edit: hey guys, 60+ comments, can’t reply from now on, but know that I am grateful for your comments, keep the convo going. Thank you to the y’all people who gave unbiased answers and thanks also to those who told me about Waydroid and Docker

edit: Well, now that’s sobering, apparently I can do most of these things on Windows with ease too. I won’t be switching back to Windows anytime soon, but it appears that my friend was right. I am getting FOMO Fear of missing out right now.

I do need these apps right now, but there are some apps on Windows for which we don’t have a great replacement

  1. Adobe
  2. MS word (yeah, I don’t like Libre and most of Libre Suit) it’s not as good as MS suite, of c, but it’s really bad.
  3. Games ( a big one although steam is helping bridge the gap)
  4. Many torrented apps, most of these are Windows specific and thus I won’t have any luck installing them on Linux.
  5. Apparently windows is allowing their users to use some Android apps?

Torrented apps would be my biggest concern, I mean, these are Windows specific, how can I run them on Linux? Seriously, I want to know how. Can wine run most of the apps without error? I am thinking of torrenting some educational software made for Windows.

Let me list the customizations I have done with my xfce desktop and you tell me if I can do that on Windows.

I told my friend that I can’t leave linux because of all the customization I have done and he said, you just don’t like to accept that Windows can do that too. Yeah, because I think it can’t do some of it (and I like Linux better)

But yeah, let’s give the devil it’s due, can I do these things on Windows?

  1. I have applications which launch from terminal eg: vlc would open vlc (no questions asked, no other stuff needed, just type vlc)
  2. Bash scripts which updates my system (not completely, snaps and flatpaks seem to be immune to this). I am pretty sure you can’t do this on Windows.
  3. I can basically automate most of my tasks and it has a good integration with my apps.
  4. I can create desktop launchers.
  5. Not update my system, I love to update because my updates aren’t usually 4 freaking GB and the largest update I have seen has been 200-300 mbs, probably less but yeah, I was free to not update my PC if I so choose. Can you do this on Windows? And also, Linux updates fail less often, I mean, it might break your system, but the thing won’t stop in the middle and say “Bye Bye, updates failed” and now you have to waste 4GB again to download the update. PS: You should always keep your apps upto date mostly for security reasons, but Linux won’t force it on you and ruin your workflow.
  6. Create custom panel plugin.

  1. My understanding is that the Windows terminal sucks? I don’t know why, it just looks bad.

I am sure as hell there are more but this is at the top of my mind rn, can I do this on Windows. Also, give me something that you personally do on Linux but can’t do it on Windows.

  • offspecA
    7·
    1 year ago

    Pulseaudio’s networked audio devices are sick, and similarly getting your computer’s headphones/mic on your phone by just connecting your phone to your computer over bluetooth is fantastic.

      • offspecA
        7·
        1 year ago

        So I personally use two computers on a daily basis, a personal desktop I use all day long, and a laptop I use during work hours. Both are running Linux with pipewire and the pipewire-pulseaudio extension. I do my best to keep everything work related on the work device and everything personal on the personal device, so discord chats with friends stay on the personal machine etc. I occasionally need to participate in work meetings and the like, so I would like my audio interface to be shared between the two devices. Turns out this is exceptionally simple.

        On my “host” machine with the audio interface I always use I have a pipewire config file at /etc/pipewire/pipewire-pulse.conf.d/50-network-party.conf that contains

        context.exec = [
    { path = "pactl" args = "load-module module-native-protocol-tcp listen=0.0.0.0" }
    { path = "pactl" args = "load-module module-zeroconf-discover" }
    { path = "pactl" args = "load-module module-zeroconf-publish" }
]

        And on my work laptop I similarly just load the module-zeroconf-publish module. Once that’s done all of my desktop’s audio devices show up on the work laptop and I can set them as my defaults, and everything just works! Didn’t even require installing any extra software or anything, both systems worked out of the box when I learned about this module.

        As for using my desktop’s audio devices for my phone, turns out pulseaudio also supports connecting android devices using a2dp and simply pairing my phone and computer had my phone streaming its audio to my desktop and using its microphone for calls. Honestly wish I’d looked in to this sooner, having everything going through my desktop’s audio setup is so nice.