What I mean is that MacOS is proprietary and runs on specific hardware, it’s by design not meant to be interoperable so it’s not “just” popularity.

Proton is built on top of Wine in order to make sure games specifically work well.

You can check https://www.protondb.com/ before buying a game (with Steam or otherwise) to insure it works as expected. A lot will work with 0 tinkering but some might next extra command line parameters.

You might get the same result with Wine directly but Proton it doing everything it can to “hide” away those (hopefully small) challenges away from the final user, a gamer (like me) who wants to just sit down and play.

So… the heuristic is basically :

• games? Proton
• not games but Windows applications that somehow do not have a better open-source equivalent running on Linux? Wine

Edit: for the anecdote I wrote this reply on my SteamDeck, the gaming console by Valve coming with Steam, and Proton, and running Linux to… just play BUT I also use it to work while traveling. So yes, works like a charm!

Isn’t it what passthrough is for?

Feels very arbitrary. Why would I care about say MacOS versus FreeBSD or say NeXTSTEP (just to be provocative)?

Anyway I’m being pulled away from the actual argument, the “bare metal” argument is about performances, isn’t it?

Meanwhile me as a barbarian installing Debian and copying my ~/.bashrc file (and a few others) if not just remounting /home/ in the new installation every few years.

Does it matter if the overhead is practically irrelevant?

Indeed hence my warning. I’m only sharing this alternative because in practice it works and it’s secure (AFAIK).

Edit :

black box security fob

IMHO that’s a feature, namely I do not want to OS to mess with this specific part of my setup. I do also have NitroKeys and FPGAs to tinker with but that’s different. FWIW if there is an OSHW&FLOSS alternative to the YubiKey Bio please do share.

FWIW because you do so professionally I’d factor in the time you spend too versus buying hardware (e.g. USB dongles) or even laptop, ideally reselling the old one. I don’t know your rate or how much you can buy VAT free or your income at the moment, only that in your context this is also a business decision so you have to consider the ROI of “just” moving on with another hardware, selling the old one and with the time earned (if work is available) get another paid task instead of tinkering.

For the curious https://lvra.gitlab.io/docs/hardware/#xr-devices according to which quite a few WMR VR HMDs are supported via the Monado SteamVR plugin.

external cam haha. I use the laptop cam daily to video call family

I actually did that on desktop recently and I enjoy being able to unplug and physically remove it as I don’t use it daily. Same for the large external microphone, it’s only on my desk when I’ll have meetings planed. Maybe you could also use a mobile phone as camera.

Anyway kudos on leaving Google! It’s a great step.

For Samsung chips maybe https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Samsung could help.

If you mean interoperability there is https://libimobiledevice.org/ but honestly compared to what KDE Connect can offer with Android phones it’s just … lame.

Don’t be too sad, I’m playing and working daily with an NVIDIA for years now and it’s just working.

Fingerprint readers, in general, also widely seem to be poorly supported.

Not sure if it technically counts as fingerprint readers but using my YubiKey Bio daily, for login on my desktop and WebAuthN and… 0 problem.

voice actor, artist, and musician. My main concern is recording software and to a lesser extent, art software

Even if you are not based in Brussels where we have https://resonance-mao.be/ you might have a local equivalent, namely open source and open hardware music enthusiast and profesisonals who meet monthly at least to learn and jam. They know this domain a lot more than I do. There are a LOT of software for all that but I wouldn’t go as far as advising you. That said yes it mostly likely will require a bit of re-training. Still IMHO you have done the hardest, namely you understand the concepts behind what the tools do. The interface will be different but how it is actually done should be the same. My advice is to find “your people” and discover together.

Regarding hardware Mint is based on Ubuntu which is based on Debian. I have an NVIDIA GPU and I play (and work) with it daily. Sometimes sleep/resume is buggy but pretty much never ever while actually working or playing. Regarding the Webcam, it’s not super convenient but until it gets supported (hopefully) you might have to rely on an external camera.

Neat! Two quick things :

I’m not convinced Linux has comparable software I need).

Feel free to ask here. I might not know alternatives but others could, no matter how niche.

Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Ultra […] didn’t play well unfortunately

Same advice. I don’t have one of these but what fails and how? Any specific error message?

The lack of support seems very daunting at first.

I started thinking “Oh I wish I could transition to Linux, away from Windows, but what about the latest hardware or random gadget?”

The trick is to flip the question around, namely not “Does my current hardware work with Linux?” but rather “Am I sure my next hardware work well with Linux BEFORE I buy it?” then this remove 99% of headaches. It’s typically 1 Web search away from either a lot of complaints or positive feedback… or not much, and then it’s up to you to see if you are ready for an adventure. If there is not much but there is some standard interface, e.g. Bluetooth, and no need for a proprietary application, it’s nearly sure the main features will work. If a proprietary application is needed, then safer to avoid.

So… yes maybe surprisingly a LOT of hardware does work well with Linux!

What does not work for me, to give a random example, is the LED controller of my desktop case, which I bought several years ago while Windows was still my main OS. I didn’t put a lot of effort into it, cf https://gitlab.com/CalcProgrammer1/OpenRGB/-/issues/1683 but the recent article posted on this instance, namely https://lemmy.ml/post/32389687 makes me want to give it another go at some point!

Shit… kind of makes me want to learn Rust now!

Anyway, wonderful write up. No BS, both shortcuts if you just want to the code and in depth links e.g. https://www.beyondlogic.org/usbnutshell/usb1.shtml all written with a fun tone. Plenty of actually useful content showing us all that sure, it is not trivial to write a (USB) driver but it is also probably not as hard as we imagine. Particularly enjoyed the :

• userspace driver, namely being able to tinker locally without feel the pressure to push back the work to Linux the kernel itself
• libusb and other drivers, namely that there is a myriad of points to start from already, not just writing reverse engineering bits in memory to the new device and hoping it’ll work

Focus on productivity and pleasure, so make the transition easier :

• try Linux without dual boot, e.g. https://distrosea.com/ (I made a 30min video discussion if you are curious)
• try Linux on a USB stick to get persistence and not be afraid of using private data
• try dual boot with default on Windows, your important data backed-up (e.g. music you created)
• try dual boot with default on Linux and Ableton or whatever you need on Wine, if it doesn’t work in virtual machine
• try boot on just Linux with Wine
• try boot on Linux with Ableton FLOSS equivalents (few listed in this thread)
• try boot on Linux with e.g Ardour or LMMS but genuinely benefit from FLOSS by making and sharing your own plugins

The entire process must be risk free and fun!

Start kdeconnect-app from a console and share what the actual error message is.

Thanks for sharing, always nice to learn alternative ways to do so!