[kettleballroll]

> I'm a power user that games... so Windows it is. For now. The moment I don't need Windows to game, and Wine can run all my legacy apps, then I'm jumping ship to Linux.

As a power user that games on Linux, and has been for a decade -- what's stopping you right now? Which apps specifically tie you to Windows?

[lordfrito]

Great question -- I run Microsoft Money -- it's managed my finances since 1995 -- I've got 30 years of financial transaction history in there I don't want to bail on. Sure it's old but it's always got the job done, I have no complaints other than it can no longer update stock prices from the internet. It's actually my most critical app to me, much more than gaming.

Last time I ran Wine it wasn't up to the task, graphical glitches etc. My financial package is too critical to me to live with downtime. I thought about trying to import to Quicken etc but all of the mainstream financial apps have become online subscription services -- that seems like a downgrade to me. Open to any suggestions here.

So, for the time being I'm still running windows. Until recently it hasn't been much of a problem for me. But with each upgrade Windows is becoming more and more of a thorn in my side. With Windows 11 being force fed to us it seems I'm going to be forced to migrate to Linux this year. Not looking forward to the transition of my daily workflow. I just want to run my apps, not play with a new OS. The pain is real.

Any suggestions on what Linux distro I'll have the easiest time migrating to?

[573v14n7]

Microsoft Money has basically been discontinued at this point, so there's no real guarantee it's going to keep working on Windows. Meanwhile Wine-HQ lists Microsoft Money Plus Deluxe Sunset as a "Platinum" level supported application, which means it should run essentially perfectly on any current Linux distribution.

Pick the distribution which seems the best fit and try it again. As Money is no longer being updated, support is only going to get better in Wine and worse on Windows from now on.

Even if you don't move to a different OS, since your data and Money are so important and Money is not particularly demanding in terms of hardware, it might still be a good idea to migrate money into a VM with a fully supported OS to insulate it from changes to the underlying OS. That would simplify backups, and guarantee that you can continue to use it essentially indefinitely even if you choose to use an ARM architecture Mac or Chromebook in the future.

Both VMware and VirtualBox are free for noncommercial use, available for all popular platforms, and allow easy snapshots and full backups. If you backup your VM to a cloud service you could lose literally all of your possessions in a disaster and still be in a position to recover everything onto nearly any computer within minutes.

[qwelias]

get a cheap laptop, move your windows dependencies onto it, keep it isolated

then your main machine can be moved to Linux

i personally just have an old ssd with windows installed on it just in case, always can boot from it if I need to (just don't like dealing with VMs)