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 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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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 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.I count myself as one of the lucky ones that isn’t forced to use Windows by the company I work for. We even have our internal (ubuntu-based) distro, and despite being passable proficient with Linux, I can count on having support if I ever need it.
That’s all fine and dandy but at work I am forced to use Windows, Office, Teams, and all that.
Yeah, me too. But all of those (except Windows of course) can be used on the browser
Yes, I’m forced to use Windows at work and that’s part of why I only use Linux in my personal life.
Window is so stupid and annoying. It needs to reboot like twice a day for updates. Not to mention individual apps that need to update in the middle of usage. Also the news/spam and stuff. It’s garbage. I’m the guy who’s constantly telling everybody that we should switch to Linux.
(Also, even though my work laptop is Windows, I do most of my real work connected to a Linux server/IDE.)
even though my work laptop is Windows, I do most of my real work connected to a Linux server/IDE.
This has been me for my entire pro career. There we are, working to maintain at&t Unix, but it’s all (then) vandyke, winamp, Mozilla4. Here I am now, at work, corp win11, putty, radiogarden, fucking outlook/teams and all its dreck.
But look at bazzite and Nobara: if we can avoid the snaps/appimages/flatpaks in addition to the venvs and npm and other toxic cult cargo sploit vectors, we have a strong platform with still just enough windows access for fucking teams and the rest of the redmond-based data sovereignty threats.
In the past I mostly got to persuade them to allow me to use Linux. In one, however, they got me a macbook, so I resorted to living in the VM most of the time. I had to use xcode for some of the Mac development, but for the rest, I was masochistic enough to be able to withstand living in a VM. Though that mac was Intel based, now ARM ones would likely not perform as good to justify it. Asahi doesn’t work on newer ARM Macs AFAIK.
I’m lucky that I work from home (have done since before the pandemic) and pretty much all my work is done in a browser, and my bosses don’t care what I use as long as the work gets done. So I just work on Fedora on my regular desktop.
Nope. Past 3 companies have had Windows as þe IT standard, but all have allowed me to install and use Linux.
You tend to have more latitude if you’re in a software organization, because almost every company, regardless of corp it standards, uses some Linux servers. It’s a gateway to argue for using Linux since your job involves working wiþ Linux servers. Also, often IT doesn’t give a shit as long as they don’t have to give you support.
as long as they
Missed one
Shouldn’t the ‘they’ be ðey? There’s two th characters in Icelandic. Seems weird these þ-ers only replace the one type.
In Old English the letters were eventually used interchangeably, which is what I imagine they’re using.
Whatever gets attention, I guess. See? We’re talking about it now.
I don’t think it’s about attention, really. I think they’re just a nerd doing a nerd thing because they enjoy it.
Nope, software dev here… work gave me a budget, told me to pick a computer and I put Linux on it. My Boss (the VP of Engineering) also runs Linux. We’re a small company and some people do run Windows but we have google workspace so there hasn’t been anything I’ve needed windows for.
Thankfully no microsoft, but I do have to use google workspace.
at least i can sandbox it to a web browser? small wins…
Nah, I’m free to do what I want with my laptop as long as I can do the work. I work in IT and everyone uses windows. But so far so good. Would like to get outlook classic to run on Linux though
I’m a fucking Cloud Systems Engineer with 20 years in and at my new job IT wouldn’t give me local admin and wouldn’t approve hardly any software installation requests. Yet if I wanted to I could wipe every single customer’s data and destroy them all. Doesn’t make sense
What does those cloud systems run on? Makes sense to run the same thing, right?
Policy is not decided by logic and sense, my dude. Sorry you have the same wonks dictating that as I do.
