New refugee from Windows / Need advices about image system backup, excel, vscode

[Guest]

Hey there I am another refugee from windows with the forced push to windows 11. I thought it was time I tried once again linux. So far I am pretty satisfied.
I installed Fedora with KDE and successfully migrated my syncthing server, sftp server. Correctly mounted my nft disks and successfully installed mullvad with all split tunneling I needed.

Now I need advices about 3 things which I sorely miss and which keep forcing me to boot on windows :

• is there any equivalent to macrium reflect, allowing to schedule weekly image backup for system disk. So it could be restored in case something really goes wrong.
  My system disk is brtfs. Time machine looks nice but it's not working because I have no @home and @root volume identified. I found explanations which explain how to do it but I am not too sure it's a good idea to do so.
  I also found rsync. Didn't explore enough this solution but I am not sure an image backup can be done if system is running ?
• for vscode it's easy and I got it running for my linux environment. Yet I have programs which are meant specifically to run on windows and so I can't develop and test them on linux
• at last for my work I need to be able to use excel. Libre office is not a solution, it's ok for basic usage but it's far behind if you're using it professionally. Please don't turn this about an arguments to say calc is good, really there is something that are just impossible with it. (Like using arrays, power query or data models)

For the last 2 points I feel like my only solution would be to use a virtual machine running windows. Is there a way to run them on it but make it looks like it's a linux app? Somewhat is it what docker is doing but for linux apps ?

Well I feel like I have not many options if I want excel and vscode on windows environment. So sadly I think that will settled it. Please share your thoughts.
I would also really appreciate people sharing what they do to backup their system disk.

Thanks for your advice !

[aux@feddit.uk]

The best Linux is WSL.

[narc0tic_bird@lemm.ee]

The best Windows is Wine

[mynameisrichard@lemmy.ml]

If you're developing specifically for Windows, you're going to need Windows somewhere in the process be it bare metal or vm. You will also have problems with Excel on Linux although you could try the online one.

[bad_news@lemmy.billiam.net]

Pika Backup does backups.
For testing Windows, you'll want to run a VM, QEMU is best for that (There's a KDE wrapper I forget the name of for it with a better GUI) but you can probably do some level of testing running your app with Wine.
You can run Excel with Wine (also the Office365 web Excel runs in browser)

[mynameisrichard@lemmy.ml]

The biggest problem with wsl is that you have to have windows as well.

[n0x0n@lemmy.ml]

There are some functions that do not work in the Office365 web Excel ! So that's also not a solution if they need it for work ://.

[aux@feddit.uk]

That's not a problem.

[rozauhtuno@lemmy.blahaj.zone]

For Excel, you can use OnlyOffice.

[lorty@lemmy.ml]

Do the programs you develop run on wine? It could be an option while developing, but either way you'll have to QA it on windows at some point.

[zygo_histo_morpheus@programming.dev]

If you want to test windows programs on linux, you're probably going to want to do that in a virtual machine, or even a spare computer just for testing on windows. Depending on how much you need to use excel, a virtual machine could be a good option for that as well, but if using Microsoft Excel is a big part of your job, maybe it makes more sense to just stay on Windows for work at least

[robin@lemmy.world]

Sir I think you have stumbled into the wrong sublemmy

[dariusmiles2123@sh.itjust.works]

For image backups I use Clonezilla.

It works well but I don’t know how easily you could take an image from one computer to a different one. I tried once and it didn’t work because of Legacy Bios issues..still I guess it works between two modern computers.

I’d love if something like this was implemented directly in a distribution for ease of use.

[redsnt@feddit.dk]

I wasn't aware of pika backup, but it does look good. It's basically a fancy GUI for borgbackup, but I like separate projects like that, each focusing on what they do best.

[mentaledge@sopuli.xyz]

I haven't found anything that is quite like Macrium. Mostly, because something that works the same way is a bad idea on linux. Bausese no, as you suspect, and image backup cannot be done while the partition being inaged is live.

Macrium creates restorable images of your entire boot partition, as-is, which can then be restored onto the same, or an entirely different, disk.

This isn't really something you can do in linux, with a system that is live. Hence, partition images should be done offline, when the given partition isn't booted.

That said, everything that matters can be backed up simply by copying the relevant files. For this, I use Kopia.

As for making sure you always have a bootable system, for this I use Timeshift on btrfs.

For MS office, you might try winapps. Sounds like what you're hoping for.

[dran_arcana@lemmy.world]

RE: backups, I'd recommend altering your workflow. Instead of taking an image of a box, automate the creation of that box. Create a bash script that takes a base OS, and installs everything you use fresh. Then have it apply configuration files where appropriate, and lastly figure out which applications really need backup blobs to work properly (thunderbird, for example). Once you have that, your backups become just the data itself. Photos, documents, etc. Everything else is effectively ephemeral because it can be reproduced through automation.

Takes a lot less space, is a lot more portable. And much better in scenarios where something in your OS is broken or you get a new computer and want to replicate your setup.

[easily3667@lemmus.org]

Comparing switching from windows to another piece of software to being a refugee is truly the most privileged techbro thing I've seen in a long time. Well, since mid January at least.

[catloaf@lemm.ee]

It's for work? Keep using Windows. VM or separate PC or whatever. Maybe WINE.

[reversalhatchery@beehaw.org]

go away with that fucking mentality. microsoft really thinks they can do anything with their slaves

[Guest]

Take the following with a grain of salt, it depends on your specific setup, environment and preference, but might help you:

Regarding system backups, and depending whether you need to run fedora, check out nixos, which takes a declarative file and builds your system based on that. Declarative immutable system, no moving parts, no breakage. If your system breaks, revert to a prior version and keep using what you've had before before retrying. Your backup is a git repo or whatever is keeping your handful of config files. Has been an absolute game changer for me, and the community and ecosystem around it is far beyond the point of quirky esoteric immutable distro.

VSCode has a powerful feature that I've yet to see in another editor/IDE - remote development, and it works really, really well. Spin up a VM however you like (I'd recommend checking out Vagrant), and depending on how much you need to do in windows either use the windows box as a remote run target (just running your built artifact in windows), or as a remote development box (running everything in windows and using your Linux VSCode as a "Frontend" for everything else happening in windows). Both methods can be made to work seamlessly in vsc.

Excel - again depending on your usage, you can try wine, you can use a VM, dual boot, M365 in browser, or a remote VM.