How true! Who has the biggest problems? Windows users? Mac users? LINUX users? Who knows? However, regardless of which OS one prefers, users of Windows programs such as CC3+ and FM8 will do themselves no favors by switching to a Mac or a LINUX system. FM8 users seem to get along fairly well with Windows emulations on a Mac. (There's no guarantee that'll be true with FM9, however.) It's quite a different matter with a Mac running a Windows emulation and CC3+. I worked with the Mac users on ProFantasy's official beta testers roster, and even with some refined workarounds, there are some things in CC3+ that just don't work.
But the OS is only one problem. Another problem is the tendency of a few brand-name computer manufacturers to design machines and BIOS systems that don't comply fully with the OS manufacturer's standards. Instead of doing that, they want to build a better mouse trap and then flop when a new kind of mouse comes around. Here in Germany, Siemens PCs in the late 1980s and early 1990s were delivered with Siemens' own tailor-made version of MS-DOS. Where the original MS-DOS was installed from a single floppy disc, the Siemens version came on three floppies. When Microsoft updated original MS-DOS 3.0 to 3.1, the Siemens BIOS wouldn't boot Microsoft 3.1 and there was no Siemens 3.1. Stick with 3.0, Siemens said. Nice, except that the current versions of some popular software programs that were released after the introduction of MS-DOS 3.1 wouldn't run on Siemens 3.0, although they ran on Microsoft 3.0. When MS-DOS 4.0 came out, the same thing happened all over again. (Siemens has been out of the PC business for some time now.)
In the particular case in question in this thread, the computer that had the problems came from HP. HP and Dell are two companies that also are known for brewing their own beer on Windows PCs and then becoming somewhat incompatible when either Windows itself or a 3rd party Windows program updates. After that, the new version either doesn't run quite right or not at all. After HP acquired Compaq, there were some i486 Compaq models that couldn't manage memory right anymore and crashed constantly after updating to Windows 95. The customer had only two choices: Go back to Windows 3.1 or go to the more expensive Windows NT 4.0. HP never fixed this.
Mark Oliva
The Vintyri (TM) Project
WINE Is Not an Emulator!
As I said, I have no experience with it or with any recent distro, it's just the one that really caught my fancy. Chickpea recommended avoiding it due to technical issues and user friendliness and just sticking with a mainstream Ubuntu distro for ease of transition.
Maybe CP can answer for this or any other Linux user...
so, if you are running Linux, could you run some sort of android emulator?
And if so, then run apps from the android store?
Thus, you could run sketchbook pro and photoshop and some others.
It wouldn't be quite the same as the full app experience, but might suffice for some.
And it would conceivably be super cheap by comparison.
Artstation - | - Buy Me a Kofi
Have a look at Anbox. Is that the sort of thing you were looking for?
I'm being pedantic. I don't think any of the Windows 'emulators' for Linux are true emulators. They're application compatibility layers. They parse the incoming system calls from an application and translate them into the native machine's kernel code's system calls. An emulator is some software that mimics an instruction set from, say, a CPU, in order to run software. It's like machine within a machine. Then there's virtualisation which is like an operating system within an operating system. If Venn diagrams were drawing I'd say there'd be a few unions within them though.
OK, yes, I stand corrected. Wine is not an emulator. Just trying to explain simply to a non-techie.
About Budgie, I want to be clear that I haven't tried it. I considered it earlier this year (or maybe this time last year, I can't quite recall). At that time, there were reports of so many little bugs and issues, and it put me off. However... when a project is very active, as Budgie is, development is fast and it possibly has come a long way in the last nine months or so. It looks fantastic and I was quite enthused about it, but I have the feeling there was a killer bug that stopped me. It might have been a hardware issue. I can't quite remember now. One of these days I will try it...
If you have some experience with Linux, then go for whatever distro takes your fancy. However, if you're completely new, and have never even tried it, then I feel it's best to go for something super popular, because you're likely going to need help. The Mint and Ubuntu forums are friendly places, used to dealing with new users' questions. You can ask what you suspect might be an idiot question, without worrying about receiving a RTFM answer.
Ilanthar, I suspect you're running into the UEFI/Secure Boot issue. Maybe this article will help?
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams"