I transitioned to Linux a few years ago, which has piqued my partner’s curiosity. She’s been genuinely interested and asks questions about it, but she is so deeply integrated I don’t know where to start. She uses iCloud, an Apple Watch, iPhone, iPad, a Mac desktop, plus whatever default proprietary software. She has a semi-technical background.
I want to help and be encouraging without overselling the ease of transition. There’s always some friction with transitioning technology, and of course Apple makes that intentionally difficult. I came from a Windows ecosystem, so I’m lacking any direct insight for potential challenges.
Any advice or personal experiences on moving from the Apple ecosystem to Linux would be hugely appreciated!
(I can host services on my local server, so transitioning to something like Immich vs iCloud for photos is one option we’ve discussed).
A clear purpose and clear expectations help. It’s important to remember why using Linux is valuable. It’s what keeps us pushing through, even when it gets tough. It also helps to know that not everything will work right out of the box. And, to an extent, one can assume that that is the cost of using Linux.
One thing that inspires me is Snowden’s quote that says something like “We won’t win with features, but with ethical convictions”.
Now, as to what steps to take, focus on safe-to-fail experiments. Start by making relatively small changes, even within the Apple ecosystem:
Once these changes are part of daily life, you can attempt a transition to Linux.
The idea here is to make change sustainable.
Excellent advice!
I’d like to add to the list:
I’d only make the switch once you’ve made sure that
I would push back on using Nextcloud for contacts and calendars, as I think that is Nextcloud trying to do to much and failing. I use Baïkal as that is its only focus.
Admittedly, Nexcloud does try to be the everything app, and for several of those things, it naturally loses out to more specialised applications (e.g. photos vs. immich). Contacts and calendars, however, are such a no-brainers (particularly when run through card/calDAV, not the web apps) that I don’t see why I’d set up yet another service just for that.
Feel free to sell Baikal to me a little more, though! ;)
I admittly have not been able to shake the Apple out of my LAN fully yet. And I was having difficulties with my iphone, ipad, and linux devices syncing with Nextcloud. That was when it was hosted elsewhere. So I I stopped trying that as I was still whenning myself off of icloud, I later tried selfhosting Nextcloud and same problem plus it was not syncing contacts. I was almost ready to throw in the towel and call Nextcloud useless and started just using smb and fiddled with syncthing I recently went onto my Nextcloud webui to find my halloween counter and decided I may still use it as a file server, syncthing may still be running somewhere on my LAN no idea! lol
I needed something to sync my calendars so I went searching, I remember checking out a few things (some of which may still be running on my homelab but Baikal is what I use) and Baikal won out just because it was dumb simple and only did calendars and contacts it did not try to do more, the moment it tries to do more I will be looking for a new service.
It could also be that I use caddy with https and my devices did not like using nextcloud with https for calendars and contacts, but Baikal works fine with the https. I get the ssl certificate from my web host, easydns hosts my VNC and email.
Fun side note: I originally was going to host my blog out of my place but decided to use a VPS instead, I had already moved my domain name and email to easydns so I got a VPS instead.
AirDrop = LocalSend
It depends what you want from this.
Personally, I prefer the latter because it’s much more powerful. Also, I’ve experienced issues with LocalSend and VPN usage.
Yep, Syncthing is great, and I use it heavily. What I meant is that AirDrop is for sending files you select, from one device to another, so LocalSend just closer to that. As the sibling comment pointed out, AirDrop is more robust.
This is such bad advice. If you tell people that, people expect it too work like AirDrop, which it doesn’t.
LocalSend is great, but it is much more limited than AirDrop. As the name suggest, it only works if people are in the same network. If you’re in your home network, and both devices are yours, that’s probably fair enough, but that isn’t the point or (only) use case of AirDrop.
Also if you’re installing it on a Linux machine which happens to have a firewall enabled by default, you will have to open the correct ports for it to to work out even just see the other devices.
I won’t call it a bad advice, because I’ve been struggling without LocalDrop, as there’s no similar thing for Linux world. AirDrop is surely works better, you can send files just being on the street, connected to no WiFi. However, I had a number of issues with it for family usage, while LocalSend just works seamlessly between my Linux computers and iOS devices.
You misunderstood my point. LocalSend is great. It does exactly what it promises, and works well.
But you’re claiming “AirDrop = LocalSend” and that is not true and causes false expectations. People used to Apple think they can use it in all the same situations and for the same things, which they can’t. Just because you mostly used it in the same network doesn’t mean most people use AirDrop that way, and I know quite a few that mostly use it while out and about, meeting new people etc.
The “Good advice” version is too tell them there is LocalSend, which can do quite a few things like AirDrop, but not all. Basically make it clear they need to be on the same network.
I would really focus on what features she likes of the Apple ecosystem and replace those. For me, I started being in the Apple ecosystem because all my colleagues used it and it was kind of expected for me to fit in. So no amount of “you can replace this with that” could have convinced me.