This PC is basically my life, I use it for work (freelance business), entertainment, and to self host a server so I’m hesitant. I have a handful of questions for now while I look into it more:

  1. I’d prefer not to dual boo, but it might be the safest way to start? If I dual boot, get used to Linux and (hopefully) get everything I need working, can I then go from dual boot to erasing the Windows partition and recombining so I then only have Linux installed and can keep the work and programs I already installed on Linux?

  2. I do voiceover work, music production, and digital art/photography. Anyone else here do all this and what programs would you recommened to replace Audition, Photoshop, and Cubase?

–2.1. Regarding music production, has anyone successfully used vst files from Windows on Linux?

  1. The drives for my server are NTFS. Does anyone have experience with this format on Linux (I use Emby)?

  2. My bread and butter right now is voice acting so I NEED everything to play nice. I’ve read there might be some issues with drivers for my hardware, namely Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 and Behringer UV1. Anyone have any experience with this?

EDIT: Wow that’s a lot of responses. I’d like to respond to each but I’m a bit overwhelmed with all the info haha. I think I’m gonna grab an old external USB drive and live boot from there and test things out. Thanks to everyone, I’ve got a tonne to mull over now. Appreciate it!

  • ijhoo@lemmy.ml
    11·
    18 hours ago
    1. Dual boot should be ok. If and when you decide to fully switch, I’d say it’s better to do a reinstall. Messing with partitions always comes with disclaimers. A bit advanced topic if you are interested: when you resize partition usually data needs to be moved, depending what you do with it, so it will wear your ssd; also you should be aware that you must install windows first, Linux second because windows doesn’t really play well with others and be sure NOT to format EFI partition when installing Linux.

    You have alternatives to dual boot: VMs. Run Linux on bare metal, then boot up a VM if you need something only windows can provide. Gnome has a new VM tool incoming.

    1. No idea for audio, but Photoshop has alternative, gimp. Wether you like it or not, it’s another story (people I know really really hate that one). For digital art there is a tool called Krita that runs on kde. People really enjoy using it.

    2. NTFS has one thing that Linux doesn’t really like - it is case insensitive. Linux normally works with case sensitive filesystems. There was recently a rant by the Linux overlord about case insensitive filesystems, so you might want to stay clear of it. It’s ok to use it on a thumb drive though.

    Edit: minor typing fixes