Okay, all you who post on every post "you should just switch to Linux". Here's your chance. I'm someone who really does want to run Linux on the desktop. I run Linux servers at home, was a Unix sysadmin for years running Linux on the desktop in the '90s. But now I'm in sales and run Windows at work (actually very happily with some help from StartAllBack and Rufus).
I want to replace my Macs at home. Since they removed upgradable RAM and disk, I am no longer willing to pay the high tax for the few little things they do better. But there is some functionality I just cannot seem to find replacements for. This is where you folks who say "I should just switch to Linux" come in. Tell me how please:
Requirement 1) I have heavily invested in my local music library on iTunes. 1200 albums. I have little to no interest in streaming services. I want to organize my music with * ratings from 1-5 and from that have smart playlists that autopopulate and sort themselves by * ratings and genre. I have more than 40 of these types of playlists and it's completely unworkable to populate them manually.
Requirement 2) I must be able to sync my music library in full to my phone. I use an iOS phone now, but I could even be convinced to switch to Android if there was a good solution. I am not willing to go in and select 100 different playlists manually to sync. It must completely replicate what's on my desktop on my phone, 100% locally, including all the afformentioned smart playlists. I travel a lot for work and want my music always available even when there's no network.
Requirement 3) My job really doesn't require much more than Office and a browser, but it requires very heavy use of those things. Firefox is fine for the browser, so no trouble there, but I need full fledged Outlook, OneNote and most of the features of Excel at a minimum. Word I can take a bit of a hit on as long as I can save something that others can open. Ideally I would want to run the Windows version of these tools. I will not be able to live with only the browser versions, that I'm 100% sure of.
Requirement 4) I'd really like some sort of decent photo management tool. I can probably manage just by keeping them organized in folders and having google photos suck that in, but I don't much trust Google, so would like to have a second tool that can also do a good job at replacing MacOS' Photos app. AI image recognition and search a-la Google Photos would be the cherry on top.
Requirement 5) I need to be able to scan in batches from my Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner into Evernote. I use this on mobile, other OS', etc. and have a lot of organization built into it now that I really don't want to try to migrate from.
That's it. 5 high level requirements that must be met. Is it possible?
Don't have a lot of time right now... But if your iTunes library is DRM free music files (Apple moved new purchases to DRM-free some number of years ago when Steve Jobs was still at the helm, however if it's a song you've had a really long time you might have to pay Apple for the DRM-free slightly better quality music file), you're in good shape with something like Rhythmbox.
On the office side... I'd try using the LibreOffice suite on your current operating system instead of office and see if you can get away with it. It's the best open source office suite around ... and it's cross platform, so you should be able to tell if that's going to be a problem without going all in.
I removed all the DRM from my music files, so that's not a major issue. The smart playlists and syncing to a fully local music app on mobile are that main things.
As far as I can tell, LibreOffice has no replacement for Outlook, which is the main thing I need. I need at least to sync with Outlook servers for all email, tasks, contacts, and calendar items.
I've not used it for quite a bit, but look at Thunderbird (a mozilla project iirc), it might do what you want as far as email is concerned. However do note that Microsoft is really closing things down in outlook/office these days, they really don't like people using a "real" Linux (they want people to use windows with all their crap and start menu ads, and just have a small Linux VM they call the wsl )
I use Thunderbird already. It's not even 10% of the way there, unfortunately.
Evolution is another GUI client I don't have a ton of experience with other than proofing it was stable. It exists.
Unironically the most powerful email clients i know on any platform are retro, mutt or emacs (last time I used notmuch, but there's options). I never bothered to set it up since all the reading and half the writing I do are off my phone these days.
But I don't know the juice is worth the squeeze starting out, that's a bit of a hurdle. I'm really curious on use case, what are you missing?
The main thing I need is the full functionality of Exchange server. Sync all the tasks, email, calendar items, and contacts. If it did that, it would have a pretty good chance of getting the job done. Without that I can't really work from home.
It's largely a tough nut to crack just because Microsoft is obnoxious about integration. Thunderbird can do it (or used to) in pieces with local AD forest access. I don't know about remote IMAP access, but you can definitely sneaker net export. It's the weird formatting on the import side I'm fighting.
I saw someone piping something to local programs through the office 365 electron app, but the least work probably ends run a VM and sync off of or just use that. I didn't try wine, so others would have to verify emulation works.
Thanks for the data points!
I'm working on trying to pry local office software copies of outlook from the clutched hands of people stuck in the win 7 era.
Well done sync is a hell of a drug.
Interesting about Thunderbird AD forest access. I hadn't heard of that, and can't find much info on it.
It has been years since I was paid to play on prod, bigger companies are smart enough to have change management.
I remember lots of messing with kerberos, and I don't remember a lot of minutes passing without cursing.
lol