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And yet the game Overwatch doesn't have an OSX port so I have windows 10 setup as a dual-boot option. It seems that Microsoft has correctly deduced that users d

And yet the game Overwatch doesn't have an OSX port so I have windows 10 setup as a dual-boot option. It seems that Microsoft has correctly deduced that users don't really give a fuck. They'll throw a hissy fit, they'll make all sorts of blog posts, but at the end of the day the majority are still staring at a windows 10 installation screen and dealing with it.

r00fus 10y ago
Once you stop playing games (it happens eventually for many of us), your need to have Windows around will drop considerably. Are there any killer apps other than games to have Windows around @home?
- legodt 10y ago
  Design software, rendering suites, and CAD mostly
  - ben_jones 10y ago
    I would add VS to that, and potentially Unity/Unreal? Also I imagine corporate and government environments that use windows might also hamstring their developers into using it.
    - bitmapbrother 10y ago
      Unity and Unreal are all cross platform. As for VS - that was never really a consideration to stay on the platform for a lot of developers.
      - bluesilver07 10y ago
        While they support building for Linux, the editors themselves are only alpha quality on Linux.
        bitmapbrother 10y ago
        They're also on MacOS and not in alpha.
      - WayneBro 10y ago
        > As for VS - that was never really a consideration to stay on the platform for a lot of developers. By what means are you measuring these considerations? Do you have some sort of citation? As a developer, the biggest reasons for me to stay on Windows are Office, IIS, SQL Server and Visual Studio. Nothing on any other platform comes close the the usability of these. Furthermore, knowing these products really well gets you a lot of easy work...because almost every business on the planet runs Windows. Anyway there's no reason to single out Microsoft here since both Apple and Google are some mixture of anti-choice, anti-freedom and anti-privacy. And the EFF wants you to quit all of them too. They recommend moving to the equivalent of a hippie commune where you'll enjoy spending time milking your own cows instead of feeding other companies' cash cows.
        anonbanker 10y ago
        didn't MS SQL Server just get ported to *Nix?
        WayneBro 10y ago
        The core of it did. Do you think it will ever reach parity with the Windows version though? Microsoft is acutely targeting devs who build cloud apps for the public or for very large organizations with the Linux version of SQL Server. Devs like me who build apps that are self-hosted (almost always in-house) for small and medium sized businesses. My customers need all that Windows integration including (among many, many other considerations) Windows authentication, Windows file sharing and security, SQL Server Integration Services (none of which are probably available on Linux...SSIS for sure) and they need it running on Windows because that's all they know or want to know. There are certainly more developers like me than their are of the other type.
        bitmapbrother 10y ago
        Office is also on the Mac. As for the other apps you mentioned, well, that's very subjective because I completely disagree with your assessment that nothing even comes close on any other platform. To imply that IIS and SQL Server are best of breed is ridiculous. Also, VS isn't exactly a compelling reason to stay on Windows. Last time I installed VS 2015 it sprayed 30+ GB's of files all over my SSD and installed about 30-40 apps in the process. To say VS 2015 is a bloated pig would be an insult to bloated pigs everywhere.
- dTal 10y ago
  Anything regarded as "industry standard" in some quasi-niche engineering field. I guess that doesn't count as home use. Personally, I've been on Linux for over a decade. I don't feel like I'm missing out on any "killer apps", but there's always some odd bit of software that only works on Windows - like the freeware RC helicopter simulator I use. Wine's great. It's just the path of least resistance for most people.
- brokenmachine 10y ago
  Unfortunately I need to stay with Windows for the moment only for Ableton Live, which is IMO the best Pro Audio/Music creation tool. I can't run it in a VM because only basic sound features work in a VM (I'm using a PCI soundcard, actually thinking about it now, maybe USB3 soundcards could work well in a VM?). Also Photoshop is pretty much the gold standard for image editing, but I could be happy running that in a VM.
  - anonbanker 10y ago
    Ableton Live works really well in Wine with the WineASIO plugins and JACK. Should you want a sandboxed VM, Windows in KVM/Qemu with USB passthrough, and GPU passthrough might solve all your audio/photoshop needs.
  - hrnnnnnn 10y ago
    Check out Bitwig, it's very similar to Ableton. That said, I can't recommend it right now as it's still quite buggy. Worth keeping an eye on if you want to get off Windows though.
    - AstralStorm 10y ago
      Nowhere near in functionality. It is like suggesting notepad as a replacement for the Eclipse IDE.
- PatentTroll 10y ago
  Office. For any "real" word processing in the "real" world, there are no open source equivalents.
  - r00fus 10y ago
    I have Office on my Mac. Plus I really don't use Word/Outlook for home stuff, though sometimes LibreOffice doesn't cut it for spreadsheet stuff.
- Vexs 10y ago
  Sharex. Holy shit, sharex. It's a program that's a combination of a universal file sharer, screenshotter, image editor, screen recorder (which can output gif) and a seriously unbelievable suite of tools like OCR, image combiners, a QR generator, etc. When I say universal file sharer, I mean everything. It uploads to different sites based on the filetype, be it drive for files, gifycat for .mp4's, pastebin for text, whatever. And there isn't a linux equivalent. Which sucks.
  - anonbanker 10y ago
    Sharex qualifies for Zawinski's Law[0] 0. http://catb.org/jargon/html/Z/Zawinskis-Law.html http://catb.org/jargon/html/Z/Zawinskis-Law.html
    - guftagu 10y ago
      Looks like HN traffic broke the site.
- Senji 10y ago
  Excel
anonbanker 10y ago
Windows VM in KVM/Qemu using GPU Passthrough = sandboxed windows with full-speed games.
- AstralStorm 10y ago
  Sort of sandboxed. You still need to carefully firewall it to prevent sending usage data to MS.

r00fus 10y ago

Once you stop playing games (it happens eventually for many of us), your need to have Windows around will drop considerably. Are there any killer apps other than games to have Windows around @home?

legodt 10y ago
Design software, rendering suites, and CAD mostly
- ben_jones 10y ago
  I would add VS to that, and potentially Unity/Unreal? Also I imagine corporate and government environments that use windows might also hamstring their developers into using it.
  - bitmapbrother 10y ago
    Unity and Unreal are all cross platform. As for VS - that was never really a consideration to stay on the platform for a lot of developers.
    - bluesilver07 10y ago
      While they support building for Linux, the editors themselves are only alpha quality on Linux.
      - bitmapbrother 10y ago
        They're also on MacOS and not in alpha.
    - WayneBro 10y ago
      > As for VS - that was never really a consideration to stay on the platform for a lot of developers. By what means are you measuring these considerations? Do you have some sort of citation? As a developer, the biggest reasons for me to stay on Windows are Office, IIS, SQL Server and Visual Studio. Nothing on any other platform comes close the the usability of these. Furthermore, knowing these products really well gets you a lot of easy work...because almost every business on the planet runs Windows. Anyway there's no reason to single out Microsoft here since both Apple and Google are some mixture of anti-choice, anti-freedom and anti-privacy. And the EFF wants you to quit all of them too. They recommend moving to the equivalent of a hippie commune where you'll enjoy spending time milking your own cows instead of feeding other companies' cash cows.
      - anonbanker 10y ago
        didn't MS SQL Server just get ported to *Nix?
        WayneBro 10y ago
        The core of it did. Do you think it will ever reach parity with the Windows version though? Microsoft is acutely targeting devs who build cloud apps for the public or for very large organizations with the Linux version of SQL Server. Devs like me who build apps that are self-hosted (almost always in-house) for small and medium sized businesses. My customers need all that Windows integration including (among many, many other considerations) Windows authentication, Windows file sharing and security, SQL Server Integration Services (none of which are probably available on Linux...SSIS for sure) and they need it running on Windows because that's all they know or want to know. There are certainly more developers like me than their are of the other type.
      - bitmapbrother 10y ago
        Office is also on the Mac. As for the other apps you mentioned, well, that's very subjective because I completely disagree with your assessment that nothing even comes close on any other platform. To imply that IIS and SQL Server are best of breed is ridiculous. Also, VS isn't exactly a compelling reason to stay on Windows. Last time I installed VS 2015 it sprayed 30+ GB's of files all over my SSD and installed about 30-40 apps in the process. To say VS 2015 is a bloated pig would be an insult to bloated pigs everywhere.
dTal 10y ago
Anything regarded as "industry standard" in some quasi-niche engineering field. I guess that doesn't count as home use. Personally, I've been on Linux for over a decade. I don't feel like I'm missing out on any "killer apps", but there's always some odd bit of software that only works on Windows - like the freeware RC helicopter simulator I use. Wine's great. It's just the path of least resistance for most people.
brokenmachine 10y ago
Unfortunately I need to stay with Windows for the moment only for Ableton Live, which is IMO the best Pro Audio/Music creation tool. I can't run it in a VM because only basic sound features work in a VM (I'm using a PCI soundcard, actually thinking about it now, maybe USB3 soundcards could work well in a VM?). Also Photoshop is pretty much the gold standard for image editing, but I could be happy running that in a VM.
- anonbanker 10y ago
  Ableton Live works really well in Wine with the WineASIO plugins and JACK. Should you want a sandboxed VM, Windows in KVM/Qemu with USB passthrough, and GPU passthrough might solve all your audio/photoshop needs.
- hrnnnnnn 10y ago
  Check out Bitwig, it's very similar to Ableton. That said, I can't recommend it right now as it's still quite buggy. Worth keeping an eye on if you want to get off Windows though.
  - AstralStorm 10y ago
    Nowhere near in functionality. It is like suggesting notepad as a replacement for the Eclipse IDE.
PatentTroll 10y ago
Office. For any "real" word processing in the "real" world, there are no open source equivalents.
- r00fus 10y ago
  I have Office on my Mac. Plus I really don't use Word/Outlook for home stuff, though sometimes LibreOffice doesn't cut it for spreadsheet stuff.
Vexs 10y ago
Sharex. Holy shit, sharex. It's a program that's a combination of a universal file sharer, screenshotter, image editor, screen recorder (which can output gif) and a seriously unbelievable suite of tools like OCR, image combiners, a QR generator, etc. When I say universal file sharer, I mean everything. It uploads to different sites based on the filetype, be it drive for files, gifycat for .mp4's, pastebin for text, whatever. And there isn't a linux equivalent. Which sucks.
- anonbanker 10y ago
  Sharex qualifies for Zawinski's Law[0] 0. http://catb.org/jargon/html/Z/Zawinskis-Law.html http://catb.org/jargon/html/Z/Zawinskis-Law.html
  - guftagu 10y ago
    Looks like HN traffic broke the site.
Senji 10y ago
Excel

anonbanker 10y ago

Windows VM in KVM/Qemu using GPU Passthrough = sandboxed windows with full-speed games.

AstralStorm 10y ago
Sort of sandboxed. You still need to carefully firewall it to prevent sending usage data to MS.