6 ms·

What Windows software do you still need on Linux?

by pabs3 4y ago

Avshalom 4y ago
mostly games for myself but I've also needed it for various weird programs that some professor decided we should use for some homework.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 4y ago
  It's decent for games on MacOS now too. In particular I was looking at it for playing some FTL mods that are only shipped as windows binaries natively on MacOS a year or two ago (in the end I ended up using Codeweavers Crossover, but I think that the limitations that made me choose Crossover have since been fixed in Wine). I see that a Codeweavers dev is present in this thread (Hi guys, great product, thanks for helping make Wine what it is). I think that there's still a ways to go for Wine on MacOS at least, like for instance I don't think playing No Man's Sky on MacOS via Wine is viable (or at least it wasn't when I tried a few years ago). I think that's more a limitation of the graphics API MacOS uses though. Supposedly a native port is on the way anyway.
haunter 4y ago
Excel. Nothing comes close really
- alchemist1e9 4y ago
  Do current versions of Excel actually fully work in Wine now? That would be a big deal and if true embarrassing I didn’t know about it.
- ogogmad 4y ago
  Is this because of compatibility and VBA macros? In a vacuum, what Excel does is straightforward, and there's lots of free alternatives. Don't get me wrong -- I think it's a great program, but I don't see anything unique about it.
  - Denvercoder9 4y ago
    > In a vacuum, what Excel does is straightforward, and there's lots of free alternatives. That's true in theory, but Excel executes it so much better than Google Sheets or LibreOffice Calc.
    - ogogmad 4y ago
      Why? I occasionally use them* for taxes and whatnot, and they pretty much work identically. The differences seem at best marginal. * - LO Calc and MS Excel.
      - artificial 4y ago
        Similar to how databases are nearly identical superficially. Once you have a non trivial coupling the inertia kicks in. That said, depending on your use case (light usage minimial complex multi sheet macros) the differences are indeed minor.
        omginternets 4y ago
        An example would be helpful.
- jwr 4y ago
  Interesting — I hear that repeated sometimes, but it always turns out that the person stating that opinion is an Excel expert and barely looked at anything else. Having used Excel, Numbers, OpenOffice (since back when it was still StarOffice), and Google Sheets, I find it to be a mixed bag. For example, there are certain things which Numbers does way better (drag&drop rows to reorder them, for example) and I personally prefer it for my work. But most importantly, I haven't found Excel to be "way above the rest" at all.
  - tacroqueen 4y ago
    No offense but you clearly are not a spreadsheet power user (and to be clear you're starting off with what feels like a pretentious reply/generalization: always turns out that the person stating that opinion is an Excel expert and barely looked at anything else.) I have never heard anyone that has used both products deeply ever admit that Numbers comes close to the capabilities of Excel (and this includes a few former Numbers devs). They really aren't even in the same product category. For basic spreadsheet stuff that 90% of people do, sure, and Numbers does have some UI niceties - but the differences go well beyond drag and drop behavior. It's way harder if not impossible to use AppleScript like you can VBA. What is the Numbers equivalent of ODBC? How do you connect pivot tables to external sources? Excel has tremendously more builtin functions. Excel has far better performance, which can start to matter. Meanwhile Numbers can have field types like star ratings. It uses a fundamentally different visual abstraction. Numbers focuses more on appearance and makes better looking graphs easily out of the box. At the limits of their feature sets though, these are really tools aimed at different audiences. For basic spreadsheet functionality, all of the major spreadsheet programs in the last 2 decades are serviceable.
    - dijit 4y ago
      the major issue the parent eluded to was a sort of sunk cost fallacy that exists in the spreadsheet ecosystem. Excel is great software, truly, what it enables people to do is impressive (and awful sometimes). But once you have convinced yourself that its industry standard, why look as deeply into alternatives to even figure out if there are better tools? all of them will have quirks, some will certainly be more powerful in some areas (google docs has the ability to read data direct from bigquery for example). Many already convinced themselves that excel is the one true format and there is no reason to look hard at anything else. Others don't want their investment in learning to be wasted. Theres a lot of people who are genuinely not incentivised to look at the ecosystem critically.
davidgerard 4y ago
I use one fully open-source program (LMMS) which I've found a PITA to build reliably. But the Windows binary under WINE just works. We have a stable binary format for Linux! It's Windows.
- anthk 4y ago
  Use Guix, everything gets compiled fine, no matter what. If you need non-free because of $HARDWARE reasons, use nonguix, (or just a non-free kernel to avoid polluting the userland), but I won't help you on that. Altough you can install guix on any GNU/Linux distro, on top: https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/System-Installation.html https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/System-Installation... Then, run guix pull as a non root, and next, guix package -i lmms Don't forget to follow the installation instructions well, so your XDG menu items from GUIX get correctly enabled after the user logins in.
  - orhmeh09 4y ago
    It sounds like WINE "just works" for their uses, "non-free" or not.
    - anthk 4y ago
      Audio latency under Wine would suck against a native binary from Guix.
    - davidgerard 4y ago
      the whole stack is free software, the API just originated at Microsoft.
  - davidgerard 4y ago
    or I could keep doing the thing that has worked in a consistent manner for me for years rather than gratuitously do something different, of course.
    - anthk 4y ago
vetinari 4y ago
Winbox (Mikrotik configuration tool). Mikrotik seems to go out of their way to make sure it is compatible with Wine.
- julienfr112 4y ago
  I suspect mikrotik devs to work on linux...
  - geokon 4y ago
    Can you compile code from within Linux to run on wine..? I know clang supports Windows, but I haven't heard anyone have a crosscompilation setup like that (sounds handy!)
    - ta988 4y ago
      Yes you can.https://swarminglogic.com/article/2014_11_crosscompile https://swarminglogic.com/article/2014_11_crosscompile
    - squarefoot 4y ago
      In many cases you wouldn't even need cross compilation if you can run Windows tools directly on WINE. Years ago I installed Delphi 6 on a Linux machine with WINE, and although I didn't write any complex stuff or imported 3rd party components, it compiled every Delphi code I threw at it, producing native Windows code that ran flawlessly on Windows machines.
      - anthk 4y ago
        You could use Lazarus just fine.
        squarefoot 4y ago
        Yes of course, I meant a native Windows compiler/IDE in general.
    - 4y ago
tannhaeuser 4y ago
Anything 3D modeling related not covered by Blender, and software for 3D printing, just as an example. The word "still" in your post suggests you expect F/OSS software to eventually become available for all fields of application. But that's not what I see happening; instead, there's no new desktop (as opposed to cloud) software being released at all, much less on Linux. So Wine is here to stay with us to (increasingly) run old Win software out of maintenance, and works surprisingly well. Of course, that's made possible by Win32 itself having excellent binary compatibility in the first place, as opposed to the Linux user land.
- OscarCunningham 4y ago
  So what we need is Wine in the browser.
  - tech234a 4y ago
    A port exists, though it could use some more work on optimizing performance/browser integration: https://www.boxedwine.org/demo/ https://www.boxedwine.org/demo/
glitchc 4y ago
Office. And Visio.
LeBit 4y ago
Tax software. The most popular in my country is Windows only.
Enginerrrd 4y ago
AutoCAD Civil 3D would be the big non-negotiable one for me. It's a shame since I love linux but I have to use windows for work.

What Windows software do you still need on Linux?

by pabs3 4y ago

What Windows software do you still need on Linux?

mostly games for myself but I've also needed it for various weird programs that some professor decided we should use for some homework.

SOLAR_FIELDS 4y ago
It's decent for games on MacOS now too. In particular I was looking at it for playing some FTL mods that are only shipped as windows binaries natively on MacOS a year or two ago (in the end I ended up using Codeweavers Crossover, but I think that the limitations that made me choose Crossover have since been fixed in Wine). I see that a Codeweavers dev is present in this thread (Hi guys, great product, thanks for helping make Wine what it is). I think that there's still a ways to go for Wine on MacOS at least, like for instance I don't think playing No Man's Sky on MacOS via Wine is viable (or at least it wasn't when I tried a few years ago). I think that's more a limitation of the graphics API MacOS uses though. Supposedly a native port is on the way anyway.

haunter 4y ago

Excel. Nothing comes close really

alchemist1e9 4y ago
Do current versions of Excel actually fully work in Wine now? That would be a big deal and if true embarrassing I didn’t know about it.
ogogmad 4y ago
Is this because of compatibility and VBA macros? In a vacuum, what Excel does is straightforward, and there's lots of free alternatives. Don't get me wrong -- I think it's a great program, but I don't see anything unique about it.
- Denvercoder9 4y ago
  > In a vacuum, what Excel does is straightforward, and there's lots of free alternatives. That's true in theory, but Excel executes it so much better than Google Sheets or LibreOffice Calc.
  - ogogmad 4y ago
    Why? I occasionally use them* for taxes and whatnot, and they pretty much work identically. The differences seem at best marginal. * - LO Calc and MS Excel.
    - artificial 4y ago
      Similar to how databases are nearly identical superficially. Once you have a non trivial coupling the inertia kicks in. That said, depending on your use case (light usage minimial complex multi sheet macros) the differences are indeed minor.
      - omginternets 4y ago
        An example would be helpful.
jwr 4y ago
Interesting — I hear that repeated sometimes, but it always turns out that the person stating that opinion is an Excel expert and barely looked at anything else. Having used Excel, Numbers, OpenOffice (since back when it was still StarOffice), and Google Sheets, I find it to be a mixed bag. For example, there are certain things which Numbers does way better (drag&drop rows to reorder them, for example) and I personally prefer it for my work. But most importantly, I haven't found Excel to be "way above the rest" at all.
- tacroqueen 4y ago
  No offense but you clearly are not a spreadsheet power user (and to be clear you're starting off with what feels like a pretentious reply/generalization: always turns out that the person stating that opinion is an Excel expert and barely looked at anything else.) I have never heard anyone that has used both products deeply ever admit that Numbers comes close to the capabilities of Excel (and this includes a few former Numbers devs). They really aren't even in the same product category. For basic spreadsheet stuff that 90% of people do, sure, and Numbers does have some UI niceties - but the differences go well beyond drag and drop behavior. It's way harder if not impossible to use AppleScript like you can VBA. What is the Numbers equivalent of ODBC? How do you connect pivot tables to external sources? Excel has tremendously more builtin functions. Excel has far better performance, which can start to matter. Meanwhile Numbers can have field types like star ratings. It uses a fundamentally different visual abstraction. Numbers focuses more on appearance and makes better looking graphs easily out of the box. At the limits of their feature sets though, these are really tools aimed at different audiences. For basic spreadsheet functionality, all of the major spreadsheet programs in the last 2 decades are serviceable.
  - dijit 4y ago
    the major issue the parent eluded to was a sort of sunk cost fallacy that exists in the spreadsheet ecosystem. Excel is great software, truly, what it enables people to do is impressive (and awful sometimes). But once you have convinced yourself that its industry standard, why look as deeply into alternatives to even figure out if there are better tools? all of them will have quirks, some will certainly be more powerful in some areas (google docs has the ability to read data direct from bigquery for example). Many already convinced themselves that excel is the one true format and there is no reason to look hard at anything else. Others don't want their investment in learning to be wasted. Theres a lot of people who are genuinely not incentivised to look at the ecosystem critically.

davidgerard 4y ago

I use one fully open-source program (LMMS) which I've found a PITA to build reliably. But the Windows binary under WINE just works. We have a stable binary format for Linux! It's Windows.

anthk 4y ago
Use Guix, everything gets compiled fine, no matter what. If you need non-free because of $HARDWARE reasons, use nonguix, (or just a non-free kernel to avoid polluting the userland), but I won't help you on that. Altough you can install guix on any GNU/Linux distro, on top: https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/System-Installation.html https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/System-Installation... Then, run guix pull as a non root, and next, guix package -i lmms Don't forget to follow the installation instructions well, so your XDG menu items from GUIX get correctly enabled after the user logins in.
- orhmeh09 4y ago
  It sounds like WINE "just works" for their uses, "non-free" or not.
  - anthk 4y ago
    Audio latency under Wine would suck against a native binary from Guix.
  - davidgerard 4y ago
    the whole stack is free software, the API just originated at Microsoft.
- davidgerard 4y ago
  or I could keep doing the thing that has worked in a consistent manner for me for years rather than gratuitously do something different, of course.
  - anthk 4y ago

vetinari 4y ago

Winbox (Mikrotik configuration tool). Mikrotik seems to go out of their way to make sure it is compatible with Wine.

julienfr112 4y ago
I suspect mikrotik devs to work on linux...
- geokon 4y ago
  Can you compile code from within Linux to run on wine..? I know clang supports Windows, but I haven't heard anyone have a crosscompilation setup like that (sounds handy!)
  - ta988 4y ago
    Yes you can.https://swarminglogic.com/article/2014_11_crosscompile https://swarminglogic.com/article/2014_11_crosscompile
  - squarefoot 4y ago
    In many cases you wouldn't even need cross compilation if you can run Windows tools directly on WINE. Years ago I installed Delphi 6 on a Linux machine with WINE, and although I didn't write any complex stuff or imported 3rd party components, it compiled every Delphi code I threw at it, producing native Windows code that ran flawlessly on Windows machines.
    - anthk 4y ago
      You could use Lazarus just fine.
      - squarefoot 4y ago
        Yes of course, I meant a native Windows compiler/IDE in general.
  - 4y ago

tannhaeuser 4y ago

Anything 3D modeling related not covered by Blender, and software for 3D printing, just as an example. The word "still" in your post suggests you expect F/OSS software to eventually become available for all fields of application. But that's not what I see happening; instead, there's no new desktop (as opposed to cloud) software being released at all, much less on Linux. So Wine is here to stay with us to (increasingly) run old Win software out of maintenance, and works surprisingly well. Of course, that's made possible by Win32 itself having excellent binary compatibility in the first place, as opposed to the Linux user land.

OscarCunningham 4y ago
So what we need is Wine in the browser.
- tech234a 4y ago
  A port exists, though it could use some more work on optimizing performance/browser integration: https://www.boxedwine.org/demo/ https://www.boxedwine.org/demo/

glitchc 4y ago

Office. And Visio.

LeBit 4y ago

Tax software. The most popular in my country is Windows only.

Enginerrrd 4y ago

AutoCAD Civil 3D would be the big non-negotiable one for me. It's a shame since I love linux but I have to use windows for work.