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?
Most workplaces have switched to the cloud model. Google workspace, MS Teams (or w/e they call their work ecosystem?), Salesforce, etc. Pretty much everything these days runs in the browser. And fortunately almost all browsers run on Linux.
That being said, yes, they may provide hardware, and expect you to use it, and they probably wouldn’t allow for you to modify it.
It’s remarkable how 5 years ago, I would not have been able to do my job just with web apps. Just recently I used my personal Linux laptop for 3 weeks while away from home. It worked perfectly for the job with two minor exceptions:
‘1. There’s a proprietary web app that requires you to upload a specifically-formatted .xlsx file, couldn’t get that to work.
‘2. MS Teams - unless you have the web page pulled up and are looking at it, it will show you as Away instead of Available. Workaround was to just leave Teams open on my phone and have the screen always on.
unless you have the web page pulled up and are looking at it, it will show you as Away instead of Available.
Mine always says away. It’s none of your business where I am or what I’m doing. Send me a message and I’ll get back to you at my earliest availability.
I ran Linux at work up until recently where I found out that they are in the process of changing the network setup, so only systems with a valid certificate can access the network. And they have no plan to support Linux in that setup. So I was kind of forced to switch back to Windows, because my work requires that I can access the local network.
Other than that, I used Linux in a Microsoft Entra/Intune environment with Edge, Teams and Office 365 for a couple of years.
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.
Yes, unfortunately
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.
Professor here facing the same problem. I am bounded by administrative procedures with grandma school administrators.
I use Linux at home, of course. Debloated my Win11 machine at work but hope to use Linux instead everyday.
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.
I used to work as a software dev before mass layoffs got me. Our work was technical enough that most of us used Linux to the point that finding a Windows user to test things was a real problem.
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)
I’m a teacher and I make Linux work for me. Open doc formats get converted to pdf for the shitty windows 7 running the printer in the printing room, and the Android/Windows only app for communications I just run on my phone. PPTs run fine. When there was a problem with the projector, ‘IT guy’ went to my laptop, got confused (it’s Gnome), I told him not to interfere with it because it’s Linux. He proceeded to say ‘Ah, not working because it’s windows.’ Later that day he actually came to fix the cable to the projector.
There’s few things more satisfying than having the “IT guy” say “oh it must be a Linux problem” only for them to have to eat crow within 24 hours.
No. We are a proper engineering company.
As an engineer, piss off with this pretentious crap.
Yeah, have fun making stuff when the device you’re using to do so is actively fighting you
LOL, spotted the “windows engineer”.
Thinkpads running Linux for the staff.
We use open-source. Our own on-prem servers running Linux. A lot of our software is also open source. Our git, our office suite, our video and chat… All open source.
We just got rid of our Google Cloud connections a few months ago, but we’re still reliant on aws, cloudflare, etc.
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.
So not an industrial automation engineer. Nothing but windows software.
Ignition for scada works on Linux, but nothing else does.
It depends on your work. I’m a web designer and I can use anything I want. I also work from home.
Forced to use Windows 11 at work, my brand new laptop with 32GB or RAM takes 10 to 20 seconds to open the explorer or view an image. It’s horrendous. It’s absolutely not because of the application I need to use because I literally do EVERYTHING in Google Chrome. This year IT uninstalled Excel and Word from our laptops because we are supposed to do all the work in Google Drive. Updates always need minimum 2 reboots and you need to attend to the computer because rebooting will get stuck on the encryption password. I hate it, but it always been like that so…
Same here. 64 gb ram win 11. Slow as FUCK. bloated. My linux pc has 20 gig and is lightning fast.
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.
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.
