My partner doesn’t do much on the computer except web browsing and writing. The Scrivener writing program had a Linux version at some point that was abandoned.
I wanted to see if anyone personally has used Scrivener with Wine and if it is fussy or not. How has your experience been?
I could set it up for them, but they’re not a tech person and will probably reject Linux if it breaks all the time and they have to get me to come fix it.
Extra irrelevant info: trying to decide on having them try Mint or Ubuntu. Fedora is my daily driver and I typically use a headless Debian install for servers, but I heard Mint and Ubuntu are pretty perfect and low fuss for Windows users.
I use the Windows version of Scrivener 3 on Linux. It works almost perfectly. Sometimes it’ll freeze after opening a file, but force-quit and restart the app, and it’s fine.
I haven’t tried Scrinever. What follows is about trying to convert people to Linux, you can safely ignore the comment if you’re not interested.
If the will doesn’t come from him, he will certainly look for things he doesn’t like and that will confort him in staying on Windows.
I’d say keep him informed and let him make his decisions with the information he has.
That’s a good and sadly realistic point.
I read a forum post back in the day about a guy that forced his wife and kids to use FreeBSD and they hated it. It was pretty funny but I also don’t want to be that guy
My wife is basically tech illiterate and has 0 desire to ever use something that doesn’t just work out of the box. We’ve moved some of her software to foss (darktable over Lightroom due to their stupid subscription only model) but she’s really only comfortable on a MacBook and even then only after I’ve set the whole thing up and maintain software/os updates.
macOS also sucks for smb file shares so I have a FreeBSD jail that just does xrdp and ssh X-11 forwarding (better color matching for photos this way) and she runs a script disguised as a desktop shortcut to run her apps. The script launches an ssh session and pops up a simple program I wrote that just lists available apps like darkroom. Gives her native file speeds and 0 need to understand anything related to the OS. My rambling point here is unless you set it up so the SO doesn’t need to learn it’s likely to fail and in return you’ll be responsible for all of the maintenance. Unless you’re ok with that it’s probably not a good idea
Exactly. No one wants their autonomy removed regardless of whether it’s arguably in their interest or not. It sucks the joy out of it.
On the distros: Go with mint. ubuntu has snaps which are the perfect way to scare new users away. They make everything super slow to launch and cause errors that make no sense if you don’t know how snaps work.
And worst of all, if you type “sudo apt install firefox”, hit enter and press Y, you won’t get what you asked for. You’ll get the snap version of firefox and the only way to know that is if you read and understand the output of apt.
@nottheengineer is this also the case with Ubuntu server? If so is there a way to turn that shit off,
They are definitely pushing it there too, but not as hard. There isn’t a way to disable this shitty behaviour, you need to manually set apt up to not pull snaps for every package individually.
@nottheengineer well thanks for letting me know anyway, this probably explains a lot of the docker issues I have been encountering which are “snap only” problems, despite me installing through apt
Oh yeah, I learned about snap the hard way with docker as well.
I’d highly recommend using a different distro for that.
@nottheengineer what do you suggest? problem is I’m limited since my home server is a raspberry pi so I’m limited to distros that support arm
I should probably give Debian a try, but I never had a good experience with Debian desktop.
I’d say debian is a good pick. I have debian LTS on my ventoy for whenever I need to partition a drive and it’s been great.
I never had any issues with it, what drove you away from debian on the desktop?
I can’t speak to running Scrivener, but other folks have that covered, so I thought I’d weigh in on your “extra irrelevant info.”
If it were me, I’d just give them Fedora. I set up my partner’s computer with it and they were fine. They adapted to Gnome like it was nothing, and everything went smoothly.
If you’re worried about the UI, you could use some Gnome Extensions to set it up like Windows (dash to dock, Arc Menu, etc.) or set up a KDE, Cinnamon, or XFCE spin to work like Windows.
Mint is an okay choice for beginners, true, but if you’re setting it up for them and will be their tech guru, any significant advantage is kinda lost. You’re the one who’s going to set up the starting packages and the DE and all that, which nowadays is about 90% of the advantage Mint has over Fedora when it comes to beginners. Because of that, since you’re tech support, you should just set up what you’re most comfortable running support for.
That’s just my opinion, though.
Have you gotten them to try an alternative program? And if they REALLY need scrivener in particular, then you can try installing it in something called “bottles”, though it will probably require a bit of setup to work correctly, though my personal advice to anyone who needs a windows only program that doesn’t have a Linux port or alternative is to just… Use windows.
Linux makes a fantastic writing / research machine but helping folks make the transition to Linux can be difficult.
Everyone comes at it from a different angle and with a different intensity. Sometimes just letting them explore available options can be what they need. I’ve found that allowing the transition to be an open, running conversation, can be really helpful and much less stressful. There’s a lot to learn, even with Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, etc…
If you haven’t found them already, here’s a few personal favorite writing apps/systems (in no particular order) I’ve enjoyed using over the years.
Fadein https://www.fadeinpro.com/
Focus writer https://gottcode.org/focuswriter/
Wordgrinder http://cowlark.com/wordgrinder/index.html
Emacs org-mode https://jacmoes.wordpress.com/2019/09/24/creative-writing-with-emacs/#Manuskript_and_the_cork_board
Fadein works great on Linux! I second this!
Love that I can easily switch from phone to laptop when working with Fadein.
I’ll likely get downvoted for this.
It doesn’t seem like there’s any advantage for them in switching to Linux.
It’ll just make their experience harder for no real gains for them.
I wonder how much functionality of Scrivener you could get in Obsidian. I found an article about someone setting their Obsidian vault up to run a workflow similar to Scrivener.
Obsidian is my Scrivener replacement. It’s not the same, but it’s a great tool that actually gives me more of what I wanted from Scrivener.
Not sure there’s really much point in trying to push people to use Linux if they aren’t interested in computers.
Imagine if someone came up to you raving about switching to a new car brand that has a 5% higher top speed and 10% more fuel efficiency for your money but the handbrake is in on the roof, you change gears with buttons instead of a gear stick and you fill the tires with water instead of air
Most people don’t care about what software runs on their computer and just want the default because it works the same way everyone else’s does
Only way Linux gets into the mainstream is if consumer hardware with it preinstalled gets popular, the steam deck is a good start
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It’s their partner. Maybe OP just wants to get rid of microsoft in their home network and the household, which is not an absurd thing I think.
Bingo!
They wanted to give it a try so win-win for both of us if they end up liking it.
I’m probably going to be unpopular for saying this but I think at some point you just have to settle. What practical difference does it actually make to your life if someone else has windows on your network
It has, I think.
A little different, but I hope you’ll see my point.
My family members use netflix on our smart TV. The netflix that says in it’s privacy policy that they’ll scan your network to know what devices you have.
I have never agreed to that outrageously unacceptable privacy policy, still, my devices are scanned by that garbage service, and by that they have insight on what devices I have, when am I around (at home), the network services that those devices run (any android app can run a network service in the background), and probably the OS along with it’s version that your device runs. These information can be quite telling about your personality, your life situation and other private matters.And it sucks that companies are allowed to do things like that with their software but I would imagine you wouldn’t be very popular if you try to tell them they can’t use Netflix anymore
Could always put your machines on a different subnet to the smart TV?
Why do you want other people to switch to Linux? I don’t understand making fuss with relationships for an OS. Especially if they have Windows programs. Plus now everytime there is a problem, s/he will always call you. What does s/he think?
They don’t want to at all but I’ve chained them to the desk and propped their eyes open clockwork orange style. They have no choice but to watch me remove Windows
