Desktop EnvironmentThere are many desktop environments (DE) for GNU/Linux, so you're not limited to GNOME, which personally I avoid due to strange decisions that its developers have undertaken. I recommend XFCE, which I find the most reasonable of all DEs. You can also ditch desktop environment completely and just use one of the many extremely lightweight window managers, but these require some degree of manual configuration and existing GNU/Linux knowledge to tailor them to one's liking. But once they're set up, they shine.
Fractional ScalingFractional scaling is
not a trivial feature [
mail.gnome.org] to implement and therefore there still might be some problems with it. To get it working flawlessly is one of the priorities of the GNU/Linux community, so things can only get better in this department. And until they do, I suggest reading
HiDPI section [
wiki.archlinux.org] of the ArchWiki, which should help you to configure your desktop with HiDPI monitors in mind.
Image Viewers for 32-bit HDR ImagesImage viewers like
tev
and
HDRView
, for instance, allow for rapid scrolling through sets of 32-bit floating point images. Of course images are preloaded into VRAM first, so a fast SSD and vast amount of VRAM is required. Otherwise, you risk slow disk read times or choking up memory of the graphics card.
24 GB of VRAM available in RTX 4090 which you own will allow you to store slightly above two dozens (29) of 8192x4096 floating point OpenEXR pictures directly in VRAM. Once VRAM fills up, the program will again need to pull the data from storage memory. I don't think it's different on Windows, so I understand that "dozens of 8k textures of 150 MB HDRI" was a hyperbole.
There are probably plenty of other fast image viewers with HDR and EXR support for GNU/Linux. Gnome Viewer you speak of is unsuitable for any production work. Treat it more like a basic image viewer for home use, but even for this purpose I find other programs much better (like
feh
to name one). However, neither Gnome Viewer nor
feh
support OpenEXR format at this point of time. Which reminds me to make appropriate feature requests.
OpenEXRYou're mentioning that OpenEXR is not available "by default". What "default"? Perhaps you mean the default state of the system right after installation? This depends on how you install the system and which part of the installation you consider to be that point. Personally, I treat manual installation of additional packages after the installer finishes its job to also be a part of the installation process. Anyway, the reason of absence of OpenEXR support in standard type of GNU/Linux installation is simple: very few people outside our niche have a need for this format.
On GNU/Linux OpenEXR is available through
libopenexr
package, at least on Debian. In other distributions the library might have the same or it may vary slightly. Usually, when you have at least one program supporting OpenEXR installed on your system using your distro's package manager, appropriate dependencies are pulled as well (in this case
libopenexr
). If there are no such programs, dependencies become redundant and will be scheduled for on-demand removal.
Programs installed from other sources than the main repository might come bundled with their own "local" OpenEXR library version, or will have this library listed as a requirement that needs to be satisfied manually by the user. The latter is usually the case when you need to compile software from source (in which case a dev version of the
libopenexr
package might be required). Some external programs may use proprietary OpenEXR libraries. Avoid them.
PerformanceOn performance. I have the opposite experience. Any machine I have installed GNU/Linux on got a significant perceivable overall boost in performance and resource allocation. There were even times when it felt like I had bought a brand-new computer. So you can imagine why I have never looked back on Windows. Computing power and I/O operations are always utilized for the task I want them to be utilized for. There is no "background noise" like you have on Windows, where your system is constantly doing something and you can't tell what it actually does. Here you always know what task your resources are used on at any given moment. I'd say, you can almost feel that they're not wasted on some bull crap.
In my experience, performance in Houdini is better than it was on Windows. I didn't do any benchmarks, but I could feel the difference. Everything is snappy, so no complaints. Occasionally there are some minor problems related to some aspects of Qt interface, but I think they will be resolved once Houdini moves to a newer Qt version.
But, you need to be aware of one thing. In case of GNU/Linux --- hardware matters. And what I mean by this is that you need to be very careful of what you buy. You need to make sure that components of your system are supported by the Linux kernel, or at least have proprietary firmware binary blobs available in your distribution's repositories. While Linux kernel supports most hardware out-of-the-box, you may occasionally stumble upon something that works only partially or doesn't work at all. This is especially the case with obscure products. If you consider your system sluggish, you may have a missing driver, or are you can be using a libre driver that wasn't fully reverse-engineered yet. Or your GNU/Linux installation is misconfigured in some way. You may want to verify all this. Check system logs for information about missing firmware or for any other errors and warnings.
Lastly, looking for answers is not a wasted time, because you always learn something in the process. Besides, on GNU/Linux you can solve problems relatively quickly by reading the logs and looking for an answer, while Windows gives very vague information on what the culprit of the issue may be. I always found Windows extremely user unfriendly in this regard.
Linux ConsoleTerminal, or Linux console to be precise, is one of the main reasons I switched to GNU/Linux. It's so overpowered that it literally turns the whole operating system into one giant IDE, which raises productivity of any task --- from simple home use, to programming, CGI and science. Windows can't compare to it by any stretch of imagination. And never will, even with WSL.
Distributions and Software AvailabilitySpeaking from my own experience, it doesn't matter much what kind of distro you choose. The only thing that matters is if it comes with library versions matching requirements of the (ahem) proprietary software you wish to use, or if paid support addresses issues only on selected GNU/Linux distributions.
Regarding
alien
, so far it never failed me, but of course I always did the opposite conversions (
rpm
to
deb
), so I can't tell much about your particular case.
By the way, I think you're misunderstanding the word "freedom" used in the "free software" context. Freedom is about
"user freedom", not freedom of choice (although in some way it's the result of having user freedom). Please read
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html [
www.gnu.org] and watch at least several lectures by Richard M. Stallman to understand what "free software" actually stands for.
The example of Adobe or Maxon's Cinema 4D misses the point. It's not the free software community that is to blame for the lack of GNU/Linux versions of Adobe's and Maxon's proprietary programs, but those corporations themselves. Free software community can do nothing about it. If you wish Adobe software to be ported to GNU/Linux, you can join the discussion on their corporate community forum, but your voice is guaranteed to be ignored.
Fortunately Substance Painter and Designer still do have GNU/Linux versions and that's all I care for when it comes to their products. Their other software has either good to excellent replacements, which are free or proprietary programs, like GIMP/Krita, Inkscape, Darktable, Fusion, DaVinci Resolve, 3D Coat, etc. or can be run in Wine (like ZBrush).
Dual BootingRegarding dual booting, I think it's counterproductive and relatively unsafe, but that's my own subjective opinion. There are probably as many people who are satisfied with their dual boot setup, as there are those cursing it after having their bootloader botched by a Windows update.
In dual boot setups data exchange can be solved by sharing a disk partition formatted to file system readable by both operating systems, though Windows support of different file systems is extremely narrow. I believe
ext4
is supported by WSL, so this could be the optimal choice because of its reliability and resistance to fragmentation.
I'm a person who believes that jumping into deep water brings more incentive to learn how to swim than gradually walking into the sea. Metaphorically speaking. We humans almost always choose the path of least resistance, so dual booting might be a temptation to default to Windows if even the slightest problem with GNU/Linux occurs. I think the best way of learning GNU/Linux is to run it for some time on a frequently used separate computer, like a home laptop. This gives plenty of time to familiarize oneself with operating system's intricacies, learn how to look for help, and how to solve common problems.
If you absolutely require some software that is available only for Windows, then running Windows in a Virtual Machine, like
qemu
, with a dedicated video card in passthrough mode might be more convenient and is definitely safer that using a dual boot configuration. The performance should be identical to running Windows outside the VM, although this setup is more costly, because it requires a second GPU.
Summa SummarumWhat makes me use GNU/Linux? Before I made a switch, I've been testing GNU/Linux for about a year on a pair of laptops I used for home tasks and entertainment, but also to test out programs that I use in my work. The list below contains several of my observations which turned into main reasons for me to migrate to this operating system.
- Richard Matthew Stallman.
- Free (libre) operating system.
- Huge software base, comprised predominantly of libre programs (or on some distributions, like Trisquel or Parabola, even exclusively).
- No spyware, adware, advertisements, backdoors, or any other anti-features. And if they are spotted, they can be cut out from the source code either by you or the community.
- Privacy friendly.
- Not owned by corporations. They do fund kernel development to a large degree, but because of the GNU GPL 2.0 license that the kernel uses, it can be forked into a new project if things start to go in the wrong direction.
- Much better resource allocation than Windows, which translates directly into better overall performance.
- Software repositories maintained by trustworthy people.
- Software installation done with package manager, instead of by downloading some random binaries from the Internet and wishing for the best.
- Uninstalled software is truly uninstalled (ergo: there remains no residue in the form of files).
- Plenty of small programs that "do one thing well" which can be piped together to do complex things.
- Linux console.
- Modularity, customizability.
- If configured properly, stable and secure to the point of boredom.
- Mostly POSIX-compliant.
- Filesystem Hierarchy Standard and XDG Base Directory Specification which clearly define where each file should go. On Windows, it's a mess.
- Configuration based on text files instead of on a central registry. So called "dotfiles" are great.
- Supports a plethora of robust file systems.
- Uses reliable open standards pretty much for everything.
- Easy, robust and quick upgrade system.
- Thanks to detailed logs it's very easy to solve problems when they occur.
- Great documentation for pretty much every program, available through man-pages.
- The whole operating system can be easily moved to another computer. Impossible on Windows.
- Fantastic and knowledgeable community always open to questions and serving with good advice.
After spending a year with GNU/Linux on my laptops, I knew my way around enough to solve most problems that may occur. So I installed Debian on an external HDD plugged into my workstation, in order to see if there would be no problems with the hardware. After an uneventful month, during which I barely used Windows, I fully migrated and never looked back ever since. Now all my computers and computers of my closest family are running it.
So this was my rationale, plus advice on how to do the switch pretty much painlessly. Note that if you have never had any prior contact with GNU/Linux, the switch will not be an overnight process, so some time investment
is required, It helps a lot if you have a friend who knows his way around this operating system.
Oh boy, that was a lot of text to type. Maybe you'll find it useful, maybe not, but there you go.