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?
Nope.
Full Linux shop here. Love it…
Desktops, laptops, servers.
For those rare customer teams meets, we just do it in the browser.
</saltRub>
How big is your install base at work? Still wondering how to replace something like Active Directory, Group Policies and the like for centralized management akin to Windows based networks.
FreeIPA does a passable job at replacing AD for the absolute most basic functions. I used to use it for sudo rules and user management at one of my previous jobs, even though it wasn’t a Linux shop.
We’re using exclusively MacOS at work, with the exception of one windows device which is pretty quarantined from the rest. I would not accept a job offer from a windows-only company. My mental health is more important to me
my employer using windows on their machine is their problem. i could be faster via bash in several instances, wouldn’t have to wait ours for updates to be done … but i get to drink tea and listen to complaints about outlook from my co-workers.
it’s okay. i get paid.
Yeah getting paid to sit there while windows wastes 20+ minutes of company time updating is always a treat
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.
My university forces us to use Microsoft products and I hate it.
The only good thing is that most MS products are available through web browser nowadays, but they have random quirks that make me bash my head against the desk.
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.
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.
As an engineer, piss off with this pretentious crap.
We are an MSP for small business. We have been a strict linux server environment for 10+ years.
On the desktop side, we have a few clients running Linux mint desktops and laptops now. Mostly for 2nd line personel, or roles where only browsers are required. We run microsoft Edge Browser on those devices for Office 365 usage and because firefox based browsers are so hit and miss with business web apps these days. We have our RMM tool to manage configurations and run our own Rustdesk instance for remote support.
The main impediment for larger adoption we see is still 3rd party app support. Desktop Excel being the primary one. Online Excel and LibreOffice is still not quite there in terms of some features for intermediate users. Whatsapp desktop app for voice calls with clients are also a major one in our country. Its a windows store app, which I have not been able to find a way to get connected to wine.
What we need is a proton like project for business applications. Proton has likely already done half the work. Once Office and windows store apps installs work as smoothly as games under steam, adoption can start at a larger scale.
The question is which company is going to make that investment. Canonical is too close to Microsoft and wont want to upset that relationship. And Red Hat always seems to be stuck in their own world. Other teams with the insight to tackle such a project, are probably too small, or do not have the financial backing or incentive for it.
Office 365 and teams work fine on Linux in Chrome or Firefox, including voice calls, video calls and screen sharing, and notifications with pop-ups and sounds.
Excel, in particular, is 100% inside Office365 in the browser when I have to interact with it. In the past, I have created Excel files in LibreOfffice and uploaded them to Office365 to convert. Though I haven’t been tempted to do so in a few years.
Most of my coworkers are not aware that I run Linux at work. My boss knows and doesn’t care. My peers are just surprised when I mention it, because I use the same tools without issue.
Zoom works great on Linux, as well, both in bowers and as the native app. Many corporate VPNs are compiant with open standards, and so don’t even require any additional install. Cisco’s isn’t made right, but they provide a Linux client that works fine.
Slack works fine in browser, including full first class notifications. I haven’t sought out a dedicated client app, but I recall having some options.
DropBox and Google have particularly decent Linux client applications, and of course, fully functional web tools.
There’s also some excellent ways to run Android apps nearly seemlessly inside an Android emulator of Linux. In theory, I could resort to those, but I haven’t because everything I need works in a web browser now.
I’ve heard that the two glaring exceptions are AutoCad and Adobe Creative Suite. I understand that neither works on Linux or in a browser (per other threads on Lemmy).
Oh yeah, and Linux has more and better ways to produce nice PDFs than Windows does, and of course reads them without issue
Oh, and yes, mandatory compliance stuff like antivirus tools and CrowdStrike also have compliant options for Linux. Some of the really shitty spyware level invasive stuff probably hasn’t been ported to Linux, but the “keep me virus free” stuff seems pretty available - because they want to sell copies for Linux servers.
Edit: If this seems needlessly thorough, it is because I worked to independently verify all of these details before my upgrade. I figure my notes might help someone making the case to switch, or just researching whether they need to not switch.
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.)
Linux or Mac shop in the past 3 places.
I’m lucky enough that my MD barely understands what a computer is, let alone gives a shit what we use to do our work. So I just said fuck it and put Kubuntu on mine. As long as I can do my work, no one cares how I do it.
I pretty much have to use Linux at work. I’m only still on windows for gaming but that will probably change soon.
If you have an AMD GPU and don’t care about playing games that require kernel-level access for anticheat (ew), then Linux might just work better for you than Windows, for most games.
Like, getting Minecraft installed and working with mods in CachyOS just required installing Prism Launcher from the CachyOS repos (1 easy step) then launching it. I didn’t even need to open a web browser to download an installer.
Heroic Launcher is amaze balls, too. It pulls all the free games I get on GOG, Epic, and Amazon (iirc?) into one library that looks and works like Steam’s (amazing) library. So slick. (I think it’s preinstalled in CachyOS, too.)
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.
