this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2024

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I legitimately want to run Linux as my desktop OS, please tell me how to meet my requirements. (lemm.ee)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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?

(page 2) 39 comments

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Hmm. Okay so Music should be fairly manageble. Just have a local folder with your music in it and then sync it to your phone using Syncthing. Then you need to find a music player that you like and has the features that you want.

For Office Suite have a look at OnlyOffice. It's pretty darn Microsoft Office compatible.

For 4. look at photoprism (https://www.photoprism.app/) it's a self hosted photo management platform.

I don't know about 5 though. It looks like the scansnap scanners are supported in Linux but I don't know about batch scanning or evernote. This you will have to figure out yourself

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

The playlists are the problem for music.

I will look into OnlyOffice. Do they have an outlook replacement?

I checked out onlyprism, it could concievably do the job.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

For outlook replacement I suggest Thunderbird. I can't help you find a music player. I know that ones with your requested feature set likely exist but the googling you will have to you yourself

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Fair points. But I need 3TB minimum on my desktop machine. I have 2 NAS' with 6TB and 3TB RAID arrays. Yes I can get by with 8gb of ram but I keep a ton of stuff open. It's slow. 16gb is probably the right amount but with upgradable ram 8 can get 64 for $200 which is well worth it to me. None of this is possible within my budget on new Macs, whereas on any normal hardware platform it's pretty affordable. You might want to go back and look at Mac ram and ssd prices and compare them to market prices to see how out of hand they've become. It's like a 10x multiple in some cases. The one area I don't need to go big is on CPU as nothing I do is compute heavy, which is of course the one area where Apple doesn't charge an absurd premium.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I didn’t see your reply because it was top level lol.

Out of curiosity, what has you using 3tb of space that can’t be moved off to a nas with (hopefully) some redundancy? Usually when I see people with huge drives in their pcs it’s for games or huge datasets but you said cpu power wasn’t a concern and most of the big data havers I’ve experienced want that cpu (and like minimum 64gb of ram). Of course the meta there is to not do anything on your physical computer and host it all on aws or some such so you don’t have to buy a billion xeons and cuda devices.

What’s your budget for a replacement computer and when are you trying to upgrade?

I’m not trying to convince you that apples prices are comparable or that you should be happy to pay them, but instead that when considered over the lifespan of the device, the price premium isn’t much and will most likely make your life much easier.

I looked at the new imac prices and you’d be paying $600 extra for a 1tb ssd and 16gb of ram. That’s a lot of money for me, but if you make it six years in between replacing the device (that’s about normal in my experience) you’re talking eight bucks a month to not have to deal with all the stuff you listed in your op and anything else that comes up.

I’m not trying to fight you about it, just to offer the perspective of someone who uses linux a lot and has many computers with 32gb+ of memory and also uses macs and wouldn’t try to do what you’re suggesting.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The 3tb are mainly my music and photo library and the rest of my files. I actually have 2 NAS'. I could use them, but I like having things locally and to keep copies of the most important things in multiple places. So one NAS is mainly for backup of the other computers around the house. The other is for home automation and media server.

The disk is less of a problem than the RAM as I just keep it on an external drive. With the 2018 mac mini I have now, I just bought the lowest RAM and SSD possible and added an SSD RAID externally and then upgraded the RAM. I could concievably keep the RAID for the next computer. But even the base 128gb without any of my actual home folders on it is still to small (it's criminal that they even sell this SKU as it would be entirely unusable for anyone in it's base config). I could get by on 16gb of RAM (8 is really shit, I can't do it), but I have to ask myself why I should when I can get more for so cheap.

More than anything I'm just tired of being screwed, and generally want to move to FOSS for everything at home. The FOSS stuff I do run at home like Plex and Homeassistant serve me so well, so reliably, over such a long time, that that's just where I want to end up with everything so I'm not constantly having to fight being herded into paying for too-expensive cloud solutions or overpaying for basic computer hardware. I'm tired of having my software and hardware be unsupported and then replaced by solutions that are worse just so that they can attempt to extract new revenue streams from me. I want off the treadmill.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I really hope you’re able to switch and it works out okay.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

I think between all the ideas in this thread that I could conceivably pull it off. I'd probably have to stay on iTunes and Windows Office under a VM, but Windows and office licenses aren't hard to come by.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago

Just use a music server and shared storage for your music. Nothing can be done about office apps

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago (3 children)

How does Requirement 3 work? You have macs, so you must be running the Windows versions in a VM? Obviously you could do that on Linux as well.

But, to be honest, Requirements 1 and 2 say to me that Apple have you heavily locked in, and I think you should recognize that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I run office for Mac. It's far inferior to the windows version but it gets the job done for the minority of time I work from home.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

OK, but is it really a requirement to improve on what you have? That said, I find the O365 versions better than the native Mac versions, and I would run O365 rather than bother with a VM (plus the Windows license for the VM might outweigh the savings you get from switching from Mac to Linux, unless your employer will pay for it).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

If my job weren't so heavily focused on Outlook and doing things quickly and efficiently there, I wouldn't be such a snob. I am just quicker on local software and use a lot of local things like many windows, drag and drop between windows, etc. Every time I tried o365 I ran into some sort of major blocker to my workflow pretty fast (like within hours). If workflow and throughput weren't so important to my job, I wouldn't mind, but it gets me in trouble at work if things don't work smoothly. I can probably grab a cd key from my employer or an old laptop, so I don't see this as much of a cost issue as it is to max out a mac with RAM and HD.

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[–] [email protected] -1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

@realitista I'm honestly not being rude, but use Google or some other search engine. The answers are out there to be found! Then try them out to see if they meet your rigorous standards. It will take too much time to provide all the info you seek. And we wouldn't know if you'd be satisfied or not anyway.

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