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(sh.itjust.works)
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this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2023
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As a windows user in corporate IT. It just doesn't work. I spend most of my time hacking my way through useless unix pseudo toys, wsl2, cygwin, mingw... Each one for every tool because... Reasons. And because wsl2 is just painful. So we spend time creating fake unix virtual machines via docker on kubernetes using vs code remotely on expensive linux clusters... Frustrating.
Go home and turn on a linux laptop just to see a real functional terminal. Deep breath, zen, cathartic.
Windows makes my otherwise fine daily work miserable.
I hate enterprise IT. Built for sending around emails and working with excel sheets.
I am seriously thinking about starting an AI start up just to avoid risking another windows laptop switching job (they always promise cool stuff, at the end they always deliver overpriced windows garbage, my 8 years old laptop is more functional than their $ 3k notebook)
Sounds like you're just more familiar with Linux and that's fine. I use Linux, Windows and MacOS regularly and haven't had a problem with Windows honestly. The most frustrating of the 3 is MacOS, and even then it's nitpicking.
In sorry, but they're kind of right. Windows is HELL ON EARTH to support. Fixing issues is a guessing game because no one really knows what's wrong, its garbage driver enumeration system means a year down the line a users monitor/headset/dock will magically stop working, restarting is a 50/50 shot of getting stuck on the spinning circle, I could go on and on and on.
Within three months of starting that job windows was gone from every PC I owned.
In a big corporate/ large enterprise environment, I've usually had few major problems with my windows laptops. It's just always slow as balls because of all of the security shit they put on them. So these $3k laptops take forever to load or launch outlook and teams.
I always dream of a Linux laptop, but then realized they'd butcher it all to hell and make it useless with security policies and tools. I can't imagine using a Linux machine at work where I didn't have the ability to "sudo" anything.
That'd be more frustrating than windows tbh.
10+ years of Windows and I still can't say I'm familiar with it.
Linux has a steep learning curve for sure, but if I have to say one good thing about it, it's the openness of Linux.
I dread seeing the message "An unknown error has just occurred" when I use Windows. Tell me, Microsoft, tell me what the error was!
Agreed, the lack of proper (and often any) error messages is incredibly infuriating. It makes it impossible to diagnose anything, the only thing you can do is look for forum posts to make sense of the weird behaviour.
On linux, if something doesn't work it tells me why and I can just follow a chain to the root cause every time without fail.
I am familiar with all 3. Power user some would say. But I must use unix. I do ML/AI, corporations pay money for the ML/AI guys and give them windows. Like partecipating to an f1 race with a Fiat panda...
For my work windows is simply painfully useless
It's just windows being almost default OEM OS. Why should they bother to install Linux over it for you while they don't know particular flavour of Linux you like?
Because they need to maintain multiple huge servers and virtual machines with my favorite flavor of Linux, to make us doing the job very ineffectively. Because Linux does the job they need, it is needed, no escape, while windows is just for outlook and for creating issues.
I am paid enough that I really should not complain if companies waste money on the wrong tools for the job. Most of my salary pays to find solutions to problems that exist only because of windows. They have to waste a lot of money because the former accenture guy they hired as head of IT support (or whoever decides for the laptops) told them that windows is the only possible solution for big corporations. Good for them.
As said I am seriously thinking about starting my own start up, because my experience with corporate IT has been so miserable in all places I worked (outside academia, that has many defects, but at least they can manage a decent IT).
Is it forbidden to install a different OS? I'm propably ignorant as in all my dev jobs so far (N=1), I have been permitted (and encouraged) to install OS of my choice.
Nope unfortunately. Having worked in finance and pharma I have access to systems with sensitive data (and build them). IT is responsible for everything. When we set up a cluster, for instance, we say what to do, at the level of the single command line, but the work is physically done by an engineer from IT.
Ah, I see. Thanks for explaining
While it is partly true, I can't deny I spent the last 15years on linux, I have my fair amount of deal with windows in a professional setup, I can't totally accept this response then, hence the word partly true :P.
Now, explain me how any familiarity with Windows can help when a vanilla installation for windows 10 pro, used for two specific application (nothing cloudy), no game, almost offline, etc... How this system decides, randomly to not allow me to literally login in, looping forever before giving prompt, or pretend there is issue with my PIN and or my profile although I use plain passphrase and my account is local and literally nothing has changed system wise since the last session! I have disabled all the auto update shit everywhere (the obvious one and the one I know about) and no updates in between.
You could say I might no know this particular register bit field. Probably but then, we are not in the easy/just works view.
Honestly this sounds like a freak accident. I use Windows myself and work with people using Windows regularly and never heard of something like that. And I guess you can achieve an unrecoverable state on any operating system given the right conditions.
Sure for the possibility for every OSes to break but what I said was just a recent example, even though it's on a pretty pristine installation in term of alteration. There's so many other things where Windows and its ecosystems is a mess but I guess it is more or less forgiven because you can game on it and because that particular device you would use has the driver while on Linux it must be reverse engineered and written if not, never exist.
Anyway, my whole point is about the "just works" label which has been proven to be wrong more than I can count.
I have the exact same issues as @jeanma@lemmy.ninja . Every single work day contains at least 10 minutes of waiting for windows to log me in and 2 login errors without exaggerating. IT have told me on numerous occasions there's nothing they can do other than reinstalling windows since the error source is very proprietary.
At this point I'm considering switching jobs just to get rid of windows.
Honestly sounds like you're just not very good at your job. As a windows wsl2 user I don't have any of these problems. Everything just works for me.
Happy for you. I am literally the one who fixes the issues for the whole department, that chooses technologies and design systems and solutions and lead integrations. I have no issues with pretty complex technologies, including cuda on kubernetes, that is pretty tricky.
But I know c# developers are also happy with just windows and visual studio.
As suggestion, try the real thing, you'd likely never want to go back
I'm Dev ops and a developer, I use cuda daily and kubernetes is my personal stack of choice. I have to use the real thing constantly for servers etc. It works ok, would much rather a Linux server than a windows one. But servers is where it ends.
My last use of Linux for personal machine was Ubuntu on an Alienware laptop. It didn't have drivers for most of it. Got 90% of it working (took a good 6 hours) then one day I went to stick my headphones in and the jack wasn't working (a Linux issue) I went back to windows and never looked back.
People scream about Linux being so much better but the hard truth is it just isn't unless you are also willing to reinvent several wheels that are already handled for you in other operating systems. But if you like that level of fine control over every element and are ok with your UI lacking the finishes of commercial ones and custom drivers not being as effective with hardware management as the proprietary ones then Linux is the distro of choice. There seems to be a very thin line between people bragging about Linux to make it appear they are smarter than they are and actual Linux users, like it's some sort of tech badge to shout that you love Linux that gives you some sort of superiority but after 25+ years in the industry I can honestly say all the actual Linux users I've met are also all very much on the spectrum and don't have people skills. It would be fair to say what they are looking for in an OS isn't the same as everybody else.
We have linux on our clusters. It is the de facto standard for scientific computing, and it is the best choice for kubernetes. So we have both linux as host OS and only linux containers on our servers.
Everyone uses Linux nowadays. Even Microsoft makes more money on Linux than windows on azure. No one wouldn't even think about using windows for the job I do, not even Microsoft.
That's why they created wsl2, to provide unix for enterprise IT. The real struggle is that wsl2 is suboptimal. A real Linux desktop, or even a mac would be much better. Problem is that enterprise IT doesn't want to manage them, because accenture said so... I guess. Bigger the enterprise, less willing to support unix laptops they are.
If your diagnoses of professional unix users in the spectrum was right, you'd have to put most of scientific computing, hpc, ML and AI commuties in the spectrum.
It is a bit stretched, I'd say.
I don't claim to be smarter than anyone, I started the thread pointing out that "windows just works" (as OP claimed) is not always true. For my work, it doesn't work and it is painful
True, before i started to work with Windows i already disliked Microsoft, but what they are able to break constantly is astonishing.
There is no way security would give you a full terminal with all kinds of stuff to break or leak.
I do have access to multiple terminals. Terminals are just another interface alternative to GUIs. There is no way I could work without. I simply have access to the plethora of crappy terminals you can find for windows, and wls2. And clearly I have access to the remote linux VMs and can attach to containers running on the remote clusters, and deploy there hardened images I build, that are secured full OSes just lacking the kernel
Of they are but your access will be restricted (no access to files or executables). That can easily make working with a terminal that much more exhausting although implemented for good reason.
I do have admin access to my machine via a system of temporary password. Admin privileges are really not the problem. Is the overall windows experience that is pretty exhausting for power users. And if one needs unix, MS sells to companies this solution of wsl2, as if it was real native linux experience, but it's not. It's just frustrating