I’m getting sick every day at this Microsoft Windows slowness and bloat. I am trying to use as much Linux VMs as possible. I feel so unproductive on Windows. I also tried installing Linux on the office laptop. The problem is that Windows is officialy supported and the Linux is DYI. Once the IT departament changes it will sync up with Windows but Linux can be broken and you are no longer able to work. Next job I want to have full Linux laptop or at least Mac.
Besides:
- Microsoft Office
- Active Directory
- Some proxy and VPN bullshit
Everything seems manageable and even better on Linux.
What is your experience?
Most tech people actually use macs, because corporations prefer them for their tech employees, while the normal employees usually use Windows. Very few corps support linux on the desktop for their admins – even if their infrastructure is all on linux.
I used to have a Linux laptop at work. I was even allowed to install my chosen distro. Then the IT department said “we don’t really know Puppet or how to manage Linux, but we know JAMF, so you’re all getting Macs now.”
My job satisfaction has gone down since then. However, in more positive news, they did end up giving away the old Linux laptops to the employees when they moved office.
It is always interesting to me that companies can afford new Macs but not use old laptops for Linux.
It’s a support question. It may cost $2k more for a Mac, but if it’s officially supported, auto patched, remote managed and they can prove it with security tools, force patching and restrict users, use standard well known tools for compliance and security monitoring/administration/etc, they will easily save thousands in corp licensing, training costs and legal costs. That $2k+ really becomes negligible.
Any source on that mac claim? I’ve not seen any proof of that at all.
(Edit: To clarify, I know people are saying they use MacOS here, but I don’t think the claim that most tech people in corporate settings use MacOS to be true. I only have my personal experience in a very large corporate environment, and am asking for information as every team I’ve worked with was using Windows.)
I am a software developer and work on Kubernetes based project.
I was given a Mac laptop when I joined. It was a few OS releases behind, because corporate IT didn’t support newer versions.
Macs have to run some sort of VM to do docker based development.
VMs are not that great.
When time came, I requested a Windows laptop. I installed Debian on WSL 2. Then got it to run systemd properly and installed Docker on WSL. Then vscode on windows host with remote ssh into WSL.
This setup beats Mac any day for me.
I wish I could run Linux on work laptop, but corporate IT doesn’t know how to deal with it.
You wish. Most tech companies will get you the cheapest laptop they can get away with.
I remember being denied a 64bit laptop when developing a 64bit only application lol.
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Interesting… But you use it at work and it is allowed?
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Wdym with linux can be broken?
Don’t mess woth the system and go atomic. Fedora atomic kde or gnome or wm
Fedora atomic or not is nice.
I got tired of manually installing Arch and was pleased with Fedora the most.
Changes from the upstream can make your system nonfunctional. For example VPN for remote connection. They change something, push to Windows but on Linux you need to figure it out by yourself.
On linux you just put the ovpn into the settings. VPN connections are built into the system
Yes, I have used systems that broke. Yes I followed bad advice and broke my system. Ever since not touching my system, that didn’t happen again. If I would touch windows, I would brik windows as well.
Yeah that’s another thing that Windows can break in the same way as Linux.
Wdym with linux can be broken?
Linux mint kept harassing me to install the official drivers for my wireless card, so I did. It broke my ability to use WiFi.
I told Linux while in presentation mode I did not want the screen to sleep, it took that as sleep after 5 minutes.
Every time the laptop sleeps/restarts my screen resolution is borked, half the time the correct resolutions are not available and I have to disconnect all my monitors, restart, then connect the monitors.
Most solutions I hear are use a different distro, learn command line, you should not be using Linux if you cannot fix this stuff.
That is what i mean when I say Linux can be broken.
If you’re on Mint still, that’s X11 fucking you over. AFAIK, Mint hasn’t moved to Wayland, though you might be able to install an experimental session, but I wouldn’t trust it like a distro that’s all-in on Wayland.
I used to contend with monitors jumping around like a jack russell terrier with X11, never keeping settings, dropping out due to ACPI. Wayland has fixed pretty much everything I had going wrong with that stuff.
Boot a live USB of some distros that default to Wayland like Fedora, and see how it reacts to screensaving, then make some choices from there.
I moved to macOS full time now.
How do you like it?
Those things happen on windows as well
I would argue that they happen way more on Windows. I’ve never had any of that happen to me on Linux (mostly a Fedora user) but plenty of times on Windows from 7 to 11.
The worst part is it is not Windows fault. The pure kernel and the system without any bloat works great. I tried AtlasOS once and I felt bad for Microsoft engineers that their work is being spoiled with greed, bloat, enshititifaction. Everything was going smoothly and flawlessly.
But so many components are just… Hacky… Unnecessary… Just weird that it barely works especially so many companies don’t know what they are doing. Then the dependency hell happens of this software.
Linux on the other hand is so much transparent.
I moved to macOS full time now. Things work much better now.
Less bloaty? How much?
Corporate support for Macs is usually worth than on Windows.
It is a very risky move.
Yep, many people complain about Wayland and just graphic things in general. On Windows on the other hand sometimes I cannot click buttons. Example: unmute myself in Teams. Why? Because the docking station after some time cannot figure out where is the focus and also Electron sucks. And many other thing like weird behaviour with moving apps’ windows from one screen to another.
Lol i think most of us Linux people just forget how basic most peoples computer usage is. An example, i wanted a program yesterday. Im on Manjaro and it was a .deb so i had to look it up in the AUR, clone it, compile and install it. All in command line. To someone who is used to that its not a big deal just some copy and paste and searching. To someone who is used to windows where you download .exe, and click install thats a herculean task.
I disagree that people shouldnt use linux if they cant fix stuff on their own etc. I fully support making some distros entirely GUI and really easy to use because some people just need that and theres nothing wrong with not wanting to get all into the weeds setting up a computer. Thats the whole point of distros is to have various options for different use cases. I hope youll be able to find a linux setup that works for what you need. As of now a little bit of terminal may be needed even in the easier to use distros depending on what your doing tho.
MacOS. Systems doesn’t want to support Linux, and the only other option is windows 11. A few of my coworkers have Win11 with WSL and fight it every single day. They’re diehard windows people who have been seriously considering moving to MacOS for their next round of upgrades.
Also Mac here. I started with a linux laptop but still have to do some desktop support work for the company and since they all use Mac it’s just easier to dogfood it. At least I have a decent terminal emulator.
Try this terminal emulator then https://github.com/gnachman/iTerm2
Same here. I really really tried with WSL but the experience is miserable.
Swapped to MacOS and like night and day. I’d be perfectly happy with a £300 linux laptop though.
Yeah, it is slow in the end, not native, many things to configure (like proxies) and so on…
Great! Was it hard also to switch to MacOS as a Linux user for work?
I actually run away from Mac. Mac OS X is long time as not Linux.
WSL is a way better option than whatever VM option is on Mac.
What about the experience is miserable? I’m just curious as I really like it.
Yeah, I do all my development in WSL2 (Ubuntu) at work every day. I use VSCode on the Windows 11 host. It’s great!
Would I prefer to use Linux natively? Sure, but I also have to support some Windows-only legacy code and a D365 environment or two, so Windows makes sense.
I am happy with WSL as well. I don’t try to get Linux GUI running.
I use vscode remote ssh session. I run docker natively on Linux, not on windows.
The trick is to get DBUS services running in whatever flavor of Linux you install. Don’t try running a full UI session.
The biggest problem I have on Linux is time drift after laptop goes to sleep. it is easy to deal with manually.
Do you have a guide that makes this possible?
And what do you mean by using vscode remote ssh session? Does this vscode instance is started from the WSL via some kind of
ssh- Y?Vscode is installed on windows. Then you install vscode ssh plugin from Microsoft and open ssh connection from vscode to any Linux including WSL hosted Linux.
MacOS, nearly everyone who does anything with development or ops is using a MacBook. Though lately more “normal” employees have been getting MacBooks too.
We have some client’s engineers who use MacBooks. I’ll just say that I’m wary of anyone technical using MacOS at this point.
Though some of our devs use them too, but from what I’ve seen, they could just as well use Linux.
Wary why? I work remotely in IT and manage a ton of Linux systems with it. Because my company has a large number of remote employees they limit us to Windows or Macs only, and have pretty robust MDM, security, etc. installed on them. Since MacOS is built on top of a unix kernel it’s much more intuitive to manage other unix & linux systems with it.
Personally I haven’t used Windows really since before Windows 10 came out, and as the family tech support department I managed to switch my wife, parents, brother, and mother in-law all to Mac’s years ago as well.
I’ve met some folks who’d use an Apple laptop as part of their general attempt to look more competent than they actually were, for managers and such. Or maybe just for their ego.
If your choice is between Windows and MacOS - I dunno. Depends on how AuDHD-tolerant one can make MacOS. What I usually see doesn’t inspire confidence.
This is very anecdotal, but both myself and the vast majority of my peers use macOS as their base host system. I work in cybersecurity, specifically offensive penetration testing. Myself, most of my coworkers, and probably half of my peers I’m competing against at local conference CTFs or that I know at local meetups are using a MacBook host with VMs spun up to need.
Something like 75% of my job is done in a Linux VM. Doing it on a MacBook is infinitely more pleasant than any other laptop I’ve ever tried using, regardless of what OS it’s running.
Also, and again extremely anecdotal, the most technical people I’ve ever known were all using hackintoshes when I knew them, and would use MacBooks when away from the home/office.
I really don’t understand where this “Mac products are for non-technical people who want to appear technical” trope comes from. MacOS is a phenomenal product for non-technical people. My partner is the least technical person in the world, but they started using macOS in art school and found it intuitive and easy to use. As a technical person, I appreciate the polished UI built on top of the Unix kernel and that I can do everything I need to do from a terminal shell. The fact that the product is excellent for both wildly disparate types of users is testament to how great it is imo.
It’s different between countries, I suppose.
Also people want different things. For me customizable desktops (say, FVWM however I want to script it) are important, because I easily get distracted and overloaded. I also can’t ignore aesthetics, and in my subjective taste Apple style is concentrated bad taste combined with arrogance. Also there’s something in their UI design making me feel nausea and get tired faster. I don’t know what it is.
Other people want something else.
It comes from subjective experience in a country where Apple is traditionally not very popular.
I also can’t separate their disgusting advertising from their products, subjective again.
At least they have some kind of choice…
I’m in the lucky position that I always could work with Linux. I was working with people that couldn’t be bothered to run Windows on their Desktops (administering mostly Linux Servers anyway). In my first job we had a “Standardized” Fedora desktop that was actually attached to our AD so you could log in at any desktop with your domain user. However we did have internal tools and some software requirement that only were available on Linux meaning everyone in our department had a Windows VM for using those tools (kinda overkill but ok). My last job we didn’t have any standard other than the system had to be encrypted and had Eset installed other than that we could set it up he was we liked.
Could I work with a Windows desktop? Sure I’m on the Terminal sshing into systems 98% of the time anyway but at the end of the day I love to simply be on Linux having a workflow I’m used to.
Regarding Office I was just using Office online for anything that needed it.
Getting Linux Systems into AD is possible (but of course requires cooperation on the side of the IT department)
Proxy and VPN should mostly be doable (but of course might not be able to be deployed via Group policies)
I’m currently more of an generic sysadmin than linux admin, as I do both. But the ‘other stuff’ at work runs around teams, office, outlook and things like that, so I’m running a win11 with WSL and it’s good enough for what I need from a workstation. There’s technically a policy in place that only windows workstations are supported, but I suppose I could run linux (and I have separate laptop for linux-only stuff). At the current environment it’s just not worth the hassle, spesifically since I need to maintain windows servers too.
So, I have my terminals, firefox and whatever I need and I also have the mandated office-suite, malware protection/IDR/IDS by the book and in my mindset I’m using company tools for company jobs. If they take longer, could be more efficient or whatever, it’s not my problem. I’ll just browse my (personal) cellphone while the throbber spins on the screen and I get paid to do that.
If I switched to linux I’d need to personally take care of my system to meet specs and I wouldn’t have any kind of helpdesk available should I ever need one. So it’s just simpler to stick with what the company provides and if it’s slow then it’s not my headache and I’ve accepted that mindset.
Hmm that is also a nice a way to put it. However when you are slowed you can be demanded more productivity even though you cannot do anything about it. Maybe except unpaid overtime. Do you have anything for this?
I live in Europe. No unpaid overtime here and productivity requirements are reasonable, so no way to blame for my tools on that. And even if my laptop OS broke itself completely then I’m productive at reinstallation, as keeping my tools in a running shape is also on my job description. So, as long as I’m not just scratching my balls and scrolling instagram reels all day long that’s not a concern.
Previous job: Windows, because it was a company issue laptop.
Current job: Linux, because I got to keep the perfectly decent Dell laptop when I left. I wanted to make sure I purged everything, so it’s running LMDE now. Plus, there’s not much outlook and teams stuff that I have to use.
Great! However I think you are lucky one.
I use a Windows laptop because that’s what is supported by our infrastructure, our endpoint protection and our cybersecurity insurance.
Also, to help test changes before they are rolled out to users.Understandable.
When I could get away with it at work, I did.
In the last… I want to say six or seven years, issuing Macbooks to sysadmins has been a common thing in the sectors I work in. Rather than put up with us going rogue and messing up license tracking by rebuilding our stuff with a distro of choice, management just throws OSX at the problem (us, we’re the problem) because operationally it’s close enough for our purposes.
It’s not my choice or preference, but the money’s green.
I got my IT department to allow me to use WSL2, because I have to clone and patch the Linux kernel for our embedded linux device.
😁now I can install stuff, for which I otherwise would have need windows admin privileges, into WSL2, like steam (just for the fun of playing a windows game over proton on a ubuntu install on WSL2 which is just linux hyper-v emulation on windows -> games run very bad and seem do not use the nvidia card in the laptop 🤭)
So my setup is for work windows running WSL if needed, at home, I have a macbookpro11,3 dual boot BigSur and up to date endeavourOS(Arch+KDE) as allrounder devices, a game PC running endeavourOS(Arch+KDE) (NVIDIA 970), a raspberry Pi W2 running my homebridge, an iPad pro for easy webapps (configure *arr services) and streaming. Other not so much PC coputing devices available are PostmarkedOS pine phone, TvOS running Atv, various game consoles with most CFW installed, and many iPhones (collected over time, self bought is only iPhone 4s, 5, 6, X and 12mini)
So, I use them all big OS’s 🤔 well, not really android anywhere… 😁 I just recognised that my router is BSD based (OpnSense)
all big OSs*
👌🏻fixed
🫸🫷
all the windows shit runs in citrix, i run linux at work from home for the host system.
Ive just started in a government IT role; everything is windows, I use windows myself at home for games, but run WSL for hobby dev, home server management and stuff like that.
This is my first sysadmin role, having come from a Dev background, and administration on windows feels like such a chore. Everything takes ten steps to do, lots of issues, and feels very counter intuitive. I am not enjoying it at all. I suppose actual large scale Linux adminning probably has the same issues and I’m putting it down to lack of experience, but there’s so many small niggly issues that I know I could solve if this was a Linux environment that I can’t due to how windows is set up.
I’m hopefully getting to move into a more hybrid dev/admin role for some web stuff, but I firs thave to convince my boss to let me install WSL so O can have a sane dev environment for web dev.
Sounds like you need to familiarise yourself with PowerShell and Group Policy.
Most of our sysads use macOS. A few use linux but they have limited choices with distros and can only use fedora I think.
Maybe Ubunto too. Sometimes they allow you to use Linux as sys admin.
Right, but the distros employees are allowed to use are dictated by corporate IT so they are able to control them and have the required endpoint security tools. So people who prefer linux have very limited options.
What are your experience?
My last “real” Windows experience was with WinXP and every time I have to touch Windows at the PC of a customer, which happens sometimes when the stars align, I feel like the first human that ever walked the earth.
I have no idea how people get any work done on a system that is constantly nagging for attention, popups, restrictive Enterprise environment and non descriptive error messages. Nothing in this world seems to make sense or is presented in a unified way. Every dialogue or sub system seems to be it’s own isle stemming from another decade of tech. The experience for someone who is simply not used to Windows any more due to missing exposure is horrible.
Heck a Mac feels alien to me too but in the end that’s still a system I could deal with given some time.
Mebbe I’m spoiled by stuff like systemd, PipeWire, Wayland, btrfs and all that candy we get nowadays on a Linux desktop. I’m not even talking about privacy or FOSS principles at this point. Just the fact that the system doesn’t get in my face with ads or AI or “very important reboots” seems to be a revelation in 2024.
That was me 2 years ago. Now, I am wondering how I got the work done until now on Win11. It just takes longer and compensation for overtime helps. And by compensation I don’t mean money; I get my time back, working less on other days.
I will ask for a 4 day workweek. Every day without Windows is a good day. (:
