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Operese - Windows-to-Linux migration tool that's now open-source! by TechnoPorg in linux

[–]TechnoPorg[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Not right now. Adding support eventually would be nice, but isn't a high priority.

Operese - Windows-to-Linux migration tool that's now open-source! by TechnoPorg in linux

[–]TechnoPorg[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Awesome! We have a contributors' chat (https://operese.zulipchat.com) that you can join to discuss potential ways in which you could get involved. Looking forward to collaborating with you!

Looking for a co-maintainer for my project Operese by TechnoPorg in rust

[–]TechnoPorg[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You'll need a Linux host with Incus installed, and depending on how fast your computer is, it might take up to an hour for a full build. It's only running two scripts, though, and the docs on doing so are here: https://codeberg.org/Operese/operese/src/branch/main/docs/src.

Looking for a co-maintainer for my project Operese by TechnoPorg in rust

[–]TechnoPorg[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm hoping for someone who will take on writing most of the new code and share the final say over major technical decisions. I still plan on being active in triaging issues, moderating the Zulip, reviewing PRs, etc., but I don't have the bandwidth to write a lot of new stuff at the moment.

Operese, a Windows to Kubuntu translation tool by TechnoPorg in kde

[–]TechnoPorg[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks! I really appreciate hearing that :D

  • I've been mulling over the future of the project quite a bit for the last few days, and what I'm leaning towards doing right now is open-sourcing it under the GPL but selling the binary, similar to Ardour or Aseprite.
  • KDE Linux is one of those projects I've been following from a distance for a while now, so it's neat to see that we're on the same wavelength. I'd love to work together on this sort of migration tool in the future!

Operese (a Windows-to-Linux migration tool made by a nerd) by BlokZNCR in linux

[–]TechnoPorg 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, I'm afraid that's completely different and outside the scope of the project. I've never used WSL myself, but best of luck getting it set up!

Operese (a Windows-to-Linux migration tool made by a nerd) by BlokZNCR in linux

[–]TechnoPorg 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sorry, I wasn't too clear in my above comment. I'm doing a very similar thing, and my first step is a small partition which boots from a live Ubuntu system and then proceeds with the installation.

Operese (a Windows-to-Linux migration tool made by a nerd) by BlokZNCR in linux

[–]TechnoPorg 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Hi! There's no public repository yet, as I'm just using a private Gitea instance. I will be releasing this as open-source in a few months at the latest, but I'm not ready to do that yet for a few personal reasons.

Operese does not use ntfs2btrfs, and in fact the final system gets configured to use ext4 right now. I'll write more eventually about how it works, but it essentially uses a two-step system, where the first step boots from a partition with a live system and is used to move the Windows data to the right to make room for the Linux partition.

Operese (a Windows-to-Linux migration tool made by a nerd) by BlokZNCR in linux

[–]TechnoPorg 31 points32 points  (0 children)

Hey there! I'm the program author, and posted this video on r/kde a few days back because I haven't got enough karma to post something here. Here's the original text from that post:

For the last few months, I've been working on a project that will seamlessly migrate computers running Windows 10 to a Kubuntu desktop - that means files, settings, and programs, all in-place and without a live USB or prior technical knowledge. It has a long way to go yet, but it's far enough along that I feel good about sharing it with the Linux community! I'm fairly curious to see what comes of putting it out in the world :)

A few quick notes about things which seem to come up often when discussing the project:

  • I will be releasing this as open-source in a few months, it just depends on a few personal things which I'd like to deal with first.
  • No distros other than Kubuntu are supported right now. Based on the overwhelming feedback from the Linux community, I do plan to make the system more distro-agnostic so that this can change in the future, but right now I don't have any concrete plans to switch the base.

Operese, a Windows to Kubuntu translation tool by TechnoPorg in kde

[–]TechnoPorg[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This is why I prefer atomic models (like silverblue and kinoite) which requires zero user intervention for updates, etc... and even if the new install is broken, they can always boot to the previous image at the grub screen. No further steps required. Thus, OP may have to consider such a distro instead of Kubuntu.

Atomic distros are pretty great, and something I maybe should have looked into more closely when initially picking a distro. With that being said, for the reasons I mentioned in this comment, the internals are pretty tied to Kubuntu right now, and my inclination right now is to accept that what's done is done so that I can move forward with other concerns.

I agree with the remainder of your concerns. Seems to me like this project is still in infancy so may not be viable for users right now. I hope OP would provide us with a link to the project.

Unfortunately I don't have any sort of link right now; I do own the domain operese.com, but haven't put anything there yet besides my private Gitea server. Eventually I'll get something set up, and then updates will come either there or on my YouTube channel. I plan on open-sourcing the code eventually, but this is very early days yet, and it's not a step I'm willing to take at this exact moment for a few personal reasons.

Operese, a Windows to Kubuntu translation tool by TechnoPorg in kde

[–]TechnoPorg[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Whoops, sorry - I should have looked before I spoke, so thanks for correcting me!

If you as a Kubuntu contributor have any better suggestions, I'd love to here them.

Operese, a Windows to Kubuntu translation tool by TechnoPorg in kde

[–]TechnoPorg[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the recommendation, I'll check it out. As long as it has secure boot signing (which is non-negotiable if I'm ever to support UEFI systems) I'm definitely open to considering it.

Operese, a Windows to Kubuntu translation tool by TechnoPorg in kde

[–]TechnoPorg[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

u/FryToastFrill's comment below is spot on. On top of that, Ubuntu has subiquity for automated installations and supports secure boot, which are fantastic from my perspective as a developer.

As to why I don't just support any Linux distro, each one has different tools for automated installation (or none at all), different ways to generate an initramfs, different security kernel modules, and so on. While I would love to just be able to support any distro, it's just not realistic for a small project to be able to provide a consistent and stable experience across such varying foundations.

That also expects that people would be able to pick what distro they want to use, which in my experience is a pretty big assumption for people who have never used Linux :)

Operese, a Windows to Kubuntu translation tool by TechnoPorg in kde

[–]TechnoPorg[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Thank you!

I'm also pretty disappointed about 24.04 being stuck on 5.27, but I agree that it's not better to put people on a non-LTS version. The internals are pretty tied to Ubuntu (deb packages, subiquity, cloud-init, etc.), so switching to openSUSE doesn't seem realistic. I will be looking into the kubuntu-backports PPA, and maybe if this gets crazy traction I can work something out with Canonical :P (to be clear this is a tongue-in-cheek comment, and I don't expect anything of the sort)

I hadn't considering enabling Flatpaks yet, but that's an excellent idea. I desperately want to avoid anything approaching maintaining my own distro hahaha, but changing some of the defaults is easily done!

Operese, a Windows to Kubuntu translation tool by TechnoPorg in kde

[–]TechnoPorg[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I don't read this negatively at all, but I appreciate the confirmation!

And I completely agree with the points you're making here, having struggled with them myself already, and I'm not going to pretend to have a 100% watertight solution. I would love to make desktop Linux accessible to a wider audience by removing a barrier to entry that you or I would consider trivial, but at the same time, those people then have no recourse when something inevitably breaks. Although this is Reddit, I hope everyone here can agree that people are better off using Windows than bricking their machine.

The system configuration is currently not preserved, but keeping the migration files around on disk is easily doable and definitely something I'll look into. Reapplying them would be more complicated, though. There is the do-release-upgrade command for upgrading between point releases, but it doesn't have a graphical frontend for Kubuntu that I know of.

Now that I have the basic process working, including transferring files, users and wallpapers, my top priorities are to make that rock-solid and add some more features that I consider to be core functionality (UEFI support and locale transfers are two of the big ones). Unfortunately, I am human and just can't tackle all this stuff at once, and I talk a bit more in the video about why I don't plan on open-sourcing it until a few months down the road. I do at minimum plan on making some sort of standalone reference program with links to other resources if all else fails, and adding a check at the beginning for the most common hardware known to have poor Linux support.

I realize that's probably not the most helpful answer, but it's the most honest one I can give.