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 allowed my own laptop cuz most of my work is ssh to a server and fix shit. You have to register your laptop on the network first though.
Office, Team: these can work via the browser if your company/organizations pay for the subscription. In fact, the web versions run much better than the standalone desktop ones for me.
Code editor, terminal, programing in general: These work much much better in linux. You open a terminal and you write commands to install stuff. Editors are even easier, i.e. nano, vim, vscode, emacs… etc. just pick your poisons…
Email: now I login to my exchange email using the browser. That works for 100% of the stuff I need to do: basic emails stuff, accept/decline meetings…etc. Unless you absolutely need to use Outlook, there should be no problems.
Now… the real problem lies in specialized software like CAD, CAE tools. I like Linux but there isnt a free CAD / CAE tool that is comparable to what the industries are using. In academic? absolutely you can use for research.
No, instead I’m forced to use macOS at work.
And Microsoft Teams, which is terrible, but somehow still better than Cisco Webex, which we had before.
The last two corporate jobs I had I was able to use Linux. I did have to dual boot but that’s easy. Currently I run my own company and I have one machine that runs windows for people that remote in and need to use my PC for terminal access etc. that machine basically just sits there and doesn’t get used for anything except for that stuff. All my other computers I run at home are all Linux based.
Linux admin grey(ish) beard here, work provides a MacBook and I just use it as a web browser and terminal.
Internal chat, mail, etc are all browser based, Google Docs is the office suite of choice for anyone I have to work with.
I get a decent terminal (iterm2), together with ZSH, tmux and Python is all I really need. We do have a bunch of GNU core utils installed as well, although coming from a UNIX background, I don’t mind the BSD versions that ship on MacOS either.
Would I prefer Linux? Yes, I would. But at the same time, the M4 performance is awesome, the touchpad is glorious and I don’t have to foot the bill, so I’m not complaining!
Didn’t macos go Linux base a few years ago? I thought they moved away from bsd. Admittedly it’s been a good few years since I’ve had to touch a Mac os.
Nope. Still based on nextstep
I never heard of that, and I doubt it happened. Apple won’t touch anything with a GPL license.
One addition, in the past I’ve been forced to use Windows at previous jobs, but once we got WSL, that wasn’t too much of a pain either.
And once upon a time I worked at HP and we were allowed to run whatever we wanted on our workstations, but that was before laptops were commonplace for my kind of work.
Yup, and every time I have to deal with Windows bullshit at work, I get a little bit happier that I don’t have to deal with it when I go home.
My biggest issue with Windows is the lack of control I have of the actual hardware I own. I don’t own my work computer to begin with nor am I entitled to have full control over it so it doesn’t matter.
I do use WSL, but mainly because I’m more familiar with Bash than Powershell and don’t have to constantly figure out how Powershell does things I already know how to do.
It’s the same reason I have no problem using my company’s OneDrive for work files when I go out of my way to avoid putting any of my personal data on the cloud. It’s their data to begin with and they don’t care so I don’t care neither.
It’s also nice because I can set up a Linux-only file server at home with things like SSHFS and the Windows computer can’t even see it since it has no SSH access doesn’t even support the network share protocol. If I had an SMB share it would show up on my work computer because it autodetects it.
Its not my machine, so I don’t really care. As long as it doesn’t prevent me from doing the work, then that is the employers problem what OS they want to enforce.
On my personal computer, I run what I want and will continue to do so where possible. Hence, why I like using Linux.
As someone who works in software, I’ve been using macs at work for more than a decade. One job had Linux machines. One place had windows for developers and it was a shit show.
Apple isn’t amazing but at least the terminal is sensible.
Yes, but it’s okay. I have low expectations.
Yeah. After a period of unemployment and having used windows 10 at my previous job I came home after using 11 and told my wife “damn bitch you live like this?” about it
I am very lucky that I never had to use windows at any full time job, nor even in full time education post 18.
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.
At my work they use Mac OS. However before I started the job I said, that it’s a requirement for me to work with Linux. So I’m the only one with a proper OS in the company now 🥴
But jokes aside, it’s not that bad to work on different OSes. Nowadays everything runs in a Docker container. Ok, it’s a bit slow for the Apple users, but that’s not my problem 🤷♂️
I have to use Windows at work, but I can use WSL on the developer laptop. Also I develop for/on Linux servers via ssh, so it’s good that I know Linux from home.
I was managing with virtual box on the work machine. But following win 11 the performance under hyper v is so appalling that I gave up.
In the end my solution is a 2nd hand ThinkPad off FB marketplace that I use for work.
Browser apps cover all the word/excel/outlook/teams requirements.
Winboat is covering the very limited set of other apps.
Everything else I do works better in Linux, or at least better on a device I have admin for.
Yes I am out of pocket but not significantly, and not having to deal with windows has been completely worth it for me.
