I've been using Linux for over a month

Things I will miss out on using Linux

The #1 PC gaming platform is Windows and there's no denying that. To play modern PC games, Windows is required.

Yes, I know Steam exists for Linux. I even tried it out, but uninstalled it.

Did I uninstall Steam because it didn't work? No. It's because I'm not a gamer.

If I really wanted to game, I'd just buy a Sony PlayStation, Microsoft Xbox or Nintendo Switch, because I have zero interest in dumping over $1,000 into a PC and necessary accessories solely for the purpose of playing games. To me, that's a total waste of money.

To be clear, Linux can game, but you can't get around the fact you still need the the expensive PC hardware like a high end graphics card. I'm not about to dump a pile of cash into computer hardware just for games, regardless if the OS is Linux or Windows. Again, this is why I said if I wanted to game, I'd just get a gaming console instead because it's ultimately cheaper.

To be brutally honest, for gaming I'd probably just buy a renewed PlayStation 2 since that's under $200 and it plays both PS2 and PS1 games. Tons of titles for cheap. Good stuff.

What I miss out on by using Linux, sort of, is that there are certain really old Windows programs I can't run anymore.

I have to talk about gaming again for a quick moment.

Old games made for Windows don't work on modern Windows. This happened when Win98 games didn't work on WinXP, then with each successive Windows version with new DirectX, old games would break in modern Windows. That's been the way of things concerning PC games in Windows for over 20 years.

The entire reason many gamers build PCs today specifically with old hardware is just to use Windows 98 or Windows XP properly so they can run all their old games. When you have the right hardware, right OS platform and right DirectX, you're good to go.

However, for productivity software, Windows has the best legacy support of any OS. I can run Paint Shop Pro 7, a 32-bit graphics editor originally released 1999, in native Windows 11, and it will actually work. If I want to run an ancient copy of WinRAR, like the 4.00 32-bit version from 2011, yeah, Win11 will run that.

There is a lot of old 32-bit Windows stuff that still works in modern 64-bit Win11 on a native level. The reason behind that are the thousands of corporations who use Windows that absolutely require the old stuff to work to keep business running.

I didn't have many ancient 32-bit programs I used in Windows. Paint Shop Pro 7 was one of them, but I've since ditched that for GIMP and do all my graphics stuff there.

Now of course, in Linux I can run ancient 32-bit Windows stuff in Wine, and things are made even easier with Winetricks. But as I've learned, I'm really better off just dropping the old win32 stuff in favor of modern Linux software.

A thing I've learned in Kubuntu is that finding the software you need to do something is a 4-step process. Try "Discover" first. If that ends up with nothing, Synaptic Package Manager next. If that ends up with nothing, outright type out the thing in Konsole (example: type rar, and Konsole says Command rar not found, but can be installed with: sudo apt install rar). Konsole will even guess what you're looking for even on a misspelling (very nice). If Konsole ends up with nothing, then you start searching the internet. One of those will get you to the software you need. The thing you need is most likely already in the repository but just went by a software title name you'd never think to search for.

For example, I needed a way to make recovery files for archives. Turns out the thing I needed was already installed in Kubuntu by default, par2. But I didn't know it was called that until I searched around first, found the name of the utility, looked it up in Synaptic, and oh, cool! It's already there!

Ultimately, the only things I miss out on in Windows are the things that either only run on Windows, or only run on Windows or MacOS.

An example in my computing life of that is Garmin Express. No Linux version. People have been begging Garmin to release one for years. They won't do it. It's only for Windows or Mac and that's it.

And yes, that software is on my Win11 Pro computer, obviously.

It literally has to get that specific just to find something that absolutely won't run on Linux.

So other than that ultra-specific stuff I just mentioned, I'm not missing out on anything by using Kubuntu full time.

Kubuntu gets the job done, and I'm sticking with it.

Although as I said earlier, at some point I will most likely just install straight Debian. If I stick with this for the long haul, which I most likely will, Debian will be my next OS.

Published 2023 Jul 20