[rjsimmon]

This is something I may have to give some serious consideration to. After the current MS OS build and its repetitive failures (had to rebuild the OS 7 times and don’t get me started on the “ClassPNP.sys” issue...), Ubuntu may be a viable alternative. My concern is that the apps I need might not run under the Ubuntu kernel. My wife does a considerable amount of photo editing and our financial software is tied to our credit union, losing either of those would be a deal breaker.

[markomalley]

This is something I may have to give some serious consideration to. After the current MS OS build and its repetitive failures (had to rebuild the OS 7 times and don’t get me started on the “ClassPNP.sys” issue...), Ubuntu may be a viable alternative. My concern is that the apps I need might not run under the Ubuntu kernel. My wife does a considerable amount of photo editing and our financial software is tied to our credit union, losing either of those would be a deal breaker.

My machine has 16GB of RAM, so I have no problem running VMs. That's what I've done with Windoze: I have a VM on Virtualbox running on 3 cores with 4 GB of RAM...when I need to make a change, I clone the VHD and make the change on the new VM until I am certain that there won't be a problem. When I need to run the Windows apps, I use the VM; otherwise, I just run on Linux (which is about 75-80% of the time at a minimum).

[Westbrook]

Yup. I have a W10 VM running in VBox on Fedora-23 for things that only Windows can do. I use bridged network, so it just looks like another machine on my network.

[martin_fierro]

“My wife does a considerable amount of photo editing and our financial software is tied to our credit union, losing either of those would be a deal breaker.”

The GIMP for photo editing ; financial software may be a problem tho

[taxcontrol]

For windows apps in the Linux world, you have three options:

- convert to a Linux app. Many times this is the better option. A lot of MS Office apps have alternatives that are just as good or better than the existing app. For example: GIMP is a photo editor that many feel is very close to Photoshop. https://www.gimp.org/

- run in an emulator. WINE and PlayonLinux are emulators that allow windows applications to run inside Linux. Photoshop is on of the supported apps

- run windows inside Linux. Virtualbox allows for the creation and execution of a virtual windows environment inside Linux. This is often used to support those applications that only run occationally and there is simply not an alternative.

What the names of the two apps you have most concern about.