I highly disagree with recommending regular users to use virtual machines, it defeats the whole purpose, at the end of the day, you are still using windows, and on top of that, it adds additional complexities that can only create frustration to users.

Do you correct everyone who says Windows instead of Microsoft Windows NT?

Is that trustworthy? I don’t really want to go from Adobe spying to a random russian hacker spying on me.

In corporate world, where I think MS makes most of the money, windows is the standard (unfortunately).

OP asks a relatively simple question, and gets scolded as it committed murder.

For all we know OP is the only user and is just playing with Linux, and just wants a simple (probably unnecessary) shortcut because he’s GUI oriented.

This is kind of someone asking how to open their lunchbox easier, and get treated like they are giving a copy of their house keys to everyone in town.

Chill… Not everyone is running a maximum security level server. If OP screws their system (like most of us do at some point), I’m sure a fresh re-install would be enough for them.

I mean, that’s what I do, do you think that’s feasible for everyone? No. Not everyone is willing to go through that much hassle.

I use both. Sadly, I have lots of software that doesn’t work (or works pretty bad) on Linux. I love Linux, but there’s no denying it can be frustrated, specially if your hardware doesn’t support it, and that applies to too many people who has no saying in the hardware they use.

So in what world? Corporate world, science, CAD modelling…

For the life of me, I tried every single pdf reader on Linux, none gets close to Adobe reader, in terms of compatibility, tools and nice UI. Every time I found the perfect one on Linux, days later I realised my collaborators couldn’t see my highlights (or something of the sorts).

I never managed, I used Linux Mint, but I didn’t bother to try others.

It doesn’t have issues. It just doesn’t work. You need your library on ext3/4 for the games to run on linux.

It doesn’t matter though, he’s not the president and is not involved in any politicalmatters. Sure, he should be investigated if he did something wrong, but why is that relevant?

Work use. The are hardware requirements (XRD machines, potentiostats, CNC machining) and software requirements (3D design). My workshop asks for files in Autodesk Inventor, if I send it in any other format, they just won’t fabricate my pieces, and I completely understand, who am I to change the workflow of a complete department just because I refuse to use Inventor (which is provided at work).

Read my other replies. 1 and 2 don’t really work, the performance of using wine, or the alternatives, is just not there, if you do amateur work, maybe that’s fine, but for professional collaborative work, good luck using freecad instead of autocad.

Personally, I use 3 and 4, but you have to understand that the regular user is not going to go through that much hassle to set up a virtual machine.

I use linux 50% of my time, I’m not going to ditch my job so I can use it 100%, lol. What kind of advice is that for someone who wants to use linux.

I mean, that’s what I do. Will I be able to convince my 60 yo colleague that had been using the same workflow for decades? No, not a chance.

That’s my point, I use linux as much as I can, but if 80% of your colleagues use Windows… You don’t have much choice.

I wish Wine worked well enough to use Excel. We are not talking about adding up numbers in a cell. Once you include macros, or a reference manager in Word, Wine is not good enough. The same can be said about propietary software, like autocad, or software used to control equipment. Also, good luck convincing a regular user to get familiar with wine.

WPS is great for simple files. Again, not good enough for complex files, especially if it is a corporate collaboration environment. I have lost count on the amount of ppt files that didn’t display well when it used WPS.

Every other year I try all the alternatives you mention, hoping they got better, and I always come back to use a dual boot or a virtual machine, which is not a thing your regular user wants to do.

But can it run proprietary software used in the industry? From Excel to Photoshop, if you are in a collaborative professional environment, you can’t run away from those, and don’t tell me you can use the alternatives in Linux, because no, you can’t. This is not linux fault, but it’s still an issue you can’t handwave.

I love linux, but you can’t expect people to adopt it just because it’s objectively better than windows.

Like or not, it’s a de facto standard. Good luck trying to convince your colleagues to change their workflow.

I love Linux, but I would never recommend using Microsoft Office on Linux especially if you work in a collaborative environment. Saying that Linux can run Microsoft office without any issue is a blatant lie. I run virtual machines basically so I can run Microsoft Office, but I don’t think everyone wants to go though that much hassle.

Or reference managers. I’m in academia and it’s a pain because I can’t edit anything on Linux without breaking the fine, I tried everything, LibreOffice, Only office… Nothing works.