Hi SMB Community!
A big thank you to everybody who took part in the OS Preference forum discussion - it was great to see so many responses and I really enjoyed seeing the details on what people liked about their OS of choice. Sometimes I get a little buried in my Linux bubble and it was genuinely interesting to get feedback from the wider community on what you use.
There were a number of points raised with Windows on security, device support and standardization that were all interesting - but the point that got raised the most was application support on Windows, and so I thought it might be interesting to dig into that. I would love to hear what are the key applications for folk in the SMB community. I'm assuming MS office is a requirement - but any others that are considered "must haves"? Comment below!
Applications through Linux
From my personal point of view, despite having worked on Linux systems for over 20 years, my default work system up until just a couple of years ago was Windows. This was entirely driven by work requirements - needing access to Microsoft Office, Outlook and Skype for Business. As browser based solutions started becoming available and improving in quality I was able to transition fully to my preference of a Linux based system and have generally found it to be trouble free.
Making the switch to browser versions
It took me a while to get used to using the browser version of Outlook but I love the fact that I can now switch from my desktop to a laptop and just pick up emails where I left off. I wouldn't switch back to the native client even if it was available on Linux now. We use MS teams in Lenovo and whilst they have a native Linux client I've found the browser based version to be better and very usable. I have some slight niggles about notifications that I hope gets fixed.
There are a number of free office alternatives (which incidentally run on Windows too!) -
- LibreOffice - Main office alternative I use
- Only Office - Good experiences with this alternative
I do sometimes have issues with PowerPoint slides - it's the main reason that every now and then I'll need to fire up Windows if I have to edit some existing PowerPoints (I tend to avoid PowerPoint if I can so it's relatively rare).
My biggest missing application on Linux is Adobe Digital Editions (which I found a solution to listed below) - otherwise I've always been able to find a Linux application that covers my needs.
Running Windows apps on Linux
There are a few solutions for running Windows applications on Linux.
- The main one is Wine which I've had mixed results with.
- I recently tried Crossover and it's impressive - it worked straight off for me and the install was pretty simple; definitely something I think I'm going to try and use more (it solved my Adobe DE issue!).
Final Thoughts
I love that the tech ecosystem is seeing more cross-platform development. Applications run on Windows, OSx, mobile and Linux well. There are some really exciting cross-platform development environments like Flutter that are making it easier and easier for developers to build their application to run everywhere and still look good.
Let me know any thoughts - would love to get your feedback.
Mark