Okay, all you who post on every post “you should just switch to Linux”. Here’s your chance. I’m someone who really does want to run Linux on the desktop. I run Linux servers at home, was a Unix sysadmin for years running Linux on the desktop in the '90s. But now I’m in sales and run Windows at work (actually very happily with some help from StartAllBack and Rufus).
I want to replace my Macs at home. Since they removed upgradable RAM and disk, I am no longer willing to pay the high tax for the few little things they do better. But there is some functionality I just cannot seem to find replacements for. This is where you folks who say “I should just switch to Linux” come in. Tell me how please:
Requirement 1) I have heavily invested in my local music library on iTunes. 1200 albums. I have little to no interest in streaming services. I want to organize my music with * ratings from 1-5 and from that have smart playlists that autopopulate and sort themselves by * ratings and genre. I have more than 40 of these types of playlists and it’s completely unworkable to populate them manually.
Requirement 2) I must be able to sync my music library in full to my phone. I use an iOS phone now, but I could even be convinced to switch to Android if there was a good solution. I am not willing to go in and select 100 different playlists manually to sync. It must completely replicate what’s on my desktop on my phone, 100% locally, including all the afformentioned smart playlists. I travel a lot for work and want my music always available even when there’s no network.
Requirement 3) My job really doesn’t require much more than Office and a browser, but it requires very heavy use of those things. Firefox is fine for the browser, so no trouble there, but I need full fledged Outlook, OneNote and most of the features of Excel at a minimum. Word I can take a bit of a hit on as long as I can save something that others can open. Ideally I would want to run the Windows version of these tools. I will not be able to live with only the browser versions, that I’m 100% sure of.
Requirement 4) I’d really like some sort of decent photo management tool. I can probably manage just by keeping them organized in folders and having google photos suck that in, but I don’t much trust Google, so would like to have a second tool that can also do a good job at replacing MacOS’ Photos app. AI image recognition and search a-la Google Photos would be the cherry on top.
Requirement 5) I need to be able to scan in batches from my Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner into Evernote. I use this on mobile, other OS’, etc. and have a lot of organization built into it now that I really don’t want to try to migrate from.
That’s it. 5 high level requirements that must be met. Is it possible?
No.
If you ever so carefully paint yourself into a corner then the corner is where you will be stuck. How badly do you want out of your corner?
There are FOSS and SAAS options that could work if you wanted them to… but whether they will depends on you.
Meat eaters trying to become vegetarian for ethical reasons often fail because the “un-meat” options out there don’t meet their standards. Success almost always requires some letting go and re-adjusting. If you are not open to that then don’t force yourself to put up with something you don’t really want.
Agreed. You need to be willing to migrate to FOSS software or else “switching to Linux” will be a total failure.
More than happy to, but it needs to perform the job.
Still you’re adamant on M$ Office, nothing can replace that, because you obviously need every single (anti-)feature, including the M$ logo in the settings. The only thing I can see is Outlook, if it is integrated with your work somehow, but then you should get a dedicated work device anyway, because installing company stuff on private devices is a bad idea.
Written like a true neckbeard, dripping with contempt, even going out of his way to deliberately type MS wrong. This is why normal people people don’t like Linux - for all the righteous idiots.
Now brace for the response…
I’m not adamant on office, I just need to be able to do work on my device, that means exchange syncing at a minimum. Otherwise I can’t do anything. I have a work provided device but work from my home machines too (totally allowed by company policy).
Why is work not providing a laptop to you? Making/allowing you do work on a BYOD is insanity from a security perspective. I hope your company doesn’t have to go through PCI compliance audits or do any kind of transactions with the general public’s credit cards…
To be clear: what I wrote here is not a linux user’s opinion, but rather someone who works infosec for a Windows-based organization.
With that being said, you can use O365 apps through the browser just fine as long as you work out of your OneDrive or your team’s SharePoint storage exclusively. You can even use Outlook/Exchange through O365.
But if you can, I’d push for a company laptop even if you stick with your Macs. Mixing personal devices with work is a baaaaad idea for both parties.
I have a company laptop. I leave it at work.
I have two company laptops. One lives at home. BYOD computers are still a bad idea.
Thunderbird rolled out support for exchange (mostly)
I’d only get working on private devices if you have a very specific and good working workflow, which would be totally destroyed by using the company device. In my case, I just can’t work on Windows, with a stacking WM. So I mostly write code on my private machine, push it to git and download it to my dev machine.
That’s bullshit. I can’t do my work without connecting to exchange. It’s not something I can find an alternative for.
Giving up the organization of my data that I’ve worked for 20+ years to achieve is simply not worth it just to move platforms.
People love to go around telling people to move to Linux, but then expect everyone to sacrifice all the useful stuff they do with their computers to do so. Until desktop Linux can cover basic desktop use cases it will be a useless endeavor for most people.
I don’t think music, photo, document management and groupware should be some unobtainable goal for a desktop os.
I didn’t say it was unobtainable. But it might look/behave quite different than the tools you are currently using.
As for Microsoft Exchange, I only use that for work, and my employer would not allow me to connect from my personal machine anyway. I am not saying that you that you have to give up your favorite tools… but I am saying that it you are putting up so many fences then you might as well stay with what you have.
As with all things, there’s a trade off: how much do you value the [convenience/ecosystem/insert other thing that proprietary system offers you] compared to the ongoing cost - monetarily but also in terms of privacy, market manipulation, environmental impact, etc. of supporting and relying on the proprietary system.
You can’t do your work without connecting to Exchange because Microsoft has leveraged decades of monopolistic gains to make Outlook the default option for any “serious” business, and has invested even further in making inconvenient (or soon impossible) to connect to Exchange from outside their sanctioned walled gardens. Demanding that Linux solve that for you is akin to demanding that the person commuting on bike undo a century of automotive-centric urban expansion in the US so that they don’t interrupt your commute. It’s not their fault they can’t solve the problem and it doesn’t help anyone to get mad at them for doing their best to behave rationally in a system stacked to only serve the 1%’s corporate interests.
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Exchange is Microsoft’s SMTP server. Its the thing outlook runs on top of. If OP works in the corporate world, there is no “replacement” cause its not his.
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Tell me you didn’t read the post without telling me you didn’t read the post.
Requirement 3) My job really doesn’t require much more than Office and a browser, but it requires very heavy use of those things. Firefox is fine for the browser, so no trouble there, but I need full fledged Outlook, OneNote and most of the features of Excel at a minimum. […] I will not be able to live with only the browser versions, that I’m 100% sure of.
Full disclosure: I ran manjaro as a daily driver for a while a few years back bad have been forced back on windows as well by company policy. So I’m not going to be the ultimate authority to answer your questions.
All I wanted to comment is that with iTunes and Office you have picked two pieces of software by two companies that have a very strong interest in not letting you migrate away from them. I tried to migrate my gf’s password manager from the iCloud one to bitwarden and it’s amazing the hoops they make you jump through to get at your data. So what you might be experiencing right now is a thing called “vendor lock”, and I wish you the best of luck for finding a way out. ;)I’m fully capable of escaping vendor lock. I’m technical and persistent and have switched platforms at least 5-6 times in the past. I’ve run just about every desktop operating system that has existed since the '80s. The only things that are holding me on Mac are the specific features I’ve mentioned.
The only things that are holding me on Mac are the specific features I’ve mentioned.
Isn’t that the vendor lock part?
I look at vendor lock in more as giving you proprietary file types or other data that simply won’t work on other systems. I’ve been very careful to avoid that by using DRM-free media exclusively for example. Smart playlists and those sort of things are features that can and have been delivered on multiple platforms. The only place where I’d say I’m truly “locked in” is in Echange server integration, but that’s a choice my work made which I have no control over.
Some of these are going to be a bit of a challenge, but let’s put down some keywords you can look into.
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Airsonic or jellyfin in a docker container
- I also recommend a container with lidarr etc. and a qbitorrent locked into a VPN
- smart playlists may take some playing around with, however playlists are just a text file, so in a pinch a python script will do basic things.
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This one’s easy, I use rsync / unison with termux, there’s also syncthing.
- No clue with Apple. Jellyfin and airsonic stream well to it though
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Nope, if this is a deal breaker, stop now. If your flexible however:
- Excel: python, Jupyter, R and libre Office
- Rmarkdown will produce reports
- OneNote: Joplin, Obsidian, Dokuwiki, tiddlywiki etc (see r/pkms on Reddit)
- Word: markdown with vim, vscode Emacs and then pandoc
- Excel: python, Jupyter, R and libre Office
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Immich, shotwell, F-spot photoprism and I think there’s another KDE tool that has AI
- I’m very happy with immich, it does require docker, which is worth it imo.
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Scanners do work, but I don’t know how you’ll connect it with Evernote.
Probably one of the best responses so far, no idea why you are getting downvoted. I will look into it and get back to you.
Downvotes: Docker is contentious among some in the community.
Based on your use case, you may find your current workflow fairly incompatible with the Linux approach. However, id recommend you try nonetheless, always worth the learning experience even if it’s not your cup of tea.
Feel free to reach out if you need any support. always happy to help.
Unironically recommending OP uses Docker just to run two pieces of software. 🤦🏾♀️
I run many docker containers at home already so this is no issue whatsoever to throw a couple more on.
Absolutely, the portability and encapsulation is great.
If you want to spin it up by hand, go for it, but containers make things very easy with no downsides.
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Well I typically write my own dockerfiles so I have a good understanding of how a lot of software works, I’m sure others do too. It has increased the reproducibility of my stack, my understanding of dependencies and the reliability. Docker is not just
docker compose upYeah the containers can be large and usually will lead to large downloads. I have tried bubble wrap and raw chroots but the tooling around docker is a lot better. The change to php8 was a pain, hence why I went docker. An alpine base with clearly defined deps gives me a container that is thin enough but I can move from a Gentoo box to arch for free. This, for my use case, is great.
I put everything in a docker container and it’s been, mostly, a net positive. You may laugh at me but it works very well for my use case.
Overall, net positive. I recommend everybody try it and use where appropriate.
This isn’t a religion and subscribing to dogma for want of suckless stacks won’t always be the best path to the end goal.
However, you’re right, docker may not always be the best call and it may promote bloated garbage.
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Nix is really useful as well. But it’s not always a one-for-one replacement.
One problem I hit with nix is the size, after adding latex and a few other related packages, The install time took a very long time And the amount of space consumed was over 150 GB.
It wasn’t too bad because I was able to put it on a compressed ZFS data set but it wasn’t great. Whereas distrobox and podman built quicker, had a smaller size and it was easier to move the image between machines.
The other issue I hit with it was having to set environment variables for QT.
Definitely a nice piece of software just a little rough around the edges.
I suppose that’s my point. I have tried alternatives and many are good for many things but Docker works for all things.
But Docker is a bit of a sledgehammer approach by packaging a whole operating system.
I wonder how different that file size would be if you had gone with content addressed derivations. Good points.
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Don’t have a lot of time right now… But if your iTunes library is DRM free music files (Apple moved new purchases to DRM-free some number of years ago when Steve Jobs was still at the helm, however if it’s a song you’ve had a really long time you might have to pay Apple for the DRM-free slightly better quality music file), you’re in good shape with something like Rhythmbox.
On the office side… I’d try using the LibreOffice suite on your current operating system instead of office and see if you can get away with it. It’s the best open source office suite around … and it’s cross platform, so you should be able to tell if that’s going to be a problem without going all in.
I removed all the DRM from my music files, so that’s not a major issue. The smart playlists and syncing to a fully local music app on mobile are that main things.
As far as I can tell, LibreOffice has no replacement for Outlook, which is the main thing I need. I need at least to sync with Outlook servers for all email, tasks, contacts, and calendar items.
I’ve not used it for quite a bit, but look at Thunderbird (a mozilla project iirc), it might do what you want as far as email is concerned. However do note that Microsoft is really closing things down in outlook/office these days, they really don’t like people using a “real” Linux (they want people to use windows with all their crap and start menu ads, and just have a small Linux VM they call the wsl )
I use Thunderbird already. It’s not even 10% of the way there, unfortunately.
Evolution is another GUI client I don’t have a ton of experience with other than proofing it was stable. It exists.
Unironically the most powerful email clients i know on any platform are retro, mutt or emacs (last time I used notmuch, but there’s options). I never bothered to set it up since all the reading and half the writing I do are off my phone these days.
But I don’t know the juice is worth the squeeze starting out, that’s a bit of a hurdle. I’m really curious on use case, what are you missing?
The main thing I need is the full functionality of Exchange server. Sync all the tasks, email, calendar items, and contacts. If it did that, it would have a pretty good chance of getting the job done. Without that I can’t really work from home.
It’s largely a tough nut to crack just because Microsoft is obnoxious about integration. Thunderbird can do it (or used to) in pieces with local AD forest access. I don’t know about remote IMAP access, but you can definitely sneaker net export. It’s the weird formatting on the import side I’m fighting.
I saw someone piping something to local programs through the office 365 electron app, but the least work probably ends run a VM and sync off of or just use that. I didn’t try wine, so others would have to verify emulation works.
Thanks for the data points!
I’m working on trying to pry local office software copies of outlook from the clutched hands of people stuck in the win 7 era.
Well done sync is a hell of a drug.
Interesting about Thunderbird AD forest access. I hadn’t heard of that, and can’t find much info on it.
i plan to get a similar setup (music on homeserver, synced to phone for offline use) but i dont need to sync playlists as i rarely use them, i have a streaming account with one(!) playlist with all the songs i remembered and wanted to listen to but didn’t buy as CD back then and use the radio like streaming options a lot.
but for syncing phone with nextcloud i use FolderSync (Pro) and it works as it should. it has lots of possible sync targets and lots of options to sync one or both ways. i have folders with >8000 files that take some time to sync but it works fine in the background with no prob, i let it sync over mobile network too, cz i value a more reliable in-sync status more than bandwidth. however i didn’t really try “immediate sync” for new/changed files yet as i don’t see the need for this but its one of many options.
however i only use nextcloud sync in one or two-way syncs and once used sftp for a one-way sync, so i cannot judge all the other options, but if your playlists are organized in files, their two-way sync might be as easy as with the songs. i bought the pro version on their website so my license is not bound to a google account.
Syncing files is easy enough. It’s the playlists and metadata that I need.
I think the key is you need to find FOSS software that works for you before migrating your OS. Most FOSS software will run on windows and sometimes MAC.
1-2 and 3 will be hard. You can find many tools that do something similar but it won’t be perfect. There are a few different music managers, and for office libreoffice is the go to.
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try digikam, it supports all OSes
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googling “Fujitsu snap scanner Linux” yielded a few blog articles on the matter. Seems it should be supported.
Digikam looks nice. For the scanner, I’d imagine I can get it connected. I’m wondering if any of the Evernote hacks for linux are usable.
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Before I migrated, I had devised elaborate lists of programs and things I thought I would always want with me. But now, years later, looking back I realize that most of those list items had been replaced by new stuff that I found I like even better, or simply dropped from my routine altogether as I grew to realize they weren’t actually all that essential.
I’m sure this will happen over time, but I need to find some way that I can do my most common tasks first or the migration will never happen.
I saw a good post the other day which suggested to NOT migrate (at first) but instead try to find as many cross-platform apps as possible and use them on your current setup until migrating over would be relatively pain-free. Learn the free applications before switching to the free OS.
I went local with my music collection.
I’m not sure if it ticks all your boxes. But there are many options for subsonic servers and clients - you can probably give it a good test run on Mac/iPhone as well. I managed to migrate from spotify painlessly enough to pass the wife test.
I’m running navidrome as server and tempo on my phone. It’ll either stream from my self-hosted server, or play offline if I’ve downloaded that playlist.
I’m sure you can find apps that do smart playlists. Metadata and regular playlists are easy, though you may need to do a little work to script some kind of conversion.
Outlook doesn’t have a Linux equivalent at all. Thunderbird is great, but it’s a downgrade. I’m not sure how well it would work through Wine or similar. What’s keeping you from OWA?
I think most people use Immich or Photoprism for a local image management program. Try [email protected] for more alternatives.
Any scanner program should be able to scan like you want.
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The smart playlists are actually the part I’ve spent the most time on, at least 3-4 hours over the years. I have found a few things that can do it, but none that can sync them.
Photos are probably the easiest option, I think I could manage with some of the options mentioned here. Immich and Photoprism both look very nice.
I am a very heavy user of Outlook, I use pretty much every feature to the max extent possible as my job is primarily about organization and throughput. Web tools require too many signins, tend to get lost in a pile of tabs, and are almost always stripped down versions of the thick client alternative. I have used OWA over the years occasionally when something wasn’t working locally, and every time I need to, I hate it, it feels like trying to work with both my arms tied behind my back. Things like dragging and dropping emails into other emails, dragging schedule items, dealing with attachments and tasks, etc. are just really painful, and I just spend too much time in outlook to deal with something suboptimal. Wine would probably be the best option for me, even with an older version if needed as long as it worked well and connected to exchange still. I don’t see anyone doing that though.
If it helps, the web versions of O365 have been closing in fairly rapidly on their desktop counterparts to the point that I often find myself working in the web version without realizing it (usually when I open an attachment in Outlook or a Teams shared link). The preview of the new desktop version of Outlook is 99% the same as the web version now.
I don’t know if its possible or not but you might be able to “install” them to your desktop as progressive web apps.
Those 5 requirements are not small things, but as a (relatively) recent linux migrant, here’s my take.
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Keep using iTunes (but use the windows version) - through wine. You get to keep all your stuff as is for now with the possibility of migrating to another service in the future.
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See above, stick with your current device, keep using iTunes for now.
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If it’s for private stuff LibreOffice suite does just fine though + the thunderbird email client. If it’s for work you should probably have a work device, but there is also winapps for linux, which isn’t official by microsoft, so it might be a bit funky.
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Maybe try out proton if you want something trustworthy to back up your photos. They’ve recently added a service for that. Costs a subscription though.
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Keep using evernote. There’s a linux client.
Obviously there will be hickups, and things’d be a lot more smooth if you were willing to make some adjustments, but this is perfectly doable.
Solid advice, thanks. Winapps looks really promising for those things where there is just no other option. I will have to give that a test run.
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I use rhythmbox, but my usecase isn’t quite as extensive as yours. I don’t think it has smart playlist capabilities, for example. But it is able to rip MP3s from CDAs, which is cool.
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I haven’t found anything that will work 100% with iphones on Linux, but I no longer have iphones, so it’s been a while since I’ve looked.
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MS Office used to work fine enough under WINE. I’ve had 0 luck with 365. There’s LibreOffice, which is a great replacement for most things Office (minus Outlook). Thunderbird, I think, has an exchange plug-in. On my home computer, though, I use Outlook web, which has worked just as well as Desktop for my use cases so far. I understand you want Desktop Outlook, so this may be a deal breaker. However, Desktop Outlook New is heading towards WPA anyway, and MS is trying to sync the functionality between desktop and web, so this may only be an issue for a little while.
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I don’t have this use case for my computer, so I can’t really help here. But others on this thread seemed to have provided some nice options.
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not sure you’ll get integration into proprietary software like Evernote, but there are built-in scanning tools that “just work” with every scanner I’ve thrown at it thus far. I do not have the same scanner you do, though.
I recommend grabbing a live ISO of a distro you’re interested in trying (Mint seems to just work for most people, ElementaryOS if you want to maintain that macos look/feel), and just trying it out on RAM. No installation needed, and you can get a better feel if this will work for you. Don’t expect a perfect fit, though. Workflows and solutions will differ from Mac to Linux, just as they do from Mac to Windows. This was one of my reservations, and why I kept finding myself back on Windows and Mac. The end goal, IMO, should be to get out of the walled garden in which you’ve found yourself. Once I realized that, once I switched my goal from ‘finding exact replacements’ to ‘getting out’, switching was much easier and smoother. Good luck! Post any questions you have, and we’ll do our best to guide you right. This is a great and super helpful community (mostly lol).
In terms of recommended distros, I would say have a look at endeavourOS.
A nice compromise between the abstraction of eg Ubuntu and the technical requirements of eg Arch.
I’ve recommended this distribution to quite a few new users to great success.
Personally, I haven’t been a fan on arch systems, but enjoyed the tinkering. Endeavor does seem to be more geared towards someone unfamiliar with arch, which is good. I may give it a try. Thanks for the suggestion!
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I’ve never used it, but Crossover Office was developed largely to get MS Office working on Linux. It looks like it’s still maintained.
It’s at least worth looking into.
I forgot about this. Will look into it again, thanks.
The last time I ran desktop Linux I recall the default music player for KDE being closest in functionality like ratings smart playlists a shuffle mode to select an album at random and play the whole album in correct track order. Looks like “search playlists” in Juk might be the feature you’re looking for. But I can’t recall much in terms of mobile syncing from then.
I’ll assume you have already, but did you look at Plex Amp on Mobile?
For Office, if Evolution can’t do what you want then I’d say to try MS Office under Wine.
Someone else already suggested DigiKam for phitos. I’ve looked at that a little for replacing Lightroom.
Plex amp unfortunately does not allow syncing the whole music library locally. Other than that it looks perfect.
Hi there and congrats on giving the idea of migrating towards digital freedom a go.
I personally havent used macs ever but am on ios still for my phone and was on windows before with outlook, excel and word.
What I did was the following:
Entertainment
I run a plex server that organizes my music library and plays my music on all devices. Some things like sonos still have some issues with flac files but otherwise, playlists and albums are no problem. I dont know how strictly you need everythin on device because apple doesnt let you do that on linux without hacking itunes to run on wine. I stream music from my server and it is always reliable as long as I have minimal connection. There is a download option but I havent tested it. Movies play with no issue.
Office
I fully transitioned to libreoffice on devices and use collabora office with my nextcloud instance when I want to cooperate over cloud services. Outlook has been replaced by thunderbird, events go through nextcloud, synced over all devices.
Photos
Also nextcloud. I sync all my photos between computers and my iphone. Nextcloud is work to set up but it is imho the most integrated solution which gives you a pretty comfortable experience. You can host it yourself or pay someone to host it for you which of course would mean a lot of trust that is needed.
Bonus: security
For the sake of my sanity, my private stuff stays on my home network and the only way in is a vpn which I have automated on my laptop and a linux phone that I‘m working on. Ios afaik needs manual activation but once its synced, you‘re good. That takes the biggest threat away from personal cloud hosting imo. Just secure your home network and there should be no issues.
Let me know if you have any further questions.
P.S.: I would suggest you first build the infrastructure. An old quad core with 8 gb ram, gigabit wired network and two good nas disks in raid 1 with an encrypted off site backup gives you double redundancy.
I’ve got plex and multiple home servers/NAS’ already. All my non laptop machines run RAID on all their disks (even SSD’s). They all have not just one but multiple offsite backups.
Plex is close to being the solution to the music as it’s one of the few options with smart playlists, but it doesn’t yet allow syncing the entire music library to mobile in any usable way.
Nextcloud looks very promising. The Exchange integration options are not great, but the software itself looks really nice. Thanks for the headsup on that.
I started using FOSS apps on OSX until I got familiar with them, then moving to Linux was a lot easier.
There’s a lot of people in this thread saying it’s possible, some saying it’s not and more than is really healthy saying there’s something wrong with you.
But the question I can’t help but ask is should you switch to Linux.
I don’t think so.
You’re trying to get away from the high price of Apple hardware, not out of a general unwillingness to pay for expensive things, but because the ram and storage in the computers are no longer upgradable.
To do so you’d have to find bespoke solutions based on new software and systems you might not be familiar with and which mill most likely face loss of maintainers and updates some time in the near future.
That’s not a dealbreaker really, but the general trend in laptops is moving away from replaceable memory. Sure at the moment you generally can still replace the disk, but for how long? Are you thinking that apples ahead of the curve on system on chip devices or that they’re making a misstep? Personally I think anyone your age or mine will have a hard time buying new computers that don’t have everything built into the board or processor before we shuffle off. I could be wrong though.
Let’s say it doesn’t matter though, just in dollars amortized over the life of the hardware, how much are you really saving by upgrading the memory and storage?
I tend to run five + year old macs and for the oldest ones, the 12 year old MacBooks, I got lots more life out of em by doubling the installed memory to 16gb and going from hdd to ssd. How much money was really saved though? Maybe ten bucks a month at the most.
Are you keeping em for fifteen years or cycling out every five or so?
Newer Macs which already have ssds don’t see near the stark performance change that we probably both wowed about when going from hdd to ssd.
You’re not really listing any software or operations in your post that would make upgrading the ram from the (maybe?) current 8gb minimum to anything more seem worthwhile.
It’s not that I don’t think a person could do what you want to do under Linux, just that it doesn’t seem like something you ought to pursue when weighed against the relatively low cost of just staying with the system you’re using considering the computers themselves will hold value better over time than anything you might swap out to.
