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?
I’m a teacher and I make Linux work for me. Open doc formats get converted to pdf for the shitty windows 7 running the printer in the printing room, and the Android/Windows only app for communications I just run on my phone. PPTs run fine. When there was a problem with the projector, ‘IT guy’ went to my laptop, got confused (it’s Gnome), I told him not to interfere with it because it’s Linux. He proceeded to say ‘Ah, not working because it’s not windows.’ Later that day he actually came to fix the cable to the projector.
I recently got my Linux-laptop in a heavy MS-based company. It is enrolled via Intune and I can access all company resourcws an MS365 apps through Edge.
Apart from having to use Edge for all of that, it is a great experience compared to what I am used to.
But it took a while and a lot of complaining about being allowed to use more appropriate tools for our job. But the bottom line is: ask for it. Tell them why you need it. When they say no, try again later, document why your current setup fails and why getting a Linux-machinee would work. Maybe you will succeed. IT here has gone from “we don’t use open source” (actual quote) to giving us Linux-laptops and setting up Linux-servers on OT. They grow from this also.
Some companies will also supply Macs - several of my colleagues got MacBookPros just by asking for them. I, unfortunately, missed the “open funds” window and must wait until the current “all POs over X$ must be signed by GOD” phase passes.
Was macos at work, now Linux dev machine. Its a big up.
To be honest, all those are web apps now shrug. Zoom, slack, teams, docs, sheets, <insert word named app here>, all open in the browser. So IDC what the OS is for them. Linux Zero-Touch deployments are still in progress IMHO so I get why they arent here yet for a lot offices, but we are closer now than ever (thanks atomic OSs!).
Depends on your workplace and in which field you are.
I’m not forced to, but occasionally my job kinda requires it so I dualboot (most of my coworkers who are on linux run a windows virtual machine when they need it).
But my previous job required windows due to all the industry specific software only working on windows. No chance of getting that to work on linux sadly. Then I just used windows at work. It’s always my employer’s hardware anyway and I like to keep work and free-time separate so it was ok.
No. I would never allow them to force me to use Windows
Mac, actually. Its a different kind of bad. At least I can use many of the same cli tools.
TIL companies have Mac fleets
I mean this happens. Traditionally it was companies with lots of digital artists for improved software compatibility, but these days it’s really more done for developers and anyone else just as an employee perk to put them on their preferred platform.
Honestly, for administration purposes having a proper native Unix shell running standard utilities is extremely handy, especially when you need to manipulate files, such as working with disk/VM images for example
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.
No. We are a proper engineering company.
So not an industrial automation engineer. Nothing but windows software.
Ignition for scada works on Linux, but nothing else does.
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
Thinkpads running Linux for the staff.
We use open-source. Our own on-prem servers running Linux. A lot of our software is also open source. Our git, our office suite, our video and chat… All open source.
We just got rid of our Google Cloud connections a few months ago, but we’re still reliant on aws, cloudflare, etc.
LOL, spotted the “windows engineer”.
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.
We use libre office
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…
The last several places I worked gave me a choice between Windows and Mac OS, so I picked Mac OS.
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.
with so many Windows programs being just PWAs these days, running everything in a browser is really no different anymore.
I’ve been lucky, at two of my previous jobs, I was permitted to use a Linux laptop instead of the default Windows ones, it was wonderful.
Sadly you’re right though, at least in the US, even in the IT world, unless you’re working specifically at a Linux company, you’re almost certainly using Windows.
My current job is all Windows, even though my team spends a significant amount of time maintaining Linux systems. I just open up WSL and try to pretend It’s running on bare metal. 😞
I’ve had to kind of strongarm employers a couple times to provide me with a non-Macbook so I could put Linux on it. But usually in my job I can choose what I run.
I believe to be the only one running linux on the work laptop at the company. I told them I’d like to use linux when I applied and they told me “fine, but you will have to install and maintain it on your own, we have no support personal for this”.
I installed arch linux and have been happy for years. MS Teams runs in my browser.
Same here :)
I had that a couple of jobs ago, but since then I’ve been stuck with Mac or Windows depending on the employer. I understand their reasoning, but it’s annoying. At my current organisation, I use WSL2 (which I was allowed to install for Docker support), and I do everything except the corporate stuff in that. So Edge, Teams, Outlook, whatever proprietary VPN we use at the time on the host, all my actual development work on WSL. It’s mostly fine.
