After convincing my employer to move away from MS office I can finally make the permanent switch away from windows.

I settled on pop_os for now since it supports hybrid Nvidia graphics out of the box and I am a noob.

Two questions:

  1. I used OneDrive, and especially the file on-demand (all files on server visible in explorer but only downloaded when needed) feature a lot. What cloud storage provider has the best Linux integration? I dabbled with NeXtCloUD but the Linux client is not great, especially the file on-demand implementation.

  2. What are best practices for managing apps? The last time I entertained the idea of switching, I ended up with applications installed from the snap store, flatpacks, some appimages, some through apt. It quickly gets confusing for me when I want a specific program but it, f.ex., is only distributed through the snap store. Is there a GUI (I know) way to see all applications, where they’re installed from, with an easy remove button? Akin to what windows offers?

  • d3Xt3r@lemmy.nzM
    0·
    8 months ago
    1. I used OneDrive, and especially the file on-demand (all files on server visible in explorer but only downloaded when needed) feature a lot

    You can continue to use OneDrive. I use the OneDriver client and it works really well - your drive appears just like a local drive, but files only get downloaded when you try to access them. Once downloaded, it gets cached locally and is available offline, and is kept in sync automatically. Other cloud providers should have similar FUSE clients available.

    1. What are best practices for managing apps?

    Best practice is to stick to packages provided by your distro’s repos. Flatpak should be your second option if you can’t find your app there, and AppImages should be your third option (since Flatpaks are superior as they can share dependencies, unlike AppImages). Avoid Snap. In fact, avoid any distros that even use Snap (*buntu). Also, if you’re on a Debian/Ububtu based distro, avoid adding PPAs (thirdparty user repositories) as far as possible, as these can cause dependency issues and may cause pain when you upgrade your distro.

    Is there a GUI (I know) way to see all applications

    That should be provided by your distro - Gnome-based ones have “Software” and KDE-based ones have “Discover”.

    • pufferfischerpulver@feddit.deOP
      0·
      8 months ago

      Thank you for the detailed reply.

      1. I’ve used onedriver previously, or rather I do use it on my backup machine. While it works well what I’m missing is a progress indication for the download of files, I occasionally work with bigger video files f.ex. Also an option to keep directories synced permanently to the device would be great. In OneDrive you can check a box in the context menu to ‘make files available offline’. It keeps the file/directory synced and available offline. This is again useful for bigger projects. I could of course move those to a temporary location on disk but I do like the set and forget nature of working in automatically synced directories.

      2. I assumed that’s best practice, thank you. What I find overwhelming is the amount of choice. Which is a general Linux “problem” I suppose. Yes, it’s possible and elegant to manage everything through the package manager and the default repos. But if I search for a specific program, like f.ex. a clipboard manager, I might just get recommended something that is not there. And all of a sudden I have an appimage. Or the nextcloud client for example, it’s on the flathub but only the appimage supports the above file on-demand feature.
        Btw, how can I be sure that software from the flathub is kept up to date? My understanding is that it’s often community maintained?

  • Pantherina@feddit.de
    0·
    8 months ago
    1. Good that only you do this, as a whole company setup is complex
    2. Pop_OS is currently not that well maintained afaik, their GNOME desktop is quite outdated.

    Just using their OS for the hybrid graphics support is a valid point, but should not be the only one.

    Having a well managed OS is crucial, but I disagree that Ubuntu base is the best here.

    For stability, a centrally managed Fedora Atomic would be better I think. Way more stable, image-based, all peolple would have exactly what they need.

    You could build images locally and take care of the exact updates like that. Or you just share specific configs for each role, like preinstalling different software.

    But having things like specific policies, any files, hardening etc. is totally possible during image creation.

    • atzanteol@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      0·
      8 months ago

      Pop_OS is currently not that well maintained afaik, their GNOME desktop is quite outdated

      The shit people say in here sometimes…

      • Pantherina@feddit.de
        0·
        8 months ago

        What do you mean?

        To my knowledge they dont ship GNOME 46 but some old “LTS” variant (GNOME doesnt do LTS variants)

  • Shimitar@feddit.it
    0·
    8 months ago

    Is this on your personal work PC or company wide?

    Be careful not to burn the Linux bridge by being not able to support the transition now… :)

    Edit: what I mean is, if you are responsible for this transition, now study study study… Be very careful and test each setup on a “test” machine before going to deploy for others…

    • pufferfischerpulver@feddit.deOP
      0·
      8 months ago

      Fortunately it’s just my personal machine. Most of the organisation is on macOS anyway.

      It’ll be enough of a challenge to properly transition existing docx to the gsuite were switching to.

      • MonkderDritte@feddit.de
        0·
        8 months ago

        transition existing docx to the gsuite were switching to.

        From a half-proprietary, broken format to a document-as-a-service platform. 🤦

        Well, if gsuite doen’t work out, there’s OnlyOffice/Univention corporate server for selfhosting.