Given all the game-related posts, I thought I'd post a work-related one:
In September, after beta testing the privacy nightmare that is W10, I dual-booted my work desktop and travel laptop. Since then, Mint has been my daily driver. This weekend, I deleted the Windows partition from my laptop and travel next week without the ability to fall back on Windows.
I have only booted into Windows twice since September. Once because I was on the road and needed to use PhotoShop for a minute tweak for a client. The second time was on Friday, figured I'd patch up before the trip, just in case. I don't know whether I only now noticed it but the update option no longer exists. You can't choose a time to patch, you just have to leave the computer running and wait. This is a mind-bogglingly stupid decision by Redmond. First, there's the telemetry without end. Now you can't choose a time to update? Goodbye.
Things I have learned:
- Libre Office 5 is a superb improvement over the previous release and is vitually as compatible with Office 2013 and 2016 as Office 2010. A win.
- Backups with rsync were a already godsend on servers. Now I have it native on my desktop. A big win. (Plus bash? Awesome!)
- Office 365 works the same across any OS. Chrome or Chromium does seem to work best. Gone are the days when Linux was an endless also-ran, so another win.
- Photoshop + Wine. When I need it, it works perfectly. A definite win.
- Dropbox and other cloud *aaS services just work. Win.
- Printers and scanners work as they should. A few tweaks can be needed but the manufacturers are shipping Linux drivers that pretty much just work. Gone are days of tweaking cups and hoping something prints someday. A big win.
- Lower attack surface is another win. Same is all the free, functional, and stable software.
The only thing I have yet to resolve is searching for text within .docx files. If anyone can recommend a tool that unzips the archive and permits direct searching the xml content I'll be at an all win. In a world of machines being eaten by ransomware, I wonder why organizations aren't moving in this direction?
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[–] Psylent ago (edited ago)
In my case it's Solidworks, after paying $14,000 for it we are not about to use an alternative in a hurry. Systems like onShape show promise but still lack features we need for day to day use like sheetmetal functions. Tried a VM but it's too clunky and often has issues / crashes, currently I keep a windows laptop just for work. (all my other PCs are fedora).
Solidworks is the main one, I can find reasonable alternatives for just about everything else, it's the one bit of software we just can't toss out.
[–] DrBunsen ago
It will only be a matter of time before Linux is big enough for all the stubborn companies. I guess the smarter companies should move to Linux, first comes, first takes.
[–] Psylent ago
I hope so, I find that I really enjoy using a *nix system, it's fun in all kinds of ways that windows can now never be. It's good that it still supports users who are comfortable without a window manager, at any time I can change runlevel and use the system without all that overhead. I could be wrong but I don't think that's possible with ms-dos anymore.