I have Linux Mint installed on my work PC. As I work with IT I am sometimes tasked with doing stuff like restoring Iphones and such, which is normally done through Itunes. But there’s no Linux support for Itunes, and I haven’t been able to install it through Wine. I also can’t use a VM as my PC isn’t powerful enough for it. I’m hoping there’s a solution for this, as I will have to re-install Windows if I can’t get it to work on Linux, and I really want to avoid that.
A few options
1,Getting a Mac with apple silicon and install asahi , dual boot. 2. Add a new SSD and some ram to your current one and enable virtualization in bios. Might need a bios update as well. 3 Dual boot windows , might want to check out https://ameliorated.io/ 4 Get a old crappy Mac just for the itunes. 5. Use the Linux tools mentioned earlier
- Throw away your Apple devices. Fuck that walled garden.
Absolutely, but OP will have to explain a bit to their boss why. Maybe we can help OP there?
Fuck that walled garden is not a business value added task so can we, as a community who cares how openness, translate that to C-suite MBA speech?
- Apple devices are more expensive to manage (source? time from OP to do so? additional hardware? TCO comparisons?)
- Apple devices are less compatible with software solution we use in the company (examples?)
- Apple devices …
Maybe Ubuntu, RedHat, and other company selling FLOSS have reports to help there.
This is nearly 20 years old but give the idea of the words needed https://www.cio.com/article/274764/operating-systems-the-tco-of-operating-systems-compare-the-big-oses.html
Here is something a bit more recent https://umatechnology.org/comparing-operating-system-costs-windows-macos-linux/ but again this isn’t to give an “answer” but at least understanding management perspective, which is not really a technical one but rather a cost/value one.
https://asahilinux.org/ but sure no roms for iphones
It might be possible, but you can be sure that Apple made it as inconvenient as they technically could. They try their best to lock everyone in. You’re probably better off getting some kind of Apple box to manage those machines.
Yeah, that wouldn’t surprise me. I can technically get an Apple box, but my boss might be a little upset with me for losing that functionality on my PC, and might want me to revert to Windows.
Simplest solution might just be to dual-boot Windows if you can’t get a VM working
What’s your computer specification?
my work PC […] isn’t powerful enough
Ask a more powerful work PC, that’ll be cheaper for them than you tinkering for hours.
Wine can’t properly access USB devices, so even if you got iTunes installed, it wouldn’t work.
I’m sceptical that a VM is out of the question, one should run on almost anything, though not necessarily perform well. I would give it an attempt, if you didn’t already.
Still, it might be simplest to set up a windows install with itunes on a usb, or second partition, and boot into windows only when you need to.
It’s possible to install Windows onto a USB? I ask b/c once in a blue moon I need a Windows install for mouse firmware updates or something.
Should be. A USB drive is a storage device like any other. Shouldn’t matter that it isn’t connected via SATA or NVME.
Should be.
One would think, but so you haven’t actually done it, have you? Because I might be misremembering, but I’m pretty sure I tried to install Windows onto a USB drive one time. I couldn’t get the installer to show the USB drive. I really want to be wrong, though.
Apparently windows doesn’t like it, but it can be done using Rufus or WinToUSB.
IDK if you can have a live windows usb, but virtualbox is great for that sort of thing.
I’m also curoious how bad of a computer OP has if it’s unable to run a VM
It still has a Windows 7 sticker on it.
It probably just needs some more RAM installed.
I am using thinkpad t430 with 8 gig of ram ,with virt-manager and qemu and have installed windows 10 with after script to delete all bloatware to make system more snappy and more responding u can easily USB pass through I phones in there for iTunes,for accessing just file on iPhone u can use ifuse
https://github.com/libimobiledevice/idevicerestore
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/IOS
you can restore on Linux i think, but you have to use the cli
Correct.
There is also iFuse and iMobileDevice
This is absolutely no problem with virtualbox and a win10 vm. I tried wine as well but no luck. You just need to pass the usb port to the vm and youre good. I had to reboot the apple device though so it would connect correctly.
To be fully honest, running windows on the device should not be much more demanding than running windows baremetal. Because running a win10 vm means running the os in factory new condition and not having any additional autostarts etc. Only reason against that in my book would be a missing virtualization extension.
The thing is, first time I tried using a VM my whole system lagged and froze.
Others mentioned virtualization — I have had issues with COW filesystems (btrfs), as COW does not always play nicely with VM drives (extreme fragmentation and very poor performance).
Sometimes you need to enable something in the bios (virtualization? i forget what it’s called)
That sounds like a missing virtualization extension of your cpu. Can you share your pc stats? Cpu model, ram, gpu?
I think you’re on to something. I have a 10 year old laptop with linux, 4 cores, 8gb of ram, a mechanical drive, and a win10 vm on it and it runs fine for it’s purpose.
I would try finding some de-bloated windows iso and try the VM route anyway. If your pc can run windows directly without much trouble, it should be able to run a lighter version of it on a VM too. You can dedicate most of your hardware resources to the VM and just no run anything else alongside it when you are working on an iPhone.
You can start the restore/factory reset from the phone. But if you need iTunes after, then you probably have to run windows in a vm like qemu. Also might want to pass trough ‘usb hub’ to that wm. Wich if the usb controller share several ports you would want to use mouse and kb on different usb-controller.
OP stated that a VM is not feasable because of ressources on the PC.
I’m afraid they have to install Windows again, if work is not able to provide a device for this function. I have not heard of any solution for reliable iTunes functionality on Linux. :(
OP stated that a VM is not feasable because of ressources on the PC.
I very much doubt that is true. Most standard issue system these days should be able to run an emulator well enough to run iTunes.
Sure, just stating what OP mentioned.
