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?
Linux or Mac shop in the past 3 places.
Yes, but maybe it’s not so bad. It creates a clear separation between work and play. Windows is for boring work and office stuff. Linux is the happy place at home.
My university forces us to use Microsoft products and I hate it.
The only good thing is that most MS products are available through web browser nowadays, but they have random quirks that make me bash my head against the desk.
Debian at home. Red Hat at work. I have tried to talk them into better OS choices, but really I’m just glad to not be on Windows.
Nope: My lathe runs Linux.
I’m a MLOps engineer. Rules at my current company is that you need Windows or MacOS. According to the IT department it won’t work if you use Linux.
So I installed Linux anyway and everything is working perfectly. My manager don’t care that I use Linux but the IT department is not happy.
IT probably has tools to manage policy on Mac and Windows, but have not set anything up for Linux and as a result cannot manage your computer.
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
My job involves maintaining Linux servers so there are no problems with Linux as my desktop.
Currently Arch Linux as the desktop OS.
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 pretty much have to use Linux at work. I’m only still on windows for gaming but that will probably change soon.
If you have an AMD GPU and don’t care about playing games that require kernel-level access for anticheat (ew), then Linux might just work better for you than Windows, for most games.
Like, getting Minecraft installed and working with mods in CachyOS just required installing Prism Launcher from the CachyOS repos (1 easy step) then launching it. I didn’t even need to open a web browser to download an installer.
Heroic Launcher is amaze balls, too. It pulls all the free games I get on GOG, Epic, and Amazon (iirc?) into one library that looks and works like Steam’s (amazing) library. So slick. (I think it’s preinstalled in CachyOS, too.)
I have an older 1080ti or something like that which is still running just fine. And with the current prices I’m unlikely to change that.
It will also likely work really well, apparently. I think you just need to be careful to pick a distro that comes with NVidea drivers, like CachyOS, and it will likely just work. Test with a live USB boot.
Yeah, I think I’m mostly done with my current set of games, so maybe a good time to make the switch.
I think photography workflow might have some issues, but it’s probably manageable.
I’m liking Krita and Photopea (web app), but I’m not heavy into photography. I haven’t looked for a Lightroom replacement.
I’m aware of Darktable, but haven’t tried it myself.
We’re a Linux shop at my work. We do have a windows PC due to corporate policies…but everything we do on our windows PCs we could do from Linux.
Outlook? Website. Excel? Website. Jira? Website. Teams? Website. Nearly everything we do front end wise is all web based. Which, I know electron sucks, but from a “Linux as a main desktop environment”…I’m pretty damn happy with everything being web based nowadays. It’s all OS agnostic.
with so many Windows programs being just PWAs these days, running everything in a browser is really no different anymore.
I am an electrical engineer, so even beyond Teams and MS Office, several of the engineering and CAD programs we use are not supported or only partially supported on Linux (i.e. hardcoded to only work on a specific version of Ubuntu, lol).
I have spoken to our IT guy, and he would be completely on board with using Linux, but even he acknowledges that there is no reasonable path to us doing so, so I just sort of accept it.
I’m allowed my own laptop cuz most of my work is ssh to a server and fix shit. You have to register your laptop on the network first though.
Office, Team: these can work via the browser if your company/organizations pay for the subscription. In fact, the web versions run much better than the standalone desktop ones for me.
Code editor, terminal, programing in general: These work much much better in linux. You open a terminal and you write commands to install stuff. Editors are even easier, i.e. nano, vim, vscode, emacs… etc. just pick your poisons…
Email: now I login to my exchange email using the browser. That works for 100% of the stuff I need to do: basic emails stuff, accept/decline meetings…etc. Unless you absolutely need to use Outlook, there should be no problems.
Now… the real problem lies in specialized software like CAD, CAE tools. I like Linux but there isnt a free CAD / CAE tool that is comparable to what the industries are using. In academic? absolutely you can use for research.
I use Mac at work :). Most of my group uses Mac with a few using windows. There have been some people who have tried using fedora but the support for some enterprise apps is just not there. But I do get to manage around 100 RHEL systems. So I still get plenty of linux time at work.
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.
Sharepoint and collaborative editing is what keeps us on Windows. Everything else we do is browser based so the OS doesn’t matter. I suppose we could live in Office365 but it’s not nearly as full featured as the desktop apps.
OnlyOffice usually plays nicer with microtrash formats.
