Ok, a quick update.

After posting, and a little soul-searching, I decided to install Ubunu and give things another try.

Installation failed the first time, seemingly right at the end! Tried again, and it went through.

Set things up, and things seem to be OK. I’m only running a browser, and needed to try a paid windows program through Wine, which installed and loaded up without any real issues.

I go for a walk during lunch. Come back to the Linux login screen (expected, as I’d assume it locks like Windows). Log in… blank slate. All my work was closed, and it was like a fresh reboot. What the hell??? No error messages or anything. I literally have the browser and like a few other programs installed, so it’s not like the system is a mess from years of bad software installations.

Sigh…

Then I try another paid Windows program used to convert video files. It seems to work, but it’s not detecting my Intel graphics card. As I look for help on how to do this (officially, from my Laptop vendor), I get pages and pages of things to try… all through the terminal.

I mean, this is stuff that just works on Windows. No messing with stuff.

I really want Linux to be my daily driver, and even I type this from Ubuntu, I can’t help but feel like something is going to catastrophically self-destruct at any moment, and that kind of anxiety is never felt while using Windows.

I couldn’t imagine setting linux up for my wife, if this is the experience I’m having.

From Window’s perspective, there’s no need to dual boot. But I get what you’re saying. I’m not trying to defend Microsoft, and think that they’ve been enshittifying windows for years now.

But everything works without jumping through hoops. And if it doesn’t, the fix is usually very easy and done through a GUI 99% of the time.

But you are right. There are many flavours of Linux to try. Aesthetics aren’t my priority, though. I do need things to work without spending hours trying to figure it out.

I’m at an age where messing around on my computer for days on end is long gone. 😵

Yeah with Linux if it doesn’t work you’re often just screwed.

This has been my experience for decades. Even if it works, something will suddenly stop working and I’ll have no way to fix it without hours of research and messing around.

With windows, I can fix anything quickly through the GUI. But haven’t had to in a very, very long time.

I’m going to look at other options. I want to stick with a distro that is fully supported by my laptop to avoid even more issues. But the options are limited.

I appreciate the reply.

Fedora and Ubuntu are officially fully supported by laptop, so it’s Mint and a few others to a lesser extent.

I won’t use Fedora due to it being American, but the Fedora experience was quite nice the last time I tried.

I may explore other options through the Framework (laptop) community to see what else I can try.

Fedora is fully supported on my Framework laptop (as is Ubuntu and Mint), and I did have it working off an external SSD to try.

But… Sigh…

It’s American, so I won’t use it. American is one big reason why I want to quit Windows. Maybe I’ll just keep trying. 😮‍💨

My 15 year old desktop also “couldn’t do windows 11”, but you can bypass whatever bullshit limitations Microsoft puts on the installation process. That computer has been running 11 for several years now without any issues at all. Rock solid.

Man, I really tried today to get Linux on my Framework laptop.

I can’t believe how goddamn frustrating the experience has been, and I’ve dabbled in Linux for decades.

I try Mint. Install as a dual boot… Installation done. Reboot. Straight into Windows. Check partitions and nothing has changed.

Try again. All seems fine. Boot. Some error screen that won’t let me get into Mint.

Do this like four more times with no luck.

Tried Ubuntu. No easy way to install as a dual boot unless I want to mess around with custom paritions. Also, GNOME sucks ass, but Ubuntu seems way more polished than Mint.

I did get mint on a mini PC I have running through my TV. But audio wasn’t working, so that took a while to sort out. And the onscreen keyboard does nothing on the lock screen. So unpolished, and I have no idea why it’s recommended “for beginners” when it feels unfinished.

With windows, there’s no messing around. Everything just works. And I fucking hate that I feel forced to choose a miserable, hacky, terminal-based experience with countless hours of installing shit through commands… Or a smooth, reliable, easy one with bloatware and spying on the backend. Goddammit!

Fair enough. I still don’t think that being open about their self-hosted option would hurt them.

You implied that it would hurt business, and that really doesn’t seem to be the case for other projects using a self-hosted/subscription business model.

If you meant something else, then I guess I misunderstood. No harm, no foul.

Has that killed Bitwarden yet? There are many self-hosted projects that also have paid options.

I’d be happy with a paid (one-time fee) license for a self-hosted option with any software. Subscriptions should only be paying for data/storage, and if that’s offloaded to the customer’s local hardware, there’s no need to keep them on a subscription.

Especially for a product that’s privacy-first, that really should include a self-hosted option (paid or otherwise).

I don’t mean to talk negatively at all, and their product looks amazing (especially with the added context you’ve provided).

For me, based on my own experience and the huge amount of storage needed to keep my photos/videos safe, it’s not cost-effective for me personally. If the choice was any of the other paid services or Ente, I think Ente would be the clear winner from the sound of it.

Like with all other online services, it’s cheap until your collection grows. I basically outpaced Google Drive (at the time), and it would have been significantly more expensive to continue with their paid plans. So, I invested in hardware. LOL

But realistically, if you have a smaller photo/video collection, then I think it would be just as easy to spend $5-10 a month and forget about it. I was working with decades worth of images, so I would quickly outgrow any 1, 2, 3TB plans.

I may have tried the demo at some point (along with other Self-hosted solutions for photo backup), but Synology Photos does what I want without any real setup.

For search, I use a paid software called Excire Foto (German origin) that uses local-AI. I point it to my network folder, and it creates its own database away from my originals. Expensive software, but it’s been worth it. Synology photos also has searching by subject, but Excire is far more contextual and easily beats out anything that Google Photos offered.

My Synology NAS is set up as RAID, so there’s redundancy built in.

Then I have daily backups to an external drive (automatic, so there’s no intervention).

In addition to (automatic) daily encrypted cloud backup (which I’m looking for an alternative due to rising costs). Ideally, I’d love to set up a second, smaller NAS somewhere else to offset the cloud backup costs.

Then I have a monthly backup on physical media kept secured outside of my home.

But my NAS handles way more than just photos and video, so this low effort is really covering all kinds of data.

I made the switch to self-hosting in part to reduce subscription costs of various services, and I’m sure that by now my setup has paid for itself.

Thank you. Any reason why they wouldn’t make it more apparent from their homepage? I’m always interested in self-hosted solutions, and even I ducked out of there after seeing only subscription plans being offered.

Is it?? They don’t make that evident anywhere on their website. All I see is a pricing page with no hint that it can be self-hosted.

I appreciate the privacy-first model, but I don’t think I can ever go back to paid subscriptions for my photo and video storage. Not only does it cost a fortune over time, but when the company eventually folds or changes their policy for the worst, it’s a nightmare to get your photos and videos to another platform.

Self-hosting is what I prefer, although, I can appreciate that it’s not an option for everyone.

I think the point is, you just don’t support products from countries led by dictators. I wouldn’t use an OS from North Korea, no matter how free it was. LOL

In my case, the US is worse than North Korea, because they threaten the existence of my country (Canada) on a daily basis.

And for the EU, they have as much reason to distance themselves from Americans than I do.

There are far too many alternatives from other countries to even entertain an American distro. My opinion, anyway.

Fedora Origin: USA

No, thanks. 🙅

It’s like you need high-level programming training to even understand how to contribute to their project. Where’s the “Edit” button, for example?

I’ve contributed dozens of hours to other projects (namely OpenStreetMap), but it’s DEAD SIMPLE to contribute there.