I’ve used plenty of Linux VMs through Windows, so I’m aware of the limitations. I’m not trying to game through a VM, more like accessing some programs that I need for a few minutes at a time (and not even on a daily basis).

Can you share the software you went to use? Maybe there’s a good Linux alternative or someone knows how to get it working in wine.

These are all paid programs that don’t have viable alternatives and/or I actually need to use them.

A few off the top of my head:

• Excire Foto
• Jpegmini Pro
• Garmin Basecamp
• Garmin Express
• several paid video editing/photo editing apps; I’ve tried alternatives, but they aren’t nearly as intuitive.
• Reolink camera software.
• ACP Ups software.

I do my best to find alternatives to other software, and prefer to use self-hosted solutions, but the ones above aren’t really easy to replace, so I’d rather just run them in a VM.

I’ve use VMs in windows to run Linux, so I’m aware of the performance hit and possible startup times (but I use snapshots for quick access). I’m not too concerned about that for any of these programs, since I’m only using them from time-to-time.

Bottles didn’t run anything I tried, unfortunately. They seemed to install just fine, but that was about it.

I’m actually pretty happy to be using mostly FOSS apps. The exception are banking or services apps, which I’d never expect to be available as open source.

I went through the same dilemma. The old Synology photo software had a duplicate finder, but they removed that feature with the “new” version. But even with the duplicate finder, it wasn’t very powerful and offered no adjustability.

In the end, I ended up paying for a program called “Excire Foto”, which can pull images from my NAS, and can not only find duplicates in a customized and accurate way. It also has a localAI search that bests even Google Photos.

It runs from windows, saves its own database, and can be used as read-only, if you only want to make use of the search feature.

To me, it was worth the investment.

Side note: if I only had <50,000 photos, then I’d probably find a free/cheaper way to do it. At the time, I had over 150,000 images, going back to when the first digital cameras were available + hundreds of scanned negatives and traditional (film) photos, so I really didn’t want to spend weeks sorting it all out!

Oh, the software can even tag your photos for subjects so that it’s baked into the EXIF data (so other programs can make use of it).

Ok, I think I’ll grab another drive and try again over the weekend.

Their forum is pretty good, and there’s a dedicated linux section there, too. They also have extensive support documentation.

I’m sure I can get it working to be more stable, but man, it’s an effort for sure.

My laptop is a Framework and has official support for Fedora and Ubuntu. I wouldn’t expect these kinds of issue, TBH.

I can probably try a few more distros, but I’m just disappointed that the experience seems to always be the same :(

That is a fair point. I don’t expect every feature to match 1:1. But minimize and maximize window seems to be a no-brainer for basic use. At least, how I use floating windows.

But… I’m glad that there are options to bring those features (and more) back if someone chooses.

Is this only when using Linux? The drive’s S.M.A.R.T status is all perfect (it’s only got like 40 hours of use on it), and tests with no errors).

Maybe I can try another drive.

Well, I think my experiment might have come to an early end.

Yesterday, when I booted up fedora, I lost my wifi (like, it didn’t even give me the option to use wifi). Re-booted and it worked again.

Then I decided to get a copy of Fedora with KDE Plasma loaded up. Seemed fine, started setting it up.

Let’s try some Windows software through Wine (Bottles, I believe, is what the actual software was called). Program 1, installed, but won’t run. Program 2, installed, but wont’ run…

Then, out of nowhere: Blank screen.

After waiting several minutes, I hit the power button: FAILED FAILED FAILED messages “Failed to start plymouth-reboot.services” being the last. FFS…

I just don’t understand how I can break Linux so quickly without really doing anything. My experience over the last 20 years of trying Linux has always ended the same. Are there no stable distros available? Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, Elementary, Damn Small… none of them last more than a few days/weeks before they crash and burn.

And when Linux crashes and burns, I really don’t know how to fix it.

It’s extremely hard to go from Windows 11, which has been absolutely rock solid. Literally no problems, no crashes, no BSOD, no compatibility issues, etc. to Linux, even though I value Linux more.

I would rather not use Windows, but I feel like I’m forced to at this point.

I may have another external SSD I can use, so it should be easy to just install another copy with KDE or whatever on it.

Or… I may just stick with GNOME, since I’d rather keep things simple anyway. Regardless, I’m glad I have options.

I’m sure by now you know about the troves of compatibility layers that exist in order to make this possible; depending on the software.

Yes, I’ll need to do a bunch of experimentation to see if I can get it working. But it’s a messy solution to something that isn’t even a thing on Windows.

This is more of a DE issue than Linux issue, I’m assuming you went with the default Gnome but you might like KDE or Cinnamon for a more windows like experience. I personally loved both of those DEs until I made the mistake of getting comfortable with a window manager

Fair point, I’m using what Fedora came with, but I can go with something else. Better if I do that sooner, rather than later. LOL

After some encouragement, I’ve been making an effort to switch much of my computing over to Fedora (at least, on weekends until it’s got everything I need on it).

My (Framework) laptop fully supports the OS, and even booting it up on an external SSD has been easy, and it works fast and smooth.

But, it’s absolutely not as easy to settle into compared to windows.

With Windows, the only “tweaks” that a user might make is installing a different browser, but everything else will work as it should.

Power Windows users will spend more time removing bloat and ads, I won’t deny that!

But on Fedora, I had to scour the internet to find out how to get a minimize and maximize button on a window (had to install another utility, then an extension…). Then I had to do the same to move things down to a dock.

Annoying, but it wasn’t a huge deal. These small add-on, tweaks, and personalization options all require that you know where to look and how to actually apply these fixes. Thank god I didn’t have to fuss around with device drivers.

Then, as I happily watched the Para Olympics while multitasking, my screen just went black. No warning, no way to recover it. Hitting my laptop’s power button throws up a series of errors and !!! “FAILED TO EXECUTE SHUTDOWN BINARY”.

If this is the equivalent to a BSOD on Windows, then it would be my first BSOD in many, many years.

Now I need to figure out how to get some Windows-only software to run, if that’s even possible, which adds another layer of time and aggravation.

If I were a novice computer user, I wouldn’t even bother with any of this and just stick to Windows. Hell, I wouldn’t even know where to begin with any of it!

But I’ll see how long I can ride this out, and perhaps I’ll be a full-time Linux user some day.

The batteries should not degrade that fast.

For real!

I use several refurbished APC UPS’, and also use third-party batteries (from the company that refurbishes the UPS’) and it’s been trouble-free for like 10 years. I replace batteries, it seems, every 4-5 years and only when the self-test says to replace it.

Never had a problem with data loss due to the UPS failure.

But key mismatch error when trying to actually connect between two internal systems.

Can you confirm that there are no spaces before or after the key on the client end? Sometimes, copy and pasting can add extra spaces that cause invalid passwords, etc.

I’m not having issues running my self-hosted Rustdesk (docker) externally, but I can’t offer much more than that :(

Yeah, the weird filenames bothers me, too. It does take a hit to data portability, for sure. I’m not using it for some kind of long-term, bomb-proof YouTube archiving, but more to have offline access to instructional videos I might need in the near future. For that, the UI and integration with Jellyfin works well for me.

If I was actually collecting youtube videos, I would go with something else that generates human-friendly folders and filenames! I’ll bookmark Tubesync :)

I’m using Tube Archivist. Works great, too.

“Made simple”, but it’s all command prompt with no UI 🙂

Not knocking it, as I’m sure it works great, but these things end up being a huge barrier to adoption and use by the regular people who might be “self-hosted curious”.

I can honestly say that I haven’t had to reformat a windows PC since the early 2000s because of a problem that couldn’t easily be solved.

Even a BSOD is exceedingly rare.

Stability has been excellent, but the threat of advertisement creep is beginning to annoy me.