I’m Mark from Canada. I worked in IT for a long while before opening a bakery, hence the username.
I’ve been using Windows Subsystem for Linux on my Dell laptop for several years now and been dreaming about making the leap to Linux 100%. But I’ve been afraid of messing up the computer and losing data. So I have been taking very small steps recently.
Last month I reclaimed my daughter’s old Acer laptop (from 2013) and loaded a few different distros, settling on Mint LMDE 6 with Cinnamon desktop. I’ve been having a blast with it. I spend as much time as possible in the terminal but the default apps in Cinnamon run great.
I’ve got four projects in mind / in progress:
Move all my OneDrive and WSL files to an external drive so I can run Linux on my main laptop (Dell XPS 7590)
Set up a media / data server powered by the old laptop or a Raspberry Pi and an external drive, with regular backups to another drive (I’m obsessed over losing my photos)
Finally organize my chaotic, over-duplicated, mess of a photo collection.
get away from music streaming and get back to a local, curated music collection (rip CD’s, play through the media server)
This seems like a friendly group. I’m excited to be part of it.
I’m splitting your post into its own thread since you brought up several really interesting projects that deserve to not get buried in the welcome thread.
A few quick ideas based on what you mentioned:
Migrating OneDrive/WSL files: You could look into rclone or rsync to handle transfers and backups cleanly.
Media/data server: TrueNAS is an excellent choice (I first heard about this from @shybry747 and since then have seen it in use first hand), and OpenMediaVault works great on a Raspberry Pi.
Photo organization: digiKam or Shotwell are solid tools for sorting and de-duplicating large photo collections.
Local music setup: Check out Navidrome for lightweight streaming or Plexamp for a more full-featured setup.
Looking forward to seeing how your projects develop. You’ve got some fun projects lined up.
Edit: I checked out your website and came across your post: Shifting to Linux. It’s a great read for anyone curious about what inspired your move toward Linux and how you’re approaching the switch. Thanks for joining us!
rclone is awesome. I’m just about done bringing over the OneDrive files using rclone copy. I have an issue where my drive keeps disconnecting/reconnecting every several hours, so the way rclone tracks / restarts transfers is a godsend.
I’m using old drives salvaged from past machines but just ordered two new 4Tb drives which will will give me some extra peace of mind. And if they don’t stay connected, I’ll troubleshoot deeper.
Great shouts. Thank you. I keep waffling between setting up my Pi as the NAS and connecting it directly to my router, or just plugging the media drive into my ‘not a TV but acts like one’ laptop/monitor. My router/fibre access is in a terrible location in my apartment so I don’t want to pile too many computers next to it. Will keep you all posted.
Oooh, thanks for the shout about Shotwell. I’ll check it out.
I’ve been using Digikam on Windows and am planning on using it ‘for real’ once I get all my photos in one place. I like it, but having everything spread across multiple drives / computers / operating systems wasn’t doing me any favours. So this first consolidation step will help a lot.
Thanks. I’ve been reading about Navidrome. The Rhythmbox app that comes with Cinnamon works well enough for now, with less than 100 or so albums, but I’m curious what will change as my local collection grows.
It’s pretty clear to me that I have a digital asset management problem more than anything (copies upon copies, 90% cruft, 10% irreplacable, but I don’t know which is which!)
What has me the most excited about Linux is control and acceptance of the good ol’ command line. If I need to write a script, I can, and all the software I’ve seen seems to accept that you might also access it via the command line. I often seem to want to use Windows software in ways that it wasn’t intended, or want to do the same thing 10,000 times.
That’s excellent progress on the migration. rclone really shines in situations like that, especially when you’re dealing with drives that occasionally drop off. Those new 4TB drives should give you a solid base to build on.
Your Pi vs laptop plan makes sense too. No reason to overcomplicate things if the layout makes it awkward. You can always revisit a dedicated Pi setup later if you want to expand.
And yeah, once everything’s consolidated, photo and music management gets a lot less frustrating. It’s clear you’ve got a good handle on where the real bottlenecks are the way you described that “digital asset management problem” is something a lot of us can relate to.
Having the flexibility to script your way out of those walls is exactly what makes Linux so freeing.
A quick update on my progress, pretending that there is someone interested
OneDrive migration: Rclone did its thing, but the external drive that I cloned everything too is exceedingly flaky, and keeps disconnecting / reconnecting from my. So I painstakingly copied everything from the flaky drive to a brand new 4tb external drive using rsync, and the new drive is now my ‘main’ drive.
I only messed up once and unplugged the new drive early, messing up the file system tables, but I fixed that and kept going.
And once the copy was complete, I made another rsync copy to a second brand new 4tb external drive, verified that it worked, and this is my backup. It’s now hiding in another room. Not ‘off site’, but at least disconnected.
My current dilemma is settling on the best way to connect my main drive to the network. I tried plugging it straight into my router and setting up an SMB share through the router software. I can connect fine from my LMDE laptop, but not from my Windows laptop. Well, I can connect from Windows but not read/write files consistently. I’m getting errors about connecting via SMB 1.0 because that’s all the router supports. Ugh.
So now, the drive is connected to the LMDE laptop directly. Works a treat via linux and I can ssh in from Windows Terminal no problem. But I still might set up my raspberry pi as a NAS and access it remotely.
I haven’t made any real progress on organizing the mounds of data on the drive, other than a few sessions of moving old files around and deleting the most obvious duplicates and junk. So it’s quite early days for this project.
And I haven’t got the nerve to ditch windows completely and install linux on my main laptop. Soon. I think that will actually simplify things quite a bit.
Migrating off OneDrive is no small task, especially when flaky hardware gets in the way. Good call on doing the extra rsync pass to a second 4TB drive and stashing it away. That alone saves a lot of headaches later.
The SMB 1.0 limitation from the router is a classic pain. Honestly, setting up the Raspberry Pi as a proper NAS will be more peace of mind.
Cleanup always drags on the longest. And yes, moving fully to Linux on the main laptop would simplify the workflow a lot.
Maybe setup as dual boot for now, keeping windows for a bit:
