Proprietary software I use on a regular basis with no Linux alternative:
Revit, AutoCAD, Houdini, 3dsMAX, SolidWorks, Rhino, Grasshopper, Adobe Illustrator/Photoshop/InDesign (and/or their Affinity alternatives), CUDA optimized simulation and rendering plugins, etc.
I use at least one of these every day, almost none of them have any functioning compatibility with Wine or other emulation. Even just using Affinity has caused some issues with team projects when someone picks up where I left off and there’s no layer information and a ton of clipping groups instead.
If all you do with your computer is program, work with documents, use a web browser, and play video games sure go wild don’t use Windows on any of your machines. But I just don’t understand how some people in the FOSS community cannot fathom that there are entire professional workflows and industries that just have zero possibility of moving to Linux.
Do I like using Windows? No. But I do like being able to use all the programs my work and research requires.
I contribute actual, tangible research into FOSS CAD/CAM/BIM software development and implementation. I love it and want to see FOSS options grow and become widely adopted. But it just isn’t anywhere close to having feature parity. And that matters, just as much as industry interoperability matters.
I’m just so tired of this thought process in the community that the only reason someone isn’t using Linux/FOSS is because they’re some fanboy or something
For all the people who preach ideology over career, advocating that "one just should sacrifice a little and use Linux already" even if that means disadvantages in the job:
Present me with a way that your ideology can buy my son the life he deserves and I'm in. You can't? Huh. You might want to check what's really important in life. Hint: compared to my families livelihood, the OS I use is banal as fuck.
Update: wow. I'd never have thought that "I'd rather feed my son than use some OS" is a take that's doenvoteable. Yet here we are. Folks,.go touch some grass!
once i had an old laptop that i switched over from windows to linux, but the bluetooth drivers stopped working, so i was searching online for a way to debug it and the only thing i found was a forum post telling somebody to "just write your own bluetooth drivers"
what i'm saying is that this post has the same energy
See this neckbeard extremist evangelising is why people stay away from Linux community. Linux hobbyists having 0 concerns for others’ jobs, work or needs is incredibly icky. I advocate for FLOSS, but posts like this just gives more ammunition to Windows/MacOS/proprietary culture fanboys.
OP said this to a poster below:
It’s sad you built a career out of black box code lmao. […] I piss on your profession
I emotionally understand this idealistic view. But you can’t exclude yourself from the economy and exclude yourself from professional collaboration of any kind by switching from Photoshop to GIMP.
It’s a chicken-egg problem. People stay away from Linux because Linux can’t run (or at least very flawed) industry standard programs like Adobes catalogue and those proprietary software publishers wont publish for Linux because there aren’t enough Linux users to be worth the “trouble”.
But that’s just a part of the problem, the true offender, are the goalpost-movers. “Linux cant run A, that’s why I NEED to stay on windows. What? A now runs flawlessly? Well there’s also B which is really important!” No matter how many programs get ported or at least near flawlessly emulated, there will always be one more program our jack-of-all-trades absolutely can’t live without.
No, there are no evil "goalpost movers" who just pretend to want to switch to Linux bit just aren't flexible enough and can't be arsed to sacrifice something which would be prudent or something.
The goalpost moves with progress. So when they said that A was.missing, that was their concern. Then it took several years until A was running.and the user didn't stand still in the meantime and wants to use B now, too.
Yeah, let me just change my profession real quick, fuck the 20 years I have invested. I’ll just do a tapdance on my eyelashes for the neckbeards and everybody will be happy weee
LOL wait till the company your proprietary software relies on tanks or makes a shitty change for their benefit.
It’s sad you built a career out of black box code lmao. I guess 20 years isn’t enough to read the writing on the wall: proprietary code is shit. Black boxes are shit. I piss on your profession
Companies are always going to make shitty changes, but that doesn’t change the reality that industry leaders are usually in that position for a reason. You simply cannot replace After Effects without kneecapping yourself. GIMP is nowhere near as capable as Photoshop. It is impossible to develop iOS apps without Xcode, and difficult/unsupported to develop Android without Android Studio.
You can piss off your high horse as much as you want, but it is fantastical to claim that professions should hamstring their work and sacrifice reality and practicality for the sake of some ideology belief. Companies aren’t choosing these standards because they love giving away money, they’re doing it because they recognise that rejecting a $300 annual expense for $10,000 worth of greater productivity is financially irresponsible.
So many graphics designers use Macs because that's what the college they went to used to teach them. What features, exactly, are the Windows version of PS missing that the Mac version has?
To be honest, sometimes it’s just easier to use Windows, for compatibility sake. Sure, I can install Office or Photoshop through Wine, but some software can just be a pain in the neck to install and use on Linux.
This is the main reason why I dual boot and will most probably for a very very long time. I just don’t have the time to tackle with these things ATM, real life is more important.
There is a trade off i guess if you put it that way. Would you rather tinker and make your software work for you, or would you install a shitty bloated operating system that routinely trades your data like pokemon cards just so you can install a handful of programs comfortably.
I would rather tinker to be honest, I am that kind of a person, but currently, my family (kid) needs me. He’s young and needs guidance, playing, attention, etc. That is more important than tinkering with tech IMO.
People use a lot of proprietary software because it’s their job, why would you want to use a program requiring you to relearn an entire operating system, is more difficult to initially setup and generally has less features and support when you can just… Use the thing that works? I understand where you’re coming from but there’s a lot of fields where using Linux is just not reasonable and your response here is just obnoxious and part of why Linux has the reputation it does
Also you CAN get your workplace to shift over to something else.
Not every workplace will change procedures, but some will. Especially if it’s software that handles local data or if there are high costs or privacy risks, they can be convinced.
You’re gonna get a whole team of people retrained with software they’re not used to, probably doesn’t have proper support or learning resources to fall back on, and may lack features or compatibility?
They might save some money, but a lot of businesses are more than happy to pay a lot to ensure they don’t have to worry about the above, and they can get on with their company’s actual purpose.
You’re gonna get a whole team of people retrained with software they’re not used to, probably doesn’t have proper support or learning resources to fall back on, and may lack features or compatibility?
Like the jump from Windows 10 to Windows 11? People move to unfamiliar software all the time, then complain about it for a bit and then cope.
I work in support, the amount of people I ask are you running windows 10 or 11 and don’t know the answer should be enough of an indicator that when they did upgrade, they barely noticed.
I work in support, the amount of people I ask are you running windows 10 or 11 and don’t know the answer should be enough of an indicator that when they did upgrade, they barely noticed.
Those people don’t know the product names. That’s it. Obviously they noticed that the core piece of GUI interaction moved from left-aligned to centered, just as they notice when after an update a giant search bar appeared on the middle of the desktop.
Well companies continue to get new software and learn new skills. They might not switch as soon as you suggest it, but it could get revisited later on when renewing a contract.
This also depends a lot on the size of the team and the work that’s being done. If required features are missing or there are compatibility issues, then that’s one thing. If people prefer the other product, or enough workers share similar views on the topic, then it’s easier to switch.
Again it doesn’t happen all the time, but it’s worth bringing up. If anything, it shows you’re thinking about how to improve your work and the business (financially, ethically). I’ve seen times when changes were made, and I’ve seen times when it wasn’t.
The support thing is a fair point, where companies would rather outsource risk than self host the thing. In that case it’s a matter of picking the most trustworthy company to outsource to. Best case scenario, the other company is doing things just as well as yours would have with the added benefit that they’re focussed on doing one thing well.
Is it that top of the line software truly doesn’t exist for linux, that it’s impossible to the work done, or is it possible BUT you have to spend more time tinkering and learning the quirks of quite admittedly rough around the edges open source software? That yes, it’s less efficient, but actually more rewarding knowing that the software you worked on was open source. And one you actually learn how to use open source software, nobody can take it away from you.
Look at unity! They gutted the program through its egregious licensing structure and now people are scrambling for alternatives. People that sticked with Godot didn’t have the same trouble. It was just another Wednesday
Of course open source can’t play on the same level as proprietary software right now. It doesn’t have the same money thrown at it than proprietary software! But the appeal of open source is that every change is guaranteed to benefit you, not some arbitrary bottom line. Proprietary software is polished, but you are at the whims of a big tech company.
If i were to base my profession on software, spend literal years of my life depending on code, i really would fucking like to look inside that shit sometimes. Anything else is like building a skyscraper out of quicksand
It’s great to use open source software. But once you need to use CAD for work, you’re gonna use the most efficient tool you can find no matter what OS it requires.
Yeah, but people who bring these things up act like everyone needs these things to get their day to day work done. Like everyone works in an architect office, industrial design firm or print marketing agency.
In the grand scheme of things the people who NEED to run Photoshop or CAD programs are edge cases.
The real reason people need windows for work is non-technical corporate and government IT departments. Windows management software (eg. Exchange) is too deeply embedded in the organisation and it is too time consuming and expensive to remove.
I hope you are kidding, trolling, as those things, plus audio/video editing, started fron unix when it wasn't conceivable to do so on PCs with proprietary OS. All those corporations who later sold such sw copied/stole FOSS and dressed it up as their own.
No team or corporation can ever ever catch up to FOSS development. It is a neo-liberal fallacy that promotes them on marketing hype.
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