Wine/Proton, made my switch to Linux way easier
this post was submitted on 29 May 2025
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Vuescan.
Used to be Skype but MS just killed that so....
Kdenlive. I used Adobe Premiere professionally and Kdenlive completely replaced it for me.
Bash. It has enabled me to automatize a lot of sh*t I wouldn't do just because it would take me a lot of time/efford to do. There's a LOT you can do with a few simple scripts, a few examples:
- Remove files I don't need (images, rip/conversion logs, empty folders...).
- Compress and optimize folders of photos recursively.
- Apply watermarks to photos recursively.
- Convert filetypes (flac2mp3, pdf2cbr, webm2mp3,web2jpg...).
- Configure input devices (keyboards, mouse, graphic tablets).
- Autorename files (spaces to _, . to _, _ to spaces...).
- Remove audio from videos recursively.
- Remove audio/subtitle tracks from videos.
- Download images/videos/audio from websites.
- Update appimages automatically.
- Update/cleanup system/repos.
- Use different theming for different applications.
- Mount iso/bin... images.
- Extract zip|rar|tar.gz|.... files automatically.
- Modify pdfs.
- Get the weather for my location.
- Get stats from my PCs to be shown in panel applet.
- Alias program names to ones of my choosing.
- Open CUPS config in firefox.
- Refresh font caches and other management tools I don't care to remember.
- Fix permissions.
- Make a backup.
- Restore a backup.
- Copy files safely (rsync).
- Change volume level.
- Install all the packages and configs I need to make the OS/apps behave/look the way I like.
...you name it...
...in most cases just by typing one word in the terminal. It was kind of a mindblow coming from the crappy window$ crappysystem eons ago.
Which program is the one that surprised you most that it is available on Linux?
Bash.
I find that the least surprising, but ok...
Microsoft Defender.
I convinced my work to let me use linux on their laptop. They sent me instructions for setup. One of them was to install Microsoft Defender, had a link to the Ubuntu package and everything. Blew my mind.
TIL. Nothing will ever surprise me in life anymore. 😂
We've got to install Microsoft Defender, Edge, and PowerShell on Ububtu so that the device will be flagged as compliant in Intune.
What the fuq??
Yup! Here's a helpful link in case you feel like spreading the joy.
https://www.maketecheasier.com/install-use-microsoft-defender-linux/
But, why?
I don't know, but my guess is it might still be able to detect some cross-platform malware signs and detect malware intended for Windows on Linux machines (e.g. I can download a PDF or .docx that is harmless on my machine, but if I reupload and a Windows user downloads it, I've spread malware regardless). IIRC ClamAV is sometimes used to scan attachments on an email server, often looking for Windows exploits being sent through the server.
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Probably ComicTagger https://github.com/comictagger/comictagger
I had been holding onto ComicRack for years and really loved it for scraping and generating tags before adding to Komga. I was a happy camper when i found ComicTagger.
about 10 years ago, i noticed steam was available for linux. for the longest time i had pretty much written off gaming on linux (apart from like tuxcart, nethack, emulators...). i hadn't considered actually being able to play "real" games.
that was before proton, so there really wasn't a ton of stuff i could play, but i found some good stuff like hotline miami, papers please, super win the game.
obviously now we have proton and linux can be argued as a superior gaming platform in many cases.
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I agree simple-scan is awesome.
I just like when I do an update and my computer uses less data...and its a bit faster. Thats happened a couple of times. Feels good.
Microsoft Edge was a recent surprise. It's surprising both that Microsoft would create it and that any Linux users would run it. Since its Chromium based, there should be no need for developers to test Edge separately.
You can also get Teams on Linux
Really? All I've seen is a Flatpak that's really just a wrapped web view. Is there now a native version of Teams for Linux?
The native windows version of teams is also only a glorified web view.
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That's a little less surprising to me. Organizations are likely to pick competing communication software if Teams is not available to everyone. Web browsers are generally interoperable after Microsoft lost the war to popularize one that wasn't.
A very unwelcome surprise, too.
I'm pretty neutral about the mere existence of software I'm not interested in using.
I think MS assumes no one will use it. But having Linux builds of some of their software enhances their "MS loves Linux" marketing.
Teams is another example.
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Surprised? IE/Edge. Like, why?
My work mandates Edge as a browser on the company PC. With Edge on Linux I can have a "work" browser on my private PC with bookmark sync etc.
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Bitwig and Reaper. Two of the best music DAWs on the market and they each have a Linux native version.
EDIT: I forgot to include Renoise, the music tracker DAW.
Yeah, Reaper is surprising! It's in the Arch repos and Flathub.
I would have been happy if I had to build it from source or download a random deb from their website. But, damn. It's on Linux and easily installable!
As a guitarist ToneLib and Carla are also up there for me.
I have been experimenting with Reaper a bit, but I am a sort of DAW noob, so it's kind of hard to get in to. I've done a tiny bit using Lmms though, but I am missing synthesizer stuff in Reaper. I've tried installing plugins by putting them into the proper folders and let Reaper attempt to resolve it, but it doesn't really work as expected.
Any tips? Especially for Linux of course. Many of the tutorials are Windows oriented.
I would start from the docs. There is pretty good reaper manual available from its homepage, covers everything from basic "how does one creates the prohect?" to relatively advanced topics.
Most of the plugins I encountered have no native Linux version, but yabridge deals with most of them quite good. I personaly use it paired with Play on Linux to logically separate different groups of plugins and everything works like a charm.
Reaper is like the Arch Linux of DAWs. It's power is in its flexibility and customization. That said, I found it to be uninspiring in its complexity out of the box. That said, the Reaper community is amazing. If you want to mod and customize it into your ideal DAW,y recommendation is to hit the community forums, Discord, etc.
Personally, I bounced from Reaper almost instantly in favor of Bitwig and Renoise on Linux.
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LocalSend.
No more USBs ever (outside of install media). So so simple, fast, and works on all devices and FOSS.
It is really the best UX of any file sharing app I have experienced (outside of airdrop I guess, but obvious problems there)
Okular is also a favorite of mine.
I really like LocalSend as well, but it’s very inconsistent with me. I think it has to do with one device being on a VPN, but I’m not totally sure. Basically I have some “one way” connections where one device can see and send to the one connected to a VPN but not the other way around. Is there some way I can specify LocalSend connections to ignore the VPN? I’m on NixOS and installed LocalSend in my user package declarations in my Nix config.
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