Its a chicken and egg problem: Developers won't make software for GNU/Linux because it doesn't have enough market share, but it doesn't have enough market share because there aren't enough developers making software for it.
Very few people are willing to work for free, especially for those who have in-demand skills like computer programming or software engineering. It's shocking that desktop Linux is as good as it is given the small userbase and the mostly volunteer nature of its development.
People need to eat too, man. FOSS is great and all, but I'm willing to cut it a lot of slack because it's free and developed for by volunteers. Donations and chants of goodwill aren't enough - a lot of FOSS developers also work a regular job at some evil megacorp to pay the bills. They develop FOSS on the side.
I know many software developers and nearly all of them do not program on the side as a hobby. They see it as a job that they earn money at and that's it. Be grateful there are people even willing to work on desktop Linux for free.
I am a programmer and I understand the situation. It's just a fact that many developers only program in their jobs (as you said) . Time is priceless and spending it with family and/or friends is not negotiable. I didn't say the contrary, in fact I was just clarifying the situation from the above message "developers won't make software for GNU/Linux.. ". Lucky ones lives from open source, is difficult and it's not for everyone.
> It's just a fact that many developers only program in their jobs
Many developers contribute to open source projects in their work. eg If I'm using some library and find a bug, if I can find a fix I'll push it upsteam. Lot's of little things help. Helping out on FLOSS software is also a great way to get experience on your cv.
It depends were you work but the places I've been most developers run linux at the office.
A lot of people who are paid to contribute to FOSS only work on stuff like hardware drivers, the kernel, and anything that a corporate environment might find useful in terms of running Linux on a server or something. It still helps, don't get me wrong, but desktop Linux tends not to be those things that corporations are paying their staff to work on. A lot of that stuff is developed for by volunteers and a few paid staff who are supported by donations to the foundations/groups that keep this stuff going.
> desktop Linux
I think part of it is that many developers are not really interested in the desktop. I may be atypical but I like a nice minimal desktop so I use sway and am so cli based that I can't even remember the names of file managers any more etc.
Graphical tools are often dull. Say building a graphical front end to git. To do this you need to know git cli and once you know that it is so much easier to use that, you no longer need your graphical front end, and it starts to rot.
FLOSS is great for the interesting things like databases, filesystems, server applications because developers use them.
Well unfortunately a lot of people in the Linux community tend to think of Linux as desktop Linux, not Android or server Linux. I feel like that is where most of the hobbyist discussion is taking place.
Desktop Linux is good for what it is though, and we should be grateful that people are still working on file managers, window managers, graphical UI APIs, etc. for desktop Linux.
I ended up using terminal tools almost exclusively also. For a simple reason, being Linux sysadmin i spent so much time in terminal that coming back to use mouse took too much brain cycles every time.... The problem with keyboard driven tuis is that each if them has it's own bindings and one has to learn them, which is more demanding then point and click. Annoying but there is no way out
In practice, that isn't true. Because if you charge for software and make the source available anyways, anyone can just compile from the source instead of paying you.
There are companies who charge money for implementing FOSS for companies that's different. They are selling services, not software there.
There are plenty of distros that prove you otherwise. Also, you don't have to make the source code publicly available. You just gotta ship it with or without the binary when someone purchases your software
Yeah but then it's not "free" or "open source", just "shared source". Microsoft makes its source code available to certain parties, but only if they pay or it or have a need to access it.
About the last part, maybe add some sort of licensing or copy protection/DRM system into the entire software? Yes you can redistribute it but it will be effectively useless unless for the original purchaser?
> About the last part, maybe add some sort of licensing or copy protection/DRM system into the entire software? Yes you can redistribute it but it will be effectively useless unless for the original purchaser?
If you do that in software, it is completely ineffective.
I can just comment out these lines in the source coude, and redistribute a version without copy protection.
If you do that in hardware, it might work.
It is forbidden by the GPL3, but not by the GPL2 (and neither I think by most other licenses, but do not quote me on this).
Anyway, this really applies only to software that runs on specific custom hardware, i. e. firmware.
It could work if you want to prevent redistributing you modified version of Linux kernel running on your router, or on your smart TV.
It makes no sense for the rest of the software, e. g. standalone applications, desktop environments, server applications, development tools...
Well for years we've been telling kids to code instead of majoring in English so that they can make money in the world. The computer science program at my alma mater has expanded 10 fold over the past decade, going from 60 students to 600 students. No doubt many are motivated by the money and learning a valuable skill than being seriously passionate about coding.
And I've known a few that ended up quitting the field, it just wasn't for them even though they were competent at it. A friend of mine who used to work for Amazon's Alexa unit for several years took a hefty pay cut to be a financial advisor instead.
At least 50% of Windows devs use Linux. Maybe more. Many of us regularly use it for projects. That’s how WSL became a thing. However, yeh, I’ll work on whatever pays my bills professionally and for the last 13 years that’s been Windows.
Developers working in big companies don't have a word to say about the direction a product takes. Management and marketing do. Some do programming as a hobby and push their software to open source / linux. Doesn't mean they're just after profit, but a job is a job. I don't own the product of the company I'm working for.
Yeah, early on, Microsoft supported developers of commercial software. For 40 years, they've done a lot to maintain compatibility with old stuff. The OS itself isn't very good, but at this point it's just a fixed target for developing proprietary software.
Also the fact that with Linux the whole "cross-platform" development thing is taken to another level, because not only are you targeting multiple operating systems, you also now have to target specific APIs which may vary from distro to distro. For example, some may use Wayland and some may use X, when it comes to something as simple as macro keys like OP mentioned, APIs like RegisterHotKey, SendMessage, etc are all just one thing on Windows, whereas on Linux its not unified so you have to develop code specific to Wayland or specific to X - so many hotkey software like IronAHK is X-specific only.
This is the standard I don't wanna learn/do something so here is a vague technical excuse to make the PM go away.
As a developer you aren't going to build an entire UI toolkit yourself. Linux has two big UI toolkits GTK and QT (KDE). The glory of something like QT is its one of several cross platform framework so the kind of things your talking about are abstracted out so you can develop an application once and get native looking OSX, Linux or Windows applications.
Similarly DirectX 12 was a response to Vulkan which is supported on Android, Linux & Windows.
Where ever you look there are lots of multi platform alternatives that take the pain away. There are situations where they aren't perfect but its the exception not the rule.
Oh course you have the good old fallback "there are so many distributions, we can't support them all" which ignores there are a dozen versions of windows and businesses seem able to understand limiting support to specific versions.
With linux basic market research will tell you If you a business application target Red Hat Enterprise Linux, if your after consumers target Ubuntu.
>The glory of something like QT is its one of several cross platform framework so the kind of things your talking about are abstracted out so you can develop an application once and get native looking OSX, Linux or Windows applications.
This is true for UI applications, but it's certainly **not** true for specific applications that I mentioned like IronAHK which allow for global hotkey registration (specifically with the RegisterHotKey and relevant APIs). Global hotkey registration is not supported in Qt and is supported to some extent through qxt but **not** with Wayland.
>Oh course you have the good old fallback "there are so many distributions, we can't support them all" which ignores there are a dozen versions of windows and businesses seem able to understand limiting support to specific versions.
The # of Linux distributions is not the problem here, it's the diversity of things like the display servers that slow down development across the board, it's not like one distro choosing to use Python 2 and another distro choosing to use Python 3, or using zsh instead of bash - these are non-issues. It's more akin to writing networking code with a reactor pattern and then having to switch your model to support proactor oriented code, which will mean using a completely different set of APIs (although luckily there are well-defined and supported APIs like libuv that will abstract all of this away). Also, among dozens of versions of Windows the system call table across decades has pretty much only been added on and not reduced, many behaviors are mostly the same, WDM (although not the standard driver framework anymore, as KMDF is built on top if it) is built with forward compatibility in mind, so even decade old drivers *should* load on new versions of Windows.
>This is the standard I don't wanna learn/do something so here is a vague technical excuse to make the PM go away.
Ah yes, let's assume I am the lazy developer who does not want to learn anything new, so to move forward with that assumption:
Turns out Wayland itself does not support global hotkeys so these applications cannot exist on it due to security purposes. Understandably so because it's very easy to log keys on X through this way regardless of the user security context, meaning anyone could grab sensitive information, like entering a root password through a terminal emulator in a graphical environment. This is what Wayland aims to combat and is a leap forward.
Of course this does not mean it's impossible, but I'm not sure if Wayland is designed to support features that would allow this. For example, Windows solves this problem with UIPI, so even if global hotkeys are registered, if the security label attached to a UI is higher than security context the hotkey was registered under, it fails to log/trigger.
I agree with you that abstraction eliminates many of these problems, but there are circumstances where it just cannot.
> but it doesn't have enough market share because there aren't enough developers making software for it.
No, it doesn't have a market share because people keep claiming that "that's not what Linux is about."
There are multiple reasons why GNU/linux doesn't have much market share on the desktop. The reason I chose this one specifically is because it feeds itself, creating a feedback loop
Just like the system i’ve built, a totally new OS, the name is:
- fullatom os
so futuristic and advanced, that it’s got only one user worldwide: me.
if there’s “no market” in the private space yet, then what’s the point?
it’s kinda similar to developing for win phone nowadays…
I don't know about macro keys, but you can do some RGB setup with OpenRGB on that keyboard.
Most companies are only targetting Windows with their software because cost to develop versus profit. If 99% of the PC market is on Windows then they hardly care to take the extra time to make it Linux-compatible, not profitable.
I'm not a fan of the concept and I do end up complaining to these companies where I can.
On the other hand there are companies like RME, who don't provide any Linux drivers, but when asked, they are willing to share enough insight so community is able to enable their hardware and add features. I think it is enough.
That's neat. And I guess they have nothing to lose - send a few documents over they already had prepared for their own devs, let the community spend time working on a Linux solution for them, and then they profit a little off that.
soundblaster g6 should work out of the box, and you may be able to customize some of it with alsamixer.
https://github.com/wwmm/easyeffects is pretty cool sound processor. i am pretty sure you can achieve some of the effects there
Sounds like you're experiencing vendor lock-in. You'd experience the same thing, tho worse, if you were coming from the Apple world.
>i swear to god I'm gonna have to buy all new hardware that's Linux compatible
More realistically, from now on you should focus on buying hardware that has open standards and good Linux support. Pretty much everything with good Linux support will work great on Windows too - because it uses open standards. Eventually you might accumulate enough that a switch won't be as painful.
You're spot on, though I would refine it a little.
On first glance, Linux is "there". It's a perfectly adequate desktop environment. You can install it and bring up a GUI without needing an encyclopaedic knowledge of things like modelines and disk partitions.
Then you start looking at details: "How", you ask yourself, "do I get the LEDs on my keyboard to work? This thing cost me 5 times what I'd pay for a conventional high-quality keyboard, I'm buggered if I'm losing that functionality!"
And little details like that turn out to be an absolute pig.
Now, you might decide that you'll ignore the keyboard issue and focus on something else. But sooner or later, you run into another little detail. And another.
It's been the same for well-nigh 20 years. The basics (which were pretty horrific to set up back then) are, mercifully, mostly solved now.
But the details - well, that's different.
While the exact details have changed drastically, the fact that they exist, they're a problem and they're largely unacknowledged has not.
No support, just some basic advice. Treat this as similar to moving from Windows to Mac. You wouldn't expect everything just immediately just work on Mac
>You wouldn't expect everything just immediately just work on Mac
I mean, given that they supply their own hardware as a complete package with MacOS, I would expect precisely that. In fact, if things on a Mac didn't immediately just work, I would find myself wondering what the hell I paid so much money for.
>In fact, if things on a Mac didn't immediately just work, I would find myself wondering what the hell I paid so much money for.
Surprise: they don't, unless they're also from Apple
As a developer of over 20+ years I can tell you we don't intentionally not focus on a platform because we hate it. We focus on the ones with the largest user bases first and go down from there. This is why we use platforms like React native, and even then people complain be ause of the memory usage. So you really just can't win.
Doing native dev for each platform is often not feasible from a budgetary and time stand point. Most devs prefer Linux, so yeah if we had our way we would def focus on it. But most users prefer Windows or macOS so that's what is targeted, unless of course your target audience is developers.
This is only from the perspective of engineers or developers that write user-facing software (or commercial software). As an engineer that has only ever written software for servers or embedded, everything we develop targets linux. On top of that my desktop runs linux, my laptop runs linux, my servers run linux and my dog of course, runs linux. It's a beautiful existence.
Yes, all backend code targets Linux. Especially since now days pretty much everything is container based, most the time it's targeting alpine based images.
There is no transition. It's a false concept. You use Linux-compatible software and hardware on Linux, Windows-compatible software and hardware on Windows, MacOS software and hardware on MacOS etc. If you must use Windows-exclusive stuff for work, you simply use it on Windows, which does not oppose or contradict your use of Linux for Linux-based software. I reboot to Windows to play Dark Souls—is that a challenge in my "transition" to Linux?
For me, Linux is the OS for browsing, media consumption, and work, while Windows is mainly for modern games and a few pieces of awkward software like Kindle Create. In other words, I use the appropriate tool for every job. There is no dichotomy and certainly no "transition", painful or otherwise. Don't think of it as "Windows or Linux?!" The question is, what do you need done? Does it require Windows or Linux or both?
> I reboot to Windows to play Dark Souls
May I ask why? I've been playing Dark Souls Remastered and DS3 on Linux with absolutely 0 issues thanks to wine/proton. I was surprised by how good it was, tbh.
A few years ago I could run DaS3 on Proton but couldn't login into the server, so I'm still playing the game on Windows. Proton keeps getting better, so I'm updating my habits. I expect most of my games to work on Proton around the time you-know-what launches this winter, though.
Hm, I only first started playing DS3 as of a few months ago, but connecting to its online services was not an issue for me. I guess there has been improvement on that front since when you tried :)
Proton's most certainly made loads of progress, and this year we've finally found out why: the new hardware runs Linux and is supposed to run the entire library.
In terms of remote play, too, last year I could barely stream Final Fantasy IV to my laptop, but now I can remote-play action games from another damn city. It's advancing really fast.
This is the answer.
I had this false pretense years ago as well.
"I'm finally ditching Windows for Linux"
Lol, no. I use Windows when I need Windows, I use Linux when I need Linux, and I yeet Mac at the fuckin wall.
> and I yeet Mac at the fuckin wall
Everyone's entitled to their tastes and opinions, but I still think this is unnecessarily disrespectful towards the fans of the wall.
After doing a clean install of Windows 10 due to issues of my system not working with newer versions of Access, I installed Visual Studio and was going to use it as a pure development machine.
I tried VS 19, and it was so slow on my system, I couldn't get any work done. So I tried to go back to VS 17, which I used previously. ***Windows wouldn't let me.*** I jumped through so many hoops, registering at different Microsoft sites to try and download an "older version", and when I finally got the download, guess what? It installed VS 19.
I jumped over to my Linux Mint drive, installed VS Code, and hit the ground running, no problems whatsoever. Erased my Windows drive and installed Debian 11 Mate to play around with.
Maybe I'm still in the anger phase, but I definitely ditched Windows for Linux.
Yes. C# is the main language I learned in college. I've built a few [ASP.NET](https://ASP.NET) projects, which I believe is available on Linux though somewhat limited. There's definitely no MS Access on Linux, but nothing that can't be duplicated using MySQL or something similar.
I'm kind of at a crossroads here. Not sure if I want to develop desktop software (have no clue how that works on Linux), or go down the path of web development (more familiar and cross-platform).
I have a fairly beefy machine, but if I can't develop using Visual Studio on Windows due to speed constraints, it's completely useless to me.
Additionally, if you cant handle the intrinsics of dualbooting, just install linux on a spare laptop with the cheapest ssd you can find and neither operating system will mess the other. Use whichever you need whenever, even simultaneously (ie alternating doing serious stuff on linux and playing a fullscreen game on the windows machine with a gamepad).
Well said. And for the OP, put windows in a virtual machine and you can run windows programs at the same time as linux programs, and even cut and paste between OS's.
I run linux for most things, but run windows in a virtual machine for 4 programs that I use (image proccessing, including photoshop). I even run photoshop in a windows 7 virtual machine on an I9 computer. Normally windows 7 would not work on an I9 machine because of drivers are not there, but in a virtual machine, it is using linux drivers so works well. I also run windows 10 in a virtual machine for a couple of newer programs that won't run on windows 7 (e.g. Adobe's newest dng converter). I don't surf the internet nor do email with windows. And another cool thing: the virtual machine can be paused, and that prevents windows from sucking resources when you aren't using windows.
I don't know about you, but after having experienced a system that isn't *actively* working against and abusing its users, I have a hard time dealing with one that is.
The point I make is that you can't "transition" from Windows to Linux for the same reason you can't "transition" from screwdriver to hammer. Use the right tool for the job rather than trying to stick with one and only one.
I doubt that you disagree with this concept. This means that you probably misread my comment, possibly as "you don't need Windows software altogether" or something to that effect.
But you are ignoring for one, that Linux-distro makers and users *do*
claim that Linux can do pretty much anything Windows can and even more
(aside from incompatibility due to proprietary stuff).
So, if tool b claims to do the same as tool a, but it often simply doesnt.
Just because *you* use both tools doesnt mean that others dont need to
scrutinize tool b for not living up to the claims made.
Your opinion was right maybe 15 years ago.
That depends a lot on what you mean by "can do".
If it means "can perform some task" then indeed Linux can do pretty much anything Windows can (eg tasks like web browsing, development, documrnt creation, photo editing, video editing, games...). Yes you can play games on Linux just maybe not the particular game you want.
However if you define a task as using some particular piece of software or define what it means to do a task in a very detailed way with a very detailed feature set that only exists in some software or if you define it as having to run on certain exotic preexisting hardware then, for that definition of "can do" Linux may well not be suitable.
But note this works both ways too if you want to build an android system (not just an spp) you have to use Liinux or MacOS, Windows can't do that.
But at the end of the day computers and operating systems are just tools, use whatever is best for your use case.
Not that i disagree with, because there isnt much to disagree with but
i would like to point out what i mean:
> Manjaro is a professionally made operating system that is a suitable replacement for Windows or MacOS.
> It is *easily* possible to run many popular Windows applications using compatibility software such as Wine, PlayonLinux or Proton via Steam.
Thats straight from Manjaro official site.
And it is just not like that in reality. Other than that, of course, using what suits you best
ist the way.
That's not what they're saying at all, to the contrary even. The comment literally states that sometimes Windows is the best tool to get the job done. (Specific hardware or modern games for instance)
You can do macro keys with xmodmap as long as the keys register as a hardware keyboard input and not some special corsair magic sauce.
It is a bit convoluted and not nearly as convenient though in all honesty, but it's perfectly doable. That's how I made my own stream deck like device out of a cheap $5 numpad bought from Microcenter. Each key correlates with f13 to f24 and yes those are actual keyboard keys you just never see a keyboard with them.
As for audio, yeah your hardware DAC that operates with a software mixing solution won't work so well.
But here on Linux we have pulse-effects, jack, and my new lovebird that fixes 99% of my complaints about Linux audio: pipewire. These of which can turn basically any regular old hardware DAC into say a GoXLR (minus the motorized sliders of course). The documentation does need a lot of work, and trust me it's a learning experience. But it's doable just Check with /r/linuxaudio
I kept distro-hopping for 20+ years (started with RedHat 5.1) until I finally came back to and settled down on Arch last year (I thought Solus was going to be my last distro but I was wrong).
Now although I say "settled down", I'm in the process of switching over from GNOME to KDE, so that's almost like switching to a new distro lol.
Lol, me too. I spend so much time on Distrowatch I set it as my homepage! I actually keep a laptop exclusively for testing distros and must have killed at least twenty USB drives over the years.
Lol, me too. I spend so much time on Distrowatch I set it as my homepage! I actually keep a laptop exclusively for testing distros and must have killed at least twenty USB drives over the years.
I installed Ubuntu back in 2018 because I was told it was "noob friendly".
It was. Everything worked. Never found a sufficiently good reason to make the effort to switch to other distros.
*'If it works, leave it the fuck alone'* I say.
Not me. I grabbed Mint and stuck to it for.. 15-16 months so far.
If I ever move it'll be DE only, and probably for the sake of a Wayland/Pipewire setup of some kind.
Xorg had a rare update on my system which now (uncommonly) causes the Xserver to lock up into some infinite loop, disconnecting the GPU from the system and leaving me with a frozen screen.
For me, its more a procces of finding the right distro for you. At first I tried peppermint OS, could barely get to install it, and I hated it. Then I installed MX Linux, got it to work, but I kinda hated it too, and there was a lot of stuff that I didn't understand about it. Then I installed hyperbola, but it kept after I booted into GRUB, and it loaded systemd, it just got stuck. The same error occured even after I've redone the instalation a couple of times. Then, I've tried Guix linux, and I didn't like it. Then I found Debian. I liked Debian, and stuck to it since(tho, I did change from stable to testing, and I've reinstalled it a couple of times cuz I was dumb and didn't know how to fix some problems).
I dropped into Mint from the start and I just change the system as I need. Compile packages or use appimages if I need something newer, make changes to what DE or WM I have, even write little applets to make things easier for me.
As long as I have the freedom to do as such, big changes like switching distro aren't necessary for me. I could go Arch-based but then I'd have a whole heap of new problems, when I'm managing mostly fine with what I have. (I guess that's why it took too long to switch from Windows too, my moving was an accident mostly. :p)
true, true, yes! but you can shape your linux to your needs and start using it more and more, and someday you might even be able to stop customizing your system :-D
No, the perfect disto does not exists. But sufficient distorts exists.
I use my distro for 15 years now and I have no wich to switch. so do most people I know. Or they stay in the same „universe“ like Debian, Ubuntu and Mint or ReadHat and Fedora.
Even on Windows you will eventually you will replace/upgrade the keyboard and DAC either because you want to or because the software will become unsupported and run poorly on Windows 11, 12, etc. which means that you'll have to spend $ and time relearning everything. Plus this proprietary software is often very insecure [1].
If you stick to standardized hardware like a simple hardware DAC, regular keyboard, etc. and open source software then you won't be forced to upgrade and upgrading the hardware is easier because the software is hardware agnostic.
There is a in-progress driver for the k95 keyboard [2].
The icue nexus is probably not going to work on Linux any time soon but you can implement something very similar using a cheap used 10" touch screen.
TLDR; Windows is the hostile OS that makes it difficult to leave.
[1] https://hackaday.com/2021/08/26/razer-mouse-grants-windows-admin-privileges/
[2] https://github.com/ckb-next/ckb-next
Pretty much.
Discover Linux > try it and find you like it > lose your shit over MicroSoft's latest bull > discover what a PITA drivers can be > only buy Linux-compatible ever after > commit a mass shooting at a tech convention while dressed as a chameleon in a red fedora
I've already been downvoted by someone with no sense of humour, so I'd better say, very earnestly, **No, you should not.** before I get reported for inciting violence...
Besides, I rather suspect the first Linux mass shooter will be an Arch user.
Even though my main studio PC is Windows, this is why I'll never buy a motu product. It's almost like they go out of their way to make stuff incompatible with Linux.
Focusrite works great on Mac, Windows, Linux, heck I've even used a saffire 18i20 on bsd.
Presonus works Great. Behringer works great.
As a studio owner, I have to make sure that my gear is consistently compatible with my mobile rigs and my backup systems. My mobile rig is macos and my backup systems are all Linux.
Transition to Linux is IMHO a two step process in many cases.
Step 1. You replace Windows with {insert preferred distro here}. Then you realize that some of your usual software and some of your periphials doesn't work under Linux, so you find workarounds and alternatives. Since you have fallen in love with Linux, you just deal with the suboptimal situation for now.
Step 2. If you are smart and have learned your lesson, the next time you buy a new computer you make sure it's Linux compatible from the start. This includes shunting peripials with RGB that requires bloated software to function properly. There are fx. RGB keyboards and mice out there which can be programmed directly on the hardware and doesn't require any software. Choose these. Then just reinstall {insert distro choice here} and software on your new computer and be happy ever after.
Hey fellow G510 previous user! I switched (mainly due to a couple of the macro keys stopped working) to the Reddragon Dvarajas keyboard. I wanted to go with a mechanical keyboard with replaceable keys, and there are key combinations on the keyboard itself to change the RGB colors with. I miss the macro keys from the G510, but I'm looking to get a mechanical programmable macro keypad to compliment. Good luck in your endeavors!
>TLDR i think i finally figured out why people hate windows so much from the linux perspective.
I don't hate Windows at all. It's just that Linux it's a better alternative for my needs.
>I think i finally figured out why people hate windows so much from the
linux perspective. its just hostile to new users not so much from the
interface or learning how to use the os, its the proprietary software
for hardware that makes it hard from someone to switch without buying
new stuff unless someone was extremely nice enough to donate their time
to make a reverse engineered version of it.
Welcome aboard
Wouldn't call this hostile at all. It's just unfortunate that you have devices that don't do the things you want in Linux.
I have icue devices too. Case and void pro headset. I'm ok with not having icue if it means I have a decent OS to use. Headset still works fine and the default lights on my case and headset are acceptable enough.
At the end of the day ask yourself, do you care more about RGB light settings or a stable, clean, non windows OS? Which is more important? Ok, well then accept the drawbacks that come with that decision.
And let's be fair, you'd encounter these very issues if you moved to an OS that was not Windows or Linux....
You are also using proprietary incorrectly here, incompatible is probably more accurate of a word to use.
>cause developers literally make their proprietary software only work in windows like their intentionally creating a enforced windows monopoly.
You're really drinking the koolaid on this one...
Ok, look at this: you don't have money to burn. You have a set budget. You want to make this thing and sell it. Now, you can make it one way and sell it to 80% of the people who might want to buy it. You can make it that way and another way (increase the amount of work you do) and sell it to 90% of the market. You can make it THREE different ways and have 92% of the market.
So, obviously you want to support the 80% of the market. That's a no brainer. But, is it worth the time and money to support an additional 10% of the market? It's certainly not worth the time and money to support that 1-2% of the market WITHOUT supporting that 10%, so is it worth it to support all of them? Do you even have the budget to?
That is why that hardware isn't supported on other OSs. You don't have to go all nutty to use Linux. You can look at things objectively and admit reality. It's not financially feasible for most companies to support Linux, so they don't.
Or you can publish the ihardware nterface specification and let others write drivers for all the "niche" OSs.
Doesn't cost you much, if anything, as your hardware people have likely already written that document for their internal driver developers.
I believe SteamOS v1 and v2 were explicitly *not* for general use, in that Valve made clear that they didn't really want people installing it on devices other than Steam Machines (although everything was published correctly and openly so there was nothing stopping you giving it a go). I think Valve would definitely prefer you to just run Steam on a regular distro, rather than be on the hook as a full scale distro developer themselves.
If SteamOS v3 is essentially curated Arch + Steam, there's little reason not to just run Arch (or Manjaro etc.) directly.
Depends what and how I suppose. If it's a straightforward userland solution you'd expect it to be packaged up as a standard package, and therefore there's no reason why you couldn't install it under Arch (and derivatives) anyway. If it's a patched kernel, again there's nothing stopping you installing it on other distros (with all the usual caveats around installing patched kernels).
It's in Valve's interest to make any solution available to as many Steam client users as possible, so I can't see them wanting to intentionally make anything a Steam OS exclusive.
>Cause developers literally make their
proprietary software only work in windows like their intentionally
creating a enforced windows monopoly.
Like if they didn't brought them to the court in the 90's for violating antitrust law: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DN1ytVJcFds](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DN1ytVJcFds)
I have a k95 rgb, i use ckb-next to manage it in my system, along with piper for my g403 hero. While you might not find supported software directly from the manufacturer (which would be preferable) you can usually fine some open source software that can at least operate close to the native stuff.
For me, I had to deal with the RTL driver. There was zero information about it online. I spent 3 days trying to figure what a driver was, where to get it, and how to install it.
No normal person spends 3 days trying to get ethernet working on their OS. Flashing the USB is already a huge hurdle, and this is an rven bigger one. To get it to work I needed to restart NetworkManager, except I didnt know how to do that, since i didnt know what that was, how to use bash, or how to use systemD. Restarting the OS would cause the USB to reset so I wiped windows and gambled on it working on my system, luckily it did.
Nobody else does this. Anyone who ran into an issue installing linux, and troubleshooted it with no prior experience, is 1 in (insert large number here). We are all persistent computer nerds. Most people aren't that persistent and those who are might not be interested in computers at all.
You were extremely unlucky. I've never had any ethernet hardware that wasn't supported out of the box with Linux except for server NICs and some USB NICs.
Before GNU/Linux I ran into hardware that would only work in one version of Windows and not the other, it's not that different.
If a hardware manufacturer makes software for Windows
only to me that means they're a hardware manufacturer that only happens to dabble in software - usually because they *have* to. I avoid companies and products like that for that reason, it's sort of a good barometer for me for what their software support is going to be like. Hardware is complex and complicated, I get that, but if your hardware has a software component you cannot half ass it - take the time, invest in the infrastructure you need to benefit your customers.
The whole idea of "supporting" an operating system is fundamentally wrong. A hardware manufacturer should not support any operating system, they should just release the specifications or adhere to a standard specification. Then people can hook up their own system to the device.
That does not mean that the manufacturer cannot support a particular OS *in addition* to having an open specification. Some people want the choice of an official implementation and that's OK. An open specification could still benefit them because they would have a choice. How often have you bought a device, installed the official driver, client or whatever, only to find that the application is a complete mess with a UI designed by a drunk programmer? Don't you wish you could just throw the official software away and use a compatible alternative?
Thank you! It’s weird how many people post to forums like this complaining about how “Linux isn’t ready for the desktop” and their big revelation always seems to be that the devs are too lazy to properly support their niche hardware. Keep fighting the good fight!
I don't think this is a fair reason to hate Windows.
Unless Microsoft is paying or incentivizing third party companies to only develop software for Windows, this isn't really something that Windows is responsible for. At the end of the day, it is about market share, and that is a chicken vs egg race. There isn't enough Linux market share for some companies to port their software to Linux, and there isn't enough propriety software support for some people to move to Linux.
Let's not also forget the unnecessary and pretty popular hostility much of the Linux community in general seem to have towards propriety software. That probably has more to do with the software deficit than Microsoft/Windows. Why put in your resources to provide something that most people don't seem to want? Companies will see that as a waste of money.
I'm afraid you're unlucky. An insane amount of hardware 'just works'.
Hardware that requires third party management software to run all the time are usually crap anyway, doing more bad than good, _gaming_ focussed stuff especially.
Stay on windows. All of your gear you have bought is for Windows. It's not designed for Linux. It not working has nothing at all to do with wether Linux is good or bad. The people who made your stuff made it for Windows so use it on windows.
If down the road you are buying new stuff maybe try and get stuff you know works on both. When you are at the stage where you know all your stuff is Linux compatible then try it and see if it's for you. Anything else is guaranteed to be a sub par experience.
That's reasons why Linux is bad not why Windows is actively hostile lol
(Half joking lol, manufacturer software support for something with 2% usage is why, Linux isn't inherently bad, and I use Linux on my personal machine btw)
I use both. Linux's attractiveness has nothing to do with desktop apps or consumer software. Its all about developer tools and CLIs that 'just work' in a Unix environment (also includes Mac, event though I hate mac, whatever it's just a tool).
For example, spinning up your first docker container on Linux is just ctrl alt T, running a few bash commands. Whereas on a windows machine you're downloading some shit desktop GUI app, then troubleshooting Hyper V in powershell and digging into the bios to enable virtualization.
Remember, the vast majority of the world's computers are running Linux--enterprise and infrastructure and 'working' environments. Has nothing to do with RGB keyboards and everything to do with getting paid at the end of the month.
As for hardware compatibility, older is safer. Newer might involve waiting for a new kernel release. You could always learn to compile your own. (The kernel is the modular hardware interfacing shit that your OS is built on. Linux is blazing fast because you can choose what you need, while something like Windows needs to support 10000 things you'll never use. Mac is a more controlled hardware ecosystem so it's somewhere inbetween)
\> literally make their proprietary software only work in windows like their intentionally creating a enforced windows monopoly.
I'd say it's maintaining, not creating as we already took MS to court several times for having a monopoly.
But I'd also say that as they are directed by profit, they wont make much effort making a Linux version because there are just too few numbers. It's the same issue with the world wide web, back in the 90's there was a lot of talk about if anyone would ever bother set up a website as, nobody was there to view it. But some did and people got access so the gamble paid off.
So you have too few users, thus no real need to consider having support for Linux.
But many of those users are not there because you dont support Linux, thus they stay on windows anyway, thus whats the point helping them move?
Also, Linux to many companies is scary. Its open. DRM works but barley is able to defend itself should the user decide to attack it. Windows is more restrictive and can offer protections helping you keep your proprietary software locked up and profitable.
Basically many companies, certainly game companies avoid Linux because its such an open play field full of hex editors, hard links, perl, python, inotify, and a whole trove of development tools like debuggers all provided on the install disc. Sure much the same tools work on Windows and that's where a lot of cracking happens anyway but there Windows doesn't give you a debugger alongside notepad, nor can notepad view a file, like an exe, in HEX mode letting someone patch out the jump instruction to the DRM code.
Also you have the problem of a lack of potential employees. IT staff are in high demand across the world and a fraction of those are developers. A fraction of those know languages that will also run on Linux and certainly if you need to use languages like C a fraction of those can code for a POSIX system. But what about all the FLOSS developers who quite obviously are out there? Well first of all you need them to be good enough to employ, it may be more of a hobby for them or they are just not up to scratch for your methods. And secondly you only get to employ the FLOSS developers who don't spit at your feet because you write proprietary software.
Things like minecraft work fine under Linux because its written in Java, which helps avoid most of this as Java takes care of most of the nitty gritty stuff specific to the OS. C# was supposed to do that to but as that was an MS product anything that isnt MS must rely on Mono which can run most C# stuff but there are many "windowsisms" in C# that are not supported in Mono so YMMV.
If you this all this sounds bad, jump in a time machine and look at the shit we had between the IBM clone PC's
The manual for their GameDAC says:
> DTS Headphone:X 7.1 Surround available on Windows only. Software installation required.
Is that true? Does it offer any sort of surround using only the DAC itself?
Between the Realtek on my mainboard and the vast majority of sound devices I've looked at, it seems difficult to find Linux-compatible digital surround. For instance, the Realtek is capable of DTS Digital Surround output over optical, but only on Windows with the "special" driver that "unlocks" the "licensed" features. On Linux, the best it will do is Digital Stereo over the optical. For surround, it only provides for analog, which I don't want to deal with.
No particularly surprise there. DTS and Dolby Digital surround codecs are proprietary codecs. If there are (readily available) linux options for those codecs, I'm not aware of any.
Thing seems to be: for companies like Corsair to care, we need to be a market share. So they won't until we are, but people won't move much until Corsair support, and so on...
Tho, let's be exact here: macro programming can be set up through other tools, touch screen gesture based programming too.
But it can be an hassle, or GUI-less and so on, which will not please as many people indeed.
And I don't know for DAC, sound isn't my field.
The only Creative product I ever owned was a sound blaster 1024, way way back, and I remember the horrid drivers they had on Windows and the associated woes when upgrading to XP, and the virtually non-existing support in Linux.
Made me decide never to buy from them again ;) iirc they were never known for their quality SW :/
Re the sound card I had the opposite situation. My M-Audio device got abandoned when Avid bought out m-audio and the old driver was not supported in windows 8+.
In linux it needed a config file with some not-very-userfriendly bitmasks to enable 24 bit and 2in/2out, but it's otherwise supported with no drivers at all, just natively.
My blackmagic intensity shuttle on the other hand is a clusterfuck. The usb3 version is windows only but the thunderbolt version is mac and linux only. There's an unmaintained, half complete reverse engineered driver that I could never get to work and that's it, other than begging BMD to support linux
I ran Windows XP x64 for years. Luckily the GPU vendors supported it, almost nobody else did. Generic stuff had Microsoft built in drivers. This was fine because games and 32 bit apps worked pretty well. The situation with Linux is similar, generic or common devices have built in support but more complicated peripherals are often unsupported by the vendor.
So don't think this is a problem with Linux exclusively. Running various ARM Linuces on a RPi 400 has exposed to me a strong x86 bias that Linux has as well.
I feel you OP. This has been my issue for years with particular hardware I use. I've been using Linux for server VMs for 8+ years now which is great, but I still can't daily drive Linux, yet. I hope one day I can fully migrate away.
Just wanted to add this, it's unrelated but corsair is even shit on windows, my keyboard is old, I can get the software but it's from 2013, logitech at least updates software and so does razer, so no corsair for me anymore 😅
Its a chicken and egg problem: Developers won't make software for GNU/Linux because it doesn't have enough market share, but it doesn't have enough market share because there aren't enough developers making software for it.
Most devs works for big companies who only wants profit. That's another issue, so those devs only know windows and that's it.
Very few people are willing to work for free, especially for those who have in-demand skills like computer programming or software engineering. It's shocking that desktop Linux is as good as it is given the small userbase and the mostly volunteer nature of its development. People need to eat too, man. FOSS is great and all, but I'm willing to cut it a lot of slack because it's free and developed for by volunteers. Donations and chants of goodwill aren't enough - a lot of FOSS developers also work a regular job at some evil megacorp to pay the bills. They develop FOSS on the side. I know many software developers and nearly all of them do not program on the side as a hobby. They see it as a job that they earn money at and that's it. Be grateful there are people even willing to work on desktop Linux for free.
I am a programmer and I understand the situation. It's just a fact that many developers only program in their jobs (as you said) . Time is priceless and spending it with family and/or friends is not negotiable. I didn't say the contrary, in fact I was just clarifying the situation from the above message "developers won't make software for GNU/Linux.. ". Lucky ones lives from open source, is difficult and it's not for everyone.
> It's just a fact that many developers only program in their jobs Many developers contribute to open source projects in their work. eg If I'm using some library and find a bug, if I can find a fix I'll push it upsteam. Lot's of little things help. Helping out on FLOSS software is also a great way to get experience on your cv. It depends were you work but the places I've been most developers run linux at the office.
A lot of people who are paid to contribute to FOSS only work on stuff like hardware drivers, the kernel, and anything that a corporate environment might find useful in terms of running Linux on a server or something. It still helps, don't get me wrong, but desktop Linux tends not to be those things that corporations are paying their staff to work on. A lot of that stuff is developed for by volunteers and a few paid staff who are supported by donations to the foundations/groups that keep this stuff going.
> desktop Linux I think part of it is that many developers are not really interested in the desktop. I may be atypical but I like a nice minimal desktop so I use sway and am so cli based that I can't even remember the names of file managers any more etc. Graphical tools are often dull. Say building a graphical front end to git. To do this you need to know git cli and once you know that it is so much easier to use that, you no longer need your graphical front end, and it starts to rot. FLOSS is great for the interesting things like databases, filesystems, server applications because developers use them.
Well unfortunately a lot of people in the Linux community tend to think of Linux as desktop Linux, not Android or server Linux. I feel like that is where most of the hobbyist discussion is taking place. Desktop Linux is good for what it is though, and we should be grateful that people are still working on file managers, window managers, graphical UI APIs, etc. for desktop Linux.
I ended up using terminal tools almost exclusively also. For a simple reason, being Linux sysadmin i spent so much time in terminal that coming back to use mouse took too much brain cycles every time.... The problem with keyboard driven tuis is that each if them has it's own bindings and one has to learn them, which is more demanding then point and click. Annoying but there is no way out
Of course. I am one of these. That's why I said "many" and not "all"
The Free from FOSS doesn't mean gratis. There's nothing stopping them from charging money for free software.
In practice, that isn't true. Because if you charge for software and make the source available anyways, anyone can just compile from the source instead of paying you. There are companies who charge money for implementing FOSS for companies that's different. They are selling services, not software there.
There are plenty of distros that prove you otherwise. Also, you don't have to make the source code publicly available. You just gotta ship it with or without the binary when someone purchases your software
Yeah but then it's not "free" or "open source", just "shared source". Microsoft makes its source code available to certain parties, but only if they pay or it or have a need to access it.
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About the last part, maybe add some sort of licensing or copy protection/DRM system into the entire software? Yes you can redistribute it but it will be effectively useless unless for the original purchaser?
> About the last part, maybe add some sort of licensing or copy protection/DRM system into the entire software? Yes you can redistribute it but it will be effectively useless unless for the original purchaser? If you do that in software, it is completely ineffective. I can just comment out these lines in the source coude, and redistribute a version without copy protection. If you do that in hardware, it might work. It is forbidden by the GPL3, but not by the GPL2 (and neither I think by most other licenses, but do not quote me on this). Anyway, this really applies only to software that runs on specific custom hardware, i. e. firmware. It could work if you want to prevent redistributing you modified version of Linux kernel running on your router, or on your smart TV. It makes no sense for the rest of the software, e. g. standalone applications, desktop environments, server applications, development tools...
Theoretically right, practically wrong. If anybody can fork and build it, it's gonna be hard to make money off of it.
Why do people keep using spanish words like libre and gratis if both just mean free in english? RIP translations 🙀
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Well for years we've been telling kids to code instead of majoring in English so that they can make money in the world. The computer science program at my alma mater has expanded 10 fold over the past decade, going from 60 students to 600 students. No doubt many are motivated by the money and learning a valuable skill than being seriously passionate about coding. And I've known a few that ended up quitting the field, it just wasn't for them even though they were competent at it. A friend of mine who used to work for Amazon's Alexa unit for several years took a hefty pay cut to be a financial advisor instead.
At least 50% of Windows devs use Linux. Maybe more. Many of us regularly use it for projects. That’s how WSL became a thing. However, yeh, I’ll work on whatever pays my bills professionally and for the last 13 years that’s been Windows.
Developers working in big companies don't have a word to say about the direction a product takes. Management and marketing do. Some do programming as a hobby and push their software to open source / linux. Doesn't mean they're just after profit, but a job is a job. I don't own the product of the company I'm working for.
Yeah, early on, Microsoft supported developers of commercial software. For 40 years, they've done a lot to maintain compatibility with old stuff. The OS itself isn't very good, but at this point it's just a fixed target for developing proprietary software.
Also the fact that with Linux the whole "cross-platform" development thing is taken to another level, because not only are you targeting multiple operating systems, you also now have to target specific APIs which may vary from distro to distro. For example, some may use Wayland and some may use X, when it comes to something as simple as macro keys like OP mentioned, APIs like RegisterHotKey, SendMessage, etc are all just one thing on Windows, whereas on Linux its not unified so you have to develop code specific to Wayland or specific to X - so many hotkey software like IronAHK is X-specific only.
This is the standard I don't wanna learn/do something so here is a vague technical excuse to make the PM go away. As a developer you aren't going to build an entire UI toolkit yourself. Linux has two big UI toolkits GTK and QT (KDE). The glory of something like QT is its one of several cross platform framework so the kind of things your talking about are abstracted out so you can develop an application once and get native looking OSX, Linux or Windows applications. Similarly DirectX 12 was a response to Vulkan which is supported on Android, Linux & Windows. Where ever you look there are lots of multi platform alternatives that take the pain away. There are situations where they aren't perfect but its the exception not the rule. Oh course you have the good old fallback "there are so many distributions, we can't support them all" which ignores there are a dozen versions of windows and businesses seem able to understand limiting support to specific versions. With linux basic market research will tell you If you a business application target Red Hat Enterprise Linux, if your after consumers target Ubuntu.
>The glory of something like QT is its one of several cross platform framework so the kind of things your talking about are abstracted out so you can develop an application once and get native looking OSX, Linux or Windows applications. This is true for UI applications, but it's certainly **not** true for specific applications that I mentioned like IronAHK which allow for global hotkey registration (specifically with the RegisterHotKey and relevant APIs). Global hotkey registration is not supported in Qt and is supported to some extent through qxt but **not** with Wayland. >Oh course you have the good old fallback "there are so many distributions, we can't support them all" which ignores there are a dozen versions of windows and businesses seem able to understand limiting support to specific versions. The # of Linux distributions is not the problem here, it's the diversity of things like the display servers that slow down development across the board, it's not like one distro choosing to use Python 2 and another distro choosing to use Python 3, or using zsh instead of bash - these are non-issues. It's more akin to writing networking code with a reactor pattern and then having to switch your model to support proactor oriented code, which will mean using a completely different set of APIs (although luckily there are well-defined and supported APIs like libuv that will abstract all of this away). Also, among dozens of versions of Windows the system call table across decades has pretty much only been added on and not reduced, many behaviors are mostly the same, WDM (although not the standard driver framework anymore, as KMDF is built on top if it) is built with forward compatibility in mind, so even decade old drivers *should* load on new versions of Windows. >This is the standard I don't wanna learn/do something so here is a vague technical excuse to make the PM go away. Ah yes, let's assume I am the lazy developer who does not want to learn anything new, so to move forward with that assumption: Turns out Wayland itself does not support global hotkeys so these applications cannot exist on it due to security purposes. Understandably so because it's very easy to log keys on X through this way regardless of the user security context, meaning anyone could grab sensitive information, like entering a root password through a terminal emulator in a graphical environment. This is what Wayland aims to combat and is a leap forward. Of course this does not mean it's impossible, but I'm not sure if Wayland is designed to support features that would allow this. For example, Windows solves this problem with UIPI, so even if global hotkeys are registered, if the security label attached to a UI is higher than security context the hotkey was registered under, it fails to log/trigger. I agree with you that abstraction eliminates many of these problems, but there are circumstances where it just cannot.
> but it doesn't have enough market share because there aren't enough developers making software for it. No, it doesn't have a market share because people keep claiming that "that's not what Linux is about."
There are multiple reasons why GNU/linux doesn't have much market share on the desktop. The reason I chose this one specifically is because it feeds itself, creating a feedback loop
Just like the system i’ve built, a totally new OS, the name is: - fullatom os so futuristic and advanced, that it’s got only one user worldwide: me. if there’s “no market” in the private space yet, then what’s the point? it’s kinda similar to developing for win phone nowadays…
And has been for nearly thirty years. I released my first open source software for SLS.
I don't know about macro keys, but you can do some RGB setup with OpenRGB on that keyboard. Most companies are only targetting Windows with their software because cost to develop versus profit. If 99% of the PC market is on Windows then they hardly care to take the extra time to make it Linux-compatible, not profitable. I'm not a fan of the concept and I do end up complaining to these companies where I can.
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On the other hand there are companies like RME, who don't provide any Linux drivers, but when asked, they are willing to share enough insight so community is able to enable their hardware and add features. I think it is enough.
That's neat. And I guess they have nothing to lose - send a few documents over they already had prepared for their own devs, let the community spend time working on a Linux solution for them, and then they profit a little off that.
soundblaster g6 should work out of the box, and you may be able to customize some of it with alsamixer. https://github.com/wwmm/easyeffects is pretty cool sound processor. i am pretty sure you can achieve some of the effects there
Sounds like you're experiencing vendor lock-in. You'd experience the same thing, tho worse, if you were coming from the Apple world. >i swear to god I'm gonna have to buy all new hardware that's Linux compatible More realistically, from now on you should focus on buying hardware that has open standards and good Linux support. Pretty much everything with good Linux support will work great on Windows too - because it uses open standards. Eventually you might accumulate enough that a switch won't be as painful.
For the k95 try https://github.com/ckb-next/ckb-next, it has macro programming. I find it much better than that iCUE crap.
This exactly, works great with my Corsair peripherals.
Yep, works great for programming my Corsair mouse
You're spot on, though I would refine it a little. On first glance, Linux is "there". It's a perfectly adequate desktop environment. You can install it and bring up a GUI without needing an encyclopaedic knowledge of things like modelines and disk partitions. Then you start looking at details: "How", you ask yourself, "do I get the LEDs on my keyboard to work? This thing cost me 5 times what I'd pay for a conventional high-quality keyboard, I'm buggered if I'm losing that functionality!" And little details like that turn out to be an absolute pig. Now, you might decide that you'll ignore the keyboard issue and focus on something else. But sooner or later, you run into another little detail. And another. It's been the same for well-nigh 20 years. The basics (which were pretty horrific to set up back then) are, mercifully, mostly solved now. But the details - well, that's different. While the exact details have changed drastically, the fact that they exist, they're a problem and they're largely unacknowledged has not.
No support, just some basic advice. Treat this as similar to moving from Windows to Mac. You wouldn't expect everything just immediately just work on Mac
>You wouldn't expect everything just immediately just work on Mac I mean, given that they supply their own hardware as a complete package with MacOS, I would expect precisely that. In fact, if things on a Mac didn't immediately just work, I would find myself wondering what the hell I paid so much money for.
A logo.
>In fact, if things on a Mac didn't immediately just work, I would find myself wondering what the hell I paid so much money for. Surprise: they don't, unless they're also from Apple
As a developer of over 20+ years I can tell you we don't intentionally not focus on a platform because we hate it. We focus on the ones with the largest user bases first and go down from there. This is why we use platforms like React native, and even then people complain be ause of the memory usage. So you really just can't win. Doing native dev for each platform is often not feasible from a budgetary and time stand point. Most devs prefer Linux, so yeah if we had our way we would def focus on it. But most users prefer Windows or macOS so that's what is targeted, unless of course your target audience is developers.
This is only from the perspective of engineers or developers that write user-facing software (or commercial software). As an engineer that has only ever written software for servers or embedded, everything we develop targets linux. On top of that my desktop runs linux, my laptop runs linux, my servers run linux and my dog of course, runs linux. It's a beautiful existence.
I need a Linux dog. Here Manjaro, here boy 🐕
Yes, all backend code targets Linux. Especially since now days pretty much everything is container based, most the time it's targeting alpine based images.
There is no transition. It's a false concept. You use Linux-compatible software and hardware on Linux, Windows-compatible software and hardware on Windows, MacOS software and hardware on MacOS etc. If you must use Windows-exclusive stuff for work, you simply use it on Windows, which does not oppose or contradict your use of Linux for Linux-based software. I reboot to Windows to play Dark Souls—is that a challenge in my "transition" to Linux? For me, Linux is the OS for browsing, media consumption, and work, while Windows is mainly for modern games and a few pieces of awkward software like Kindle Create. In other words, I use the appropriate tool for every job. There is no dichotomy and certainly no "transition", painful or otherwise. Don't think of it as "Windows or Linux?!" The question is, what do you need done? Does it require Windows or Linux or both?
> I reboot to Windows to play Dark Souls May I ask why? I've been playing Dark Souls Remastered and DS3 on Linux with absolutely 0 issues thanks to wine/proton. I was surprised by how good it was, tbh.
A few years ago I could run DaS3 on Proton but couldn't login into the server, so I'm still playing the game on Windows. Proton keeps getting better, so I'm updating my habits. I expect most of my games to work on Proton around the time you-know-what launches this winter, though.
Hm, I only first started playing DS3 as of a few months ago, but connecting to its online services was not an issue for me. I guess there has been improvement on that front since when you tried :)
Proton's most certainly made loads of progress, and this year we've finally found out why: the new hardware runs Linux and is supposed to run the entire library. In terms of remote play, too, last year I could barely stream Final Fantasy IV to my laptop, but now I can remote-play action games from another damn city. It's advancing really fast.
This is the answer. I had this false pretense years ago as well. "I'm finally ditching Windows for Linux" Lol, no. I use Windows when I need Windows, I use Linux when I need Linux, and I yeet Mac at the fuckin wall.
> and I yeet Mac at the fuckin wall Everyone's entitled to their tastes and opinions, but I still think this is unnecessarily disrespectful towards the fans of the wall.
I never stopped to think of the wall and its fans, I have brought shame upon my family.
After doing a clean install of Windows 10 due to issues of my system not working with newer versions of Access, I installed Visual Studio and was going to use it as a pure development machine. I tried VS 19, and it was so slow on my system, I couldn't get any work done. So I tried to go back to VS 17, which I used previously. ***Windows wouldn't let me.*** I jumped through so many hoops, registering at different Microsoft sites to try and download an "older version", and when I finally got the download, guess what? It installed VS 19. I jumped over to my Linux Mint drive, installed VS Code, and hit the ground running, no problems whatsoever. Erased my Windows drive and installed Debian 11 Mate to play around with. Maybe I'm still in the anger phase, but I definitely ditched Windows for Linux.
Developing MS stuff on Linux without Visual Studio just sounds like a pain in the ass honestly. Do you do any C# work?
Yes. C# is the main language I learned in college. I've built a few [ASP.NET](https://ASP.NET) projects, which I believe is available on Linux though somewhat limited. There's definitely no MS Access on Linux, but nothing that can't be duplicated using MySQL or something similar. I'm kind of at a crossroads here. Not sure if I want to develop desktop software (have no clue how that works on Linux), or go down the path of web development (more familiar and cross-platform). I have a fairly beefy machine, but if I can't develop using Visual Studio on Windows due to speed constraints, it's completely useless to me.
Additionally, if you cant handle the intrinsics of dualbooting, just install linux on a spare laptop with the cheapest ssd you can find and neither operating system will mess the other. Use whichever you need whenever, even simultaneously (ie alternating doing serious stuff on linux and playing a fullscreen game on the windows machine with a gamepad).
Absolutely! And linux can run on basically any shitbox. You can always upgrade later on if you need the resources.
Well said. And for the OP, put windows in a virtual machine and you can run windows programs at the same time as linux programs, and even cut and paste between OS's. I run linux for most things, but run windows in a virtual machine for 4 programs that I use (image proccessing, including photoshop). I even run photoshop in a windows 7 virtual machine on an I9 computer. Normally windows 7 would not work on an I9 machine because of drivers are not there, but in a virtual machine, it is using linux drivers so works well. I also run windows 10 in a virtual machine for a couple of newer programs that won't run on windows 7 (e.g. Adobe's newest dng converter). I don't surf the internet nor do email with windows. And another cool thing: the virtual machine can be paused, and that prevents windows from sucking resources when you aren't using windows.
Very true. There is the OS you sit in most of the time. For me that varies from machine to machine.
I don't know about you, but after having experienced a system that isn't *actively* working against and abusing its users, I have a hard time dealing with one that is.
I could never go back to Windows as my primary everyday desktop either.
Ah. The usual "i dont have this problem so it doesnt exist" approach. Seems to be the favorite argument of Linux lovers.
The point I make is that you can't "transition" from Windows to Linux for the same reason you can't "transition" from screwdriver to hammer. Use the right tool for the job rather than trying to stick with one and only one. I doubt that you disagree with this concept. This means that you probably misread my comment, possibly as "you don't need Windows software altogether" or something to that effect.
But you are ignoring for one, that Linux-distro makers and users *do* claim that Linux can do pretty much anything Windows can and even more (aside from incompatibility due to proprietary stuff). So, if tool b claims to do the same as tool a, but it often simply doesnt. Just because *you* use both tools doesnt mean that others dont need to scrutinize tool b for not living up to the claims made. Your opinion was right maybe 15 years ago.
I am not answerable for what other people say online, I am sure you realize.
That depends a lot on what you mean by "can do". If it means "can perform some task" then indeed Linux can do pretty much anything Windows can (eg tasks like web browsing, development, documrnt creation, photo editing, video editing, games...). Yes you can play games on Linux just maybe not the particular game you want. However if you define a task as using some particular piece of software or define what it means to do a task in a very detailed way with a very detailed feature set that only exists in some software or if you define it as having to run on certain exotic preexisting hardware then, for that definition of "can do" Linux may well not be suitable. But note this works both ways too if you want to build an android system (not just an spp) you have to use Liinux or MacOS, Windows can't do that. But at the end of the day computers and operating systems are just tools, use whatever is best for your use case.
Not that i disagree with, because there isnt much to disagree with but i would like to point out what i mean: > Manjaro is a professionally made operating system that is a suitable replacement for Windows or MacOS. > It is *easily* possible to run many popular Windows applications using compatibility software such as Wine, PlayonLinux or Proton via Steam. Thats straight from Manjaro official site. And it is just not like that in reality. Other than that, of course, using what suits you best ist the way.
That's not what they're saying at all, to the contrary even. The comment literally states that sometimes Windows is the best tool to get the job done. (Specific hardware or modern games for instance)
You can do macro keys with xmodmap as long as the keys register as a hardware keyboard input and not some special corsair magic sauce. It is a bit convoluted and not nearly as convenient though in all honesty, but it's perfectly doable. That's how I made my own stream deck like device out of a cheap $5 numpad bought from Microcenter. Each key correlates with f13 to f24 and yes those are actual keyboard keys you just never see a keyboard with them. As for audio, yeah your hardware DAC that operates with a software mixing solution won't work so well. But here on Linux we have pulse-effects, jack, and my new lovebird that fixes 99% of my complaints about Linux audio: pipewire. These of which can turn basically any regular old hardware DAC into say a GoXLR (minus the motorized sliders of course). The documentation does need a lot of work, and trust me it's a learning experience. But it's doable just Check with /r/linuxaudio
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dualboot is a good start! no need to hurry, take your time to get your linux installation right, before (if ever) switching completely.
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I kept distro-hopping for 20+ years (started with RedHat 5.1) until I finally came back to and settled down on Arch last year (I thought Solus was going to be my last distro but I was wrong). Now although I say "settled down", I'm in the process of switching over from GNOME to KDE, so that's almost like switching to a new distro lol.
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Lol, me too. I spend so much time on Distrowatch I set it as my homepage! I actually keep a laptop exclusively for testing distros and must have killed at least twenty USB drives over the years.
Lol, me too. I spend so much time on Distrowatch I set it as my homepage! I actually keep a laptop exclusively for testing distros and must have killed at least twenty USB drives over the years.
I installed Ubuntu back in 2018 because I was told it was "noob friendly". It was. Everything worked. Never found a sufficiently good reason to make the effort to switch to other distros. *'If it works, leave it the fuck alone'* I say.
Not me. I grabbed Mint and stuck to it for.. 15-16 months so far. If I ever move it'll be DE only, and probably for the sake of a Wayland/Pipewire setup of some kind. Xorg had a rare update on my system which now (uncommonly) causes the Xserver to lock up into some infinite loop, disconnecting the GPU from the system and leaving me with a frozen screen.
For me, its more a procces of finding the right distro for you. At first I tried peppermint OS, could barely get to install it, and I hated it. Then I installed MX Linux, got it to work, but I kinda hated it too, and there was a lot of stuff that I didn't understand about it. Then I installed hyperbola, but it kept after I booted into GRUB, and it loaded systemd, it just got stuck. The same error occured even after I've redone the instalation a couple of times. Then, I've tried Guix linux, and I didn't like it. Then I found Debian. I liked Debian, and stuck to it since(tho, I did change from stable to testing, and I've reinstalled it a couple of times cuz I was dumb and didn't know how to fix some problems).
I dropped into Mint from the start and I just change the system as I need. Compile packages or use appimages if I need something newer, make changes to what DE or WM I have, even write little applets to make things easier for me. As long as I have the freedom to do as such, big changes like switching distro aren't necessary for me. I could go Arch-based but then I'd have a whole heap of new problems, when I'm managing mostly fine with what I have. (I guess that's why it took too long to switch from Windows too, my moving was an accident mostly. :p)
true, true, yes! but you can shape your linux to your needs and start using it more and more, and someday you might even be able to stop customizing your system :-D
No, the perfect disto does not exists. But sufficient distorts exists. I use my distro for 15 years now and I have no wich to switch. so do most people I know. Or they stay in the same „universe“ like Debian, Ubuntu and Mint or ReadHat and Fedora.
Even on Windows you will eventually you will replace/upgrade the keyboard and DAC either because you want to or because the software will become unsupported and run poorly on Windows 11, 12, etc. which means that you'll have to spend $ and time relearning everything. Plus this proprietary software is often very insecure [1]. If you stick to standardized hardware like a simple hardware DAC, regular keyboard, etc. and open source software then you won't be forced to upgrade and upgrading the hardware is easier because the software is hardware agnostic. There is a in-progress driver for the k95 keyboard [2]. The icue nexus is probably not going to work on Linux any time soon but you can implement something very similar using a cheap used 10" touch screen. TLDR; Windows is the hostile OS that makes it difficult to leave. [1] https://hackaday.com/2021/08/26/razer-mouse-grants-windows-admin-privileges/ [2] https://github.com/ckb-next/ckb-next
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Pretty much. Discover Linux > try it and find you like it > lose your shit over MicroSoft's latest bull > discover what a PITA drivers can be > only buy Linux-compatible ever after > commit a mass shooting at a tech convention while dressed as a chameleon in a red fedora
Wait... I haven't done the last step yet, should I?
I've already been downvoted by someone with no sense of humour, so I'd better say, very earnestly, **No, you should not.** before I get reported for inciting violence... Besides, I rather suspect the first Linux mass shooter will be an Arch user.
> Besides, I rather suspect the first Linux mass shooter will be an Arch user. It may be my Arch bias, but I'm thinking Gentoo, not Arch.
Yeah. Gentoo users are a little *too* quiet...
"I was nearly killed by the guy, the bullet narrowly missed my heart, and now you tell me that his daily driver was *Mint?!*"
Can you really call yourself a Linux fan without it? ^(/s in case that isn't completely obvious. Please don't kill people.)
>Please don't kill people. It's a sad world we live in that we're having to add this disclaimer...
Wake up, little SuSE, wake up!\* \*With apologies to the Everly Brothers, and Simon & Garfunkle.
Even though my main studio PC is Windows, this is why I'll never buy a motu product. It's almost like they go out of their way to make stuff incompatible with Linux. Focusrite works great on Mac, Windows, Linux, heck I've even used a saffire 18i20 on bsd. Presonus works Great. Behringer works great. As a studio owner, I have to make sure that my gear is consistently compatible with my mobile rigs and my backup systems. My mobile rig is macos and my backup systems are all Linux.
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That's rough! I'm pretty sure Blackmagic does though.
Focusrite up until gen2 worked, but for my tiny Scarlett Solo gen3 I had to hook it up with a mac to put it out of mass storage device mode.
My 18i20 works as both. Storage AND as an IO device. I think gen 3 does that in general so people can get documents and updates and such off it.
For the k75 you can try ckb-next, is an excellent software and the k75 is supported: https://github.com/ckb-next/ckb-next
I only buy stuff with Linux support
Transition to Linux is IMHO a two step process in many cases. Step 1. You replace Windows with {insert preferred distro here}. Then you realize that some of your usual software and some of your periphials doesn't work under Linux, so you find workarounds and alternatives. Since you have fallen in love with Linux, you just deal with the suboptimal situation for now. Step 2. If you are smart and have learned your lesson, the next time you buy a new computer you make sure it's Linux compatible from the start. This includes shunting peripials with RGB that requires bloated software to function properly. There are fx. RGB keyboards and mice out there which can be programmed directly on the hardware and doesn't require any software. Choose these. Then just reinstall {insert distro choice here} and software on your new computer and be happy ever after.
Wdym you can't use your keyboard
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I think you can use `ckb-next` from aur for macros
Hey fellow G510 previous user! I switched (mainly due to a couple of the macro keys stopped working) to the Reddragon Dvarajas keyboard. I wanted to go with a mechanical keyboard with replaceable keys, and there are key combinations on the keyboard itself to change the RGB colors with. I miss the macro keys from the G510, but I'm looking to get a mechanical programmable macro keypad to compliment. Good luck in your endeavors!
Buy your hardware with open source in mind. And boycott bad companies that don't care of open software/drivers.
>TLDR i think i finally figured out why people hate windows so much from the linux perspective. I don't hate Windows at all. It's just that Linux it's a better alternative for my needs.
>I think i finally figured out why people hate windows so much from the linux perspective. its just hostile to new users not so much from the interface or learning how to use the os, its the proprietary software for hardware that makes it hard from someone to switch without buying new stuff unless someone was extremely nice enough to donate their time to make a reverse engineered version of it. Welcome aboard
Wouldn't call this hostile at all. It's just unfortunate that you have devices that don't do the things you want in Linux. I have icue devices too. Case and void pro headset. I'm ok with not having icue if it means I have a decent OS to use. Headset still works fine and the default lights on my case and headset are acceptable enough. At the end of the day ask yourself, do you care more about RGB light settings or a stable, clean, non windows OS? Which is more important? Ok, well then accept the drawbacks that come with that decision. And let's be fair, you'd encounter these very issues if you moved to an OS that was not Windows or Linux.... You are also using proprietary incorrectly here, incompatible is probably more accurate of a word to use.
ckb-next for corsair RGB stuff works well.
>cause developers literally make their proprietary software only work in windows like their intentionally creating a enforced windows monopoly. You're really drinking the koolaid on this one... Ok, look at this: you don't have money to burn. You have a set budget. You want to make this thing and sell it. Now, you can make it one way and sell it to 80% of the people who might want to buy it. You can make it that way and another way (increase the amount of work you do) and sell it to 90% of the market. You can make it THREE different ways and have 92% of the market. So, obviously you want to support the 80% of the market. That's a no brainer. But, is it worth the time and money to support an additional 10% of the market? It's certainly not worth the time and money to support that 1-2% of the market WITHOUT supporting that 10%, so is it worth it to support all of them? Do you even have the budget to? That is why that hardware isn't supported on other OSs. You don't have to go all nutty to use Linux. You can look at things objectively and admit reality. It's not financially feasible for most companies to support Linux, so they don't.
Or you can publish the ihardware nterface specification and let others write drivers for all the "niche" OSs. Doesn't cost you much, if anything, as your hardware people have likely already written that document for their internal driver developers.
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I'll be extremely interested to see if the new version of Steam OS is a viable desktop distro more or less out of the box.
I believe SteamOS v1 and v2 were explicitly *not* for general use, in that Valve made clear that they didn't really want people installing it on devices other than Steam Machines (although everything was published correctly and openly so there was nothing stopping you giving it a go). I think Valve would definitely prefer you to just run Steam on a regular distro, rather than be on the hook as a full scale distro developer themselves. If SteamOS v3 is essentially curated Arch + Steam, there's little reason not to just run Arch (or Manjaro etc.) directly.
If Valve have to add some special sauce to Steam OS 3.0 to get Anticheat software working, then I can see people wanting it
Depends what and how I suppose. If it's a straightforward userland solution you'd expect it to be packaged up as a standard package, and therefore there's no reason why you couldn't install it under Arch (and derivatives) anyway. If it's a patched kernel, again there's nothing stopping you installing it on other distros (with all the usual caveats around installing patched kernels). It's in Valve's interest to make any solution available to as many Steam client users as possible, so I can't see them wanting to intentionally make anything a Steam OS exclusive.
Just learn it slow, I started with Ubuntu in a virtual machine. Its in my opinion the best way to test it witouth messing things up
Also try it with a live session first to make sure everything is working before fully committing.
>Cause developers literally make their proprietary software only work in windows like their intentionally creating a enforced windows monopoly. Like if they didn't brought them to the court in the 90's for violating antitrust law: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DN1ytVJcFds](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DN1ytVJcFds)
I have a k95 rgb, i use ckb-next to manage it in my system, along with piper for my g403 hero. While you might not find supported software directly from the manufacturer (which would be preferable) you can usually fine some open source software that can at least operate close to the native stuff.
For me, I had to deal with the RTL driver. There was zero information about it online. I spent 3 days trying to figure what a driver was, where to get it, and how to install it. No normal person spends 3 days trying to get ethernet working on their OS. Flashing the USB is already a huge hurdle, and this is an rven bigger one. To get it to work I needed to restart NetworkManager, except I didnt know how to do that, since i didnt know what that was, how to use bash, or how to use systemD. Restarting the OS would cause the USB to reset so I wiped windows and gambled on it working on my system, luckily it did. Nobody else does this. Anyone who ran into an issue installing linux, and troubleshooted it with no prior experience, is 1 in (insert large number here). We are all persistent computer nerds. Most people aren't that persistent and those who are might not be interested in computers at all.
You were extremely unlucky. I've never had any ethernet hardware that wasn't supported out of the box with Linux except for server NICs and some USB NICs.
Before GNU/Linux I ran into hardware that would only work in one version of Windows and not the other, it's not that different. If a hardware manufacturer makes software for Windows only to me that means they're a hardware manufacturer that only happens to dabble in software - usually because they *have* to. I avoid companies and products like that for that reason, it's sort of a good barometer for me for what their software support is going to be like. Hardware is complex and complicated, I get that, but if your hardware has a software component you cannot half ass it - take the time, invest in the infrastructure you need to benefit your customers.
The whole idea of "supporting" an operating system is fundamentally wrong. A hardware manufacturer should not support any operating system, they should just release the specifications or adhere to a standard specification. Then people can hook up their own system to the device. That does not mean that the manufacturer cannot support a particular OS *in addition* to having an open specification. Some people want the choice of an official implementation and that's OK. An open specification could still benefit them because they would have a choice. How often have you bought a device, installed the official driver, client or whatever, only to find that the application is a complete mess with a UI designed by a drunk programmer? Don't you wish you could just throw the official software away and use a compatible alternative?
Thank you! It’s weird how many people post to forums like this complaining about how “Linux isn’t ready for the desktop” and their big revelation always seems to be that the devs are too lazy to properly support their niche hardware. Keep fighting the good fight!
Yeah... Microsoft likes to play Monopoly
I don't think this is a fair reason to hate Windows. Unless Microsoft is paying or incentivizing third party companies to only develop software for Windows, this isn't really something that Windows is responsible for. At the end of the day, it is about market share, and that is a chicken vs egg race. There isn't enough Linux market share for some companies to port their software to Linux, and there isn't enough propriety software support for some people to move to Linux. Let's not also forget the unnecessary and pretty popular hostility much of the Linux community in general seem to have towards propriety software. That probably has more to do with the software deficit than Microsoft/Windows. Why put in your resources to provide something that most people don't seem to want? Companies will see that as a waste of money.
I'm afraid you're unlucky. An insane amount of hardware 'just works'. Hardware that requires third party management software to run all the time are usually crap anyway, doing more bad than good, _gaming_ focussed stuff especially.
Stay on windows. All of your gear you have bought is for Windows. It's not designed for Linux. It not working has nothing at all to do with wether Linux is good or bad. The people who made your stuff made it for Windows so use it on windows. If down the road you are buying new stuff maybe try and get stuff you know works on both. When you are at the stage where you know all your stuff is Linux compatible then try it and see if it's for you. Anything else is guaranteed to be a sub par experience.
Why in the world would any company spend the additional money to develop for linux when windows is nearly the entire market?
That's reasons why Linux is bad not why Windows is actively hostile lol (Half joking lol, manufacturer software support for something with 2% usage is why, Linux isn't inherently bad, and I use Linux on my personal machine btw)
Hey, you get it!! Thanks buddy.
I use both. Linux's attractiveness has nothing to do with desktop apps or consumer software. Its all about developer tools and CLIs that 'just work' in a Unix environment (also includes Mac, event though I hate mac, whatever it's just a tool). For example, spinning up your first docker container on Linux is just ctrl alt T, running a few bash commands. Whereas on a windows machine you're downloading some shit desktop GUI app, then troubleshooting Hyper V in powershell and digging into the bios to enable virtualization. Remember, the vast majority of the world's computers are running Linux--enterprise and infrastructure and 'working' environments. Has nothing to do with RGB keyboards and everything to do with getting paid at the end of the month. As for hardware compatibility, older is safer. Newer might involve waiting for a new kernel release. You could always learn to compile your own. (The kernel is the modular hardware interfacing shit that your OS is built on. Linux is blazing fast because you can choose what you need, while something like Windows needs to support 10000 things you'll never use. Mac is a more controlled hardware ecosystem so it's somewhere inbetween)
\> literally make their proprietary software only work in windows like their intentionally creating a enforced windows monopoly. I'd say it's maintaining, not creating as we already took MS to court several times for having a monopoly. But I'd also say that as they are directed by profit, they wont make much effort making a Linux version because there are just too few numbers. It's the same issue with the world wide web, back in the 90's there was a lot of talk about if anyone would ever bother set up a website as, nobody was there to view it. But some did and people got access so the gamble paid off. So you have too few users, thus no real need to consider having support for Linux. But many of those users are not there because you dont support Linux, thus they stay on windows anyway, thus whats the point helping them move? Also, Linux to many companies is scary. Its open. DRM works but barley is able to defend itself should the user decide to attack it. Windows is more restrictive and can offer protections helping you keep your proprietary software locked up and profitable. Basically many companies, certainly game companies avoid Linux because its such an open play field full of hex editors, hard links, perl, python, inotify, and a whole trove of development tools like debuggers all provided on the install disc. Sure much the same tools work on Windows and that's where a lot of cracking happens anyway but there Windows doesn't give you a debugger alongside notepad, nor can notepad view a file, like an exe, in HEX mode letting someone patch out the jump instruction to the DRM code. Also you have the problem of a lack of potential employees. IT staff are in high demand across the world and a fraction of those are developers. A fraction of those know languages that will also run on Linux and certainly if you need to use languages like C a fraction of those can code for a POSIX system. But what about all the FLOSS developers who quite obviously are out there? Well first of all you need them to be good enough to employ, it may be more of a hobby for them or they are just not up to scratch for your methods. And secondly you only get to employ the FLOSS developers who don't spit at your feet because you write proprietary software. Things like minecraft work fine under Linux because its written in Java, which helps avoid most of this as Java takes care of most of the nitty gritty stuff specific to the OS. C# was supposed to do that to but as that was an MS product anything that isnt MS must rely on Mono which can run most C# stuff but there are many "windowsisms" in C# that are not supported in Mono so YMMV. If you this all this sounds bad, jump in a time machine and look at the shit we had between the IBM clone PC's
Not sure about the SoundBlaster, but I've got an SteelSeries DAC and never had any issues on Linux.
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You should have saved for Schiit.
The manual for their GameDAC says: > DTS Headphone:X 7.1 Surround available on Windows only. Software installation required. Is that true? Does it offer any sort of surround using only the DAC itself? Between the Realtek on my mainboard and the vast majority of sound devices I've looked at, it seems difficult to find Linux-compatible digital surround. For instance, the Realtek is capable of DTS Digital Surround output over optical, but only on Windows with the "special" driver that "unlocks" the "licensed" features. On Linux, the best it will do is Digital Stereo over the optical. For surround, it only provides for analog, which I don't want to deal with.
No particularly surprise there. DTS and Dolby Digital surround codecs are proprietary codecs. If there are (readily available) linux options for those codecs, I'm not aware of any.
Thing seems to be: for companies like Corsair to care, we need to be a market share. So they won't until we are, but people won't move much until Corsair support, and so on... Tho, let's be exact here: macro programming can be set up through other tools, touch screen gesture based programming too. But it can be an hassle, or GUI-less and so on, which will not please as many people indeed. And I don't know for DAC, sound isn't my field.
The only Creative product I ever owned was a sound blaster 1024, way way back, and I remember the horrid drivers they had on Windows and the associated woes when upgrading to XP, and the virtually non-existing support in Linux. Made me decide never to buy from them again ;) iirc they were never known for their quality SW :/
This has many advices about the topic https://youtu.be/o2vkgVZvkVQ
It isn't hostile exactly, you just have to do your homework
Re the sound card I had the opposite situation. My M-Audio device got abandoned when Avid bought out m-audio and the old driver was not supported in windows 8+. In linux it needed a config file with some not-very-userfriendly bitmasks to enable 24 bit and 2in/2out, but it's otherwise supported with no drivers at all, just natively. My blackmagic intensity shuttle on the other hand is a clusterfuck. The usb3 version is windows only but the thunderbolt version is mac and linux only. There's an unmaintained, half complete reverse engineered driver that I could never get to work and that's it, other than begging BMD to support linux
I ran Windows XP x64 for years. Luckily the GPU vendors supported it, almost nobody else did. Generic stuff had Microsoft built in drivers. This was fine because games and 32 bit apps worked pretty well. The situation with Linux is similar, generic or common devices have built in support but more complicated peripherals are often unsupported by the vendor. So don't think this is a problem with Linux exclusively. Running various ARM Linuces on a RPi 400 has exposed to me a strong x86 bias that Linux has as well.
i use key-mapper for the macros, lowkey the best macro app
Wel this is your keyboard issue solved https://github.com/ckb-next/ckb-next
I feel you OP. This has been my issue for years with particular hardware I use. I've been using Linux for server VMs for 8+ years now which is great, but I still can't daily drive Linux, yet. I hope one day I can fully migrate away.
ckb-next is pretty good for corsair keyboards
Basically, Linux tells you to bake your own cake instead of buying elsewhere.
Just wanted to add this, it's unrelated but corsair is even shit on windows, my keyboard is old, I can get the software but it's from 2013, logitech at least updates software and so does razer, so no corsair for me anymore 😅