Approaching the end of window 10 and have no plans on upgrading to 11.

I am trying to find alternatives to applications I regularly use before jumping ship (it is mostly a gaming focused pc) any suggestions?

There’s oculus software for my vr but don’t know what I’m going to do with that

Small update: probably going to do Linux mint as that appears to be the most beginner friendly

Update two: that’s a lot of comments, and Thanks for all the info

  • Peasley@lemmy.world
    21·
    6 days ago

    What do you use iTunes for? That stood out to me.

    Also Chrome works fine on Linux, though Firefox is a better browser even on Windows.

    • olympicyes@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      6 days ago

      For anyone who uses Apple Music, I recommend the Cider app. I believe it costs $3 and you get versions for Linux, Mac, and Windows.

      I haven’t found any MP3 players on Linux that I’m totally happy with. All of them have some trivial issue (eg not displaying Album Artist correctly).

      https://cider.sh/

      • DFX4509B@lemmy.orgEnglish
        1·
        6 days ago

        As I pointed out, if you have an older iPod, eg. like an iPod Video or Classic, or any other player that supports it, Rockbox is a thing you can flash onto it.

        • olympicyes@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          5 days ago

          I do have one and I have a Mac with iTunes Match (iCloud music syncing for iPhone). That said I keep most of my actual files on my Ubuntu machine and might want to experiment with the iPod at some point.

          • DFX4509B@lemmy.orgEnglish
            1·
            5 days ago

            You’ll need an original iPod, iPod Mini, or iPod Video or Classic for Rockbox compatibility. iPod Touch is just an iPhone without the phone, so it’s locked into iOS, but the original iPod, and iPod Mini, Video, and Classic all support Rockbox.

            I presume any generation of iPod Shuffle or Nano is also locked into Apple firmware.

              • DFX4509B@lemmy.orgEnglish
                1·
                5 days ago

                Then it’ll support Rockbox. I would recommend flash-retrofitting it for long-term reliability if it hasn’t been retrofitted already, though, the spinning rust is a known weak point on older iPods.

    • RepleteLocum@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      4·
      6 days ago

      I have iTunes, because I have an iPhone. I don’t know of any other good way to get mp3s on my phone. (And to get games for emulators)

    • DFX4509B@lemmy.orgEnglish
      3·
      6 days ago

      Fooyin’s a really good alternative and if you can flash Rockbox onto an older iPod that supports that custom firmware, then it’ll just function as a normal external drive, no iTunes sync needed unlike with stock Apple firmware.

          • Majestic@lemmy.ml
            2·
            6 days ago

            There is AFAIK no way to do this.

            Apple’s never open-sourced the APIs and interfaces and it only works on Macs and Windows. For this you will need to have either a Windows install (recommend separate drive so it doesn’t break Linux bootloader) or a persistent or not Windows VM with USB passthrough. I’m not even sure how well the VM situation works but it probably should. You don’t even have to have a license for Windows, you can just run it in the VM for this purpose alone but it does mean oh at least 40GB set aside on your drive for the VM image plus more if you want to do things like back-up the phone.

  • LovableSidekick@lemmy.worldEnglish
    26·
    7 days ago

    Gmail is web-based, you can use it with Firefox. For that matter Linux doesn’t bind you to Firefox either, you can use Chrome and other browsers. I never used office 360 or Libre, I just use google docs.

  • h4x0r@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    223·
    7 days ago

    1. emacs

    2. emacs

    3. emacs

    4. emacs

    5. emacs

    6. emacs

    7. emacs

    8. emacs

    9. vim

    10. emacs

    11. emacs

    12. emacs

    13. emacs

    14. emacs

    15. emacs

  • Richard@lemmy.world
    253·
    6 days ago

    AMD DRIVERS - Linux’s built in drivers

    Chrome - Chrome

    gmail - gmail

    Office 360 - Office 360 (web)

    Norton - You don’t need such piece of adware in Linux

    Py-charm - py-charm

    Star citizen - Star citizen though steam

    VPN - Proton VPN (my suggestion)

    Windows 10 - Fedora KDE

    My suggestions if you want a smoother transition, repeated ones have Linux versions

  • Semperverus@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    6 days ago

    • AMD drivers: use the built-in MESA drivers that include the official AMD support.

    • Gmail: ProtonMail for the service, Kmail for the desktop client.

    • Chrome: Firefox, or Librewolf if you care about privacy.

    • Office365: LibreOffice for full FOSS or OnlyOfficr for less freedom but more comfort.

    • iTunes: depends entirely on what you use it for, but I buy my music mostly off of BandCamp these days.

    • MuseScore: MuseScore

    • Norton: Why were you using Norton in the first place? It’s practically a virus itself. If you need an antivirus on Linux, you might want ClamAV/ClamTK for something that runs locally only, or Microsoft Defender for Linux.

    • Py-Charm: Py-Charm, VSCode, Vim, Kate/KWrite

    • Remote Desktop to iOS: I got nothin’

    • Star Citizen: Star Citizen

    • Steam: Steam

    • VPN: Wireguard

    • Windows Games: install locally using Wine and then add to Steam as a non-Steam game to use Proton for better support.

    Windows 10: run it in a VM if you still need it, or keep it on a separate SSD and dual boot into that.

      • Semperverus@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        5 days ago

        Kmail is simple and to the point, and at least in my experience is easier to set up. Bonus, if youre on KDE, it integrates very nicely.

        It’s also more performant than Thunderbird.

  • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
    8·
    6 days ago

    Off the top of my head:

    Gmail or any email: Thunderbird is pretty sweet and I need to use it more, but mostly just use the web clients anyway.

    If you own GoG games, you can use Heroic Launcher instead of GoG Galaxy. It’s gotten amazingly good, really fast. :)

    • DFX4509B@lemmy.orgEnglish
      2·
      6 days ago

      I’d recommend Lutris over Heroic both because it runs locally where Heroic is Electron, and because Lutris allows community-based native Linux ports for games where applicable, eg. for Ultima VII: The Black Gate + The Forge of Virtue, Lutris gives you the option of installing that game with Exult instead of DOSbox, for Tomb Raider and Tomb Raider II, you have the option to install those with OpenLara, for Doom 1 and 2, you have the option to install those with ZDoom, for Little Big Adventure, you can install that with the ScummVM runner, etc.

      Also, at least for DOS games where you don’t have the option to install a community-based modern port, you can use native DOSbox as a runner instead of Windows DOSbox as well through Lutris.

      Oh, and one more bonus particularly for GOG games in Lutris’ favor over Heroic, is Lutris uses the offline installers so that if anything ever goes wrong with any given GOG game, you can just reinstall from the offline installer where Heroic operates more like GOG Galaxy or Steam in that it’s always downloaded from scratch.

      • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
        1·
        3 days ago

        Hey, points for Lutris! Thanks for sharing!

        I’ve had issues in the past installing stuff with Lutris, although for advanced scenarios like using community engines and stuff, that’s really cool. I definitely have both installed on my machine for different reasons. Lutris handles EA / Origin stuff pretty well. (Titanfall 2 and Sims 2 Ultimate (not the Steam one) run beautifully on Linux, truly glorious!)

        Electron annoys me as well, but I will say that I appreciate how Heroic hooks into GoG APIs. It handles auto-updates, cloud saving, play time logging, that kinda stuff that made Galaxy decent and had a degree of convenience-parity with Steam.

        (Maybe Lutris does this too now?)

        For a complete newbie , I’d say Heroic has a bit of a smoother and expected ramp to just “Download game and run.” But if you want more control, Lutris definitely has more options!

        I also can’t recommend Bottles enough for other games that aren’t from distribution platforms. Shockingly simple.

        • DFX4509B@lemmy.orgEnglish
          2·
          3 days ago

          Even for Doom3, both vanilla and BFG, and RTCW, Steam versions included, Lutris allows you to install native community ports for those pretty easily too.

  • Heavybell@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    6 days ago

    Star Citizen runs just fine under linux. For the most part, anyway. Being under active dev it breaks occasionally, but the Linux User Group has always gotten it working again so far.

    https://github.com/starcitizen-lug/lug-helper

    I would recommend using Wine directly over using Lutris right now, but that’s an option you can pick in this script. Join the discord if you have trouble, people are friendly there if you’re polite.

    Don’t use Proton/Steam for it.

  • DFX4509B@lemmy.orgEnglish
    3·
    6 days ago

    If you have nothing to lose, ie. if you don’t play anything with anticheat or you don’t use any productivity software with crazy DRM platform-locking you into Windows, do it, switch over.

    The bulk of all games will run in Proton or even vanilla WINE now and the minority that’s platform-locked into Windows is anything that uses kernel-level anticheat, if you only play single-player games or even virtual board games like Civilization, those will broadly work fine in WINE/Proton and even in the case of the aforementioned Civilization, those games starting from Civ5 onward even have native Linux ports, but the Windows versions tend to perform better in Proton, and as for productivity software, there’s plenty of alternatives to things like Maya, Photoshop, Lightroom, or Premiere/AfterEffects to choose from that isn’t platform-locked anywhere, eg. Blender as a Maya alternative, Krita or GIMP as a Photoshop alternative, RawTherapee or Darktable as a Lightroom alternative, and KdenLive or Davinci Resolve as a Premiere/AfterEffects alternative.

    Oh, and as for Illustrator, you have Inkscape as an alternative, and for Paint Tool SAI, you got MyPaint as an alternative.

    As for a good distro to get you started, Debian or OpenSUSE seem pretty solid for beginners, and Debian Stable at least has a backports repo for newer software, and there’s also ChimeraOS if you’re building your PC into a games console.

    Also, if you’re looking for a good Foobar2k or iTunes alternative, Fooyin is great for that, and Whipper’s a good CD ripper and basically an open Exact Audio Copy clone, although it’s text-based. You could also use CUERipper in WINE as another good open alternative to Exact Audio Copy, which is proprietary. CUETools will work fine in Mono as well.

  • Kurroth@aussie.zone
    1·
    6 days ago

    Pico might be a good way to jump shop on VR. Not sure if you can change OS on current hardware. But next purchase you have plenty of options.