Impressions on Returning to 19.1 Cinnamon after a 2 year Win 10 side trip

[Kendoori]

I run a software development shop focused on the US hospital enterprise and after 7+ years of running Ubuntu and Mint (17.3 was my last distro) on my desktop, I went back to Windows 10 Pro. It was a business decision, as the world I work in customer wise is primarily a Windows one. I am well versed in the workarounds, but there were just too many niggling issues with VPN clients, hardware accessories, and online tools (e.g. web conferencing) that I finally said to myself, why am I making my life extra hard. As much as it pained me, I just felt like my life would be easier (if less cool) to live in Microsoftlandia for my desktop. And really, mostly it was. Windows 10 is actually quite good.

Compatibility wise, Apple was always an option if I wanted to switch to be different, but it would require expensive new hardware (and for some reason, I just hate their ways more than Microsoft). Jump ahead to late 2018 and the prevailing wind for us business-wise is driven by the AWS cloud, and we are about to move our stack over to Linux there (for cost, scalability, tooling reasons). Given that's what's coming it seemed worth a try to see what Linux Mint 19.1 would be like for me. It wasn't plug-and-play, but it was much better than I expected.

In 2018 much more happens in the browser, so that makes everything a hell of a lot easier. We switched offer to Google's GSuite years ago for Gmail, Calendar, and Google Drive, so all that just works of course. GoToMeeting and Zoom and the like were previously unavailable or crippled (essential tools for running or being in my business), now they just work, even video. Skype and Slack worked great right of the box. Maybe the biggest surprise is that my external Plugable DisplayLink docking station (which has an HDMI out, audio, and Ethernet on it), worked easily enough, so my Thinkpad X230 with a wonky Mini-DisplayPort can still drive my external 27" ASUS monitor. Same with my Brother DSmobile630 scanner and a new Brother HL-L2350DW laser printer. My Sennheiser BTD 800 USB Bluetooth dongle works (wow!).

So many things just worked unexpectedly. VPN connectivity in network manager (various OpenVPN and Cisco AnyConnect profiles) worked without weird configuration workarounds or downloads. Citrix worked. This meant that I could connect to Windows servers on AWS, or at my customer's sites without much problem (Remmina works great for RDP). I did struggle with setting up Office 2016 with PlayonLinux/Wine (no hate mail on that, I just need to use MS Office sometimes), but I did eventually get it to work using Crossover. LibreOffice seems surprisingly more compatible, so I may try to run with that. Of course, I always have an already configured Windows 7 Virtualbox that I can fire up as required.

I started with a 1 TB SSD that had my Windows install on it, but fortunately, that was partitioned off into Windows on one partition, and data on another. I reduced my data partition and left enough room for Mint, but decided to leave Windows intact (just in case), but to mount the NTFS data drive in Linux as required. I also have the data drive syncing to Google Drive via Insync (which works great across platform).

My only real gotcha so far is that my subscription to Backblaze backup will not work in Linux, so I need to figure out what I'm going to do about that as I prefer to have a continuous offsite backup for my data (with versioning).

Indeed Mint remains tweak city, so I definitely have put in a lot of totally unrequired futz time getting it working the way I want, but geeks will be geeks and in many cases, I could've left well enough alone. The early report is that this is much easier than ever. I need to put in a full work week After New Years to know what other gotchas I will face, but if you are curious, this is safe and pretty easy to do.

[murray]

A very interesting read, thank you for sharing your experiences!

[redlined]

hi again Kendoori!

and welcome back to Linux Mint and these excellent forums! (refering to your profile date of 2009).

Out of curiosity I did a search for Backblaze backup and went to their site and was about to close tab after seeing they defined PC as windows (and of course the other market share offering for Mac) when I got a popup they based on my 'detected OS' and clicked it to open this page:
https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/art ... nux-Users-

sounds like a recent dev and may make your LM19 user experience even better, hope this helps!

[Kendoori]

Wow, I can't believe it's that long (2009). And yes, this a great forum with very helpful folks.

Regarding Blackblaze, the reference is to their B2 solution. This is more oriented to servers than desktops.

A user in the Mint subreddit recommended pCloud (which may be a good choice).

[lsemmens]

Welcome back Kendoori. It's refreshing to hear a "can do" with Linux rather than "I had problems and had to....."

[Kendoori]

The engagement and responsiveness of the community are refreshing. Linux offers infinite choices, which leads ultimately to infinite questions about "How to xxx?" It's pretty amazing how I've been able to lock most of what I needed to know down in a few days, including some weird ones. People often say the issue with Linux is how fragmented it is. In my case, it seems that is really much more focused, meaning that one can easily get help.

[AndyMH]

I did struggle with setting up Office 2016 with PlayonLinux/Wine (no hate mail on that, I just need to use MS Office sometimes), but I did eventually get it to work using Crossover.

It's what I do - office2016 + crossover, well worth the licence fee from codeweavers.

[Portreve]

To be honest, I'm really not all that impressed with Office 365 on Win10. Using it feels like using a web app. It sucks, actually. However, I'm trying to get back into the tech profession and it wouldn't do for me not to be familiar with it.

On the flip side, it is cool to be able to run Diablo again, however it's still a matter of playing around with compatibility settings...

[Moem]

Mod note:
This old topic has been bumped by a spam post that has now been removed.