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OK, since everyone's saying "now's the time to switch to Linux" - would I be able to switch yet? Requisites: 1) Adobe Creative Cloud working with no performan

OK, since everyone's saying "now's the time to switch to Linux" - would I be able to switch yet? Requisites: 1) Adobe Creative Cloud working with no performance loss. Photoshop, After Effects, Premiere are probably the most key elements. 2) 3DSMax and Motionbuilder usable under Linux. I could switch to Maya from Max if absolutely necessary. 3) 99.5% of games playable on Linux, including Blizzard stuff, FFXIV. 4) Unreal Engine 4 and Unity development possible without productivity loss compared to Windows. 5) Evernote and Skype working. Thinking about it, that's pretty much it. Would that be doable?

izacus 11y ago
No.
- thenomad 11y ago
  Thanks!
zephyrthenoble 11y ago
You have named a lot of applications that are native to Windows only. You might be able to get them working on Linux using WINE, but I can tell you from my experience that on Fedora 21 Blizzard games are difficult if not impossible to get working. I don't have experience wit the other applications you mentioned.
- thenomad 11y ago
  Thanks - worth knowing.
- TheGrimDerp1 11y ago
  I've never had problems running blizz games in wine
joeyspn 11y ago
A more appropriate answer is "switch to *nix". I'm in the same case as you, I do engineering and design equally and I also need CC and 3D soft (I switched 3DS for Cinema4D), etc. I use OSX for the design stuff and I have an ubuntu partition via bootcamp. I also have many others Linux and Android machines via virtualbox/vagrant (but those are mainly for dev + UI design). So, if you're on win, sincerely I'd buy a mac, but I'd also start playing with Linux in another partition. It's been 10+ years since I completely abandoned win. Never looked back.
- thenomad 11y ago
  The cost of switching to Mac seems a bit extreme - for a really high-performance 3D box I'd be looking at whole-number multiples of the cost of my existing workstation, as far as I'm aware. Otherwise I'd be considering it.
  - joshstrange 11y ago
    While the upfront cost is high Macs hold their value better than any other computer I've ever used and are SUPER easy to resale. So while you pay more you will be able to sell it for way more than a windows computer.
VeejayRampay 11y ago
The honest answer: No.
hodwik 11y ago
No, but you could switch to BSD by way of Mac OS.
wjoe 11y ago
Tl;dr: Yes, with a bit of effort and maybe some compromises. A lot of software/games do have native Linux versions these days, and for those that don't, there is Wine, which does a very good job of running a lot of Windows software/games on Linux, but with has varying levels of success. Check https://appdb.winehq.org https://appdb.winehq.org to see how well it'll work for things. A lot of it depends on how flexible you're willing to be - there are a lot of decent alternatives for every task on Linux, but if you require specific software it will make things harder. Blizzard games work very well in Wine with minimal effort (I play SC2 and HotS regularly). FFXIV can take some more effort and can be a bit laggy in busy areas, but I also play it regularly and have no issues playing through raids and endgame content. More generally, you won't be able to play 99.5% of games, particularly new releases, mainly due to wine lacking DX10+ support. However, most of indie games and a good portion of AAA games are released with native Linux support these days, and wine will run most windows games based on DX9 or lower. Basically, there are plenty of great games to occupy your time on Linux, but if you want to play every new AAA release then you likely be disappointed. Unity editor was released for Linux yesterday, but still in beta. Unreal Engine 4 editor can be compiled and is usable for Linux but is not officially stable/released yet. Skype has an official native linux version. The UI is old compared to the Windows version but I don't think it's lacking any significant features. Evernote is listed as running perfectly in Wine. There are also some unofficial open source clients, and alternatives that have similar functionality. I'm not familiar with this so can't say for sure, but it looks like there should be a number of options here. The graphics software is likely to be the biggest issue, and is the main area where Linux is still lacking. Maya and Motionbuilder run on Linux. There's no native Linux versions of 3DS Max or Adobe software, and they don't run particularly well in wine (likely to be buggy, slow, or broken for some features). The only likely solution besides dual booting is using GPU passthrough on a windows VM, though this is complicated to set up and very hardware dependent. I made a few other posts in this thread with more info about this.

izacus 11y ago

No.

thenomad 11y ago
Thanks!

zephyrthenoble 11y ago

You have named a lot of applications that are native to Windows only. You might be able to get them working on Linux using WINE, but I can tell you from my experience that on Fedora 21 Blizzard games are difficult if not impossible to get working. I don't have experience wit the other applications you mentioned.

thenomad 11y ago
Thanks - worth knowing.
TheGrimDerp1 11y ago
I've never had problems running blizz games in wine

joeyspn 11y ago

A more appropriate answer is "switch to *nix". I'm in the same case as you, I do engineering and design equally and I also need CC and 3D soft (I switched 3DS for Cinema4D), etc. I use OSX for the design stuff and I have an ubuntu partition via bootcamp. I also have many others Linux and Android machines via virtualbox/vagrant (but those are mainly for dev + UI design). So, if you're on win, sincerely I'd buy a mac, but I'd also start playing with Linux in another partition. It's been 10+ years since I completely abandoned win. Never looked back.

thenomad 11y ago
The cost of switching to Mac seems a bit extreme - for a really high-performance 3D box I'd be looking at whole-number multiples of the cost of my existing workstation, as far as I'm aware. Otherwise I'd be considering it.
- joshstrange 11y ago
  While the upfront cost is high Macs hold their value better than any other computer I've ever used and are SUPER easy to resale. So while you pay more you will be able to sell it for way more than a windows computer.

VeejayRampay 11y ago

The honest answer: No.

hodwik 11y ago

No, but you could switch to BSD by way of Mac OS.

wjoe 11y ago

Tl;dr: Yes, with a bit of effort and maybe some compromises. A lot of software/games do have native Linux versions these days, and for those that don't, there is Wine, which does a very good job of running a lot of Windows software/games on Linux, but with has varying levels of success. Check https://appdb.winehq.org https://appdb.winehq.org to see how well it'll work for things. A lot of it depends on how flexible you're willing to be - there are a lot of decent alternatives for every task on Linux, but if you require specific software it will make things harder. Blizzard games work very well in Wine with minimal effort (I play SC2 and HotS regularly). FFXIV can take some more effort and can be a bit laggy in busy areas, but I also play it regularly and have no issues playing through raids and endgame content. More generally, you won't be able to play 99.5% of games, particularly new releases, mainly due to wine lacking DX10+ support. However, most of indie games and a good portion of AAA games are released with native Linux support these days, and wine will run most windows games based on DX9 or lower. Basically, there are plenty of great games to occupy your time on Linux, but if you want to play every new AAA release then you likely be disappointed. Unity editor was released for Linux yesterday, but still in beta. Unreal Engine 4 editor can be compiled and is usable for Linux but is not officially stable/released yet. Skype has an official native linux version. The UI is old compared to the Windows version but I don't think it's lacking any significant features. Evernote is listed as running perfectly in Wine. There are also some unofficial open source clients, and alternatives that have similar functionality. I'm not familiar with this so can't say for sure, but it looks like there should be a number of options here. The graphics software is likely to be the biggest issue, and is the main area where Linux is still lacking. Maya and Motionbuilder run on Linux. There's no native Linux versions of 3DS Max or Adobe software, and they don't run particularly well in wine (likely to be buggy, slow, or broken for some features). The only likely solution besides dual booting is using GPU passthrough on a windows VM, though this is complicated to set up and very hardware dependent. I made a few other posts in this thread with more info about this.