really need to think about a new piece of software, or a new OS feature/paradigm, once every two or so years. Usually takes me less than a day to make a decision. Thus I only spend about four hours per year (on average) keeping my OS/DE/tools synced with my needs. I don’t find that onerous at all.
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Worth re-iterating. Compatibility with old games is occasionally better via Mac/Linux than it is on native windows, via things like dosbox and WINE.
GOG Classic version of Icewind Dale for example i had various issues with under WIndows 10 (massively annoying screen flickering - maybe fixed by now) so i installed it on my mac where it ran perfectly under emulation.
If you want latest AAA gaming (and not having a latest AAA game work out of the box is a deal breaker), Linux is a poor choice. If you want to run games from the past 30 years with a reasonable selection of current/modern games, its not anywhere near as bad.
Gaming for me is a secondary use, there’s plenty of unfinished stuff in my steam library that works under Linux to keep me occupied during my limited available gaming time.
Hey, a fellow nano user. I used to use emacs but I’ve since totally forgotten how. I also tried vi tutorials, but didn’t practice enough to make it useful. Simple nano has been good enough for me.
Good point. Because of the choices in linux, I got used to gnome2 (after trying various DEs) and when gnome3/shell came around and I didn’t want to switch, I got to stick with what was familiar to me by going with the MATE fork and not get forced into the new default GUI. Freedom is nice.
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I think it’s mostly about how stable the setup is. With many “Windows Software on Linux” Stuff I’ve made the experience, that it tends to work until some update or such messes stuff up.
With that said, for my work PC this certainly would work. I’ve gotten much more feedback in this thread than i anticipated. I read through all of it and taken the advice to heart. I’m not going back on my home PC anytime soon, as gaming is just not where i’d personally need it. But on my work PC, i’m giving it another shot. If there is a way to integrate one or two Windows Applications in Linux, i’ll happily take your advice on how to do it and give it a shot.
I’ll be throwing Fedora on my work PC later and will try to stick with my prefered choices of Software and stop looking for more. I’m now looking at it more like a challenge.
Since we’ve switched to Office 365, Office is not a big deal anymore. Libre Office is mostly good enough and for anything else the online Versions work fine. Evolution has also mostly worked for me, though Outlook in a VM is certainly an alternative.
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You made a VMWare workstation vid a long time ago showing Unity mode (so frigged cool), then VMWare stopped supporting it, but now its back. Is that what you are talking about?
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Is it back?! Where??
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I too would like to know this.
If they mean Unity 8, that’s you know. It’s coming, but it’s not exactly got the tradewinds behind it.
Its been back for a while, a few versions ago. I’m running a really recent version, 15 Pro- its > View > Unity
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That was the coolest thing about Parallels/Early VMware. Didn’t know it was still a thing.
Off topic items regarding VMware and the GPL
For the… purist… know that VMware doesn’t hold much respect for the GPL. 
It might be an important component in your decision.
Information can be found here:
https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vmware-lawsuit-faq.html
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No it would have to be a recent change of the last few months.
So no unity mode still for Linux guests/hosts…
Uhhhhg… fail that I didn’t validate- saw it in the menu and thought, “its back!!”
What’s applications?
Fedora has some pretty decent defaults, a few exceptions because of their stance of bundling patented codecs (they stick to the legally safe route of not installing them by default) you might need to keep that in mind. But it’s fairly stable and works in most computers. Fedora and Ubuntu are my two picks these days for workstation Linux systems
Unfortunately, if you need a Unix like system for work. The best option is really a Mac. That lack of native docker images is not great but for everything else, a mac is a good option. I’m stuck on Windows due to the project I’m working on. However all the devops engineers and developers are switching to macs. Some from Linux to Mac.
I can see this happening. Ethically I want to use Linux as much as possible but whenever I use Linux beyond a Chromebook like use-case productivity tanks. I can spend hours going down the Google rabbit hole looking at 50 shades of ways to accomplish whatever little thing in which only one of the 50 things partially works vs getting the task at hand accomplished.