- Cryptomator has native Linux port. They distribute AppImage, but there’s also a Flatpak: https://flathub.org/apps/org.cryptomator.Cryptomator Dropbox itself also has native Linux app: https://flathub.org/pl/apps/com.dropbox.Client
I personally use Nextcloud with self-hosted storage and highly recommend it - again, with native Linux app.
You won’t get official support for OneDrive, Google or iCloud, but there are always some 3rd party clients you can try. I’d advise migrating out of those solutions in favor of something more FOSS friendly if you want to get good reliable experience and privacy.
https://apps.kde.org/krdc/ Last time I tried it it was crashing and couldn’t remember permission to use input across sessions, but it was a while, there could be some improvements
I fail to understand why can’t you just add
systemctl --user enable --now thunderbird-hardening-overwrite.service
after doing daemon-reload.
No Vulkan and just WineD3D on OpenGL makes it hard to consider good. Might be pretty good after they find a way to run Vulkan on it, which might be tricky given how the hardware was explicitly designed to run just the proprietary Metal API.
Azure stuff (like az CLI tool) is generally available on Linux, I used it to provision services using Terraform. Things like .NET or MSSQL all have official support on Linux now.
Back in a day we played with it with my cousins when they were kids (and I was teenager). There was some big insect like hornet or at least wasp with that scary noise. The younger one was afraid of it to the point he would run away, screaming and crying (no exaggeration here). And the older one loved to scary the shit out of his younger bro to the point he still mentions it with a smile sometimes even though they’re now 20+
Not much if you’re patient enough to set it up in the first place. It will generally frustrate you less once you figure it out and set it up properly. There is now text based installer that makes the installation fairly simple
Everyone tells me similar experience with taking cat to a vet. For me, vet is actually the lightest part, but the transport and putting cat into a case is a nightmare, no matter where we go.
Yes, systemd has ability to run user services. For every logged in user there is one daemon socket that user can access to run services without ever rising privileges. They can run in background automatically as soon as you log in (at least one user session must be opened) or alternatively you can enable lingering for your account that assures it’s always up, so your user services can start on boot without you even logging in. It gets units from couple of directories - system packages can install user services in /usr/lib/systemd, custom global user services can go to /usr/local/lib/systemd for any individual user, theres also /etc/systemd and ~/.config/systemd for unit files of particular user.
Oh, and two more random tips:
- commands like
df,lsblkormountcan help checking out state of mounted filesystems - file pickers usually support drag&drop, whether it’s a file or directory that you drop onto it
This isn’t intuitive because you can mount anything (mostly) anywhere you want under any path. The whole Linux ecosystem never decided one standard path or mounting method. If you want a disk to be mounted under /home/$USER/Games where /home is also mountpoint to something else, you are free to do so. Desktops automate it and expose UI controls, yet again some apps are from GNOME world, some other from KDE or else and they have different UX and way to expose mounted storage. And I agree it’s not ideal, especially for newcomers.
PC computers were already replaced for different use cases so yes, the market shrunk, but they will stay relevant for many others for a long time. Simple tasks can easily be achieved with super convenient rectangles that are effectively computers with different input methods, but they just won’t cut it for anything more complex like 3D modeling, CAD, video editing etc. 30 years ago it was impressive when PCs could hold a large collection of digital music with instantaneous access to all of it. Now it’s just plain irrelevant, as basically all music known to human can be accessed from anywhere with just a handy rectangle. But then even relatively simple tasks like doing taxes is a daunting task on a smartphone, and only a tiny bit more convenient on a tablet.
Of course at some point computers with completely different input and output methods can put all we know today into obsolescence, but I think we’re not even close. Some may say that VR headsets will be the thing, but personally I don’t believe so. While having virtual 3D viewport is fun and games, people seem to ignore what it takes away. Simple things like being able to see the same thing on a screen by multiple people without some video sinks between headsets or ability to interact with things without having to wear helmet or putting anything on (however lightweight it is), would be gone. Don’t get me wrong, they can certainly have their place and things they’re really good or the best at, but it’s just not going to easily replace more traditional input methods. More likely something like holographic displays paired with motion sensors recognizing body movement or some shit
I’m a Linux dinosaur user since mid 00’s and I confirm that despite huge efforts to make it as seamless as possible, it still sucks today. The problem is that you even have different file pickers (that’s what xdg-desktop-portal tries to mitigate but some applications will do it the traditional way by including toolkit library and filepicker from it, or they will even implement their own), there’s a great freedom to how drives can be mounted and multiple systems to manage drive mounts. It’s managed by gvfs or kio or something else, the behavior is a little differently every time. There are attempts to handle all automatic mounts in /run/media and while most distros conform to that, some won’t.
What I would recommend is to
- create your own mountpoints for your internal drives that you don’t expect to change too frequently. It’s done in /etc/fstab. If you’re on KDE, the Partition Manager app can help with setting mount points.
- your primary desktop file manager (like Dolphin, Nautilus or Caja) probably has option to copy absolute file paths. Sometimes copying them is easier
- If you see GNOME’s file picker, the path is hidden unless you know magical combination of CTRL+L that shows and allows to edit the path
There’s absolutely zero reason to expect Linux mass adoption as it is NOT happening anytime soon. What can happen instead is increased market share to something like 10% and even that is super optimistic from a long time user perspective.
The focus should mainly go to relatively technical users that can at least manage basic stuff and not mass market consumers. It’s good when people try Linux, yes, but it’s even better when they find it useful, it does what they need and they keep using it, not just trying and go back to a primarily supported OS that’s maybe invasive but “at least it works”.
no automatic updates
Well it’s really not entirely true unless you’re on a rolling release (which most people should if they can do basic system administration themselves). Unattended updates were a thing in traditional Linux distros with frozen release cycles since forever. On any Ubuntu-based system it’s a matter of switching a toggle, and I think it could’ve been Mint that enabled that by default (I’m not sure) at least for security updates, because users never updated their systems. They can still be done much quicker and more transparently than Windows does that, without ever forcing users to reboot in any given time.
The problem is also that once in like 5 years you absolutely have to upgrade system to a newer version to keep it updates in such scenario. Popping up a dialog with info that your system goes EOL and you’ll loose security updates and one click upgrade button should be enough.
No. Nobody cares, no matter what MS does. They can literally crap on users faces and they’ll happily lick it as long is Windows is the supported platform. And it will stay like that for decades to come.
We can expect some growth, because the tech savvy PC enthusiasts might want to look for alternatives, and if the desktop Linux is good enough, some will stick to it, some will go back, as it was always for last 30 years.
That’s what I’m saying - booting OSes is the only legitimate use now unless you want to put stuff on an offline machine (eg installed Linux and need to put broadcom proprietary driver packages on it to be able to connect, cuz no access to an ethernet cable)