Switching operating systems can be a daunting task: you need to determine which of your favorite apps are compatible and find good alternatives for those that aren’t. These are the ones I installed immediately after switching to Linux.
Steam
Linux games get better every day
Steam is the most popular digital game store on the Internet, and it would be a shame to lose access to your library just because you changed operating systems. After all, half the fun of owning a PC is gaming. Fortunately, Steam itself is Available for all major Linux distributions.and the Steam (Proton) compatibility layer has made gaming on Linux easier than ever.
Steam also does a great job of identifying which games are likely to work on Linux and which aren’t, which helps reduce the amount of time you waste downloading.
Steam can be downloaded from the Software Center (Linux’s version of an app store) on most distributions.
Discord
Just make sure you install it from the right place.
Discord has become the standard for communication between players and is increasingly popular as a way to get support from developers, especially if you like small open source projects.
It’s my primary means of communication with most of my friends these days, and no computer I use on a regular basis is complete without it.
I recommend installing Discord using Snap (which you can find by searching in your distro’s Software Center) instead of DEB or RPM packages on the Discord websiteas both require you to update Discord manually.
VSCodio
Best VS Code Fork
VSCodio is the telemetry-free fork of Visual Studio Code (VSCode), Microsoft’s popular text editor. VSCodium supports an extraordinary library of extensions for almost any coding language you can imagine, bringing it almost to the level of a fully integrated development environment.
I don’t use VSCodium for basic text editing (for that, Vim is good enough), but if I need to sit down and write more elaborate code, VSCodium is the first program I use.
Can download it directly from the GitHub repositoryand there is also an instant package available.
Spotify
Stream your favorite music from the Linux desktop
I am very fond of listening to music while I work as it often helps me set the mood and pace of whatever I am working on.
You can probably get Spotify on Linux through your distribution’s package manager, but you can also manually add a repository to download it if necessary.
VLC
The best free desktop media player
Most Linux distributions come packaged with a media player of some kind, and in my experience, most of them are pretty good.
However, I am a creature of habit and have been using VLC player on Windows since its release. the number of Ways to modify video and audio playback. are hard to beat and supports almost every audio or video format you’ll find on the internet.
You can also convert between media formats if necessary, which I use a lot more than I would have expected.
VLC 4.0 It also features a modernization of the user interface that I quite like. It hasn’t been officially released yet, but I’ve been using it for a few months without any major problems.
If you’re looking for something more stable, I’ll go with the official VLC download or your distribution’s repository.
OFFICE ONLY
An impressive Microsoft 365 replacement
Microsoft’s Office suite isn’t something I use all the time, but it’s still important enough to need a good replacement when I migrated to Linux.
LibreOffice comes with a lot of Linux distributions and I found that it worked quite well. However, I wanted something that looked more like the Microsoft Office user interface.
After looking around I decided on Onlyoffice which is quite close and was easy to get up and running. Yo I downloaded it directly from the websitebut using Software Center (or the command line) will also work.
BitWarden
Secure password management
Everything requires a password, passphrase or passcode. There is simply no way around it. I have used BitWarden to store my passwords for a long time on Windows and fortunately it is also available for Linux (Kubuntu in my case). I also took the opportunity to run it on my phone, which was a pretty easy process. You can also store your debit or credit card information, if that interests you.
Everything is secured behind. a strong master password.
Beyond syncing your passwords, BitWarden can also generate strong passwords or passphrases for you and check if your current passwords have been leaked on the Internet.
Best way to exit Windows? Try Linux now!
Switching operating systems used to be a pain, especially if you went from macOS or Windows to Linux. However, things have changed in recent years and Linux operating systems are no longer the clunky, specialized behemoths they once were.
Migrating my entire workflow to Linux only took me about an hour, and that includes the time I spent looking for alternatives, downloading and installing everything, and adjusting the settings to my liking.
