Software compat for linux is nearly total and complete except for two REAL ANNOYING CATEGORIES:
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John Deere ass corpo ass software for interfacing with maker devices
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effing E-Sports and wannabe E-Sports (HUNT)
but all of my weird old crap works just fine HBU
The one reason I shamefully went back to dual booting is because of sim racing. Logitech wheels are the only ones with official Linux support, Fanatec has reverse engineered open source drivers but that’s about it, and as for the actual games a lot of them are unfortunately shaky or don’t run at all on Linux. ACC for example works without problem, while iRacing from what I recall is still technically possible to run, but will get you banned because its anti cheat doesn’t work.
Once I get more comfortable with my Japanese reading skills, I want to play visual novel games. But like, they’re mostly 2010s era games that were still 32-bit and on like Windows 7. But on top of that, I need to use Textractor to be able to hook the games to have selectable text (for flashcard creation and easy word lookups). So I followed a guide to have this unholy setup on Lutris that lets me start up a VN and textractor at the same time. Anyway worked for one game but another is like, MEGA slow when I start it and glitchy… (Nitro+chiral fuck you)
Gonna stick with manga and my hacked 3DS for now lol 😅
Can’t beat a Hacked New 3DS.
Some software for programming an old RadioShack scanner that was last updated in 2003. Since the scanner connects over a serial port, it works perfectly.
Winamp. It’s the only audio software that supports tons of game audio formats.
I got it running in WINE, but file association has been a pain and every single time WINE launches my system locks up for a good 30 seconds.
It’s the only software that whips the llama’s ass.
What kinds of formats does Winamp support that VLC doesn’t support?
A combination of PSF/NSF/2SF/USF, various PCM streams, along with stuff like VGM, GBS and SPC.
Fascinating, thanks for sharing. I didn’t check for every one of those but surprisingly the ones I did check, VLC doesn’t support.
Apparently I should have asked if you’d tried foobar2000, because it has support for all of those, or Audio Overload, which has support for many of them.
PSF
Interesting, it appears Winamp supported PSF via a plugin that basically handled hardware emulation. I found a still open ticket from 2015 for adding support to VLC, though.
According to https://www.vgmpf.com/Wiki/index.php?title=PSF, foobar2000, which has a Linux client, has support. I’ve used foobar2000 before and it’s decent.
Audio Overload is also listed, with a parenthetical - though it’s possible that support has improved since the article was last updated (in 2019). I’ve never used it myself, though.
NSF
Per https://www.vgmpf.com/Wiki/index.php?title=NSF the same players are available, this time without a warning on Audio Overload (notably this article is from 2022). Nosefart is also listed as supporting it and having Linux support.
2SF
https://www.vgmpf.com/Wiki/index.php?title=2SF only lists foobar2000 and Winamp
Various PCM Streams
That’s a lot - and I suspect some of those are supported by VLC based off the codecs listed - but according to https://github.com/vgmstream/vgmstream, foobar2000 has a plugin for vgmstream.
VGM
https://www.vgmpf.com/Wiki/index.php?title=VGM lists foobar2000 and Audio Overload, as well as VGMPlay, which I’ve never heard of before.
GBS
https://www.vgmpf.com/Wiki/index.php?title=GBS again lists foobar2000 and Audio Overload
SPC
https://www.vgmpf.com/Wiki/index.php?title=SPC - same deal.
The first thing I did when I migrated was look for foobar2000, as I knew it rivaled Winamp in compatibility. Couldn’t find a Linux client. Only Windows/Mac. Unfortunately it looks like Audio Overload went Mac only, but the legacy 2.0 version is still available for Linux so I might give that a try.
looks like it’s the sdk’s
if you’re on arch based it’s in the aur https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/foobar2000
and if not I’m sure ya can figure it out 😁
That aur package is still just using wine to run it though.
shit it does, wait with that I’m not sure foobar has Linux support at all - just a lot of wine integrations
I haven’t tried it personally, but there is a Linux software called QMMP, which is kinda like a winamp clone.
Maybe it has compatibility with said formats?
What formats are we talking about, exactly?
honestly proton and lutris are godsends for getting old software to work. I feel like I can get old exes working on Linux that wouldn’t work on windows
I think the closest to obscure software I’ve had to use Lutris to get working is some crossword puzzle maker that only has a windows version. One day it just stopped working using just wine, so I switched to Lutris just to make it work.
Edit:
The software was last updated July 27 2022. It can generate HTML and interactive HTML when you’re finished, which is why I got it. That, and it was the first open source one I found for windows. Only got it on my laptop because I knew it had features I care about and would most likely run fine through wine.
It’s Crossword Designer.
I’m still trying to emulate windows 3.1 games
Wouldn’t using DOSbox or something similar and installing win3.1 on top of that be easier? Or just go the whole distance and use something like PCemu.
Dosbox + Win3.x is an extreme pain in the ass. I have tried. As a result I’m just writing a Linux version of that old program.
it was a sad day when Wine removed their old support for 16bit games. Wine used to run eg. Castle of the Winds just fine, though admittedly there was a very minor graphical glitch with tiling, but the game worked fine.
Now I’m back to just running win3.1 in dosbox for the game :P
I got Populous 3 running perfectly out of the box, when Windows doesn’t really manage it. It’s impressive.
I’ve gotten obscure GitHub applications with only .exe files running through steam & proton. Only time I touch Lutris is for game launchers other than steam.
Moorhuhn Kart
*Moorhuhn Kart Extra
Also, a top tier username you got there!
I had problems getting the scan software that came with my Fujitsu scanner to run. While i can use the scanner with Linux software, I haven’t found anything that works well for scanning large numbers of documents. Luckily they also have an Android app.
