Hey there I am another refugee from windows with the forced push to windows 11. I thought it was time I tried once again linux. So far I am pretty satisfied.
I installed Fedora with KDE and successfully migrated my syncthing server, sftp server. Correctly mounted my nft disks and successfully installed mullvad with all split tunneling I needed.
Now I need advices about 3 things which I sorely miss and which keep forcing me to boot on windows :
- is there any equivalent to macrium reflect, allowing to schedule weekly image backup for system disk. So it could be restored in case something really goes wrong.
My system disk is brtfs. Time machine looks nice but it’s not working because I have no @home and @root volume identified. I found explanations which explain how to do it but I am not too sure it’s a good idea to do so.
I also found rsync. Didn’t explore enough this solution but I am not sure an image backup can be done if system is running ? - for vscode it’s easy and I got it running for my linux environment. Yet I have programs which are meant specifically to run on windows and so I can’t develop and test them on linux
- at last for my work I need to be able to use excel. Libre office is not a solution, it’s ok for basic usage but it’s far behind if you’re using it professionally. Please don’t turn this about an arguments to say calc is good, really there is something that are just impossible with it. (Like using arrays, power query or data models)
For the last 2 points I feel like my only solution would be to use a virtual machine running windows. Is there a way to run them on it but make it looks like it’s a linux app? Somewhat is it what docker is doing but for linux apps ?
Well I feel like I have not many options if I want excel and vscode on windows environment. So sadly I think that will settled it. Please share your thoughts.
I would also really appreciate people sharing what they do to backup their system disk.
Thanks for your advice !
If you want to test windows programs on linux, you’re probably going to want to do that in a virtual machine, or even a spare computer just for testing on windows. Depending on how much you need to use excel, a virtual machine could be a good option for that as well, but if using Microsoft Excel™ is a big part of your job, maybe it makes more sense to just stay on Windows for work at least
If you’re developing specifically for Windows, you’re going to need Windows somewhere in the process be it bare metal or vm. You will also have problems with Excel on Linux although you could try the online one.
I use btrfs-assistant to schedule my btrfs snapshots. It’s maybe not quite as simple to set up as Timeshift, but it works on arbitrary subvolume layouts.
I haven’t found anything that is quite like Macrium. Mostly, because something that works the same way is a bad idea on linux. Because as you suspect, an image backup cannot be done while the partition being imaged is live.
Macrium creates restorable images of your entire boot partition or disk, as-is, which can then be restored onto the same, or an entirely different, disk.
This isn’t really something you can do in linux, with a system that is live. Hence, partition images should be done offline, when the given partition isn’t booted.
That said, everything that matters can be backed up simply by copying the relevant files. For this, I use Kopia.
As for making sure you always have a bootable system, for this I use Timeshift on btrfs.
For MS office, you might try winapps. Sounds like what you’re hoping for.
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I wasn’t aware of pika backup, but it does look good. It’s basically a fancy GUI for borgbackup, but I like separate projects like that, each focusing on what they do best.
There are some functions that do not work in the Office365 web Excel ! So that’s also not a solution if they need it for work ://.
For Excel, you can use OnlyOffice.
Why downvotes? OnlyOffice is great.
OnlyOffice hides the fact that it’s Russian.
And is it fully compatible? Most Excel-alikes have at least some hiccups.
Huh, it’s Russian? That’s to your point about them hiding it I guess.
The Excel part looked flawless, a closer match than I’ve seen, but I didn’t get into any of the advanced features. PowerPoint and Word documents also retained full formatting when opening documents authored in the official platforms.
Do the programs you develop run on wine? It could be an option while developing, but either way you’ll have to QA it on windows at some point.
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go away with that fucking mentality. microsoft really thinks they can do anything with their slaves
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“freely”* (Terms of Service and Privacy Policy applies) using a service that you are basically expected to use by society around you
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I don’t think anybody requires you to do so. you do that for your own health
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Previously it was just societal expectations but apparently it’s not that anymore.
since when is going to the dentist the only societal expectation? since when is that a societal expectation at all?
- education lot of places that force you to install spyware for the online exams
- banks that intentionally break their websites on “unsupported” systems
- workplaces where people work with computers, basically generally, becausre of ms office and supervision software
The best Linux is WSL.
The best Windows is Wine ;)
The biggest problem with wsl is that you have to have windows as well.
That’s not a problem.
oh it is. most of us are not switching for fun, but because microsoft is extremely user hostile and exploitative
It’s for work? Keep using Windows. VM or separate PC or whatever. Maybe WINE.
