Basically title. Do you know of any companies that use desktop Linux?
I can think of two in my area in Brisbane - Adfinis and Red Hat. Both have a pretty small presence here from what I last heard (several employees each).
My employer allows the Linux team to use Linux but it’s discouraged and our lives are made somewhat difficult.
When I was at Driver’s Village, a fairly large dealership in central New York, I noticed the salesman was using a computer with wallpaper that said Windows 11. This was before Windows 11 was even released. It was very obviously a Gnome desktop. I’m guessing IT just put the windows 11 background on it so the people using it wouldn’t complain that they didn’t know how to use Linux.
This is hilarious.
How well did it work?
The salesman I was dealing with seemed to have no trouble using it, but all he was doing was using a web browser and some database access.
My company used to allow it, but then it became clear people were doing too many dumb things with their work computers to control them normally. For example, some people would explicitly turn their PCs off without updating the OS every Friday and were nearly a year out of date.
That, plus other security concerns I don’t remember surrounding the tightening of our policies for security certifications required to net a very demanding client, made it so that we needed to institute mobile device management (MDM) for everything.
We went with Microsoft’s version because there were some crucial things I forgot that only it could do. But it didn’t support Linux.
So our few people using Linux had to choose between Windows and Mac OS.
I wish my employer (state government) would use Linux. But unfortunately, they are all in with Microsoft. Everything has gone that way. SharePoint, Microsoft hosted Exchange, OneDrive, etc… And it’s as horrible as you can imagine. It’s awesome when I can’t access my personal files because Microsoft servers are down. And don’t get me started on the CrowdStrike fiasco!
That sucks :( I’m pretty much in the same boat. I get to use a Linux desktop at work on the proviso that I don’t raise support requests. We use Microsoft for nearly everything so naturally it’s an uphill battle. The web UI is quite buggy and “not recommended” by my org. Teams doesn’t support Firefox so I have to run a separate browser especially for it.
But aside from interfacing with Microsoft everything just works, and really nicely.
In 3 of my last 4 jobs as developer I could use Linux as desktop. The 1 exception did not have the admins that could think ahead of what Amazon or Microsoft has told them. They where also struggling with other ‘modern’ ideas.
Maybe a German thing, but Linux for a dev is quite common here.
Sunshine Coast here. We all use Linux desktop. Libre office. Gimp. Krita. Inkscape. Vscodium. Thunderbird. Sublime. Etc etc. We have a programmer who favoured Windows. We finally converted him. Now we only have the mac laptop to deal with having to do osx builds.
We have both Linux and Windows machines in my team. We do all the work in Linux, and register hours in Windows. We also all have iPhones that we only use for 2FA.
We also all have iPhones that we only use for 2FA.
That’s some expenses right there.
I opened up the floodgates at my office dedicating support for anyone wanting to. All our servers and production are Linux so probably 1/4 of the staff is cli literate.
So far it’s me with NixOS and one other guy running Debian.
Half the remaining use WSL.
This is why Microsoft made WSL, they knew they were losing ground big time amongst devs.
I’ve loved WSL. I’ve been able to throw an Ubuntu CLI in front of 30 devs that had almost no Linux experience. I’ve got them scripting and doing service control. The ssh terminal is reasonable, they can use standard openssh pems. The only real problem is the VM doesn’t play with cisco well so they can’t easily VPN and use the VPN sesh in WSL. I have workarounds, but they’re kinda crappy.
In my team we use both Linux and Mac (I don’t want to disclose my company, but it’s in Sweden). IT isn’t entirely happy about some of us using Linux because it’s more difficult for them to administer the computers (i.e. install spyware), but so far they’ve been unsuccessful in making us switch.
I work for a company in Texas, USA. We actively discourage Windows being used in our organization and push people to use macOS or Linux.
I’m kinda of the opinion windows is just the pointless middle ground between Mac and Linux, to my knowledge the only advantage it has left nowadays is active directory
That said it prevents apple from getting a monopoly on the pc market I guess
Wow. I don’t think I’ve seen a dumber take than “Windows good because it prevents an Apple monopoly” in a long while.
Yes. At one employer, we had an entire domain in our AD forest that was Red Hat / CentOS / Ubuntu workstations for the developers.
Where I work,~2,000 employees and contractors, I’m almost certain I’m the one person using Linux (Fedora) and refusing to use Windows (so they deployed a cloud Windows 365 instance for me to have access to the in-house platform).
I’m blessed to hold a position for which the company would have a really hard time replacing me, I think that’s why they haven’t booted me (chances are they will at some point, but I don’t care anymore).
It still blows my mind how the IT team tries to justify being locked into Microsoft, and then telling me I could potentially become a point of vulnerability, when my system is easily the most secure in the whole company and my habits make for little to no possibility of ever exposing anything outside of the company.
how the IT team tries to justify being locked into Microsoft, and then telling me I could potentially become a point of vulnerability
Because they can manage and control all the windows PCs , pushing updates automatically, restricting what users can do locally and on the network, they have monitoring tools and whatever antivirus and antimalware tools they have, and are able to easily manage and deploy/remove software and associated group licensing and so on and so forth.
Meanwhile you’re a single user of unknown (to them) capabilities that they now have to trust with the rest of their system, basically.
The first rule of corporate IT is, “control what’s on your network”. Your PC is their concern still, but they have no effective control over it. That’s why they’re being a bit of a pain in the ass about it.
400 staff German state institution, Windows desktops are standard, but you can get a supported and standardized Linux Mint installation provided by IT on your personal computer upon request. A few dozen people do. We also provide some 150 publicly accessible PCs for research in or brach locations, all of which are Mint as well. And IT staff is allowed to install any system on their hardware they want, no questions asked; many run Linuxes. Linuces. Linnixees.
Lineés. Linacea. Linii.
When I was working for Averitt Express, a trucking company out of Cookeville, Tn, our yard trucks had computers in them (for yard and dock management) that ran Ubuntu. This was 10ish years ago.
That’s awesome - great to hear about Linux desktops bring used by non-techies especially in a company.
How was it received out of interest?
I think they are a bit harder to manage
That’s either BS or FUD, pick any two. Stick to a specific distro and train your staff and there’s no reason for any IT personnel to find linux “harder to manage”.
Users grumbling it’s harder to use might be a different matter.
Stick to a specific distro and train your staff
Linux is Linux. Train your staff to properly use one and they can use them all. “Distro” is just a fancy word for “which package manager and update cycle to we chose and what logo do we put on our pre-installed wallpaper”.
I can’t say I’ve managed Linux desktops at scale (so technically I should leave it there) but I do manage several hundred Linux VMs with Ansible, and I manage all of my PCs with Ansible. Desktops are a different ballgame to servers, dealing with end users and all, but I still don’t think it would be that hard once it’s been set up.
It is just less established which means it would be hard to get the ball rolling. It is doable but would take more time than just using a basic Windows environment with AD. You also have the issue with vendor support and end user knowledge but that’s a problem for another day.
That’s probably a fair point. I can’t say too much as I haven’t touched Windows desktop or server too much.
Could be apples vs oranges here though as we’re talking about getting started versus well established setup, but my current employer is looking at adopting Ansible + Packer for imaging and partially Ansible-managing Windows servers where it makes sense because of limitations in SCCM and GPO. As far as I can see across the divide Windows Server isn’t all smooth sailing.
My 4 last employers have used desktop Linux to some extent:
- Ericsson (Swedish telecoms), default was to have a Windows laptop with X server (Citrix?) but a few of us were lucky enough to get a Linux laptop.
- Vector (German automotive), Linux dev. environment in a VM on Windows laptops.
- Opera Software (Norwegian web browser), first day I was given a stack of components and told to assemble my PC and then install my Linux distribution of choice.
- And a smaller company, which shall remain unnamed, also used Windows laptops with Linux dev. env. in VM.
Sure most of it was on top of Windows, but if you fullscreen it you can barely tell the difference :)
Opera Software (Norwegian web browser), first day I was given a stack of components and told to assemble my PC and then install my Linux distribution of choice.
Not Swedish?
Nope, Norwegian company until they were bought by Chinese investors a few years ago. They did have a lot of developers in Sweden and Poland though.
Failed attempt at an IKEA joke, considering the was given a stack of components and told to assemble my PC part. 😥
Ahh, now I get it :P
