Going from Windows to Linux then back to windows sucks.
Edit; Going through the comments it seems it doesn’t matter so long as IT supports the operating system, which is fair, in my scenario I’m not involved with our systems-management/IT/developers unless it’s an update to the software we use.
My desktop at work is still Windows 10 and while it works, kinda, my keyboard shortcuts are almost entirely different, I’ve encountered numerous moments where switching tab either by alt-tabbing or by the taskbar not working at all forcing me to minimize everything till I find that tab, couple times it wouldn’t even boot.
I started unplugging the Ethernet cable when I leave for work so IT can’t do any behind the scenes when I’m away.
I dredd the day they force a win 11 desktop on me.
found an old unused laptop in my office the week i got the job. that week, i nuked it and installed deb12. i’ve since installed an inventory server in a virtual machine, and i’m afraid to break everything so i guess it’s gonna run deb12 for the forseeable future.
I’ve been thinking about swapping my work laptop to Linux too.
The difference is I’m in IT and I know what all things I need to put on my computer to make it compliant with all our policies and all the software I need to do my job.
I’ve been experimenting by running some Linux VMs with all the EDR, patching, and logging software we need. But by the time I’m doing all that, there’s really no point in using Linux except for the CLI which WSL has been great for that.
I’ve had Linux on my work desktop for the past twenty years.
Me too, I have also refused job offers to places that don’t allow Linux on the workstations.
Yea but what distro ? Yes you will be judged!
Debian, of course.
youll need to update your work desktop for the first time soon
I got to update my WSL on my work machine to Debian 13. Very exciting.
Yes, the company OS policy doesn’t specify which OS to use as long as it actively supported and the security tooling can be installed.
I reckon the latter part might be the problem for a lot of people.
A lot of enterprise security software has a Linux version, because a lot of servers run Linux, and they need to have the software for compliance. There is no shortage in that space.
I don’t work at an office, but at a bicycle workshop. We just have the one computer at the frontdesk to register sales and new memberships (we’re a non-profit association). So the PC doesn’t have TPM 2.0 so I convinced the board to install linux on it, since it’s a security risk to keep using Windows after it’s going to be discontinued. But that wasn’t easy ! Especially because one of the board member is an Apple fanboy and keep saying things like: “If it’s free, it’s probably not very good”. :[
Especially because one of the board member is an Apple fanboy and keep saying things like: “If it’s free, it’s probably not very good”. :[
Thanks for ruining my evening, as this made me unnecessarily angry.
Ah… Sorry
In the words of Jamie Zawinski, “Linux is only free if your time has no value.”
Is not really relevant any more. OpenSUSE has been rock solid for 8 years. NixOS, just fill in config and it all just works
+++ for NixOS. I run it across an average daily fleet of 40k systems. We’re automotive, and nix is used everywhere.
“If it’s free, it’s probably not very good”
That’s so funny to me. I used linux a long time ago but at some point I decided I didn’t want to have computer-as-hobby anymore so I got a Mac. And to be fair it did serve me well as intended for a few years. But over time, despite my intentions, I slowly started installing more free software, getting comfortable with the command line (I’d always been a GUI-only linux user), and trying to recreate certain aspects of the Linux experience that I missed.
The unfree of Mac OS led to so much frustration. I was constantly running up against Apple’s antagonism towards libre software — despite the underlying BSD/unix skeleton. Being unfree was really not very good at all. Eventually I was forced to the conclusion that I would be better off with linux. And the Apple hardware was end-of-lifed with no more OS support so I had to chose. In fairness to Apple, it did allow me to very slowly transition to linuxy ways. To some extent the contradictions and problems of Mac OS led me to learning the command line and all kinds of other things. If I stayed on Linux the whole time, perhaps I never would have had the motivation to get over my distrust of terminals. And if for some reason I had chosen Windows instead of Mac OS as my non-hobby computer, I doubt I would have gotten into any of it. I would probably just hate computers like so many people I know.
1000x happier this way. I’m even back to computer-as-hobby. Which to be clear is no longer required to run linux. Just my nature.
As to your board member, if it makes him feel better, I’ll sell him a USB key with Linux on it for as much as he wants to pay me. So it will give the feeling of being valuable to him.
I started unplugging the Ethernet cable when I leave for work so IT can’t do any behind the scenes when I’m away.
It’s not your computer, why do you care?
All that’s going to do is make you an annoyance and potentially end up with you being called into a special meeting.
Your work computer likely contains personally identifiable information. Microsoft very likely has a significant profile on what you do at work and could conceivably link that to your other identities outside of work.
Are they actually doing that? It’s hard to say. Microsoft does have relationships with data brokers like Snowflake Inc. and SCUBA plus its own internal capabilities like Xandr Inc.
Cross pollination is more than possible when employees use personsal devices to login to work accounts. Most of the people that I work with login to Slack on their personal device using Microsoft Entra SSO.
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The other commenter is right, my work desktop has access to my home server so I can remotely monitor on my breaks, as well as my password manager.
Well, that’s your own fault and poor opsec. That’s also a likely breach of your employer’s acceptable use policy in using their equipment for your personal things.
I know you’re going to say “They don’t care” and that’s probably true - right up until the point when they suddenly do care, or are looking for reasons. It doesn’t matter if your IT are in-house or a MSP, they’re still paid by your employers and so answer to them.
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what difference does it make if it’s through a web browser on the work desktop or my personal tablet.
Yeah what difference does it make? Why don’t you use your own device?
Small company, I’m friends with IT dude so he told me I could do it as long as I didn’t go to him for tech support. He then came to me asking for help installing linux on his machine. LMAO
Uno reverse
Convince?
Im a software dev. If you don’t use linux or macos youre a weirdo
If you use macos but are deploying to Linux, you’re also a weirdo.
+10 masochism points if you’re using docker on MacOS as well
Wait, docker exists for mac?
Some software branded as Docker for Mac exists for Mac.
Obviously Docker uses Linux kernel constructs not available on other platforms so on Mac (and Windows) they embed an entire Linux VM and attempt to integrate it with the host system storage, networking and resources.
This works about as well as it sounds, I/O performance in particular is terrible and trying to share folders between the host and the VM (to for example mount the code you’re working on) is super slow and annoying
“But Macs are the best for development, they’re so user friendly” - not even close lol
that’s not entirely true for windows. windows does have containers natively, and there is a native docker engine for windows that runs native software
they also support containerd and some other runtimes
in certainly not an advocate for windows, but it does exist if you’re a complete masochist
Depends on what you work for specifically, at my current job most people use Windows, and it makes sense because our product will mainly be used on Windows, and some of them are windows only. But I also worked in many other places where we were deploying to Linux servers but the majority of devs were on Windows.
I’m a huge fan of yours.
The smb server is Linux, my desktop is Linux.
The office workers use a debloated Windows 11.
I installed pihole at the same time as the server swapped from Windows to Linux, so now they believe the Linux server magically sped up the Internet.
Any suggestions on what to give people for debloated windows?
I used this: https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat
As an engineer, yes. I managed to get a pilot program off the ground at my last company. As a recently public company with a lot of IT debt, the biggest challenge was around making those devices compliant with security and IT processes, and easy for IT to provision and monitor.
It helped that I made an effort to build good connections into IT and IT leadership. The clincher was a clear proposed timeline, a commitment that it would not require any additional workload from IT, and that we wouldn’t expand it without their sign off.
Unfortunately, layoffs meant I couldn’t roll it out beyond the initial group, and when a second round of layoffs came around I took the opportunity to leave. I haven’t been looking much yet, but “allows Linux” is one of the criteria I’m measuring companies against.
I didn’t need to.
Once I had to write a utility and made sure it works on other OSes except GNU/Linux. The CTO asked in review why doing so? I explained, he said no, make it Linux only, if somebody needs to use it, they will have to install Linux then use it.
Something I appreciate about that place till this day.
I started unplugging the Ethernet cable when I leave for work so IT can’t do any behind the scenes when I’m away.
Speaking as an IT guy, don’t do this. Its not your computer, and it’s our job to manage it. If you don’t like the company’s policies go work somewhere else. This is how you get my boss to call your boss into a meeting.
At my current job they asked what OS I wanted for my laptop and Linux was an option. I do have a Windows desktop at the office that I remote to that needs to be Windows for technical reasons, but my main device is Linux.
At my job before this I worked for one year on my own Linux laptop, until one day I asked for a laptop lent temporarily because I was going to travel and my wife needed mine, and it had to be Windows. I never minded much because it was temporary, but when I came back I was told that I was supposed to always have been using a Windows machine and that I shouldn’t use a Linux machine anymore (even though our product was a website deployed to Linux servers). That was one of the reasons I eventually took another job, not the main one, but an important one nevertheless.
Before that the company also offered Linux.
And before that it was a very small company when all of the owners were software engineer guys using Linux themselves. I remember one day we were discussing OS and someone said “can we take a moment to recognize we’ve been talking about this for 15 minutes and no one even considered Windows as an option”.
I used to work at a place where it was just a small operation of us three in the IT dept. helpdesk goon me, network engineer, and IT boss. I wanted more experience on Linux in a corporate environment. IT boss saw this as a learning opportunity and gave the green light so I switch my machine over.
Then network guy switched. IT boss thought this was fine too. “We learn some lessons the hard way” he mused.
This lasted several weeks and we had basically no issues. We were actually more productive than he was. He eventually was getting frustrated this little experiment of his wasn’t going the way he wanted and mandated we “had to use windows because our customers were using windows.”
We switched back. Everything went back to shit but it was familiar shit so he was fine with it.
I brought in an old surface pro X and used it. Technically still complying and it did help us figure out some issues some of our other ARM based customers had. Any it worked better than the shitty dells we were given.
To me it’s the opposite, my boss (and owner of the company) is frustrated that we cannot install linux due to some technical requirements. It is possible to change that, but this will require reshaping of the entire work process
Usually it’s some proprietary or commercial app unavailable for Linux. I have a fairly powerful workstation and ran Windows on a VM with GPU pass thru for those use cases, but at some point I upgraded my MacBook and use that for most work. The Linux machine effectively operates as a server. I haven’t used Windows for work in many months and recently removed a GPU to save power and heat.
