New refugee from Windows / Need advices about image system backup, excel, vscode
from Matth78@lemm.ee to linux@lemmy.ml on 29 Mar 09:19
https://lemm.ee/post/59785709

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 :

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 !

#linux

threaded - newest

[deleted] on 29 Mar 09:27 next collapse

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narc0tic_bird@lemm.ee on 29 Mar 09:34 next collapse

The best Windows is Wine ;)

MyNameIsRichard@lemmy.ml on 29 Mar 09:47 collapse

The biggest problem with wsl is that you have to have windows as well.

[deleted] on 29 Mar 10:46 collapse

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Robin@lemmy.world on 29 Mar 11:33 collapse

Sir I think you have stumbled into the wrong sublemmy

MyNameIsRichard@lemmy.ml on 29 Mar 09:36 next collapse

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.

bad_news@lemmy.billiam.net on 29 Mar 09:45 next collapse

Pika Backup does backups. For testing Windows, you’ll want to run a VM, QEMU is best for that (There’s a KDE wrapper I forget the name of for it with a better GUI) but you can probably do some level of testing running your app with Wine. You can run Excel with Wine (also the Office365 web Excel runs in browser)

N0x0n@lemmy.ml on 29 Mar 09:54 next collapse

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 ://.

RedSnt@feddit.dk on 29 Mar 11:51 collapse

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.

Rozauhtuno@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 29 Mar 10:53 next collapse

For Excel, you can use OnlyOffice.

caseyweederman@lemmy.ca on 29 Mar 19:04 collapse

Why downvotes? OnlyOffice is great.

zonnewin@feddit.nl on 29 Mar 19:49 collapse

OnlyOffice hides the fact that it’s Russian.

And is it fully compatible? Most Excel-alikes have at least some hiccups.

caseyweederman@lemmy.ca on 30 Mar 11:50 collapse

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.

lorty@lemmy.ml on 29 Mar 11:12 next collapse

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.

zygo_histo_morpheus@programming.dev on 29 Mar 11:25 next collapse

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

Dariusmiles2123@sh.itjust.works on 29 Mar 11:44 next collapse

For image backups I use Clonezilla.

It works well but I don’t know how easily you could take an image from one computer to a different one. I tried once and it didn’t work because of Legacy Bios issues…still I guess it works between two modern computers.

I’d love if something like this was implemented directly in a distribution for ease of use.

MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz on 29 Mar 11:58 next collapse

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.

WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works on 29 Mar 15:16 next collapse

Because as you suspect, an image backup cannot be done while the partition being imaged is live.

can’t it, though?

macrium reflect’s normal operation is to run when the ststem is running normally. it creates a volume shadowcopy of your filesystem, and backs that up. a BTRFS/ZFS snapshot is basically what a volume shadowcopy is on windows, but with a less fancy name. if you make a snapshot, you can back that up, either with zfs send, btrfs send, rsync, borg backup, whatever. the difference is that on linux it’s not possible to notify programs that a snapshot will happen please sanitize your databases, while windows does that too, so if you restore on linux that’s like if your computer crashed because power went off

sure, it can’t be done with other filesystems, but OP said they have BTRFS. I think the boot partition can be safely imaged too: remount as read only and make a normal image.

MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz on 29 Mar 17:51 collapse

Sure.

But there’s no program that just creates a handy partition image. You’ll have to get into the weeds of how your filesystem actually works.

Lonewolfmcquade@lemmy.world on 31 Mar 15:40 collapse

Regarding Timeshift on btrfs, is the idea that Timeshift makes it easier to backup to a different disk versus using Snapper?

I’m also on btrfs and miss the wonders of Macrium Reflect. For now, in addition to Snapper, I’ve been using Clonezilla to make a disk image on occassion. I’m in the process of figuring out something like Vorta to replace that process.

MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz on 31 Mar 16:26 collapse

I don’t think there’s any effective difference between timeshift and snapper. They’re both essentially just GUIs for features supported by the underlying btrfs filesystem.

Timeshift backup to another disk, is just rsync.

Dran_Arcana@lemmy.world on 29 Mar 13:33 next collapse

RE: backups, I’d recommend altering your workflow. Instead of taking an image of a box, automate the creation of that box. Create a bash script that takes a base OS, and installs everything you use fresh. Then have it apply configuration files where appropriate, and lastly figure out which applications really need backup blobs to work properly (thunderbird, for example). Once you have that, your backups become just the data itself. Photos, documents, etc. Everything else is effectively ephemeral because it can be reproduced through automation.

Takes a lot less space, is a lot more portable. And much better in scenarios where something in your OS is broken or you get a new computer and want to replicate your setup.

Lonewolfmcquade@lemmy.world on 31 Mar 15:49 collapse

I’d also like to learn how to do this but it seems like a steep learning curve for a non-expert user. If you have any resources to share to learn this kung fu, please post

easily3667@lemmus.org on 29 Mar 14:43 next collapse

Comparing switching from windows to another piece of software to being a refugee is truly the most privileged techbro thing I’ve seen in a long time. Well, since mid January at least.

ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org on 29 Mar 15:04 collapse

go away with that fucking mentality. microsoft really thinks they can do anything with their slaves

easily3667@lemmus.org on 29 Mar 16:49 collapse

Comparing freely using a product to slavery is truly the most privileged techbro thing I’ve seen.

ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org on 29 Mar 20:40 collapse

“freely”* (Terms of Service and Privacy Policy applies) using a service that you are basically expected to use by society around you

easily3667@lemmus.org on 29 Mar 21:10 collapse

So by your definition going to the dentist is slavery? After all society expects you to go, and there are terms and conditions.

ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org on 31 Mar 00:13 collapse

I don’t think anybody requires you to do so. you do that for your own health

easily3667@lemmus.org on 31 Mar 14:38 collapse

And who is requiring you to use windows? Previously it was just societal expectations but apparently it’s not that anymore. Who is cracking the whip to force you to use windows?

ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org on 31 Mar 21:44 collapse

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
catloaf@lemm.ee on 29 Mar 15:01 next collapse

It’s for work? Keep using Windows. VM or separate PC or whatever. Maybe WINE.

x1gma@lemmy.world on 29 Mar 15:15 next collapse

Take the following with a grain of salt, it depends on your specific setup, environment and preference, but might help you:

Regarding system backups, and depending whether you need to run fedora, check out nixos, which takes a declarative file and builds your system based on that. Declarative immutable system, no moving parts, no breakage. If your system breaks, revert to a prior version and keep using what you’ve had before before retrying. Your backup is a git repo or whatever is keeping your handful of config files. Has been an absolute game changer for me, and the community and ecosystem around it is far beyond the point of quirky esoteric immutable distro.

VSCode has a powerful feature that I’ve yet to see in another editor/IDE - remote development, and it works really, really well. Spin up a VM however you like (I’d recommend checking out Vagrant), and depending on how much you need to do in windows either use the windows box as a remote run target (just running your built artifact in windows), or as a remote development box (running everything in windows and using your Linux VSCode as a “Frontend” for everything else happening in windows). Both methods can be made to work seamlessly in vsc.

Excel - again depending on your usage, you can try wine, you can use a VM, dual boot, M365 in browser, or a remote VM.

dono@lemmy.world on 29 Mar 15:25 next collapse

Timeshift is great for getting your system back after a major fuckup. But i dont think it works as a backup solution that can be transplanted to other systems, but i never tried.

I use Kup to backup my important stuff. It comes with a kcm that integrates into KDEs settings menu and can do automated timed backups. Its a wrapper for bup. It also does Incremental backups.

Lonewolfmcquade@lemmy.world on 31 Mar 15:46 collapse

I’ve tried a few times to use Timeshift to restore to a new disk. Once it worked without any issue. This last time it did not and I suspect grub just needs to be rebuilt. I’ve read that it is always possible but Timeshift certainly doesn’t make it easy in every case

Nibodhika@lemmy.world on 29 Mar 18:25 next collapse

For backups I don’t think full disk backups are ever needed or useful. Because if the system is running there’s always a chance of corruption. Besides 90% of what’s on your system is recoverable, so you should automate that part and backup what is not recoverable, i.e. personal documents. I use Borg, check out Pika or Vorta for some GUIs for it, and I use Borgbase for my remote, but you can also backup to some folder.

For the other two you need windows. Even if you managed to get vscode to compile and tested with wine, that’s not a guarantee that it will work on Windows. Same thing for excel, even if libre office had those features it’s not guaranteed that stuff that works there would work on excel.

If you need windows for work you need to find a way to have windows available, trying to circumvent this would be a source of pain.

[deleted] on 29 Mar 22:13 next collapse

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spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works on 29 Mar 22:13 next collapse

Sounds like you’ve got a good handle on most of it. FWIW, here’s how I deal with some of the same issues:

For Windows apps I’ve found a virtual machine is the easiest solution. It’s set it up to share folders between Linux and the Windows VM so moving things between OS’s is easy. I’ve tried other methods like Wine, and for the Windows apps I need the VM works best by far.

Did you mean Timeshift? (Time Machine is Apple software.) Timeshift works great for incremental backups and is easy to use so you should get it working, but in my case I also do full system backups every few weeks because setting up my systems from scratch is a PITA and really time consuming, especially for my server.

For those full backups I’ve set up a bootable persistent live USB SSD with Ubuntu. The persistent SSD is fully configured with all software, including VNC, SSH and Clonezilla. Creating a backup requires plugging in the SSD, rebooting and running Clonezilla either locally or remotely. Clonezilla is also also preconfigured so it requires only a few steps to start the backup. Full system backups take about 20-30 minutes to complete but my SSDs aren’t that big.

Enjoy your move to Linux. It’s well worth the effort.

Lonewolfmcquade@lemmy.world on 31 Mar 15:42 collapse

I do something similar but my live USB is just bootable Clonezilla. I’d like to hear more about why you use a live Ubuntu ssd.

spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works on 31 Mar 16:43 collapse

I started with a Clonezilla USB a few years ago, but Ubuntu is more flexible and can be used for everything with both VNC and SSH. The GUI is easier for some tasks, and Nautilus, Disk Usage Analyzer, Gparted, and other utilities are all available on the same SSD used for backups.

nanook@friendica.eskimo.com on 30 Mar 01:07 next collapse

I do use rsync when backing up remote computers, locally I use dump/restore. I prefer it because of the ability to get a directory listing from the backup, pick and choose files or restore the entire file system as necessary.

Lonewolfmcquade@lemmy.world on 31 Mar 15:52 collapse

This process sounds very flexible. Got a link about how to set this up?

bowerick@feddit.org on 30 Mar 09:11 collapse

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.