Linux

Fair points. But I need 3TB minimum on my desktop machine. I have 2 NAS' with 6TB and 3TB RAID arrays. Yes I can get by with 8gb of ram but I keep a ton of stuff open. It's slow. 16gb is probably the right amount but with upgradable ram 8 can get 64 for $200 which is well worth it to me. None of this is possible within my budget on new Macs, whereas on any normal hardware platform it's pretty affordable. You might want to go back and look at Mac ram and ssd prices and compare them to market prices to see how out of hand they've become. It's like a 10x multiple in some cases. The one area I don't need to go big is on CPU as nothing I do is compute heavy, which is of course the one area where Apple doesn't charge an absurd premium.

There’s a lot of people in this thread saying it’s possible, some saying it’s not and more than is really healthy saying there’s something wrong with you.

But the question I can’t help but ask is should you switch to Linux.

I don’t think so.

You’re trying to get away from the high price of Apple hardware, not out of a general unwillingness to pay for expensive things, but because the ram and storage in the computers are no longer upgradable.

To do so you’d have to find bespoke solutions based on new software and systems you might not be familiar with and which mill most likely face loss of maintainers and updates some time in the near future.

That’s not a dealbreaker really, but the general trend in laptops is moving away from replaceable memory. Sure at the moment you generally can still replace the disk, but for how long? Are you thinking that apples ahead of the curve on system on chip devices or that they’re making a misstep? Personally I think anyone your age or mine will have a hard time buying new computers that don’t have everything built into the board or processor before we shuffle off. I could be wrong though.

Let’s say it doesn’t matter though, just in dollars amortized over the life of the hardware, how much are you really saving by upgrading the memory and storage?

I tend to run five + year old macs and for the oldest ones, the 12 year old MacBooks, I got lots more life out of em by doubling the installed memory to 16gb and going from hdd to ssd. How much money was really saved though? Maybe ten bucks a month at the most.

Are you keeping em for fifteen years or cycling out every five or so?

Newer Macs which already have ssds don’t see near the stark performance change that we probably both wowed about when going from hdd to ssd.

You’re not really listing any software or operations in your post that would make upgrading the ram from the (maybe?) current 8gb minimum to anything more seem worthwhile.

It’s not that I don’t think a person could do what you want to do under Linux, just that it doesn’t seem like something you ought to pursue when weighed against the relatively low cost of just staying with the system you’re using considering the computers themselves will hold value better over time than anything you might swap out to.

1. you could try Plex and PlexAmp. I believe you need to buy PlexPass but that can be a one time fee.

2. if it hasn’t been mentioned then Immich is by far your best option here. I’ve tried most of the others and there isn’t much comparison in my opinion. Native mobile apps for iOS and Android are available. Browser for viewing from desktop.

Those 5 requirements are not small things, but as a (relatively) recent linux migrant, here's my take.

1. Keep using iTunes (but use the windows version) - through wine. You get to keep all your stuff as is for now with the possibility of migrating to another service in the future.

2. See above, stick with your current device, keep using iTunes for now.

3. If it's for private stuff LibreOffice suite does just fine though + the thunderbird email client. If it's for work you should probably have a work device, but there is also winapps for linux, which isn't official by microsoft, so it might be a bit funky.

4. Maybe try out proton if you want something trustworthy to back up your photos. They've recently added a service for that. Costs a subscription though.

5. Keep using evernote. There's a linux client.

Obviously there will be hickups, and things'd be a lot more smooth if you were willing to make some adjustments, but this is perfectly doable.

How does Requirement 3 work? You have macs, so you must be running the Windows versions in a VM? Obviously you could do that on Linux as well.

But, to be honest, Requirements 1 and 2 say to me that Apple have you heavily locked in, and I think you should recognize that.

I started using FOSS apps on OSX until I got familiar with them, then moving to Linux was a lot easier.

1. I use rhythmbox, but my usecase isn't quite as extensive as yours. I don't think it has smart playlist capabilities, for example. But it is able to rip MP3s from CDAs, which is cool.

2. I haven't found anything that will work 100% with iphones on Linux, but I no longer have iphones, so it's been a while since I've looked.

3. MS Office used to work fine enough under WINE. I've had 0 luck with 365. There's LibreOffice, which is a great replacement for most things Office (minus Outlook). Thunderbird, I think, has an exchange plug-in. On my home computer, though, I use Outlook web, which has worked just as well as Desktop for my use cases so far. I understand you want Desktop Outlook, so this may be a deal breaker. However, Desktop Outlook New is heading towards WPA anyway, and MS is trying to sync the functionality between desktop and web, so this may only be an issue for a little while.

4. I don't have this use case for my computer, so I can't really help here. But others on this thread seemed to have provided some nice options.

5. not sure you'll get integration into proprietary software like Evernote, but there are built-in scanning tools that "just work" with every scanner I've thrown at it thus far. I do not have the same scanner you do, though.

I recommend grabbing a live ISO of a distro you're interested in trying (Mint seems to just work for most people, ElementaryOS if you want to maintain that macos look/feel), and just trying it out on RAM. No installation needed, and you can get a better feel if this will work for you. Don't expect a perfect fit, though. Workflows and solutions will differ from Mac to Linux, just as they do from Mac to Windows. This was one of my reservations, and why I kept finding myself back on Windows and Mac. The end goal, IMO, should be to get out of the walled garden in which you've found yourself. Once I realized that, once I switched my goal from 'finding exact replacements' to 'getting out', switching was much easier and smoother. Good luck! Post any questions you have, and we'll do our best to guide you right. This is a great and super helpful community (mostly lol).

Just use a music server and shared storage for your music. Nothing can be done about office apps