what do I need to do to run windows software and steam/EA games on ubuntu desktop

[tross9]

the main reason for this post was this,
( the short answer -- i would prefer not to have to use new Windows 10 at all, because of the apps MS is requiring us to use. (edge, etc..)

-- the long answer --
i'm running windows 10 build 18363 ( i did not want to upgrade to windows 10 at all because of the complaints i heard but i had too)
when i first install windows 10 , i used the windows debloater PowerShell script (found it on the web) to dejunk windows ( remove/disable Cortana, Edge, cloud , and the rest of the trash Microsoft adds.)
i upgraded to the latest build and found that Microsoft made it harder to remove their trash apps. ( the Debloater script updated for the new build , does not remove or disable all that it did the first time , looks like MS is forcing those apps)

i reverted back to 18363, i don't like were windows is going and prefer to control what my pc loads and does. ( Microsoft is getting into Big data and their apps need to capture what you do, in order to support their Big data project).
and all those apps adds over head to the PC. ( not to mention the Big Brother aspect )

i'll look at WSL , and maybe creating a Linux os with a virtual windows system could work.

again thanks.

[TheFu]

WSL lacks all sorts of capabilities that a VM provides. Any Core2 Duo or faster CPU with 6+ GB of RAM can easily run Linux inside a full VM.
Setup your network firewall to block most MS stuff and only allow access to the virtual machine running Linux to online resources.

Most of us here have ended up with a hybrid solution. My firewall is busy blocking most of what MSFT's OS wants to send. Linux is my daily use solution.

[scorp123]

Linux is my daily use solution.

Same here. Especially at home. But at work? I sometimes don't have this choice and have to use the OS that an employer mandates. And in such a setting WSL has proven very useful for me.

[scorp123]

i would prefer not to have to use new Windows 10 at all, because of the apps MS is requiring us to use. (edge, etc..)

So... why not dual-boot then? Do your serious work (e.g. banking, writing mails, surfing the web, etc.) on Linux so Microsoft won't track you. But keep a Windows 10 partition for gaming, and just for gaming and nothing more.

This would be kind of "best of both worlds". Windows 10 would only get booted up for the occasional gaming session and rarely for much else. Not much to track there if you keep it that way.

[CatKiller]

Steam is easy: it's native. There are thousands of Linux games on Steam.

Windows games on Steam are easy: the Linux Steam client has a fork of Wine, called Proton, built in. You can see how well particular Windows games work in Proton at ProtonDB. Some are going to work better than others, obviously.

DOSBox is easy: it's native.

Unity, Blender, Handbrake, OBS, MySQL are all native. Powershell is native, but you might come to prefer the standard shells which Powershell is trying to emulate. There are plenty of video editors, image editors, scripting utilities and IDEs. You'll still be able to do the same tasks, even if you're using different tools than the ones you've used before.

Non-Steam Windows games are easiest handled by Lutris. It sets up containers so that each game can have its own version of Wine, and can automatically apply tweaks that people have found necessary for particular games.

I don't have any EA games, but my understanding is that the games themselves work pretty readily, but EA keep breaking their mandatory launcher. I only tried one Blizzard game, but that worked without any problems in Lutris.

[tross9]

these are all good suggestions, i'll give them a try.

I do have a laptop that is a core 2 duo, that i can use as a test site, so that if i mess up i won't lose anything.

thanks again.

[oldfred]

If using an older system, a lightweight flavor is probably better.
Ubuntu using gnome3 expects newer systems with more RAM & better video cards/chips.

https://ubuntu.com/download/flavours
Light weight flavors:
Lubuntu, xubuntu, Ubuntu MATE, Budgie

My old Core2 Duo laptop from 2006 has only 1.5GB of RAM.
I used to install Ubuntu, then converted to using "fallback" gui which was lighter weight when Ubuntu converted to Ubiquity from old gnome2. Typically slow with Ubuntu even then. And limited on how many apps I could load at once.
With 20.04, it would not install Ubuntu. Ended up installing server & then adding fallback.

But then converted desktop to Kubuntu and tried that on laptop. Bit surprised as Kubuntu not a lightweight flavor but it works reasonable well. Desktops now have SSD, so old laptop is slow in comparison, but functional.