This “solution” completely ignores the volumes of software that is still only compatible with Windows. This is exactly the belief that Microsoft wants you to have: the illusion that you have a choice between Windows and other, equal alternatives. And before someone starts spouting off about WINE: it truly is a wonderful piece of software, and I don’t mean to disparage any of its talented contributors, but it will likely never even approach feature parity with Windows. I mean, it still can’t run the industry standard 3D modeling program.
This is always brought up but it isn’t actually that relevant. The 3D modeling profession is very small, hundreds of millions of general purpose computer users have no need for Microsoft.
I think that compared to video games, productive softwares, especially “industry standard” ones, rely more on Windows APIs at much more accuracy (and since Wine and its forks such as Proton have to rely on black-box reverse engineering to avoid copyright infringement), the API calls may not have the exact values 100% of the time which is more tolerable to videos games but much less on productive softwares.
Another reason is that most of these softwares unlike most video games are likely using many Windows’ quirks or bugs and are likely less using standard (such as WinUI, DirectX,…) or cross platform toolkit (Qt, GTK,…), making reimplementing the environments and libraries to run the softwares much harder.
Oh, and not even counting that many of those softwares may also use kernel-level DRMs which Wine/Proton/Crossover/… are only userspace level to prevent pirates. This was actually a problem in video games too when many video games, mostly multiplayer ones implement kernel level anticheats or DRMs, until Valve contacted the anticheat/DRM developer as well as the release and popular of the Steam Deck make developers care more about Wine/Proton compatibility, but even then there are some developers still don’t implement Wine/Proton compatibility or even worse ban Linux users for circumvent the artificial incompatibility.
Meh gamepass is cool for now. It will probably go up in price and become shitty when they get enough market share but until then it is super cool. And honestly I think bing/edge is now the better choice as a search engine/browser compared to Google/chrome. But no way I will give up my Firefox.
Nothing Microsoft does is good. Nothing google does is good.
Choose an alternative that values you.
I don’t even value me, no corporation gives a crap. They want you and your recurrent income.
So don’t go with a mainstream option.
This “solution” completely ignores the volumes of software that is still only compatible with Windows. This is exactly the belief that Microsoft wants you to have: the illusion that you have a choice between Windows and other, equal alternatives. And before someone starts spouting off about WINE: it truly is a wonderful piece of software, and I don’t mean to disparage any of its talented contributors, but it will likely never even approach feature parity with Windows. I mean, it still can’t run the industry standard 3D modeling program.
This is always brought up but it isn’t actually that relevant. The 3D modeling profession is very small, hundreds of millions of general purpose computer users have no need for Microsoft.
I think that compared to video games, productive softwares, especially “industry standard” ones, rely more on Windows APIs at much more accuracy (and since Wine and its forks such as Proton have to rely on black-box reverse engineering to avoid copyright infringement), the API calls may not have the exact values 100% of the time which is more tolerable to videos games but much less on productive softwares.
Another reason is that most of these softwares unlike most video games are likely using many Windows’ quirks or bugs and are likely less using standard (such as WinUI, DirectX,…) or cross platform toolkit (Qt, GTK,…), making reimplementing the environments and libraries to run the softwares much harder.
Oh, and not even counting that many of those softwares may also use kernel-level DRMs which Wine/Proton/Crossover/… are only userspace level to prevent pirates. This was actually a problem in video games too when many video games, mostly multiplayer ones implement kernel level anticheats or DRMs, until Valve contacted the anticheat/DRM developer as well as the release and popular of the Steam Deck make developers care more about Wine/Proton compatibility, but even then there are some developers still don’t implement Wine/Proton compatibility or even worse ban Linux users for circumvent the artificial incompatibility.
I’m aware of the pitfalls.
meirl
Linux and Firefox with uBlock Origin.
I’ll settle for one that has a vague indifference to me.
Slackware
deleted by creator
Meh gamepass is cool for now. It will probably go up in price and become shitty when they get enough market share but until then it is super cool. And honestly I think bing/edge is now the better choice as a search engine/browser compared to Google/chrome. But no way I will give up my Firefox.
Edge (and that joke Brave) is chromium and that supports google’s control of the web. Firefox, or Safari on a Mac, don’t use google’s tech.
Firefox is the best for me. I thought chromium was open source though and not necessarily owned by Google.
Google controls it and allows people to use it so their own browser technology has the market share and can shape the web.
Denying google, a for-profit and evil company to shape a valuable public resource is dangerous.