Re: [PLUG] Backing up Windows to Linux

[Rich Freeman via plug <plug@lists.phillylinux.org>]

On Tue, May 30, 2023 at 3:11 PM JP Vossen via plug
<plug@lists.phillylinux.org> wrote:
>
> On 5/28/23 03:31 PM, Rich Freeman wrote:
> > On Sun, May 28, 2023 at 1:34 PM JP Vossen via plug
> > <plug@lists.phillylinux.org> wrote:
> >>
> >> Still, if Win-11 is able to *reliably* back itself up to the cloud (taking into account the issues Roch originally raised), might it be possible to hijack that capability and self-host it?  I'm sure they'll make that as hard as possible, then then, Samba exists.
> >
> > The fine print on this solution seems pretty important:
> >
> > 1. It only seems to back up apps/settings installed from the MS Store.
> > (That phone-like app store where MS takes ~30% of anything you buy, so
> > it doesn't contain any serious commercial software.  Actually, this is
> > basically the reason Valve invented SteamOS - game publishers didn't
> > want to have to give MS a 30% cut of every $70 game sale.)
> > 2. It doesn't really seem to do anything for data.  They'd argue
> > that's what OneDrive is for.  That sort-of works, but I'm dealing with
> > stuff like LightRoom that tends to have 50GB databases.
> >
> > The main reason I don't use individual PC backup software is that
> > those things tend to charge a premium for capacity, and I have quite a
> > bit of data.  That bacula backup weighed in at about 350GB - that's
> > the size of my profile directory basically.  Quite a bit of that is
> > thanks to Adobe.
>
> Ouch, I have to admit I missed that.  That's...not too good.
>

To draw a bit from your discussion with Walt regarding Apple, MS does
have a bigger challenge.  iPhones (and Android) have heavily sandboxed
apps, so it is easy for the OS to identify all the data associated
with an app and back it up.  I believe apps also have standard APIs
for storing data.  Apple doesn't have to worry about apps sticking
data in random places because apps don't even have permission to do so
(I believe - definitely the case on Android, but I'm not sure on Apple
if the enforcement of this is via app store gatekeeping or actual OS
protection).

On the other hand, windows programs have been storing their data all
over the place since the dawn of time, often even inside the
application install directory itself.  There is of course an official
way that they're supposed to do things, but the OS generally doesn't
keep an application from sticking data in c:\randomfolder.  That means
backing up the data has to be harder.

The target of this initiative is stuff installed from the windows
store, and I suspect this software has more rules around it.
Originally the store was targeted at a more mobile-like version of
windows (Windows RT and such).

-- 
Rich
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