Approaching the end of window 10 and have no plans on upgrading to 11.

I am trying to find alternatives to applications I regularly use before jumping ship (it is mostly a gaming focused pc) any suggestions?

There’s oculus software for my vr but don’t know what I’m going to do with that

Small update: probably going to do Linux mint as that appears to be the most beginner friendly

Update two: that’s a lot of comments, and Thanks for all the info

  • deadcade@lemmy.deadca.de
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    2 days ago
    • AMD Drivers: Good news! They work even better on Linux. Bad news, you’re probably referring to the AMD “control panel” type application instead of the drivers themselves, which doesn’t have a direct equivalent. The drivers should come pre-installed, though depening on distro you may need to select/install “radv” or “vulkan-radeon” manually. Most of the control panel functionality can be found in other applications, like OBS for recording or CoreCtrl for clock speeds.
    • Chrome: Although Firefox is pre-installed in most cases, you have full freedom of choice here. Most people find that Firefox works basically the same after using it for a bit, but if it doesn’t fit you, there’s other options. Google Chrome is most likely available in your distros app store, but there’s also less “spying” options like ungoogled-chromium.
    • Gmail: You can access this on the website, or through a mail client like thunderbird. You can switch if you want to, you’re not limited by any means here.
    • Office 360: Though LibreOffice is a great alternative, some find themselves forced to use MS office for compatibility reasons. This is still possible, buy only in a webbrowser.
    • ITunes: This is a hard one to find alternatives for, depending on what you use it for. For managing iPhones from a PC, you essentially need Windows or macOS. For playing music, there’s plenty of options.
    • JBL: I’m unsure as I don’t use any of their products, but assuming you mean audio related “control panels”, there’s many options available. Though they may need a bit of tweaking and searching around to get things to sound the way you want.
    • Musescore: I also don’t use this, but it’s available on Flathub, meaning you can (and probably should) use your distros “App Store” to install this.
    • Norton AV: Not many AVs targeting Linux exist, and they’re not the greatest quality. Though it’s doable to go without one, as long as you don’t download and run random files off the internet. Stick to the app store, and you should be totally fine.
    • PyCharm: This is available on Linux, also in the “app store”. There’s other IDEs available too, like vscode.
    • Remote Desktop to iOS: I haven’t owned an iOS device since 2019, so I don’t know which protocol they use. It’s possible this isn’t supported at all.
    • Star Citizen: It looks like this is playable through Proton. You can use Steam (add non-steam game), Lutris, or Bottles to launch non-steam Windows apps/games.
    • Steam: Works great
    • VPN: As you didn’t put a previous VPN provider here, I’m not able to tell you if it works on Linux. Personally I have a hard time recommending any VPN service, but Mullvad stands out as being the least untrustworthy. Almost all others like Nord, Express, etc. share some common traits that make them very untrustworthy to me.
    • Windows Games: This is a bit more complicated. Games from the Microsoft Store are very unlikely to run, and require messing about to even try in the first place. Other games made for Windows likely work (even outside Steam), using management tools like Lutris or Bottles is often easier than manually using Wine.

    If a tool (or distro) works well for you, it’s a good option. Everyone has different opinions on the “best” distro, but since it’s very subjective, there is no single “best” distro. There’s only 2 distros I recommend against, that’s Ubuntu (and close spin-offs) and Manjaro, because they have major objective downsides compared to equivalents like Mint or Endeavour. The distros I generally recommend to new users are Mint and Fedora, but feel free to look around, you’re not forced to pick a specific one.

    You noted you were likely going to choose Linux Mint, great! It’s a “stable” distro, as in, it doesn’t change much with small updates. Instead, new release versions (23, 24, 25, etc) come with new changes. Linux Mint comes with an App Store that can install from Flathub, which should be the first place to check for installing new applications.

    As for VR, it depends heavily on which exact headset you have, and is not always a great experience on Linux right now (speaking from experience with an Index). The LVRA wiki is a great starting place: https://lvra.gitlab.io/. If you’re on a Quest, WiVRN and ALVR exist, though they both have their own downsides. If you’re on a PCVR headset from Oculus, your options are more limited. You might also want to consider a different distro, as VR development is moving very fast. Many VR users choose to go with a “harder” rolling release distribution, like EndeavourOS, to receive feature updates quicker.

    Also of note, if you have the storage space, you can choose to “dual boot” (even with just one drive). This will give you a menu to choose between Windows and Linux when starting your computer, and will give you time to move stuff over. I generally recommend this, as it provides an option to immediately do a task you know how to do on Windows, when it’s absolutely required to do the task asap.

    • MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml
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      2 days ago

      Btw, ungoogled-chromium needs a extension for extension market access. There’s also just Chromium or Brave, Edge or whatever floats your boat.

        • virku@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          So I should do this with at least ny favorite games before wiping my drive and installing a Linux distro?

          • merc@sh.itjust.works
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            1 day ago

            Bazzite, a gaming-focused Linux distribution, is designed to work really well with Steam. One drawback is that if you have a game installed in Windows on a Windows drive, you can’t use it from Linux steam. But, there is a way to have games accessible to both operating systems. I haven’t done this, yet, but I’m probably going to try it this week.

            It involves installing a Windows driver that supports BTRFS partitions.

            Here’s the video guide I found.

            • privatizetwiddle@lemmy.sdf.org
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              1 hour ago

              An alternative is to bind mount the appcompat folder from your linux steam into the steam library on your windows drive.

              I really hope Bazzite manages to smooth out the last few snags and use cases for dual-boot so that I can recommend it to more non-techy people without needing to explain stuff like this or the unintuitive process of importing installed windows games into Lutris.

      • ScoreDivision@programming.dev
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        2 days ago

        1 gotcha for gaming on steam is anticheat enabled games. If you play competitive games where third party anti cheat is required often you will not be able to play them even if they say they support Linux on steam.

      • deadcade@lemmy.deadca.de
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        2 days ago

        Not every game works, but as another user pointed out, ProtonDB is a good resource. If you buy a new game on Steam, and it doesn’t work, you can refund it within the first 2 weeks (and below 2 hours playtime) for any reason. That includes “Ths game does not work on my operating system”.

    • Emtity_13@lemmy.sdf.orgOP
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      2 days ago

      Ye use amd adrenaline to control overclocking and settings for my GPU and games. I’ve seen recommendations for LACT or CoreCtrl