I haven’t used it a whole lot, but Lutris is able to integrate a bunch of launchers (including Steam, Epic, Uplay and a few others) and also launch games from windows-exclusive launchers using Proton (or any custom wine setup) with a great number of customization features for individual game installs.
I’ve also heard of HeroLauncher which supposedly does the same thing, but I haven’t looked into it personally.
It might take some tinkering to get certain games running well. I wouldn’t expect Rockstar to make any attempt to make GTA run well in Proton, a product made by one of their competitors. Same goes for any non steam game.
I’ve only used Lutris to run Cyberpunk (as a non-steam game), which worked pretty well.
The problem I see coming with Windows like systems, is the commercials intrusiveness.
Look at Youtube. You watch something and you get some dumb stupid advertising every 10 minutes. Under Windows 11 we are not far away from that.
I definitely do not want Windows stopping me in-game to show me a stupid advertisement.
Nah - It will be Linux only, and if games, probably through Steam or Steam-Os Partition.
On systems with an SSD I like to install the manufacturer’s SSD support software. For Samsung SSDs it is Samsung Magician, for Western Digital it is WD Dashboard. It will allow you to update the firmware, show the SMART data etc. On Windows systems I like to install CrystalDiskInfo which will alert you to problems, overheating, etc. on SSD and hard disks.
I am NOT a power-user… But my daily drivers have all been Linux based (Mostly Mint) for several (20?) years. I still have a functional(?) 25yr old win7 box in the basement…used to use it once in a while. Now I haven’t turned it on in a few years…
One of the many things I love about Linux is that Firefox comes pre-loaded.
Other than that:
Thunderbird
VLC
LibreOffice
qBittorrent
Discord
Opera (In case I need an alternate browser for some reason)
Chromium (same as above)
A new add blocker (Have used AdBlockPlus for years but it seems less effective lately)
My daily driver has been limited by a 120G SSD lol, so now I can branch out a bit with a 2TB nvme! I have sifted through this thread and will try a few of your favorites:
Vivaldi (as an alternate)
Un-Googled Chromium? sounds good to me… (Says the guy with a Pixel6Pro)
uBlock Origin
Freetube
Mission Center
On mine I will install Windows 11 first and maybe later, if I find a suitable 2230 SSD, Zorin Os or Ubuntu, maybe Mint.
As must haves:
VLC
Steam
Gog galaxy
Firefox
Discord
Gimp
O&O Shutup10 (works for 11, too)
Portmaster
Bitdefender AV
Notepad++
7zip
Everything search
And whatever necessary to reverse the BS Microsoft changed from 10 to 11, like the centered Start Menu, context menu, etc.
Short term for testing stability and performance:
Furmark
3dmark
Prime 95
Cinebench 23/24
Hwinfo
Gpuz
Cpuz
Crystal disk mark and info
Dead pixel tester
And for its main purpose, controlling my telescope mount and camera and putting all images together:
VMware player
Virtual Windows XP for my old DSLR camera software
Stellarium
Ascom
Autostakkert
Siril
Deep sky stacker
Pipp
Registax
Second purpose is gaming, but I will have to evaluate, which games can be played with the iGPU until FW releases more powerful dGPUs, like 7800M/7900S.
And then I’ll be cursing, because the 1tb will be filled faster than I can say Pipp
Oh, good to know that O&O ShutUp10 works on Win11 as well. I meant to look into that, but never got around to it! I suppose 10 & 11 are similar enough under the hood that I should have guessed as much.
Excluding too-obvious choices, and being new to Gentoo,
Mozilla VPN (supports Mozilla, and they use Mullvad)
Firefox (uBlock Origin, Tree Style Tabs, Tridactyl, Dark Reader, Firefox Multi-Account Containers, Firefox Translations, personal extension that removes website headers)
TOR Browser (when I want to identify crosswalks)
Vim
Python 3
JupyterLab (shortest path to charts)
Qt Creator (trying to mix QML with a Python venv)
GnuCash (double-entry accounting is fun. track your stupid stock purchases.)
Calibre (probably, though bare files and folders are compelling)
Easy Effects (on the FW 13, maybe not needed on the 16)
1Password
virt-manager
LXC/LXD (probably, if it pans out)
Steam
GOG Galaxy running inside Bottles (not as good as Steam w/Proton, but not terrible)
OpenSnitch (haven’t tried it yet, but I love Little Snitch on macOS)
Either SELinux or AppArmor (one imagines)
Thunderbird probably (leaning toward Proton for email hosting though…)
KDE Connect (once I can get it working at least… IPv6 issues maybe)
ZFS (or BTRFS… debating the risk of eventually locking myself out of / with a fumbled kernel rebuild, vs. the ZFS preference)
As a bonus list, here are macOS programs and features I use, in case anybody has any good Linux advice.
Acorn (I know GIMP exists, but… a nice, refined, basic subset of Photoshop / Paint.NET-esque program)
OmniFocus (probably going to switch to text files)
Little Snitch (maybe OpenSnitch, we’ll see…)
TurboTax Desktop (even though it’s basically as bad as a web page… I just need to do taxes manually, ffs)
Apple convenience: AirDrop, AirPlay, Universal Clipboard, Messages
SoundSource (per-app volume control and automatic gain adjustment)
dBpoweramp Music Converter (I still rip CDs, has an online service for comparing hashes)
MakeMKV
Dictionary (integrated with middle-clicking text)
Xcode
Reeder
Paprika Recipe Manager 3 (need a notes app… need to write my own notes app.)
Maybe look at https://www.freetaxusa.com/ next time. Cheap, works great, probably even if you have moderately complicated taxes. If it’s super complicated, IMO, you probably have the money to pay a CPA to deal with most of it.
Thanks for the recommendation. Maybe next year I’ll see if I can get over my severe hatred of the entire parasitic tax preparation industry and the modern web to give it a shot. A part of me thinks though – just filling out the forms – how hard could it be?
Fortunately I have blockers to block all those pixels/etc.
And yeah, FreeTaxUSA is a mostly guided wizard “fill out the forms” thing. They do offer paid for “if you need help or want a security blanket” as well as charge $15 for me, for California, filing along with generally free Federal filing. And I have various investment forms to input as well, so it’s not as if it’s only allowing the simplest most basic issues.
I still can’t believe the IRS and State tax boards don’t just send a piece of mail saying “here’s the data we have, if it’s good do nothing and here’s how much you’ll owe/we owe you, if you have something else unreported to us here’s how you amend/file that”. 90-99% of Americans would be covered by that I think, since pretty much everything gets reported already.
Hello all, Windows 11 user here. Finally received my FW16 a couple of weeks ago and I think the only weakness may be speaker sound quality. Does anyone have suggestions for a good sound/speaker software?
I am currently using MaxxAudio Pro with my previous notebook, but can’t really recommend it.
Firefox
Steam
GOG Galaxy
Amazon Games
Epic Games
Oculus Link
AMD Adrenalin
Unity Hub
BitWarden
Apple Music
Apple TV
GIMP
OBS
Microsoft Phone Link
MakeMKV
Handbreak
7-Zip
Minecraft Launcher
