Linux

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!

Windows Sysadmin. My job is to enjoy the eternal arms race against Cortana every update via GPO and registry hacks. We are running on malware, it's a joke.

And before you ask, I am a peon and "Have we considered Linux?" was an office meme years before I arrived.

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.

Our engineers can use Linux desktop if they want, and I suppose anyone else could as well, but Microsoft Office is really what keeps me on Windows at work. I could use the browser based apps for 80% but that last 20% is nasty. And yes, I use libreoffice at home. The cross compatibility just isn't there without loads of extra time that I don't have.

My job involves maintaining Linux servers so there are no problems with Linux as my desktop.

Currently Arch Linux as the desktop OS.

I use Linux on my work computer

I am working in company where about 35% of users are on Windows, 40% on Linux and 25% on Mac. In Linux, official way to use MS Office is web apps, but Libreoffice is quite heavily used too.

Yes -- And it sucks balls.

Some people in a different department of the company do work with Linux. And some get Macs.

We in engineering are allowed to use whatever the heck we want so long as IT agrees that it is useful and safe and costs less than other options.

So we run a bunch of open source stuff. But the biggest one is Python. We connect arduinos and rpies to run complex machines. Meanwhile CAD runs on windows unfortunately along with all the bullshit spreadsheet, word and PowerPoint.

Linux is awesome and I see Windows day's numbered. So long piece of shit obsolescence software! One day you will be no more.

sure am and it fucking sucks

just today I ran into a new issue - when you try to close an Excel document without saving, it asks if you want to merge your changes with the server.

I do not, I want to close without saving, so I choose no.

then it asks if I want to save the document.

I do not, I want to close without saving, so I choose don't save

The document finally closes. I reopen the document, and guess what's there? my unsaved changes. if I try to close the document, the cycle repeats.

Microsoft fucking removed the ability to close a document without saving

I tried this on Windows 10 on one computer and Windows 11 on another computer with the exact same behavior

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 pretty much have to use Linux at work. I’m only still on windows for gaming but that will probably change soon.

As I build my business. All systems will work natively on Linux. So people can use that if they wish.

If there is something that specific to windows, then I do not use it.

We are, and in a way it's hilarious. I get to experience both worlds.

I've used Linux Desktop both personal and at work since 2003, I guess I got lucky with where I worked, they always allowed it as long as I could do everything that needed to be done.

Then again, I was either the owner or CTO level for the last decade or so, and just made those decisions myself.

Now I'm trying to push my current company to switch completely to Linux, and it ain't easy. Not because of Linux, that part is fine and whatever easy, but because Microsoft worked hard to ensure you can't escape their fucking clutches.

Moving away from teams, for example, will be a tough one, because most of our customers and government have complety relented to Microsoft, and you MUST use teams to talk to them.

So then what? Use different messengers internally and externally? I'm still not sure how to get rid of that part, but for the rest, we are going off the microshit soon

I’ve never had to use windows at work except for some extremely rare moments, such as debugging a customer issue.

Always had a choice between Linux and macOS, and even if it was a requirement, I’d just become the change I wanted to see, show them all the money they could be saving and improve security demonstrably.

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 🤷‍♂️

In the past I used CAD 95% of the time in the form of Solidworks, so I had to use windows. The other 5% of the time I used excel, so i probably could have dual booted, but I never bothered. Fortunately (kinda) my current job uses it a lot less, so I main Linux and for small prototypes I use FreeCAD on Linux and dual boot windows for the bigger projects that demand the speed in Solidworks

aren't y'all forced to use Windows at work?

No.

I just don't work.

(said in jest, but more truth to that than none)

We had a mix of Windows and Mac here when I joined, with development being Visual Studio-centered so Windows is what I got. I use MSYS and WSL a lot.

Now the company is moving to Mac-only, so at least I'll have a proper Unix.

I got permission from HR and the CTO to install GNU+Linux on the work desktop.

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.

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 and they don't care so I don't care either.

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.

I run teams and Outlook using versions in electron wrappers. For one drive I have to use the web interface to get to the shared storage because our folks don't know how to set it up and I don't care enough to figure it out for them.

I have one application that I really need to use that I still can't get working in Linux but I'm still trying.

I have been on macOS at work since December of 2019. Before that it was Windows since 2014. If I had the choice for Linux I might take it over macOS, but I'd happily take either over Windows.

Keep your eye open for opportunities to advocate for Linux in the workplace, change will come.

Thankfully no microsoft, but I do have to use google workspace.

at least i can sandbox it to a web browser? small wins...

We can choose what we want to run at work. I work as with Solution Architecture and Platform Engineering mainly with Azure, PaaS and dotnet solutions. It’s atypical I suppose but surprisingly seamless.

Doing this in Linux is pretty straightforward and my choice of distro is Ubuntu since last year. I have modified Gnome getting it sorta close to Omakub (the precursor to Omarchy).

The stack, including Dotnet, C#, PowerShell, Bicep, Terraform and Azure CLI works well. I’m midway in my setup of Neovim and have it working with PowerShell and Bicep as well as an assortment of other LSP’s. Additional tools such as JetBrains Rider, Draw.io and Obsidian with Excalidraw are native and so is LibreOffice. For the few workloads I can’t run natively (basically Visual Studio and Office) I have a VM.

The major issue I have found in a lot of workplaces with Windows since forever, disregarding the increasing mess in Windows 11, has been group policy lockdowns. IT tend to look at everyone including devs as office workers (assuming Office is the most advanced tools needed), meaning no admin access and blocked apps.

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

I actually get forced to use a Chromebook at my current job but it doesn't really change anything since all our software is "in the cloud" accessed through Chrome.

It depends on your work. I'm a web designer and I can use anything I want. I also work from home.

I use Linux at work, but need a VM with Win for Office. And no, LibreOffice is not an option.

All my jobs back to 2002 until now I have had full authority to run any OS I like on my work computer. I've run nothing but Linux on all my work machines and I have convinced many coworkers to do the same.

My main computer at work is Linux, I do have a Windows build box where I compile code for Windows, and to make my life easier I usually develop it there as well. But outside of platform specific code, or code related to a product that's Windows only, I don't have any issues.

As for other software Teams, slack, zoom, Google meeting and docs work well enough that I can use them daily without issues.

At a previous job for some reason they wanted me to use Windows, which was absurd since I worked on the backend of a site which would only be deployed to Linux, didn't last long in that job after that was made official.

In short, as long as my main machine is Linux, I don't mind having to have a Windows machine to do Windows stuff. But I get annoyed out of my mind if I'm either forced to use Windows as my main OS (it's just not ergonomic for me), especially if there's no reason for it.

I was handed a Windows laptop. I used it for a few weeks and then quietly just upgraded to a personal Linux machine. It's been six months and no one cares. Fine with me.