Not sure if this is the right place for it, but would anyone be interested in assisting an MSP in helping refine our Linux Stack?

Our goal is to take companies that are currently using a Windows stack and move them over without too much retraining on the user’s part.

Our current stack is Linux Mint, LibreOffice, a custom RMM agent, and a few bits and bobs that differ per client, but that’s all malleable. We have a stack, I’m just interested in anything that may make it better. Of note, we donate to FOSS monthly for roughly the licensing fees of the non-FOSS alternative that the clients would be using.

EDIT: Further info for some incredibly hostile replies who are seeking to purposely get offended…

As an MSP, the monthly client fee remains the same regardless of if the clients are on Linux, MacOS, or Windows. I assure you, we’re not winning new converts with Linux and hoping to capture some untapped market. This isn’t a money-maker. We are avoiding e-waste and upcycling machines for free on our own dime. If the client doesn’t want to convert, we donate the systems when they are discarded to one of the nonprofits we support for free. Again, switching clients to Linux wouldn’t make us any money as we don’t bill for project fees. If anything it would make us less money because we’re not trying to sell new objects to the client and are signing ourselves up to train and deploy to them. There’s no sneaky evil hidden agenda here.

I was never looking for someone to design the entire implementation, just one or two comments saying something to the tune of “X distro / software is easier for newbies, take a look!” or something.

    • Ace T'Ken@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      63·
      12 days ago

      The monthly client fee remains the same regardless of if the clients are on Linux or on Windows. I assure you, we’re not winning new converts with Linux. We are avoiding e-waste and upcycling machines for free. Switching clients to Linux wouldn’t make us any money as we don’t bill for project fees. If anything it would make us less money because we’re not trying to sell new objects to the client and are signing ourselves up to train and deploy to them. Please explain to me how that isn’t a good thing and is anything other than positive for all involved?

      I wasn’t looking for someone to design the entire implementation, just one or two comments saying something to the tune of “X distro is easier for newbies” or something. Were you under the impression that I was trying to get people on a Linux Community to come in and support carpet shop printers or something, or is this kind of weird, misaligned hostility just the general tone I should expect?

      • naught@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        61·
        12 days ago

        You should always expect hostility from Linux users, now scram!

        Anyway the stack you mentioned is pretty standard fare for Windows -> Linux transitions. If I had any more notes I’d give em, sorry & good luck!

          • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
            1·
            12 days ago

            So you do have some experience then. How do you plan on actually supporting Linux desktops? All of the mainstream vendors are Windows only as Linux on the desktop doesn’t really exist in the views of large companies.

            Don’t get me wrong, I think it would be really cool to have Linux make more of a splash in the SMB space. However, it is tricky to maintain and doesn’t offer much of an advantage over anything else. A business doesn’t care about Linux evangelicalism. It is what makes the money.

            Just FYI, 8 people is not medium sized. That is a very small MSP that is no where near the size of medium to large businesses. That doesn’t make it bad but you are not quite in same league. I’ve worked with small MSPs and most of them suck but if you do it right you can actually get a lot of business from small shops as I’m sure you are aware. Some of the crazier MSPs I’ve seen do all sorts of bad and wild things which you probably have seen the aftermath of.

        • Ace T'Ken@lemmy.caOPEnglish
          62·
          12 days ago

          Nope, I’ve never sold a printer in my life beyond what clients have asked us to buy and bring to them. Really, I thought this would just be a fun thread as we’ve already designed everything ourselves. But I should know better than to be a person on the internet… My bad.

          Anyway, I run a medium-sized I.T. firm in Canada and designed the company to be as ethical as it could possibly be from the ground up.

          • All employees have equal votes after their initial 3 months is up in any part of the company that they are engaged in. I can (and have) been outvoted.
          • After employees are here long enough (a few years), they can purchase shares if they like.
          • I am the lowest paid full-time employee at the company by design. I do not take dividends.
          • We operate on a Matrix org chart meaning that the “boss” on every project changes based on who is best suited to lead it and who has experience in that area.
          • We have it in our charter that there are never any outside shareholders allowed. If you leave the company, your shares are purchased by the company for current market value. This includes myself. This is why employees owning shares is a good idea; it becomes a retirement plan. Unlike most corporations, we don’t want solely financially invested shareholders as they’re in business to extract value. They are parasites.
          • We have acquired other companies. We have never had to pay for one. Our procedures are so thorough and ticket counts so astronomically low compared with other I.T. companies (which are called MSPs) due to our subsystems and customizations that they literally give themselves to us.
          • We are as environmentally conscious as we can be. We redo and donate old systems to nonprofits and schools where we can. The only waste we put out is utterly dead hardware - no forced upgrade cycle. Electricity bills also drop dramatically at clients we take over due to more efficient machine use.
          • During COVID, we gave away over $500k in free support. I figured it was more important that our nonprofit clients stay open than we stay open.
          • In nearly ten years, we’ve never had an employee leave, and never had a client leave (well, we had one restaurant client close during COVID, but I don’t count that).
          • We have full benefits.
          • We have zero interest in “infinite growth” as it’s not a functional model. We have turned down clients because they don’t “get” us and would be a headache for our staff.
          • Our current goal is a 9-5 (not 8-5), four-day workweek for all staff.

          I understand that not every business owner is “good.” I believe that with proper regulation, however, we can make them at least behave way, way the fuck better than they do now.

          I’ve built this model out in hopes it will catch on. I feel that if most companies operated under it that society would be substantially better off. Certain aspects of this model are so important and such a step up from the norm that I don’t understand how they weren’t obvious to other owners. But… greed I guess. Greed hurts every system it’s in.

          Also of interest, we don’t have an issue with The Peter Principle as you’re never forced to move out of a position of competence or interest. You’re not salary-limited simply because you don’t want to be a manager; in fact, there are no managers.

          So more than anything, it’s your hostility that’s telling.

          • slazer2au@lemmy.worldEnglish
            22·
            12 days ago

            Anyway, I run a medium-sized I.T. firm in Canada and designed the company to be as ethical as it could possibly be from the ground up.

            And yet you are asking for free advice to develop a product to sell.

            If you do run a MSP, have you looked internally to your own staff?

            • FrostyPolicy@suppo.fiEnglish
              5·
              12 days ago

              Why is asking for advice a bad idea even if there is a commercial interest behind it? At least OP is honest about it. Wonder how many of the “asking for advice” post over the years here and elsewhere have had some kind of commercial interest behind them and OP has not disclosed it.

            • Ace T'Ken@lemmy.caOPEnglish
              2·
              12 days ago

              Yes which is why we have several clients already running our current stack that I outlined above. As I said, it’s not exactly a money maker, it’s more of a passion thing. Also, we’re not “selling it,” it’s something to outfit soon-to-be-sidelined Windows 10 systems with. It will literally cost me more money and hours to keep them from filling a landfill than it would to just dump them. There is no profit motive. No company will join us because of this and no company will leave us if we can’t provide it. Your premise is faulty.

              And unfortunately I am also the only Linux user on staff so we are limited to my knowledge and what I can dig up.

                • Ace T'Ken@lemmy.caOPEnglish
                  4·
                  12 days ago

                  Yeah, I do. I love I.T. work and messing with computers. I have, in fact, stated that if the government paid 100% of my expenses and I didn’t need to work that I’d run computer literacy camps and still do I.T…

          • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
            26·
            12 days ago

            Good luck to you I guess

            This isn’t going to work out. The market doesn’t favor ethics or self righteousness. It is highly competitive and you lack experience. Even some basic IT experience will seriously serve you well.

      • just_another_person@lemmy.worldEnglish
        25·
        12 days ago

        You’re completely missing the point.

        You lack knowledge of a specific subject. You’re asking experts for solutions you intend to make money off of. You need to pay for that in any other scenario, so why are you acting like you shouldn’t pay for it in this scenario?

        • Ace T'Ken@lemmy.caOPEnglish
          42·
          12 days ago

          Actually, I’m rather sure you’re missing the point. Explain to me how I’m making money off it, please.

          Read my posts throughout this thread. As I said, the Linux stack is not exactly a money maker, it’s more of a passion thing. Also, we’re not “selling it,” it’s something to outfit soon-to-be-sidelined Windows 10 systems with. It will literally cost me more money and hours to keep them from filling a landfill than it would to just dump them. There is no profit motive. No company will join us because of this and no company will leave us if we can’t provide it. Your entire premise is faulty.

          I make the same monthly fee as an MSP no matter if the client runs Windows, Linux, or MacOS. The OS is a thing to be maintained by us, not sold. Hell, we provide hardware and software to clients at cost. We profit off nothing but our MRR. We’re very open and honest.

          If you really think that saying the name of software that may help users and having an MSP donate monthly to FOSS is bad, then I don’t know what to tell you - we’re fundamentally different people.