I had to test/fix something at work and I set up a Windows VM because it was a bug specific to Windows users. Once I was done, I thought, “Maybe I should keep this VM for something.” but I couldn’t think of anything that wasn’t a game (which probably wouldn’t work well in a VM anyway) or some super specific enterprise software I don’t really use.
I also am more familiar with the Apple ecosystem than the Microsoft one so maybe I’m just oblivious to what’s out there. Does anyone out there dual boot or use a VM for a non-game, non-niche industry Windows exclusive program?
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Foobar2000.
By far the best, most customizable local music player app ever. Plus it’s
open sourcefree.I loved Foobar2000 back in the day. I’m glad it lives on.
Yep. A couple of years ago they released the 2.0 version, which supports 64-bit architecture and allows for dark mode support as well.
Plus it’s open source.
no it’s not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foobar2000
The core is closed source, whereas the SDK is licensed under the Three-Clause BSD license.
My bad, thanks for the correction.
Oops, I just commented about Foobar2k before seeing this comment.
Just want to mention that it does run on Linux as a Snap (though then you have to have a Snap installed, lol). I’m sure it runs fine with regular Wine too.
Lol, Snap.
Wish Canonical would just kill it already
I haven’t had much luck installing via wine or bottles at all. Hasn’t ever worked properly for me. I’m not bothered enough to install the Snap either, lol.
I have a Windows VM that I run it in instead, please deadbeef is good enough for my Linux system.
This is the one Windows app I just cannot find a good alternative to. Deadbeef comes the closest, but even it is laggy when searching my library, sometimes crashes when I add too many files, and has a mediocre search function.
Tell me about it.
I also use deadbeef because of the plug-in support, although I haven’t experienced much lag myself.
The media library management definitely doesn’t come anywhere close to FB2K, though, sadly.
The media library is the ONE reason I haven’t switched to Deadbeef. Everything else seems close enough.
Annoyingly, there is apparently an updated Medialib plugin for Deadbeef, but only on the Mac, since the dev is a Mac person.
The only thing I need on Windows is the Adobe suite for my uni graphic design stuff. I could use GIMP, darktable, Krita, etc, but my lectures teach us how things work on the Adobe suite. I use FOSS when it is for personal stuff though.
Adobe CS is the industry standard in some fields. You should absolutely learn them if you’re in school for that.
https://github.com/Gictorbit/photoshopCClinux
I have been using this on linux during my studies. But there are also newer versions “packaged” by other people on github.
I’m sure the rest of the adobe suit can be installed in the same way with some tinkering.
I use Foobar2000 for music. It is feature packed and so customizable. It’s available as a snap using Wine (I think it’s the only snap I have installed, in fact).
I really wish there were a Linux binary available but it has been Windows-only forever. The closest Linux player I’ve seen is Deadbeef, but Deadbeef’s library plugin does not work at all like Foobar’s (the later stays updated by monitoring the music folder and shows things by tags, not folder structure). Apparently the Deadbeef plugin is being updated to be more Foobar-like, but it isn’t there yet.
I did try running foobar under wine but it just sucked, I have also tried deadbeef but its really lacking features and the GUI sucks. I ended up using musicbee through wine, it was a hassle to setup but now it just works for me and I like it better than foobar.
Lots of firmware and driver updater programs seem to require Windows or Mac and I can’t get them to run with wine. For example, I need Win to update the firmware on my car stereo and my 8bitdo game controllers. I also need it to run the tax software my CPA uses.
yes, but I don’t use VMs or dual boot. I’ve been able to get everything I need working in Wine, which is a lot more seamless
Except for video games, all software I use daily is open source and cross platform by now, but when college demanded for me to use Adobe software, I would boot my Win 10 VM. I also boot that VM to test if the software im developing works well on Windows. I also run my Logitech mouse software in a VM with USB passthrough.
Besides games, I think the only Windows program I run with wine is a tool to extract the BGM from the official Touhou games.
Before I had a 3DS, I would use a Windows tool on my VM to decrypt my totally legally acquired ROMs
Xbox app for game pass. But i would cancel that if i didnt also needed windows for Sunshine streaming. Linux REFUSES with everything its got, to make hardware acceleration work.
Oh and geforce now, which is still since release broken on linux when using hardware acceleration since colors close to black are just black. So darker games do not work.
Only for very specific terrible chip vendor software which I hate but have no choice but to use because certification reasons.
Visual Studio (Not VS Code), C# is fantastic these days cross-platform wise and a pretty solid general language
But the non-ms IDEs for it…are lacking…and MS just terminated MacOS support for VS (Not that it really mattered the macOS version was a bastardized version of VS anyways) so I don’t think their flagship is coming (officially) to Linux anytime soon.
WSL2 is pretty good. j/k
[email protected] if I am donating GPU power to science research. There is a BOINC client for Linux but packaging is a hot mess (though getting better) and compatibility with graphics drivers is hit-or-miss. So any crunching rigs I have w/ GPUs all run Windows.
I run Scrivener, which is a writing software that’s only for Mac & Windows (well, there is a Linux version but it’s ancient), but I just run that through Wine rather than a VM. That’s about the only thing I haven’t found a good equivalent for on Linux though.
Family tree maker. https://www.mackiev.com/ftm/
Why not Gramps which is open sourced and works flawlessly in Windows, Limux, and macOS? 🙂
Adobe Lightroom Classic. I have darktable installed on Linux, but I haven’t mastered it yet. Lightroom is the software for photo editing, unfortuntately.
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