I feel this post is needed here
Now that I've seen some complaints about new features of Windows, Adobe Animate being slaughtered (although as I am not familiar with the software itself I only heard rumors).
But before we start I need to state: I am no tech specialist, I share what I know and can do.
So I come in with something that could be a solution, if not for everyone then for some of you. And it contains some alternatives to pricey programs too!
Also if you've got an old laptop that's on its last leg - Linux can give it few years more!
Switch to Linux
It's simple and to some extent reversible (If you use filezilla on some free hard drive)
I know it sounds scary and it's not something you're familiar with, but there exist user friendly distros.
Which leads us to...
Distros
It can be intimidating there's so many to choose from. I personally have been using Linux Mint Cinnamon for years. The other distros I checked out were:
Puppy Linux - very light, good for really old machines. It's for basic stuff really.
Ubuntu Studio - mainly for artists, comes with a lot of related software but is a bit heavy. Also I personally ran into issues with headphone drivers (no one could hear me during online classes). Then again it was 6 years ago, I might've screwed something up.
Peppermint OS - my first encounter with Linux I believe. I had it on my first own laptop. Also a small distro perfect for older machines.
Manjaro (XFCE/Cinnamon) - similar to Mint but with different package manager: Mint has apt whereas Manjaro uses pacman). If for any reason you dislike Mint I'd use this one.
Okay, these are the few I tried and can speak of, I won't pretend I know them all.
So, what about the thing that connects us? Which is...
Games
The very thing we all love and draw fanart/write fics/hallucinate daily about. I won't lie, it's not always easy to make game working on Linux, ESPECIALLY IF IT'S FROM EA. So, my Dragon Age/Mass Effect friends, this could be the end of a ride. No proton fixes from Steam could help me. Funny enough I think I can still play The Sims 3. Other than that it all seems fine, though sometimes it takes a bit of working around to make the gods of electronic entertainment bless us with a good time.
There are two friends who can help you though.
Wine (basically a translation layer for running windows programs)
Bottles (program that runs windows software)
They don't always work perfectly, sometimes they demand some digging in their insides but 99% of time I was satisfied.
Doesn't solve the EA problem sadly.
Thank god I have a PS3
How about other software?
This page contains artists and unholy wizards of Ao3 so I'll focus on any software that may be of your general interest.
Writers
This is the easiest one - for writing there's Libre Office, for viewing there's Okular.
Also if you're using Google Docs or Ellipsus they're still in the browser. And when there's a screen AO3 shall be seen.
And Obsidian is available for Linux too!
Sadly Libre Office is a bit wooden when it comes to editing text aesthetically. The programs to achieve that (f.x. Scribus and Abiword; Abiword can be found in the software manager, the site I found turned out to be an ad farm for which I apologize; thank you tons @balancandomickgrande for pointing out!) can be a bit clonky too. Haven't really tried to edit text with them but if anyone has an experience - please share!
Drawing buddies
I haven't checked whether CPS works on linux so if any of you know - tell me!
But there's Krita which works amazing, has a dedicated community and tons of free brush packages for you to choose from! And if you want to see what can be made with it - look here.
Over the years I used different tablets for linux:
Huion H430P
Huion 1060 Plus
Wacom Intuos Art Draw S
Huion Kamvas 13 (current tablet)
I never ran into any issue using tablets with Linux other than not always being able to program the keys (but I use the good old keyboard for that anyway). Or I haven't dug into the issue enough, but my friend who also uses Linux and draws digital art ran into similar issues iirc.
3D Artists/Animators
Blender is your best friend. Krita can be used to do animations too but I've never tried that (Never did animation too so it's uncharted territory for me; once again if you know something about the topic, feel free to add!). The amount of stuff that can be done with Blender is crazy! Look this up to see the true capability of that free program. And for film editing I can't recommend Kdenlive enough. Any video shitpost I put on my blog is made with this gem of a program. Seems confusing at first but once I got a grasp on how to make stuff work it's my ride or die in shitposting. Viewing stuff? VLC can save you.
Musicians/Podcasters
For you my dear fellows I can offer quite the few solutions: simple voice recording? Audacity can do, though it's limited. For musicians it'll do best for voice and up to two instruments? I don't know, although I had a friend who did at least one album using it. For more complex stuff - Ardour (I'm still in the "I'm scared to get there because I don't know what half of the buttons do" phase but it seems to be good for music with more than two or three tracks). Spotify works on Linux, I use it almost daily so no worries here, there's an app in the software manager (aka Linux app store). For writing music I've got two programs I can recommend - Tuxguitar for writing tabs (but notes for guitar can also be written there!) down and MuseScore for general composing (it has tons of instruments in). There's also LMMS with similar use as MuseScore. It all really depends what kind of music you make. I don't know how external hardware works with it, I can only say that my Behringer C1-U does its work.
Finishing thoughts
With everything more or less covered let's jump to the summary. Linux is free and won't force anything on you (even updates are a gentle reminder in the background rather than FUCK YOU WE MUST RESTART NOW). No AI will ever get you there (other than Google's if you use Google Docs but I've seen you folks jumping to Ellipsus <3). But it has its downsides, as aforementioned EA issue (fuckyoueafuckyoueaihateyouguysgivemebackmylavellan) and occasionally you'll have to dig into technicalities to make something work.
I am happy to give an advice here and there but I am no tech support. And even if you don't decide to switch I hope I at least provided some good alternatives to paid programs (with costs of live increasing it's great to save a penny here and there, especially when greedy companies begin to yeet AI everywhere (pls tell me that color picker was a joke).
If you decide to do anything though - for the love of all that is holy
CREATE A BACKUP
Should anything go wrong you can go back and don't have any files lost. And if you have a feeling you may want to go back - Filezilla has you covered. Just keep an eye if it goes well from time to time (flashing everything to be revived later takes a while; been there myself and something went wrong the first time).
And a very important rule I've been taught -
Make sure you know how to reverse anything before you attempt to do it.
*Phew*, now I believe I talked about everything. If you've got questions, just ask! If not me then forums and discords based around certain distros probably hold an answer to anything you've got!
Happy Linuxing everybody!
