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.
Meanwhile folks I work with Linux is basically seen as a must (if not specifically NixOS). You are on your own if you want to use OSs that don’t work well with Nix since there is too much value in immutable builds to warrant supporting your proprietary setup. Most ended up switching to or getting a second laptop for Linux.
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.
Vscode ssh integration is probably best least known feature of vscode. However, initial connection setup always requires tweaking to get that best experience.
By the way, official docker setup is through VM on windows. WSL is not a recommended route, but one can get it working.
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.
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.
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I used a linux desktop in 1995 or so. Never since. Even when I was working with the company building unix and linux - to be clear, building and selling AT&T Unix and a Linux distro - our standard kit was windows. It was less hassle as winamp, vanDyke and Mozilla ran better as-is.
I haven’t used a linux desktop in 30 years of linux. Maybe this year?
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.
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?
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.
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.
This mind set has it’s limit when you need to get something done, see your family after 8h of work and don’t log overtime for some stupid windows s****.
But, yes, in most cases I just log additional unproductive time in my timesheet. It would suck, if I couldn’t compansate the overtime and leave work earlier on Fridays or so. Management has to live with the fact that working with Windows is not as efficient.
Right. But what can you do if your job has absolutely no interest in Linux? Force them? I’ve talked to some leads and managers and they laughed at the idea of using Linux. They just don’t need it for whatever they do. And 100% of our backend is SQL and C#. And you know how much they drool over visual studio and all those MS products.
C# on Visual Studio is a fucking nightmare. Switched to Rider on WSL the first chance I had, not looking back.
Then again, if this is running on .NET Framework, there is no choice, afaik. You get a buttplug made of barbed wire in Windows + VS, and you’ll like it
Our dev stack could totally run on Linux, but management wants standardization for security reasons. We have a mixed environment of Win10 and Win11 and our scripts to setup and update the dev environment produce sometimes unpredictable results even on the same version of Windows. <_<
We’re not even using WSL2 to speed things up because we don’t get enough time to adapt our scripts to configure docker to use WSL2.
My next move will be asking to get Fridays off, because they denied my whish to use Linux. If they deny my part-time request, I will look elsewhere in 2025.
True but I miss quickness of Linux, being native with my apps and just having my environment. I don’t think I ever gotten a nice working environment as it is constant struggle. On Linux I can say it’s good enough.
Yeah also I’ve seen some guys trying to have Windows OS with Linux VM. Or the opposite Linux OS with Windows VM for Office stuff. Sounds like a good agreement but with my barely working office laptop I don’t think so. It would be nice to have out of the box image support of office Windows though.
