Linux

My current company is being absorbed into a much larger company right now, got bought out earlier this year.

I was the only IT for the smaller company, and I was using 100% Linux (Debian with KDE Plasma) on my laptop to administrate everything in our environment, which is mostly Windows.

• Our DC with AD on it, I used Remmina to RDP into it for admin tasks.
• O365 and Azure/Entra stuff was all in the browser.
• Our ERP system is cloud-based, so browser was fine for that too.
• Our access control system was cloud-based and the RFID card reader/writer was plug-n-play on Linux.
• Our company SMB share worked fine with Linux in Plasma using my AD credentials.
• I set up my company OneDrive sync using rclone, it also worked flawlessly.
• Our Fortigate firewall VPN has a native Linux app which, although ugly as sin, works without issue.
• I used OnlyOffice for a while, then switched back to LibreOffice. Both worked basically perfect, a few very minor font bugs, (bullet lists having a slightly different style for the bullets, etc.)
• Teams, I used a wrapper flatpak for a while, which worked fine, then switched to the browser version of Teams. No major issues, I had a bunch of meetings, screen shares, webcam, presentations all on Teams in Linux, pretty seamless.
• Email, Outlook in the browser is fine. I also used Thunderbird for a bit, but didn't like how buggy it was in the Flatpak version, and the Debian package was way too out of date for my taste.

Now that we got bought out, I am being forced off my Linux laptop and onto the new company's Windows laptop, which really sucks. I am planning on quitting soon, as I hate using Windows and I am very underpaid at my current job as it is. Only real perk was not having to report to any IT manager/CTO, and being able to use 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.

Most places seem to issue Mac's now for the role. I just create a 90% cpu & memory Linux VM on them and work from within that, with the exception of teams or zoom meetings being native on the Mac (no echo cancellation on linux VM's, it seems). Works mostly well, but it is arm64 based linux, as the Mac's currently are M series.

Ended up going with Arch for arm64, as it had the simplest way to add widevine support to my browsers.

Much better than being native on the Mac... Mac doesn't give me the two select&paste linux 2nd copy buffer, doesn't provide focus follows mouse, no auto-raise, and type in partially covered windows without raise. Essential for my workflow.

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'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)

Well... i am feeling somewhat heretical writing this... but i am a happy ChromeOS user for years now. In my opinion its a very good middle ground between a super stable platform that JUST WORKS and with the integrated Linux VM i have the opportunity to Install the necessary tools for my work.

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 OSs 🤔 well, not really android anywhere.. 😁 I just recognised that my router is BSD based (OpnSense)

I am a Windows admin but two of my colleagues who are Linux admins use Linux machines that are running Ubuntu+a few internal tweaks to make it better fit us. The Linux platform is developed primarily by one of the developers at the company and some others (primarily developers) also use Linux. The vast majority of the company uses Windows.

There are also a few hundred Macs.

I have been considering getting our flavour of Linux installed on a VM or maybe even dual booting for testing.

Windows 11, and the group policies doesn't allow us to use WSL. We also can't directly SSH into any servers so we have to go trough a Citrix session to a Windows 10 "admin server" and then SSH or RDP to a Linux server. And Windows Terminal isn't installed on the Windows 10 server, so it's either CMD or the Powershell terminal.

It's absolutely fucking miserable. I'm a Linux sysadmin who do a lot of automation (ansible etc) but also Python development. Try it yourselves and see how long you last! I'm jumping the fucking ship in a month though, thank the gods.

All the result of an over confident "security organization", with a lot of hubris.

But the best part? It's a $5000 work laptop, and my 6 year old Thinkpad (with Linux) runs laps around the thing any day of the week. Opening the file explorer takes, most of the time, 5+ seconds...

Fuck my life, and fuck this company.

Software dev here. The only Linux I ever hear of at my job is Open shift. That's about it. We are neck deep into windows. And honestly, I don't care. It's a job and my bills are paid. My house is full of Linux, and I don't care what a big corporation wants to use for their software.

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.

I don't use Windows anymore. Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those "Linux purists", if other people wanna use Windows, go ahead. But I'm not using it. I swear to god, if it becomes mandatory to use Windows at my company, I'm leaving the next day.

i use a linux laptop; but then they got bought out and our new overlords won't let me get another one.

i've had it for 5 years now since i didn't want switch to mac during the last 2 refresh periods; but it's only a matter of time before it dies.

i think i'll just switch jobs when it does. lol

Wdym with linux can be broken?

Don't mess woth the system and go atomic. Fedora atomic kde or gnome or wm

Mixed environment, bunch of windows servers and a bunch of Linux servers. I currently run NixOS on my company owned Framework laptop, with the caveat that I have to deal with or work around any weirdness that comes up.

I've been wanting for a while now to fix up my config (weird sleep waking issues, broken hibernate, implement full disk encryption) or maybe switch to Fedora. Just haven't had the time.

Remmina is great for RDP, OnlyOffice preserves Microsoft office formatting well, KDE's network manager has working VPN connections for Cisco and Palo Alto, and I do a lot from the browser (email, O365 admin,etc).

There is friction, though. As mentioned the sleep issues. Never fun getting to a site and finding a hot, dead laptop in my bag because it decided to wake up and not go back to sleep.

For things that HAVE to be done in Windows I have a VM I haven't powered on in a months or two, and a "tech" server to rdp to with more network access.

I'd also like to get more familiar with Nix. I can handle system settings and packages from the Nix repositories, but packaging my own software is something I'd like to learn (software and printer drivers for Ubuntu/fedora, etc).

Yes, I use Fedora and love to break the permissions of shared Office-Documents. /s

The only thing I have learned is not to go too deep into customisation. Because people watching me using hyprland are some kind of disgusted.

I just use KDE with dark breeze theme. That's enough and nobody gets hurt.