I’m liking the recent posts about switching to Linux. Some of my home machines run Linux, and I ran it on my main laptop for years (currently on Win10, preparing to return to Linux again).
That’s all fine and dandy but at work I am forced to use Windows, Office, Teams, and all that. Not just because of corpo policies but also because of the apps we need to use.
Even if it weren’t for those applications, or those policies, or if Wine was a serious option, I would still need to work with hundreds of other people in a Windows world, live-sharing Excel and so on.
I’m guessing that most people here just accept it. We use what we want at home, and use what the bossman wants at work. Or we’re lucky to work in a shop that allows Linux. Right?
Full Linux shop here. Love it…
Desktops, laptops, servers.
For those rare customer teams meets, we just do it in the browser.
</saltRub>
I use an unofficial teams appimage all day every day.
I think its probably an electron thing.
I hate having to use it but it works fine.
How big is your install base at work? Still wondering how to replace something like Active Directory, Group Policies and the like for centralized management akin to Windows based networks.
FreeIPA does a passable job at replacing AD for the absolute most basic functions. I used to use it for sudo rules and user management at one of my previous jobs, even though it wasn’t a Linux shop.
FreeIPA covers most scenarios. Kerberos, Dynamic DNS/DNS, LDAP.
GPO equivalency would need some config management tool. Ansible is what RH would suggest, but something with an agent would probably be better.
Mac, actually. Its a different kind of bad. At least I can use many of the same cli tools.
TIL companies have Mac fleets
Oh sorry, just realized we are talking app servers.
Yeah, Google apps, and linux hosted apps. Havent had a company that ran windows or MS anything in 14 years.
my employer using windows on their machine is their problem. i could be faster via bash in several instances, wouldn’t have to wait ours for updates to be done … but i get to drink tea and listen to complaints about outlook from my co-workers.
it’s okay. i get paid.
Yeah getting paid to sit there while windows wastes 20+ minutes of company time updating is always a treat
“Do the least amount of work for the most amount of pay you can”
Windows is a win for the proletariat at work. Linux was made for the proletariat for the revolution.
We’re a Linux shop at my work. We do have a windows PC due to corporate policies…but everything we do on our windows PCs we could do from Linux.
Outlook? Website. Excel? Website. Jira? Website. Teams? Website. Nearly everything we do front end wise is all web based. Which, I know electron sucks, but from a “Linux as a main desktop environment”…I’m pretty damn happy with everything being web based nowadays. It’s all OS agnostic.
If a company is particular about me using Windows for work, I’ll be particular about choosing a company that uses Linux for work. But I’m in a unique/privileged position in this regard; my job involves making it easier for people to use Linux for business or personal use.
The last several places I worked gave me a choice between Windows and Mac OS, so I picked Mac OS.
All my jobs back to 2002 until now I have had full authority to run any OS I like on my work computer. I’ve run nothing but Linux on all my work machines and I have convinced many coworkers to do the same.
I am the “IT guy” for a medium sized industrial company and i am currently using Bluefin on my work computer, preparing to roll it out for the rest of the company if tests go well… my boss is quiet open for the change and if our ERP system is further behaving well in its virtualized environment the big switch will perhaps happen somewhere in the middle of the next year.
I still have to figure out what to do about DATEV, but in the worst case our accounting department will be the only ones using Windows in the long run.
No idea how good whatever “Bluefin” is, but if their front page makes my computer lag much worse than actual videogames, it’s really not a good first impression.
Also, it seems to come with Gnome which is a bit further away in terms of user experience from Windows than the other choices like Plasma and Enlightenment, so I am not sure if whoever sits in them cubicles will get used to the lack of tray icons for example. Well, assuming they know what a tray icon is, but even if they don’t, they are gonna get a bigger “something’s off/missing” feeling than otherwise. And I am assuming nobody is using Windows 8 specifically, so it will take some time for people to get used to the excuse of a start menu Gnome has. Have to always be pessimistic about user’s intelligence and will to adapt.
We use the ThinkCentre M715q ( Ryzen 5 PRO 2400GE / 16 GB RAM) throughout the company (with only two exceptions) and on this hardware it is quiet nimble, even with a ton of rather heavy opened programs.
Regarding the acceptance… well, i think the difference in user interface of Gnome compared to Windows is rather a bonus, it is different enough to be recognized as something that has to be learned rather than invoking some “uncanny valley” effects. But we will see…
No. We are a proper engineering company.
Lol what kind of engineering? Because it probably isn’t mechanical, electronics, or civil because most of those programs don’t work in Linux 😂
I have dreams of KiCAD and FreeCAD becoming good enough to be used a lot in industry and kiCAD is nearly there, but missing tons of productivity and collaboration features, but altium is still pretty ubiquitous, spaghetti code garbage that it can be.
As an engineer, piss off with this pretentious crap.
Yeah, have fun making stuff when the device you’re using to do so is actively fighting you
I have been on macOS at work since December of 2019. Before that it was Windows since 2014. If I had the choice for Linux I might take it over macOS, but I’d happily take either over Windows.
Professor here facing the same problem. I am bounded by administrative procedures with grandma school administrators.
I use Linux at home, of course. Debloated my Win11 machine at work but hope to use Linux instead everyday.
No. I would never allow them to force me to use Windows
I’ll be the black sheep and say I actually quite like using windows at work. Not really enjoyment per say, but the software suites and accessibility is different in the business world, which is primarily built around Microsoft. Not that you can’t do most of it with Linux and that Linux would do some things better, but I don’t really have an issue with most of it.
Would I choose it for my home use? Definitely not. But I’d think that fitting a Linux cog in a Microsoft machine would create more negatives than positives. This is all subjective of course, and depending on you job, company, industry this could wildly not apply.
Don’t get me wrong, I hate Microsoft. But their ecosystem isn’t all bad.
I’m a MLOps engineer. Rules at my current company is that you need Windows or MacOS. According to the IT department it won’t work if you use Linux.
So I installed Linux anyway and everything is working perfectly. My manager don’t care that I use Linux but the IT department is not happy.
Yep, IT worker here and all of our client machines run Windows 11 with all the usual Office 365 stuff. Most of our servers run Windows too. A small amount of servers are Linux-based, usually VMware hosts and some virtual appliances. Broadcom is fucking us over a barrel on VMware licensing/support but the inertia is so strong that the powers that be won’t even entertain migrating to something like Proxmox. Something something Gartner top quadrant…
Work provides us relatively decent Dell Latitude hardware but we are stuck using the corporate Windows 11 image.
If they’d let us bring our own tech I’d be on a Thinkpad running Fedora and just use remote desktop to access all of the Microsoft shit.
