The Folkmoss Logs

My digital cleanup saga (Pt 1 of ?)

Been doing some huge digital housekeeping lately. Most of it is due to my decision to finally move from Windows to a Linux distro. I ended up choosing Kubuntu, have it ready to go on a USB stick, but before that... Well, let's just say there was a bit of a domino effect.

Because I wanted to move away from Windows, I also had to check if the services I currently use would be compatible with Linux. I've always tried to choose services that are cross-platform, since I'm hectic and use a mishmash of devices (iPhone but an Android tablet, Windows but sometimes Linux). So in the end most of my stuff was okay to work on Kubuntu, except the big one: my cloud backup. So that's when the heavy housekeeping started.

When I wrote my Using and Defaults in early 2025, I already had in mind that I needed to change cloud backup services, but... Girls, that's tough when you don't have a lot of SSD space. Currently I only got 500gb available, and a chunk of it has Windows and other stuff, so realistically, I have less than that. Not only that, I was "experimenting" with Proton Drive (which was a huge bust and a disappointment if you ask me), so I had two cloud services to sift through, both of which were not natively compatible with Linux (OneDrive and Proton Drive).

But that was not all! I also had photos and videos scattered around iCloud, Google Photos and older stuff on OneDrive.

All of this was giving me a huge headache and maybe a teensy bit of anxiety. My plan earlier this year was to move away from big tech and also trim down on subscriptions. This move to Kubuntu was just the perfect storm for it.

The big move

So, what do?

Luckily for me, it was close to Black Friday, so I checked a few cloud backup services I was already interested in to see what sort of sales were happening. Lo and behold, Sync.com had a 50% off lifetime deal, and that's the one I got. It's compatible with Linux and has the main feature I need as an SSD-challenged person: offloading files.

Because I'm still navigating the sea of financial insecurity, I couldn't get the 5tb deal, which just about crushed me, but I could get the 1tb, and there we go, now I have a plan and most importantly a destination for my digital collections and documents. The move from iCloud to Sync was relatively seamless since I already didn't have a lot of stuff there (just some very recent photos and videos), but Google Photos... Boy, that was some annoying work.

I downloaded +200gb of photos and videos from Google Photos (it was a pain in the ass but it's done now!), uploaded all of them to Sync, offloaded them from my SSD, offloaded all the stuff on OneDrive and now I finally have room for my Kubuntu/Windows dual-boot.

"Dual boot?", you might ask, "but weren't you moving away from Windows?"

I am, but my work is not. I can do about 95% of what I do on Linux, but there's this 5% that may or may not be needed and the last thing I need is to add stress to my life. So I'm keeping Windows on a 100gb slice just in case. It's not ideal, but it is what it is.

Now I'm slowly downloading and uploading folders from OneDrive to Sync. This is gonna take a few days (maybe weeks depending on my memory and irl stuff), so my Kubuntu move is still on hold. I'm not mad about it though, I'm actually glad to have made this decision and actually taking steps to finally do this huge cloud cleanup I've been meaning to do since February.

I know 1tb of Sync is not gonna be enough for me (I've started redownloading all of my favorite anime/tv shows from when I was a teen so... yeah, that takes up a few gb of space), but for now I still have the 500gb subscription on Proton, so I'll be using that.

Other cleanups

Screenshot of my Inoreader folders

Next steps

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