Apple to Linux Journal Series Home

2025-03-16

Apple to Linux Journal Series Home

It's been a month since I installed Linux on my old 2012 Mac Mini, now dubbed LinuxMini and I thought I'd collect the various posts I've written into one page which I'll update with future posts as I continue on in the process.

The posts detail the concrete steps taken to migrate from Apple's iCloud: my own local cloud for photos, files and music with email, calendar and task management shifted to my domain/web host. There are also several posts that are less about the specific steps taken and more about the ethical considerations that have prompted my migration away from Apple hardware and services.

Current migration status as of 2025-3-16: In just under a month I was able to downgrade my iCloud from the 200GB plan to the 5GB free tier. I was approaching the 200GB limit of that plan and would have likely needed to upgrade to the $10/month plan for 1TB of data which was far more storage than I would likely ever need as a single user. Instead I moved all of my data to my local network and Apple will get nothing from me. A win-win.

Nothing about this migration was terribly difficult though it was time consuming. And it required at least one local computer with enough external hard drive storage to host my local cloud. I took my time and I made notes before hand about my devices and the cloud services they use. In my case an M1 Mac Mini is the server with files hosted in part on the internal drive and others on external drives.

At the end of the day my goal was to be free of corporate clouds and services and to replace them with my own local network. While my focus has been reducing my dependence on Apple services I'm also minimizing my use of and/or closing other accounts. The point of this change is to remove my dependence on an industry, specifically the US-based tech giants that are, in my view, doing greater harm than good in the world. These accounts have been deleted or are being minimized in use:

Microsoft: I had an account that I didn't use, I've deleted.
Google: I don't use it for search and have never used chrome. I don't currently use gmail but over the years I setup many other accounts using gmail as the login/registration so I'll need to change all those. I use an ad blocker so I don't see ads on YouTube but I'll migrate over subscriptions to rss. I still have a client's website that uses emebedded google forms so I'll need to sort that.
PayPal: I'll likely be stuck with this for a bit but I am no longer allowing funds to accumulate in the account like I used to. I've made the same change with Apple Cash.
Amazon: I've never paid for Prime, and currently order elsewhere when possible. I'll go for full deletion sometime in 2025.
PayPal: I'll likely be stuck with this for a bit but I am no longer allowing funds to accumulate in the account like I used to. I've made the same change with Apple Cash.
>Amazon: I've never paid for Prime, and currently order elsewhere when possible. I'll go for full deletion sometime in 2025.

The posts:

Upcoming posts currently in draft:

Apple to Linux Journal: Email with Evolution and Thunderbird
Apple to Linux Journal: Music with Rhythmbox and Shortwave
Apple to Linux Journal: Libre Office instead of iWork

I don't have comments but I love email or you can find me on Mastodon.

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