Helloall,
I'm not completely new to Ubuntu - every couple ofyears, I'll set up a dual boot on my personal computers and see how much of mysoftware I can get to work in Linux. This time round I've been pleasantlysurprised about how much progress I've been able to make, to the extent thatI've made Ubuntu the 'main' OS on my laptop, and reduced Windows to just a verybasic setup with a couple of key items of software. I've done quite a bit ofgoogling over the past few weeks to try and eliminate this last bit of relianceon Windows, without much luck, so that's what I wanted to run by the communityhere.
I'm notbrave enough to try this on my (gaming) desktop - there are a handful ofmy games that are very cranky about Linux (even with Valve's proton), but I'dconsider it a big win if I could sort the laptop out.
Main Issues
iTunes
To a large extent, I only use iTunes to manage podcast subscriptions and keep those subscriptions synchronized across devices. I thought I'd found a solution in the form of gpodder, but it looks like gpodder.net hasn't been accepting new accounts for a few months, and might (possibly) have been abandoned. No judgement, I realize it's run by volunteers! I also tried using PlayOnLinux toinstall iTunes, but I couldn't get it to work, even with the older 32-bit versions. I'm also wary of this as a solution, because then I'd be at the mercy of Apple deciding to deprecate the older versions. I considered Spotify as well, but some of my podcasts need to be manually added by URL, so that was a no-go.
Office
For both work and personal purposes, I need to be able open and run XLSM and XLSB files, without compromising or corrupting them. Office 365 (Web) is fine for everything else, of course.
For both of these, I did consider setting up a VM but I'm not thrilled at the idea of having to pay MS another license fee, just for a VM.
Nice-to-have
OneDrive
I can use the web interface, but there are some things that are backed up here that I'd like to mirror into folders in my Ubuntu install, for various reasons (photos, music, and a couple of data folders for games and applinks that I symlink in Windows). I did consider moving it all to Google Drive, but a) I'm already paying for expanded OneDrive storage because I pay for my family's Office 365, b) I'd lose the tidy integration with Windows, which is important for my work computer and my gaming PC, and c) it seems like the Google Drive integration in Ubuntu 'streams' - that is, I haven't found a way to force certain folders to always be available offline, and/or to be mounted or symlinked to a specific location.
Any insights would be very much appreciated! For now, dual-booting is fine, but it seems like overkill for literally two or three items of software.
Brett