Windows actually has a package manager preinstalled.
On any up-to-date Windows 10 and 11 computer that has the App Installer app installed (it should be preinstalled), you can use winget to manage your applications. Winget has the Microsoft Store and a community repository preconfigured and you can add additional sources, if you want.
You can use it via a terminal:
winget install Mozilla.Firefoxwinget upgrade --alldeleted by creator
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I miss the days, when Ubuntu was still a fun distribution to recommend to anyone.
Their initial idea of creating “Linux for human beings” was great and they were leading the way in user-friendly installers, graphical distribution upgrades and making the Linux desktop more accessible to everyone in general! I especially loved their predictable release cycle. Having the choice between an LTS and a more recent version is very useful and with Ubuntu you can make that decision again every two years. Very practical!
Unfortunately things started to change in the 2010s and by the 2020s I started to advise against it.
Their new installers (subiquity and ubuntu-desktop-installer) can’t do simple partitioning anymore, e. g. they can’t create a boot partition (or better: encrypted boot) + an encrypted btrfs partition that fills the rest of the space. Since the discontinuation of the mini.iso (Debian Installer) and Ubiquity (old desktop installer) images, I am therefore no longer able to install Ubuntu.
Snapd can still only manage a single repository and Canonical is therefore the only one in control of snap package distribution. This makes snapd a no-go in my opinion. But Ubuntu is still transitioning towards it, even though every other distribution is going to Flatpak because of snapd’s walled garden approach. With Flatpak you can add as many remotes as you want or you can decide to stick to Flathub, if it meets your needs. The same is true for Docker / Podman on the server: Sure there’s Docker Hub, which is very popular, but you are able to add any container repository, if you so choose.
I’m now using Fedora Silverblue on my desktops and will soon transition my Ubuntu server from 20.04 to Debian 12. I’ve already archived all my Ubuntu documentation. Sad times …
Hopefully new distributions, like Vanilla OS 2, will soon be able to fill the gaps that Ubuntu left.
It works fine for what I need it to do: access and share my Syncthing folders, CalDAV, CardDAV, RSS
I try to minimise the amount of stuff I selfhost, as I don’t enjoy being responsible for the uptime and security of a whole bunch of personal web services. That’s why I like the flexibility of ownCloud and now Nextcloud, instead of using a different, standalone project for each function.
What’s your use case for cloud storage?
If you only want to sync files between your devices, I would recommend taking a look at Syncthing. It syncs files without relying on a central server and is much faster, as it can sync within your local network and is therefore not restricted by the speed of your internet connection.
For sharing files with others, I use a self-hosted Nextcloud. I mounted my Syncthing folder as external storage.
If you use GNOME as your desktop, you can also log into some online services in system settings and then, for example, access Google drive via the file manager to upload or download files.
I believe there are also third-party tools for some cloud storage providers, but I have no experience with them and therefore can’t make any recommendations.
Some cloud storage providers probably don’t see Linux as a large enough market to justify the development of official clients. Some, e. g. Microsoft, could have an interest against one to not make alternatives to their own products, e. g. Windows, more attractive than they already are.
Flatpak apps can be uninstalled without leaving a trace:
flatpak uninstall --delete-data com.google.ChromeBut you might need some global overrides to make all apps write their configuration into ~/.var. Personally I globally revoke apps the permission to access filesystem= host, home, xdg-config, xdg-data.
That was actually the main reason that made me switch to Flatpak. Previously I used VMs to try out software, but with Flatpak I know that I can get rid of the application completely.