Rantings of a Linux newb OR I'm a windows guy and I really need some help

Software & Operating Systems Linux
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Over the last couple of weeks i have been trying to move my day job stuff from windows to Linux. Now, i am not completely clueless when it comes to Linux as i have dabbled and attempted to switch in the past. There was just always a deal breaker that meant i couldn’t shake windows as my main OS.

This time i am determined to make it work.

Now if all i needed to do was install Linux and get the WiFi working on my work laptop then there wouldn’t be much to talk about, that just worked out of the box. However i have a setup at work that could be considered edge case, and this is where things are getting interesting. i need to vent a bit and ask for some more help. (i do realize that i am making things difficult for myself here but that is half the fun right?, and hey, it all works flawless in windows… just sayin)

My Work Setup

Lenovo X1 Carbon 6th gen i7 16gb ram
Razer Core X Chroma thunderbolt 3 EGPU box with built in usb hub and gigabit ethernet loaded up with an nvidia 1660 ti
3 x 28" 4K monitors
1 x 24" 1080p monitor
Usb ports and network adapter in the core are all used.

Distros

So far i have installed a different flavor of ubuntu 5 times in the last 2 weeks (i went ubuntu because it is supposed to be the easiest to use, right?). I started with elementary OS cos its purdy but it felt lacking some how so i then tried Pop!_OS 20.04. Couldn’t get a mail client i wanted to use to work on that (hiri, I wanted that native O365 support, that’s another bloody story) so then tried Ubuntu Budgie, again, purdy desktop. Now i can’t get the VPN to my office to work which turns out to be a bug in ubuntu 20.04 (see earlier post trying to sort this out).
sigh
Ok back to Pop!_OS, lets have another go, this time on 19.10 instead. And what do you know, i get the VPN working, still can’t install Hiri but by this point i find out its not been updated since 2018, is basically a dead project and i just wasted USD$30 on my company credit card…
So i try Evolution, after some trial and error and realizing i needed to create an app password, I manage to get logged in to my business email and everything is golden.

Getting Work Done

So now i have a working laptop, i can VPN into the office and i can get my emails. Next on the list is an RDP client - we are a windows shop at work - i do some reading and Remmina keeps being recommended, so i grab that and boom, I am into all my servers.

Next on the list is office 365. This is just fine with a web browser for the most part and there is now a Linux version of teams, so i grabbed that (yes we use it)
There is something i want some feedback on here though and that is OneDrive desktop clients, we use onedrive for business a lot and a solid experience on Linux is going to be a must. I found InSync, but like Hiri its not free and i don’t want to waste more money on something unless its the best option. Any suggestions in this department much appreciated.

I next installed Microsoft code and few other apps and extensions as quality of life improvements and for the most part i can do everything i need to do day to day using Linux. YAY!

That is, until i tried to plug in the egpu dock and use my external displays and peripherals.

This post is getting long, so i will post a part two later on.

Coming up in Rantings of a Linux newb…
eGPU’s, multiple monitors, usb controllers and screen scaling woes.

Stay tuned for the next exciting installment.

p.s. please do, I’m really stuck.

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for a mail client, mailspring or mailspring-libre is similar enough to windoze mail client but with more features.

egpu.io has some good setup tutorials and auto detect/config scripts.

path of least resistance, use the xorg.conf to set dpi .

    Option		   "DPI"	   "96 x 96"

added to the monitor section, for 4k you might want to use “192 x 192” instead. restart xorg after

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I have had a good experience with InSync over the last 6 years or so, first on Ubuntu and then on Pop!_OS. I can’t speak to alternative products, though.

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My first questions would be

Why? Is it going to make you do your job better rather than using the company tools?

Is your employer ok with you experimenting with this on company time?

Sometimes windows is the right tool for the job especially if you’re in a windows environment and don’t have some special needs that work much better in Linux.

I learned Linux at home/university first via scratching a programming itch in C.

But at work, you presumably have a day job and unless you’re being paid to look into alternative platforms then this may just be a recipe for making life more difficult and even potentially copping flak for wasting company time.

I say this as a guy who runs Linux at work, has for decades and also supports a user base of windows machines.

Learning this on the job is a dangerous idea unless it’s actually part of your job. There are so many rabbit holes to fall down that will suck a large amount of time especially if you are trying to do bleeding edge things with esoteric hardware. Eg new app gets rolled to everyone. What’s the Linux alternative? Cue half a day or a week or who knows how long before you figure that out.

Will Linux help you get that time/cost back via increased productivity?

If you are your own employer, all good. Carry on…

OneDrive- there’s a command line client in fedora (possibly also others). “OneDrive” I think it’s called. I have had mixed results. It works with OneDrive for business until it flakes out and doesn’t - and you don’t really get informed (it has a log file but that isn’t in your face) until you notice stuff didn’t sync. It’s unreliable.

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Hi thro

The why is because i enjoy a challenge, and just to put anyone’s mind at ease. I am not doing this during work time, when i get to work i boot into windows (for now) and do my job. There are no issues in that department.
I am looking into this as a personal project at the moment and its something I’m tinkering with in the evenings and weekends and slow days when time allows.
I also don’t know if its going to make my life easier, based on current progress i don’t think it will. But I’m having fun learning new things.
I just wanted to talk about my own journey having a go making the switch, and ask for some help when i hit a problem i can’t solve on my own.

And as you quite rightly point out who knows how long this could take given the hardware I’m trying to get to work

I mean if all i was doing was trying to run Linux on my laptop with an external monitor connected to the HDMI portt, we would be there already, from a hardware point that setup works perfect and i have all the software i need to do my job (except onedrive client) but i really like my egpu and triple 4K monitors :sweat_smile:

And thanks for your feedback on the onedrive client, that sounds like the experience reported about most of the open source solutions that claim onedrive for business support

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Thanks

Mailspring looks good, i don’t know how i didn’t come across that myself, will download the free version and give it a try.

I have used a couple of things from egpu.io already and they helped me get part of the way. I will look into the dpi settings, i have turned on experimental screen scaling in pop os but its a bit of a crap shoot.

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Yeah, I would describe one drive for business support on linux as “a shit show”. I’ve basically given up on synchronisation to 365 for now on Linux. Then again, oneDrive for business (as opposed to regular one drive) is often a shit-show on other platforms like iOS apps (and the Mac client is hot garbage as well - say you have 2 account synched on the Mac client, there is no UI to remove an account), so linux is not alone there!

My recommendation at the moment would be to work out of the oneDrive web client, and if you need to actually sync between machines for say, your password manager use something that is better supported like google drive, next cloud, etc.

VPN support in linux is either trash or great depending on what solution your server is using.

if it’s say, L2TP/IPSEC, be prepared for pain. If it is IKEv2 be prepared for pain (i.e., built in support won’t work out of the box on most/all major distributions). If you’re using something like OpenVPN it will be fine, but openVPN doesn’t support hardware AES instructions (at least in my experience on say, a pfsense server) so… no one doing a lot of VPN traffic will likely run it. Great for home, but for a serious VPN server you’d be nuts to run without AES hardware support.

My path of least resistance as a mixed environment admin is to load my Linux (desktop) / Mac (laptop) workstation up with a heap of RAM and disk, work out of linux/macOS most of the time and if I need something Windows-y to work, fire it up in a Virtual Machine. I’ve been using KVM via libvirt for the past 12 months or so and it’s plenty good enough for most stuff that I can’t run on Linux so far.

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isn’t ubuntu free?

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I believe they meant for hiri

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Judging by the Hiri website, I wouldn’t say that it’s a dead project.

Was the seven-day trial not available?

I can’t help you there, sorry. I’ve never had any experience with an eGPU.

Is this the one?

I wish you the best of luck c0def1re!

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that’s a really bold move

I wouldn’t dwelve into linux on a windows shop unless I had plans of leaving…

your life won’t be easier on linux, y’know? It never is…

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Its not easy, but at least the pain is different enough to be worth it.

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I think so, but I installed it from the Fedora package repository with DNF. I think it worked OK until something happened on the 365 end (token expired or something) and then silently stopped replicating.

It was a few months back, can’t remember specifics but the end result is that I can’t trust it and thus it is useless to me. I can’t be having my password database diverge randomly because I’m saving things on different machines and they aren’t in sync.

For now, my password DB syncs between Windows and Mac via OneDrive for business OK and I’ll copy it manually to Linux once a week or so and not update it on the linux box.

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It can be but the circumstances are very specific.

My driver (other than hatred of Windows) is that GNS3 works a lot better in Linux. Network sniffing tools and other network diagnostic stuff is more native. As that’s part of my job, it works for me. I don’t do much “heavy” stuff in Windows so a KVM virtual machine or two of Windows takes care of that (mostly Windows/AD admin tools).

But I’m a bit of an edge case… most people won’t be making use of the network simulation and diagnostic tools in their day job :smiley:

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What are the advantages of using OneDrive over a password manager like Bitwarden?

“token expired” reminds me of when GitLab logs me out after some time of just having one GitLab tab pinned and I have to log back in when I start interacting with the tab again.

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I use Keepass so database sync is my own responsibility. This gives me the flexibility to sync however I want.

Yeah, the big problem though is there is no notification that it happened, it just breaks and you might not notice.

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Ouch! Yeah, that’s a deal-breaker then.

Hm… Well, time to look into it (I’ve heard mentions of KeepassXC for years, but I’ve never looked into it).

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When is it coming though?