Do equivalents for FL Studio, Photoshop, Sony Vegas, Blender, and still over half my Steam library run either natively under Linux, 100% functionally under WINE, or have 1:1 equivalencies in the FOSS space? “Just use Linux” is still not the silver bullet y’all think it is
I actually didn’t know that about Blender; but it’s also been years since I’ve downloaded it-- but as that’s not the main point of my creative process, it was a bad point anyway. A lot of it for me is that there are no good DAWs on Linux. None. Like… Your options are Audacity, which while barely being a DAW, it has no sequencing, and next to no VST support; or like… What was it called, Reaper? Something barely more advanced than like, Fruity Loops version 2? There’s no good DAWs on linux, and FL Studio runs like ass on it. When that hurdle is surmounted, my tolerance for windows bullshit will probably plummet like a stone in water-- but we’re nowhere near there yet.
LMMS was never mentioned to me by my producer homies on Linux; I’m actually amazed that one looks FL Studio adjacent and now I’m kinda side-eyeing my folks like ‘the fuck, I know a couple of y’all run Mint in your downtime’; experimenting with that might actually give me a reason to stand up another Mint VM. Last I tried Ardour and Bitwig, though, they both felt somewhere between GarageBand and Ableton; and I just kinda bounced off 'em the same way I did Ableton.
It is heartening to see more VST support in the space though, that’s one less thing to worry about when I finally do have good reason to permanently switch over. (I can’t imagine losing my collection of plugins; like, it’s been years. If I had to start over from pure square one collecting new plugins, it’d break me.)
Photoshop = Gimp and/or Krita
Sony Vegas = DaVinci Resolve, or maybe kdenlive
Blender = Blender
and still over half my Steam library run either natively under Linux, 100% functionally under WINE = Steam with Proton enabled*
* May require tinkering
See protondb.com if a game doesn’t work out of the box (after enabling Proton).
The large part of the games I’ve played in my Steam library worked out of the box (e.g. Forza Horison 5, Hitman 2, FrostPunk, Hearts of Iron 4, War Thunder), others vary from “click windows 7 in launcher” (Workers and Resources), use Proton 7 instead of Proton Experimental (ChilloutVR), use beta feature in Steam to download an older version of the game (Beat Saber), to Black screen, doesn’t work after tinkering (RDR2) or uses Anti-cheat that doesn’t work on Linux (Pavlov). It seems that all those that I could get working were 100% functionally fine.
If you have the hardware for it and/or can deal with some sacrifice, you could use a Windows virtual machine in linux, and do a GPU passthrough for gaming.
Linux will not meet 100% of your needs until the software developers decide to support Linux. It takes a lot of time to learn Linux. This is true. Even as a Gentoo and Arch user, I still have a lot of difficulty and frustration with certain projects to make my system work as needed. However, one thing I have learned in my journey with Linux is that there’s a lot of beauty in using simple and plaintext tools, as well as learning the base Linux system and extending it with its well established protocols and tools. Linux can serve as your IDE, your music production environment, etc., but this does require becoming a more advanced computer user and may even require some programming experience. However, I like getting into the nuts and bolts of my machines, and I recognize that not everyone has the passion/time/energy to do same.
I started off in my later childhood not understanding what a DVD drive was and why it mattered when installing the Sims game I wanted to play. It took a long time for me to understand computers as I do now. I made the full switch to Linux when I had to bring a desktop computer to the library to use their wifi and lost my progress on my resume and job applications because Windows forced its updates on me. At this point, Windows was too much of an impediment to getting my life in a better place that I had to switch. Linux gives me full control of my system, and honestly it’s much more convenient to get work done than to deal with the ancient and broken OS that Windows is. I value open source tools, and have been able to find better replacements than the old proprietary tools I used in Windows. I want to be able to be free from all proprietary shackles one day and be self/collectively-sufficient as possible in order to survive this capitalist system until we have a socialist revolution.
I know in your situation, some tools like FL Studio and Sony Vegas do not have 100% FOSS equivalents in Linux yet, but perhaps, if financially viable, you could get an inexpensive laptop or a small mini pc that you could install those tools on, and then use Linux for your main work. I would suggest Linux Mint to experiment with, though I wish they still supported KDE as I believe that desktop environment is much better for people who were Windows users. It’s still probably one of the best beginner Linux distros, but I wish there was a better option for people to migrate from Windows, and I don’t believe there’s one perfect Linux distro for absolute beginners.
Do equivalents for FL Studio, Photoshop, Sony Vegas, Blender, and still over half my Steam library run either natively under Linux, 100% functionally under WINE, or have 1:1 equivalencies in the FOSS space? “Just use Linux” is still not the silver bullet y’all think it is
deleted by creator
I actually didn’t know that about Blender; but it’s also been years since I’ve downloaded it-- but as that’s not the main point of my creative process, it was a bad point anyway. A lot of it for me is that there are no good DAWs on Linux. None. Like… Your options are Audacity, which while barely being a DAW, it has no sequencing, and next to no VST support; or like… What was it called, Reaper? Something barely more advanced than like, Fruity Loops version 2? There’s no good DAWs on linux, and FL Studio runs like ass on it. When that hurdle is surmounted, my tolerance for windows bullshit will probably plummet like a stone in water-- but we’re nowhere near there yet.
deleted by creator
LMMS was never mentioned to me by my producer homies on Linux; I’m actually amazed that one looks FL Studio adjacent and now I’m kinda side-eyeing my folks like ‘the fuck, I know a couple of y’all run Mint in your downtime’; experimenting with that might actually give me a reason to stand up another Mint VM. Last I tried Ardour and Bitwig, though, they both felt somewhere between GarageBand and Ableton; and I just kinda bounced off 'em the same way I did Ableton.
It is heartening to see more VST support in the space though, that’s one less thing to worry about when I finally do have good reason to permanently switch over. (I can’t imagine losing my collection of plugins; like, it’s been years. If I had to start over from pure square one collecting new plugins, it’d break me.)
deleted by creator
I am praying on it.
Photoshop = Gimp and/or Krita
Sony Vegas = DaVinci Resolve, or maybe kdenlive
Blender = Blender
and still over half my Steam library run either natively under Linux, 100% functionally under WINE = Steam with Proton enabled*
* May require tinkering
See protondb.com if a game doesn’t work out of the box (after enabling Proton).
The large part of the games I’ve played in my Steam library worked out of the box (e.g. Forza Horison 5, Hitman 2, FrostPunk, Hearts of Iron 4, War Thunder), others vary from “click windows 7 in launcher” (Workers and Resources), use Proton 7 instead of Proton Experimental (ChilloutVR), use beta feature in Steam to download an older version of the game (Beat Saber), to Black screen, doesn’t work after tinkering (RDR2) or uses Anti-cheat that doesn’t work on Linux (Pavlov). It seems that all those that I could get working were 100% functionally fine.
If you have the hardware for it and/or can deal with some sacrifice, you could use a Windows virtual machine in linux, and do a GPU passthrough for gaming.
Linux will not meet 100% of your needs until the software developers decide to support Linux. It takes a lot of time to learn Linux. This is true. Even as a Gentoo and Arch user, I still have a lot of difficulty and frustration with certain projects to make my system work as needed. However, one thing I have learned in my journey with Linux is that there’s a lot of beauty in using simple and plaintext tools, as well as learning the base Linux system and extending it with its well established protocols and tools. Linux can serve as your IDE, your music production environment, etc., but this does require becoming a more advanced computer user and may even require some programming experience. However, I like getting into the nuts and bolts of my machines, and I recognize that not everyone has the passion/time/energy to do same.
I started off in my later childhood not understanding what a DVD drive was and why it mattered when installing the Sims game I wanted to play. It took a long time for me to understand computers as I do now. I made the full switch to Linux when I had to bring a desktop computer to the library to use their wifi and lost my progress on my resume and job applications because Windows forced its updates on me. At this point, Windows was too much of an impediment to getting my life in a better place that I had to switch. Linux gives me full control of my system, and honestly it’s much more convenient to get work done than to deal with the ancient and broken OS that Windows is. I value open source tools, and have been able to find better replacements than the old proprietary tools I used in Windows. I want to be able to be free from all proprietary shackles one day and be self/collectively-sufficient as possible in order to survive this capitalist system until we have a socialist revolution.
I know in your situation, some tools like FL Studio and Sony Vegas do not have 100% FOSS equivalents in Linux yet, but perhaps, if financially viable, you could get an inexpensive laptop or a small mini pc that you could install those tools on, and then use Linux for your main work. I would suggest Linux Mint to experiment with, though I wish they still supported KDE as I believe that desktop environment is much better for people who were Windows users. It’s still probably one of the best beginner Linux distros, but I wish there was a better option for people to migrate from Windows, and I don’t believe there’s one perfect Linux distro for absolute beginners.
gpu passthrough if you have 2 video cards and only want to use one of them in your vm
A single gpu passthrough is also possible now
https://github.com/QaidVoid/Complete-Single-GPU-Passthrough
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=BUSrdUoedTo
oh my, i hadn’t heard