Replace Windows and/or Mac with Linux

For several years, roughly once a year, I have tried a Linux distribution to see whether it can compete with Windows.

And yes, the question “Can Linux finally compete with Windows in the office?” is inevitable, because Windows is the benchmark for usability, rather than the other way round, whatever its critics may think.

In recent months, with Microsoft trying to move its users to Windows 11, warning that it will soon stop security updates for Windows 10 and therefore forcing people to buy new compatible hardware, I decided to try a couple of distributions once again to see where things stand.

I should say that I am not someone who automatically favours either system. I like both, and appreciate their features according to my needs, so my position here is very simple: faced with the question “Do I really have to replace my PCs?”, I started looking for possible alternatives.

How did I approach it?

I have a laptop that I no longer knew what to do with, having replaced it with a Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming. The machine is an Acer Predator that actually supports Windows 11, but is now outdated for gaming.

Besides that laptop, among the machines in the office I have a 2015 Mac mini, a 2016 27-inch iMac, and an Acer that I honestly thought was only fit to be an ornament.

The situation was rather complicated, as I later discovered first-hand. Why? Because although Linux is good at running practically anything, there are still some problems with AMD graphics cards modified for Apple…

I want to give you a quick overview of the machines I brought back to life, and, to give away the ending, I am very pleased with the results.

• 27-inch iMac — graphics card: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Amethyst (Radeon R9 M395/M395X Mac Edition); CPU: Intel Core i5-6600 @ 3.30GHz × 4.
• Mac mini — graphics card: Intel Corporation Haswell-ULT Integrated Graphics Controller; CPU: Intel Core i5-4260U @ 1.40GHz × 2.
• Acer — I am too embarrassed to tell you… (lol). We are talking about a 2012 Celeron, with its matching Intel graphics.

Before moving on to the software, let us discuss the small problem with the 27-inch iMac: once Ubuntu was installed, we found startup excessively slow, and the machine would freeze when we tried to restart it.

We solved this by updating the graphics drivers, available here: https://www.amd.com/en/support/download/linux-drivers.html

We also changed one line of startup code, following this guide: https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/it-it/000123893/opzione-della-riga-di-avvio-del-kernel-manuale-nomodeset-per-l-avvio-di-linux

The machine now works normally.

The Mac mini and Acer had no problems at all and work correctly. The Predator feels reborn: it even seems more responsive and faster than before with Windows 10.

What do I need?

Now let us get down to business, starting with the question: what do I need?

Every company is clearly structured differently, but I think the basic setups are fairly similar. In our case we use cloud storage for our data: essentially, our server is Google Drive. This choice was driven by the need to work from several remote locations, not just the office.

So which programs did we need?

1. The classic office suite: Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
2. Email, preferably with an integrated calendar.
3. Accounting, quotations and so on.
4. Mileage reimbursements for employees.

It is not that Linux lacked suitable alternative software in previous years; the problem was users and their overwhelming habit of using Windows. Over the years I have realised that Windows is addictive.

Tech enthusiasts may not care which program they use, as long as it gets the job done. But ordinary users do not think that way: even a different menu can be an obstacle. And since “ordinary” users are the ones who will use the software, we need to take that into account to avoid a major failure in integration, learning curve and everyday use.

Let me repeat: in my assessment, I considered similarity to the commercial solutions available on Windows.

I tried several distributions and, after narrowing them down for various reasons, two remained: Ubuntu and Fedora. In fact, in the end, just one: Ubuntu.

Choosing the desktop

Having tried them all, I can say I do not like GNOME, which is too different from Windows; I do not like MATE, which is closer but less polished visually; and I do not like Xfce or LXDE, whose graphical finishing feels too immature.

I chose Cinnamon, and I like it: polished and similar to Windows. First objective achieved.

The distribution is therefore Ubuntu Cinnamon, available from: https://ubuntucinnamon.org

Download the ISO and, since you will almost certainly have a Windows PC available, also download Rufus, a program that lets you create a bootable USB drive to install Ubuntu Cinnamon on your chosen PC. Rufus link: https://rufus.ie/it

I assume anyone attempting this approach has some knowledge of installing an operating system on a PC, so I will not go into the installation procedure. If needed, take a look here: https://wiki.ubuntu-it.org/Installazione/InstallareUbuntu/NuovoInstaller

One important point: you should have an internet connection. It is not strictly necessary for installation, but you will need it to install the software that follows.

After installation

Assuming you have successfully installed Ubuntu, let us continue:

1. I do not like the fact that Ubuntu installs lots of games by default: it is not a disk-space problem, they simply clutter my menu. So I click the menu in the bottom left and start typing “software”: this highlights the installer for software available in Ubuntu's repositories. Put simply, it is the equivalent of Android's Play Store. Once Software is highlighted as the first result, I press Enter to launch it.
2. At the top centre are three items: Explore – Installed – Updates, with the search icon at the top left.
3. I click Installed and scroll through the list. For each game I find, I click it to open the app page. The Uninstall button is at the top right: click it for every app you do not want to keep. Often, though not always, you will be asked for the password, which is that of the first user who installed the system. (Again, I will not go into more detail here; there will be time for that.)
4. If you do not know which apps might interest you, since their names will probably be unfamiliar coming from Windows, you can click the bottom-left menu and browse the categories to see which programs there are and what they do. Typing “excel”, for example, will show its Linux counterpart: LibreOffice Calc in my case. Simple, isn't it?
5. You can also explore the store for apps you might need: often you only need to click the search icon at the top left and enter a keyword, such as “excel”, to see suitable software. Do not be intimidated by the number of options: an impressive choice is a feature of Linux, although it can cause some confusion, especially for beginners. You will not need many of these solutions. Once you feel more comfortable with Linux, I suggest installing alternatives for one specific need at a time and trying out their features. When you find one that suits you, keep it and uninstall the rest so the menu does not fill up with programs you will never use. Much like the games example. Always remember “ordinary” users, who do not like seeing too many alternatives in the menu. The old saying still applies: quality over quantity.

Let us continue.

Office

Until last month our office had an Office 365 subscription (actually, it will remain valid until August), with cloud storage for each user. An excellent solution, perhaps a little expensive, but once again the benchmark for others.

Many people will advise replacing it with LibreOffice, a suite available for Windows, Linux and Mac… Yes, certainly an excellent choice, but if we want to get as close as possible to Microsoft 365, I recommend an alternative: OnlyOffice Desktop Editors (search for it in the store). It is what we chose after letting users try both OnlyOffice and LibreOffice.

Email and calendar

I think we are still a little immature here, but only a little, and for just one reason. Our chosen solution, Thunderbird, is slightly slower than our previous client, eM Client, when some users have as many as 60,000–70,000 emails. Unfortunately eM Client is not available for Linux, but in my opinion it is the best email client around.

Despite this small drawback, Thunderbird's appearance and calendar management have improved greatly; in our case the calendar is shared on Google.

We also tried Evolution, which, although improved and certainly more responsive and faster than Thunderbird, is still a long way behind visually.

Of course, we could have used Cinnamon's built-in calendar app together with the Geary email client, but that did not meet our needs: we wanted an integrated email and calendar app.

Accounting, quotations…

In our case we use entirely Italian open-source cloud software, GAzie, available at: https://gazie.sourceforge.io/

If you use Windows software instead, things become a little more complicated: you need to find out whether it will run through Wine. Link: https://www.winehq.org/

If it does not work, you can keep a Windows PC with the accounting software installed and access it through remote desktop sharing. This is a more complicated solution, though, and will almost certainly require the right skills.

Mileage reimbursements

Our business needs software to manage reimbursements for employees who use their own vehicles for company activities. We chose cloud software developed by… me. Link: https://mob.rimborsikilometrici.it/

I will not dwell on it, to avoid unnecessary advertising.

Connecting to the cloud server

Finally, storing company documents. There are countless choices here: many people insist on the absolute need for security and therefore favour internal servers, sometimes even disconnected from the internet. Although I respect this view, I disagree. Security problems are often linked to user shortcomings: however much security you try to implement, you will eventually have to deal with distracted, unaware users who put company data at risk.

So?

So I have no definitive answers about which solutions to recommend: I can only tell you the choices we made.

We dropped our Office 365 subscription in favour of Google's equivalent, which offers terabytes of storage at attractive prices, as well as security, with constant backups and antivirus checks. Link: https://one.google.com/about/plans?hl=it&g1_landing_page=0

We connected Linux using open-source software that lets us mount remote storage as a network drive (the familiar Z: drive on Windows). The software is rclone. Link: https://rclone.org/

This gives all users access to the same “server”, where company documents are shared. Rclone also overcomes a limitation in Google Drive's resource allocation: you can restrict each user to the resources you choose to make available to them.

For security, we assigned the Acer to internal backups: an incremental backup twice a day, seven days a week.

Final notes

Well, that concludes this first short guide based on first-hand experience. After about a month, Linux has passed with almost full marks, and the whole operation cost nothing. We recovered machines that were already unusable in Apple's case and approaching end of life in Windows' case, and all the software solutions I have described are free of charge, with quality now comparable to proprietary solutions, apart from the exceptions mentioned.

Of course, in this case I worked free of charge for the company I belong to, but I am convinced there are many honest professionals who can implement these solutions, or even better ones, at very modest cost. I believe it is genuinely possible today to choose alternatives to Windows or Apple without spending a fortune, and even save on hardware.

This guide is simply a small way of thanking the great community of open-source developers who work with dedication and professionalism every day to release alternatives to paid software.

I hope it helps bring more and more users into this world, which relatively few people still know about.

Mirco Zuppiroli Programmer, analyst, systems administrator