Depends on what you're using it for. If you mostly use your PC to browse the web or use web-based apps then Linux can handle that just fine. Microsoft Office, Adobe Suite, and other proprietary desktop apps are obviously not available, so you have to learn to use open-source alternatives for those. You might need to install some proprietary fonts to get text to render the same way as it would on Windows/MacOS. I've also had issues with getting speakers and microphone working the way I want them to, but I recently bought a new headset which seems to be working without issues.
If you're using a popular distro, such as an Ubuntu based one, then there is a pretty large community that will have threads discussing workarounds for just about every issue. Unlike Windows, changing settings doesn't involve going to a menu in the control panel or editing the registry but instead usually involves running short command line scripts in the terminal, which I actually kind of like.
Of course, if you're making a leap of faith using your primary PC, then I highly recommend making an image backup and having a Live/Recovery USB. That's what I did before setting up dual boot.
I tried this once on a side project with a small engineering team, but FreeCAD was my alternative to AutoDesk. If we had been a naval vessel they would have mutinied and hung me from a yardarm. They were a clever bunch of hardworking sods and they tried, but sometimes open source isn't up to the task.
Still I think you're right. I suspect that creative suites must be much further along than some engineering sorts of software. Not sure why.
The problem with most alternatives is that for a lot of people it will almost reset them back to starting from scratch when the little details of difference come through. And that's if it even works fully, and a lot of open source variants have little bugs in them that always seem to catch up or just don't want to install properly on whatever machine you are using.
It's not just the learning curve reset, a bunch of open source projects are made by insane people with their brains installed upside down. Blender was completely unusable for decades because the upside-down brain crew insisted that left click could not be used to select things. KiCad has similar problems where none of the standard mouse interactions work, the delete key does not delete things, etc.
That's also true. A lot of open source things seem to be made to gatekeep as hard as possible, to the point where you need an advanced degree in the program itself to make it function and its made to be as obtuse as possible.
I know most of the guys who use that stuff are super proud of themselves for managing to tard wrangle the most tarded of programs, but that sometimes it feels like they do it just so they can jerk off about how difficult it is.
I would love to hear about your OpenSCAD experience and what kind of uses cases you think its appropriate for. I've no experience with parametric modeling and the I don't understand the workflow.
Openscad works well if you prefer to model in code. There's no visual interface to tweak at all, just lines of code to get the output you want. It's much easier for parametric modelling since you can simply just define values and insert them into your code and just change those. It also allows for coding different modules so you can call on them in later code. You can also call on different libraries of code people have already written to generate your models. I used the boardgame insert library extensively
I switched to freecad cause I had a hard time modelling non basic shapes ( anything that's not round or hex, or square etc) in openscad. You can do it but the coding was a bit tough for me.
I use OpenSCAD to make simple parts for projects I'm 3D printing (connectors for PVC pipes at nonstandard angles, adapters for hoses, bolts or nuts for things that aren't going to take a lot of thermal abuse) and it does everything I want and nothing I don't.
CAD is the one of the few areas where it just outright sucks. I wonder why there isn't an effort to make it a lot better. In terms of productivity software we got davinci resolve which also works on Linux, we got gimp and krita as a semi Photoshop replacement. I am not well versed in audio creation but that is probably another area that isn't as well on Linux sadly. Programming can be done on both, games too.
I'm not well versed in audio work either but Audacity has been around forever. Open source and electronic music demographics overlapped quite nicely in Europe since back when both were less mainstream. There's a surprising number of mature audio tools.
Warning about Audacity: they've been bought by a company that does not seem to have your best interest in mind. They instantly wanted to put in telemetry but the community pushback was huge so they rowed that one back. Right after they talked about saving userdata and sharing that one with their Russian main office. I jumped ship at the first part and just use Tenacity now, a fork.
I'm not sure Gimp was ever especially good. At one point I suppose they matched up alright with Photoshop and was pretty much the only alternative that didn't outright suck.
These days though there's a lot more options to choose from that are generally pretty good.
I use krita for art and animation and it's pretty good. It's still a little weak for airbrushing and gradients, which tend to have banding, but I can work around it. I still have to go back to Photoshop CS9 for text and image layout.
And reject SaaS.
Software as a service?
Software as a Service is Software as Shit.
AKA, "you pay every month but never own anything, and what you use can change or break at any time. Good luck!"
I feel like switching to Linux is inevitable. Microsoft is turning Windows into spyware already.
turning?
How hard was it to get things working and how's the support/community for it? I like the look of it from the pictures I've seen.
Depends on what you're using it for. If you mostly use your PC to browse the web or use web-based apps then Linux can handle that just fine. Microsoft Office, Adobe Suite, and other proprietary desktop apps are obviously not available, so you have to learn to use open-source alternatives for those. You might need to install some proprietary fonts to get text to render the same way as it would on Windows/MacOS. I've also had issues with getting speakers and microphone working the way I want them to, but I recently bought a new headset which seems to be working without issues.
If you're using a popular distro, such as an Ubuntu based one, then there is a pretty large community that will have threads discussing workarounds for just about every issue. Unlike Windows, changing settings doesn't involve going to a menu in the control panel or editing the registry but instead usually involves running short command line scripts in the terminal, which I actually kind of like.
Of course, if you're making a leap of faith using your primary PC, then I highly recommend making an image backup and having a Live/Recovery USB. That's what I did before setting up dual boot.
It's pretty easy to get it working on a basic level and make it look and feel like windows on the surface.
I tried this once on a side project with a small engineering team, but FreeCAD was my alternative to AutoDesk. If we had been a naval vessel they would have mutinied and hung me from a yardarm. They were a clever bunch of hardworking sods and they tried, but sometimes open source isn't up to the task.
Still I think you're right. I suspect that creative suites must be much further along than some engineering sorts of software. Not sure why.
The problem with most alternatives is that for a lot of people it will almost reset them back to starting from scratch when the little details of difference come through. And that's if it even works fully, and a lot of open source variants have little bugs in them that always seem to catch up or just don't want to install properly on whatever machine you are using.
It's not just the learning curve reset, a bunch of open source projects are made by insane people with their brains installed upside down. Blender was completely unusable for decades because the upside-down brain crew insisted that left click could not be used to select things. KiCad has similar problems where none of the standard mouse interactions work, the delete key does not delete things, etc.
That's also true. A lot of open source things seem to be made to gatekeep as hard as possible, to the point where you need an advanced degree in the program itself to make it function and its made to be as obtuse as possible.
I know most of the guys who use that stuff are super proud of themselves for managing to tard wrangle the most tarded of programs, but that sometimes it feels like they do it just so they can jerk off about how difficult it is.
I use freecad as well. Migrated from openscad
I would love to hear about your OpenSCAD experience and what kind of uses cases you think its appropriate for. I've no experience with parametric modeling and the I don't understand the workflow.
Openscad works well if you prefer to model in code. There's no visual interface to tweak at all, just lines of code to get the output you want. It's much easier for parametric modelling since you can simply just define values and insert them into your code and just change those. It also allows for coding different modules so you can call on them in later code. You can also call on different libraries of code people have already written to generate your models. I used the boardgame insert library extensively
I switched to freecad cause I had a hard time modelling non basic shapes ( anything that's not round or hex, or square etc) in openscad. You can do it but the coding was a bit tough for me.
I use OpenSCAD to make simple parts for projects I'm 3D printing (connectors for PVC pipes at nonstandard angles, adapters for hoses, bolts or nuts for things that aren't going to take a lot of thermal abuse) and it does everything I want and nothing I don't.
CAD is the one of the few areas where it just outright sucks. I wonder why there isn't an effort to make it a lot better. In terms of productivity software we got davinci resolve which also works on Linux, we got gimp and krita as a semi Photoshop replacement. I am not well versed in audio creation but that is probably another area that isn't as well on Linux sadly. Programming can be done on both, games too.
I'm not well versed in audio work either but Audacity has been around forever. Open source and electronic music demographics overlapped quite nicely in Europe since back when both were less mainstream. There's a surprising number of mature audio tools.
Warning about Audacity: they've been bought by a company that does not seem to have your best interest in mind. They instantly wanted to put in telemetry but the community pushback was huge so they rowed that one back. Right after they talked about saving userdata and sharing that one with their Russian main office. I jumped ship at the first part and just use Tenacity now, a fork.
FreeCAD is baffling and strange. I've had much better luck making things in SolveSpace, though it is limited in capability
I use gimp and inkscape
I found gimp hard to use. Couldn't figure out anything.
I'm not sure Gimp was ever especially good. At one point I suppose they matched up alright with Photoshop and was pretty much the only alternative that didn't outright suck.
These days though there's a lot more options to choose from that are generally pretty good.
Would you share some of the other.options that don't suck?
Krita is great. As a lifelong photoslop cs6 user, krita is perfect.
I use krita for art and animation and it's pretty good. It's still a little weak for airbrushing and gradients, which tend to have banding, but I can work around it. I still have to go back to Photoshop CS9 for text and image layout.