Hi fellow Hiveians,
Today I wanted to talk about prepping.. the digital style!
Digital Prepping
Preparing the move.. daunting!
Having worked in the IT industry for many years at this point, you'd think that this type of thing would be an old hat?
I, like many others, are looking down the barrel of the upcoming end of life for Windows 10. I am adamantly against Windows 11 and their spyware capabilities, so I am ending my personal participation in the Windows ecosystem after this transpires.
There are for sure certain things that will be more vulnerable as time goes on, so it's a good idea to get off the old operating system once patches are no longer being delivered for it. Now, I know that it's not realistic to be able to do it IMMEDIATELY at the day of EOL being declared.. but I am trying to get prepared.
It's like any software, server or data migration. You have to take all of the data with you and then figure out how to get it on the other side in an operational state. Ideally you have a situation where you can test it first, but that's not always the case.
For me, I'm unfortunately not able to really test it. I am going to have to go with the hard cutover path, which can be bumpy as shit for sure hahaha. I have been putting together a little cutover checklist for myself, as any good project manager would do!
The cutover checklist is helping me mentally process the situation. I know that I've got to do X, Y and Z things first in order to be able to make the switch successfully. How successful is to be determined of course.. but I know that I am going to have to kind-of treat it like a vacation that I've had in the past on Hive.
Yes I've heard it many times, the posting doesn't matter. I can agree with that, but it's a habit and an enjoyable one. I would rather keep the habit going and not have an interruption on it, but I have to also plan there may be a temporary interruption. Planning out some content that I've got written down is going to be the best way to do that.. and I know I've got lots of shit to get written!
With the checklist though, I think the important thing is having some sort of written note for the damn thing. I can certainly think of plenty of things for me to be doing, but at the same time, it's important to have it written down. We will for sure come up with other things as we go along, so it helps to have notes.
What about you, are you doing anything different after the Windows 10 end of life? Are you going to Windows 11, or Linux? Let me know in the comments!
-CmplXty. Real human written content, never AI. All pictures are mine unless otherwise stated
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Linux is the answer, but you have decouple yourself from "Cloud", too.
That is the part i am struggling most with. I still use OneDrive as a back up point, and OneDrive (with a GUI!) support on Linux is a bit messy. There are intermediaries that can be used along the way like rclone, syncthing, nextcloud, tailscale, and all that, but it is a short jaunt into full blown homelab territory at that point.
I still need Windows so unfortunately, I dual boot, but I am lucky enough to split my computing into a few categories:
I also have a Steam Deck which solves mobile gaming, if I ever get the luxury of that. :P
I went through something similar near the end of life of Windows 95. When most of my data was in Microsoft Office. So I managed to get it online by switching to Google. For anything that I couldn't get online, I briefly used Linux Mint. Briefly being a few years.
Long before I retired last year, I had everything online. So that I could work anywhere in the world without interruption. My office was wherever I sat with my Chromebook.
I think that the online move is easier nowadays. Around 3 years ago I had a similar chat with a photographer. "Not possible," he said, "because I have too much raw photo data to move it all online and I need [name of Windows apps forgotten]."
Earlier this year, as we were chatting about imaging software, he revealed that he had moved to Adobe Cloud.
!BBH
Hello! Adobe's Cloud is not great if you're working with large files on a very regular basis - for a few reasons. 1) You still have to sync the files locally 2) The Cloud is just someone else's computer 3) You're paying a monthly fee to have an inferior experience than to have a local copy of the file
I have photographic data and records from when I was about 13 (when I got my first digital camera) - I'm nearly 40 now, and I would be buying a hard disk every three months if I was paying for Adobe's equivalent of the storage they offer on their plans.
The Cloud isn't back up, particularly when it comes to people's wedding photos, portraits of loved ones who aren't around anymore, or other events that cannot be reproduced.
I am "my own cloud" with my photography stuff, and hold back ups in other locations that regularly get rotated. It is part of my selling points as a photographer - my robust back up methodology!
I think it's great to be nimble that's for sure! I personally highly dislike G()gle and refuse to use their services but it is convenient for many people which helps! Being able to take your work wherever you go is a really awesome thing in a lot of ways! I'm glad you were able to benefit greatly from that change. I for sure have taken advantage of being able to do my work remotely and gone on 3 week vacations, working for 2 weeks, taking one week off. Awesome stuff!
The photographer I can agree with. I don't want to know how much he pays in a subscription fee to them lol. RAW photos are heavy! I do store my photos in a private cloud, so if my computer shits the bed, I'm not up a creek!
Back then, I had to switch from MS Office reluctantly. But a couple of years ago I did a collaboration with a client. So I tried the online Microsoft service to access his Office files. I was very impressed with it. And I would do things differently today.
But the important part was getting online. And after I finished my comment, I had a flashback to 2014 and an extended family holiday in Portugal. Very happy memories of doing a couple of hours work after a family breakfast before rejoining them for lunch. So I agree with you how awesome it is to balance work with vacations.
I kind of lost track of this and didn't realize just how close we were. I have a ton of Windows 10 machines that are just going to have to sit out there for a bit. I was trying to find a way to push the Windows 11 update remotely, but I am not running SCCM or anything like that, so I think it is going to end up being a lot more complex.
Haha yeah, I think it's not going to be a Y2K event, but it's going to be a lot of work in the coming weeks!
SCCM was super convenient to remote into things, I used it quite a bit in my other job lol. Nowadays it's about the remote access tools!
I was never able to get SCCM configured correctly to work well for us. It's like a three day process just to get it rolled out and configured.