Linux user base keep growing !

[Chills]

I do agree about the direction of travel; with the latest MACs.
There are some major software suites on Linux. Resolve the professional video SW but it is for only one distro.
It is also a VERY small number of users.
 
You were going to explain how to convert from Windows to Linux on the same PC.

[anto]

I have Windows and several Linux distributions on one computer. I experimented a lot. Linux is friendly to other operating systems. If you install Linux first, and then Windows on another partition, Windows will overwrite the boot sectors and references to Linux. If you do it the other way around, you'll get a menu where you can choose which system you want to work with - Windows or Linux.

[walt.farrell]

Just now, Chills said:

You were going to explain how to convert from Windows to Linux on the same PC.

They did describe it. Here's my paraphrase:

1. Backup
2. Install Linux (Note: this might be by overwriting Windows or as a second partition, depending on your machine specs and desires.)
3. Restore needed data, add additional softtware as needed.

I've done that on an old machine I didn't need any more. It was quite simple. Of course, perhaps you're talking about the case where software is available for Windows and Mac but not for Linux. That does complicate things, but if that's your point it wasn't clear to me from your recent posts here.

To migrate to a Mac instead, you still need steps 1 and 2. But before that, you need to spend a significant amount of money to buy a new machine.

[fde101]

16 minutes ago, Chills said:

You were going to explain how to convert from Windows to Linux on the same PC.

He did:

21 minutes ago, spicyramentt said:

I backup the system.

Boot into my Ubuntu LTSC usb stick, then i install it.

Its pretty straightforward. Then i do what i would on any windows / mac machine.

I run the updates.

Install my software.

Then i do my work.

 

 

21 minutes ago, spicyramentt said:

nothing is user upgradeable or maintainable,

Apple's general design philosophy has long been that you install upgrades OUTSIDE the box - you need more disk space, you plug it in - but that obviously doesn't work for things like RAM or CPU.

There is a trade-off with the SOC approach they have taken: the tight integration of the memory and GPU on the same chip as the CPU means reduced latency in communication between them and allows for more efficient sharing of memory between the CPU and GPU, giving performance benefits.

They have increasingly capitalized on those benefits with newer generations of their chips, giving strong performance for the amount of power they consume, which is one of Apple's primary goals in their chip design - power efficiency, something they are doing incredibly well at, offering potential savings in people's electric bills when plugged in, and longer runtimes when using laptops on battery power.

The trade-off is that you can't easily open up the IC to add more memory or swap out the GPU.  Any additional memory or any different GPU would need to be off-chip, throwing away those benefits.  This creates an optimization hassle in that the OS would need to figure out when it is more efficient to take advantage of the fast communication of the on-chip resources and when it is worth taking the slower approach of sending things outside to leverage some added hardware.  While this certainly has precedent (Amiga "fast RAM", NUMA architectures, etc.), it is not really something that macOS has ever been optimized for - most operating systems have not - and Apple has evidently (at least for now) chosen to simplify things by doing without.

 

 

9 minutes ago, anto said:

I have Windows and several Linux distributions on one computer

I have Windows (for ARM), several Linux installations, FreeBSD and macOS on a single computer (a Mac Studio) and can run them all at once (as the non-macOS systems are virtualized).

 

In all honesty, the biggest remaining reason for me to be using macOS instead of Linux as my primary OS (other than general preference) is the [admittedly idiotic] legal issue of patents when working with various common video codecs, and the general lack of support for some of the more proprietary RAW-like video codecs.

Windows would never work for me as a primary OS.  I simply don't trust Microsoft.

In fact, when installing that Windows 11 VM, at one point I had to jump through hoops (with the PRO version of Windows 11 - not HOME) to install it with a LOCAL account instead of tying my login to a Microsoft account.  They are increasingly trying to force users into the whole cloud scheme.  Not that Apple doesn't seem to be heading somewhat in that direction (inching me closer and closer to a switch to Linux) - but Microsoft is a lot further down that path in very undesirable ways.

[anto]

Compare reinstalling Windows and Linux.
Reinstalling Linux is a breeze once you've created a /home partition for your documents. You don't have to worry about losing your documents and don't have to make a backup copy. When installing, you only need to enter a different username in the /home partition and do not format the /home disk during installation. And then copy all the data from the old folder to the new one. And all the settings are in place.
This is not possible with Windows.

[Wanesty]

4 minutes ago, anto said:

/home partition

not a lot of people have a partition only for their home directory but yea, it's common, and often done with subpartition when using btrfs, rarely on a different drive tho

but regardless, yea, the way stuff are laid out in a /home directory is so much more comfortable to navigate than windows users folder

[Chills]

12 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

They did describe it. Here's my paraphrase:

1. Backup
2. Install Linux (Note: this might be by overwriting Windows or as a second partition, depending on your machine specs and desires.)
3. Restore needed data, add additional softtware as needed.

I've done that on an old machine I didn't need any more. It was quite simple. Of course, perhaps you're talking about the case where software is available for Windows and Mac but not for Linux. That does complicate things, but if that's your point it wasn't clear to me from your recent posts here.

To migrate to a Mac instead, you still need steps 1 and 2. But before that, you need to spend a significant amount of money to buy a new machine.

A second partition?
How do I add MS Office and MS Publisher?

You have proved my point, I know a LOT of people still using MS Publisher who have no idea what a "second partition" is. For most users other than geeks, the easiest option is to buy a Mac and install MS Office on it then transfer files across.

90% of PC and 95% of Mac users would have no idea how to do the "simple"  procedure you have outlined.

I often talk to "programmers" who when I ask then which compiler they are using give me the name of the IDE (which is usually not the same as the compiler)   This is why Linux will never get overt 4% of the desktop users. Your "simple" procedure is well outside the scope of most of them, and they don't want to know.

Also, there are 100's of Linux in current use (never mind the 1000's obsolete and unsupported)   that are all moving targets.   Love it or hate it Affinity can sign up withy Apple  and MS to get roadmaps for the next 2+ years and early access and API changes well in advance.   With Linux it is still the wild west. Linus has spoken about this many times

Also most of the Linux servers are either from commercial suppliers or maintained internally by people who know what they are doing.  Not home users.
 

 

[spicyramentt]

31 minutes ago, Chills said:

I do agree about the direction of travel; with the latest MACs.
There are some major software suites on Linux. Resolve the professional video SW but it is for only one distro.
It is also a VERY small number of users.
 
You were going to explain how to convert from Windows to Linux on the same PC.

I backup the system.

Boot into my Ubuntu LTSC usb stick, then i install it.

[Chills]

11 minutes ago, spicyramentt said:

I backup the system.

Boot into my Ubuntu LTSC usb stick, then i install it.

and my MS publisher still runs as normal under Linux?

[walt.farrell]

17 minutes ago, Chills said:

You have proved my point,

If your point was about applications that run on the various OSes (or don't), then you should have been clearer in your recent posts. That consideration didn't come across in your recent statements (to which I was responding), at all, that I saw.

[fde101]

1 hour ago, Chills said:

How do I add MS Office and MS Publisher?

The same way you install Nisus Writer and Final Cut Pro under Windows.

[Alfred]

3 hours ago, Wanesty said:

not a lot of people have a partition only for their home directory but yea, it's common

Is it “not a lot of people” or is it common? I’m afraid I don’t see how it can be both!

[Peter Werner]

It is likely that the reason why an increased number of people have been migrating from Windows/Mac to Linux or back to Windows 10 recently is the same as why a lot of people have moved from Adobe software to Affinity. Hence I wouldn't be surprised if there was a higher than average overlap between people who would like to use Linux and those who already use Affinity or are thinking about making the jump. In other words, a Linux version might be another incentive to get more of those Adobe users to switch, particular if an announcement is timed right with respect to the end of support for Windows 10.

People in the graphics and media space have to choose their OS based on where their software runs. Only looking at the data of the status quo ignores the chicken and egg nature of the problem.

[Chills]

6 hours ago, fde101 said:

The same way you install Nisus Writer and Final Cut Pro under Windows.

Not the same. MS Office runs on Mac the same as FCP but neither run on Linux,

[fde101]

47 minutes ago, Chills said:

MS Office runs on Mac

You weren't asking for it to run on a Mac; you were asking for it to run under Linux.

That said...  MS Office actually can be installed under Linux (using Wine), so the allegory does break down a bit due to that.

[Wanesty]

On 5/10/2024 at 9:14 PM, Alfred said:

Is it “not a lot of people” or is it common? I’m afraid I don’t see how it can be both!

not a lot of people do it manually or purposefully but it is common that installer do it by default! :p

[Chills]

On 5/11/2024 at 1:13 AM, fde101 said:

You weren't asking for it to run on a Mac; you were asking for it to run under Linux.

That said...  MS Office actually can be installed under Linux (using Wine), so the allegory does break down a bit due to that.

not really, You are now installing emulators most people have no idea about them. It isn't out of the box like it is on windows or IOS. 
This is why only geeks use Linux not 99% of the population

 

[Wanesty]

23 minutes ago, Chills said:

now installing emulators

Wine Is Not an Emulator

[fde101]

2 hours ago, Chills said:

You are now installing emulators

Only if you are going across CPU architectures, and that would normally be something like qemu, not Wine.

As @Wanesty pointed out, Wine is a recursive acronym for Wine Is Not an Emulator, which describes it correctly.  It is a reimplementation of the Windows API calls, translating them to Linux API calls.  The Windows applications actually run almost natively, no emulation involved.

Wine was actually designed so that applications could theoretically even be compiled against the libraries to turn them into Linux applications, to some degree, though the majority of cases it is used for obviously do not leverage that.

In some cases, if Wine is installed from the distribution's package repository (just like installing any other Linux app provided by the distribution), you can just double-click a compatible Windows application icon to run it directly under Linux.

[Wanesty]

13 hours ago, fde101 said:

translating them to Linux API calls

and translation layers are common !

this is what Apple's Rosetta(PowerPC to x86) and Rosetta 2(x86 to Arm) are, as-well as Windows 11's WSL and android subsystem

[fde101]

4 minutes ago, Wanesty said:

Windows 11's WSL and android subsystem

Not sure that WSL and android subsystems qualify translation layers - if they are, then the Win32 subsystem is as well, for mostly the same reasons.

 

5 minutes ago, Wanesty said:

this is what Apple's Rosetta(PowerPC to x86) and Rosetta 2(x86 to Arm) are

Not exactly, as Rosetta is translating CPU instructions, effectively acting as a more advanced form of emulator, without translating the API calls.  Wine translates API calls so it works more like the DLLs in Windows or the shared libraries in the macOS/Linux world.

[Chills]

1 hour ago, Wanesty said:

and translation layers are common !

not to 99.9% of Windows users.....

This i the problem, Linux is mainly used by geeks. As Linus has said many times it is not suitable as a general purpose operating system for the masses.

[Peter Werner]

In very simple terms, you can think of Wine (and Darling for that matter) as something similar to Qt or Gtk+, combined with a tool that knows how to load a windows exe file and start it so the software developer doesn't have to recompile their software for Linux against the WINE libraries.

So if a program says "Create a Window" to the Qt library, the Qt library would then call the underlying X11 command. Similarly, if the Windows program calls a Windows API function like CreateWindowEx under WINE, the WINE library would in turn talk to X11 and call the underlying X11 command to create a new window. So it's not inherently more inefficient than most major native Linux applications these days.

Apple QuickTime, iTunes and Safari used a similar method for their Windows ports where they re-implemented Mac APIs on top of the Windows API. Carbon was pretty much the same thing for building and running OS 9 programs on OS X/Cocoa with only minor code changes and was used by major software like Adobe Photoshop. MS Office (and I believe Internet Explorer for Mac too) used to be based on a re-implementation of the Windows API for Mac (in fact, you can still find references to building on Mac in Windows API header file code today). Many big-name programs like Corel Painter, ProTools, Avid MediaComposer and others used a library called Mac2Win from a company called Altura Software to port their OS 9-era software to Windows. Corel used WINE libraries in a similar manner for their CorelDRAW and WordPerfect for Linux, as did Borland with their Kylix IDE. The office suite GoBe Productive re-implemented parts of the BeOS API for Windows to make their Windows port.

So while the magic is a bit more visible when running WINE, a lot of successful and somewhat performance-critical programs have used this approach in the past.

[Thomahawk]

A yes from me too. Would I have a good graphics studio for Linux I could finally escape the Apple dominion. Don't get me wrong, I am thankful already, Affinity did set me free from Adobe at least.

[bobwal]

I switched from Win 11 to Linux mint about 6 months ago for web design and development and I love it, my pc fans do too. I was running WSL on Windows which is great but things just feel smoother, cleaner and simpler on Linux. I just switch back to Windows now for AD and AP which is a real drag sometimes. I've tried GIMP but it seems unintuitive and I just don't like the feel of it or have the inclination to learn it.

I'd love to see Affinity on Linux but totally understand the reasons against.