Samba VS PowerToys

Samba

The TLDR is that you create the filesystem on Linux/Raspberry Pi. Then you "export" that file system via some software to remote computers. You can use Samba (https://www.samba.org/) to create CIFS shares which can be mounted by either Linux or Microsoft Windows devices. There are of course other software/protocols you can use to export the filesystems like NFS, iSCSI, CEPHFS, etc; but these are a bit more complicated than what a novice can deploy. I would start with Samba/CIFS and then branch out once you get more experienced.

You could try to use samba via cgo.

I think you want a CIFS/SMB client? A quick search turned up smbc, which looks like it does what you want. All three crates are based on libsmbclient, which is a C implementation from the Samba project.

Remember kids, there is always Samba.

> First, the article doesn't say that "Linux is not ready for the desktop" - or concern itself with this as an abstract question.

Well, it does, but in a sarcastic manner:

"Yeah, let's consider Linux an OS ready for the desktop :-)."

> Also, I find the "GNU/Linux is already ready for the desktop; I and others use it" argument tired. I've used GNU/Linux for the desktop in 1998, but it sure as hell wasn't ready then.

Conversely, that it doesn't work for certain people does not mean that "it is not ready", which the post does state (sarcastically) as I pointed out above.

> Many use cases aside...

I'm not sure how the browsing, docs and email is miserable, maybe you can expand on that. The video editing is indeed a bit limited from my experience too. However, I don't think "limited proprietary options" is a problem. The community largely and specifically avoids proprietary software. Proprietary incursions into the community are generally seen as a negative thing. And for the lack of codecs, software patents for the most part are to blame.

And then it just comes to my original statement; many things stated in the article are non-issues to most Linux users or just falsehoods:

- Neither Mozilla Firefox nor Google Chrome use video decoding and output acceleration in Linux.

Firefox does.

- NVIDIA Optimus technology is a pain

NVIDIA is a pain.

- You don't play games, do you?

I do.

- Linux still has very few native AAA games.

So "it's not ready" because it doesn't have AAA games? What a pitty.

- To be fair you can now run thousands of Windows games through DirectX to Vulkan/OpenGL translation (Wine, Proton, Steam for Linux) but this incurs translation costs and decreases performance sometimes significantly.

No, not 'significantly' for dxvk.

- Also, anti-cheat protection usually doesn't work in Linux.

For good reason. Blame the dev, and don't make it work on Linux.

- Microsoft Office is not available for Linux

Thankfull.

- LibreOffice often has major troubles properly opening, rendering or saving documents created in Microsoft Office.

And whose fault is this? Use ODT.

- Several crucial Windows applications are not available under Linux.

Thankfully. Also, 'crucial' is subjective.

- In 2022 there's still no alternative to Windows Network File Sharing.

It's available since 1992: https://www.samba.org/

- Linux doesn't have a reliably working hassle-free fast native (directly mountable via the kernel; FUSE doesn't cut it) MTP implementation.

I can transfer files to my phone just fine.

- Too many things in Linux require manual configuration using text files.

No.

etc.

I have a media server that runs ubuntu, and today I wanted to copy some files off of it from my windows laptop. But the samba shares weren't showing up in file explorer (but they showed up on fine on my macbook).

brew info samba samba: stable 4.16.0 (bottled) SMB/CIFS file, print, and login server for UNIX https://www.samba.org/ Not installed From: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/blob/HEAD/Formula/samba.rb License: GPL-3.0-or-later ==> Dependencies Build: [email protected] ✔ Required: gnutls ✘, krb5 ✔ ==> Caveats To avoid conflicting with macOS system binaries, some files were installed with non-standard name: - smbd: /usr/local/sbin/samba-dot-org-smbd - profiles: /usr/local/bin/samba-dot-org-profiles ==> Analytics install: 1,477 (30 days), 3,287 (90 days), 6,917 (365 days) install-on-request: 1,459 (30 days), 3,246 (90 days), 6,863 (365 days) build-error: 5 (30 days)

Windows PowerToys GitHub Repo

RunFlow is a cross-platform productivity tool which can launch apps and search files and more, that similar to Wox and PowerToys on Windows, and also similar like Alfred and Raycast on macOS. But we have differences with these tools, and we have our own unique new features. Right now, at the below, we will introduce you what features of RunFlow have been implemented in more details. It's an amazing journey, let's start.

I'm curious - when you were doing research into the mechanics of hinting options, did you stumble onto any relevant discussion around allowing custom pixel geometries to be defined, to enable hinting on modern OLED / WRBG displays? There's a good thread on the topic here[0], with some people referring to it as 'ClearType 2' on the MS side [1]. On the oss side I know FreeType theoretically supports this[2], but I can't quite figure out how relevant the FreeType backend is to this most recent work.

This is great work btw.

[0]: https://github.com/snowie2000/mactype/issues/932

[1]: https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/issues/25595

[2]: https://freetype.org/freetype2/docs/reference/ft2-lcd_render...

Thank you all for the informative advices. Here is the summary for those who are in the same situation:

1. Run Windows on Linux by using VM

for the applications you can’t run on Linux

Risks:

* some softwares may attempt to detect VMs and refuse running

* Anything what needs to touch hardware may not work.

2. separate "data" partition on D:

3. back up %APPDATA% and %USERPROFILE%

4. learn chocolatey, scoop or winget

Winget should be good enough

5. Don’t worry about C:\Program Files

6. (Mixed) Use/Don’t use Ansible (or saltstack/salt)

Use:

* Allows you to setup a new machine quickly and consistently when one breaks, get stolen, or lost in an inconvenient time.

* You can get a clean and consistent development environment so that you do not depend on anything accidentally installed on the machine.

* If you define specialised roles, create test playbooks for those individual roles, use these roles to compose more complex playbooks, and offload logic to custom ansible modules that are written in python, you won't wrestle with heavy logic in the template or playbook layer.

* installing software and pulling some configs and scripts down is fine

Don’t use:

* You will spend your days fighting a mix of yaml and Jinja.

* You will end up looking at Python errors because there are no static types.

* errors are cryptic.

7. Use WSL2

You need 32gb of ram, but ram is cheap so choose a good thinkpad

8. Debloat with Recommended Tweaks

Run

irm christitus.com/win | iex

from Administrator Terminal (Powershell)

The link leads to https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ChrisTitusTech/winutil/mai...

VirusTotal

https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/709834b0e003b6bb546cf16e...

9. Get [PowerToys](https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys)

10. Use Devbox for containered environment

https://www.jetpack.io/devbox

11. Dual-Booting Linux and Windows

If you use physically separated drives, you don’t need partitioning.

12. Dedicated Windows machine for class

Yes it sure would be the cleanest solution but I prefer one device for everything

13. keep a git repository with all dot files in it

Many people suggested me to use virtualization, otherwise just let Windows be Windows.

Also, backing up seems to be a good practice.

I’m planning to write a blog about this, if it worked.

Again, thank you all for the helps!

Powertoys Run (https://github.com/microsoft/powertoys) can do this. There are not that many plugins as Alfred but Window Switcher is built-in.

For sharing a mouse/keyboard between Windows PCs, there is Mouse Without Borders. It's included in PowerToys nowadays.

https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys

- https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys

If you’re on Windows, download PowerToys. It’s an app published by Microsoft officially. Then enable Quick Accent in the settings of PowerToys. Now all you have to do is hold down the key you want accented until the switch shows up, then add an accent with your arrow keys.

microsoft/PowerToys: Windows system utilities to maximize productivity (github.com)