Linux

Used Ubuntu LTS in a VM at a bank, a tech company and now using it as an officially sanctioned OS at my workplace.

For sure. I worked in IT for a long time. After we switched from the mainframe to os/2 I ran it for a decade on my desktop while the company went to Windows. Then once I couldn't run os/2 anymore due to newer hardware I switched to Linux. Ran it from the late 90s until my retirement 5 years ago.

I had to support it all myself but they let me since I was also the security guy and they realized that Windows sucked.

My work allows RHEL, but it's a specialized configuration that doesn't get updated very often. I tried it for a while but it was so out of date that I couldn't build half the tools I needed, so I ended up switching back to Windows. It was about 10-15 years ago when the C++ standard was undergoing a lot of changes, and the company-approved version of GCC was several years old and didn't support any of the newest features.

I didn't convince anyone, I just did it.

As soon as microsoft announced the recall feature I was like nope this I aint consenting to that even at work. I put Nixos/Gnome on my work laptop and haven't looked back. Everytime I help someone on their windows 11 laptop it feels like a snails pace.

I wish I could convince our workplace to switch to linux. I feel like Nixos would be PERFECT for the workplace, you could just deploy like a standard config and add more apps if needed.

It would make all the software requests super easy. (given they were FOSS ofc. Even most windows apps work using Wine or Proton tbh.) I don't use any closed source apps on my laptop, but others could.

Yes, but it was a huge corp that literally had it's own linux community within the corp.

Yea, but at a small company (~15 workers). It took a few weeks of back and forth because I didn't have a real work-related reason to switch.

I did, in my previous and curret job...e very happy camper

Working for Danmarks meteorological institute, as a developer its default with Ubuntu, hr/finance/management use windows

Would a vm work? What about live environment on a usb?

Yeah. I also have GrapheneOS on my work tablet

We have some platform-specific tooling. I might attempt it if they didn’t let me have a Mac at work (I remote into Win for the couple of proprietary things anyway). There’s that saying, you miss all the shots you don’t take. Go for it and see.

At my workplace all the devs are on either Mac OS or Linux, with Mac OS being more common among Web/PHP guys and Linux among the backend devs (like me). As it turns out, given the choice, nobody actually prefers Windows. I'm still baffled by Mac OS being so common, though, at least among devs.

This works because our whole IT infrastructure is designed to be accessible via the web-browser, most of it even without VPN, via two-factor authenticated single-sign-on, most of it self-hosted (all except Teams, which obviously also needs its own authentication). This gives people the freedom to run whatever OS they like on their computers and set it up themselves, with the only requirement being to use FDE with a strong password and regularly do backups to the remote storage. We're also allowed (if not encouraged) to use the laptops for private stuff and get to keep them when they're replaced.

And as far as I can tell IT problems because of this diverse environment are surprisingly minimal and mostly with those aforementioned web services.

I've been sysadmin where I work for 12 years, Ive been using Linux as my OS there all that time except the first month. After that month I asked the IT manager if he cared what OS I use. He said he didn't care so long as it didn't impede me getting the work done. The junior sysadmin who started a year ago now also uses Linux and my manager wishes he could too (he does too much Microsoft office to get away with it)

i consider myself lucky in that i've only been forced to use windows twice and both times they were okay with wsl; so i used that instead.

i'm guessing it depends on what your work is and since i've primarily worked on linux & solaris; there was no reason why i couldn't use it as my primary means for getting work done.

both times, they used the microsoft office suite (primarily outlook, word and excel) which was always problematic; but i suspec that's a permanent thing since that's still not even seemless when you have to go back an forth on those apps on a mac and windows.

Protip: don't ask, just do it.

We have the option of using wsl but it's more trouble than it's worth. I think some people can request MacBooks, but it's a really drawn out process.

We typically only use RHEL for servers and kubernetes and stuff. I just put up with windows, and request a new laptop when it inevitably slows down and gets bloated.

I've worked in a few offices but never in an I.T. role.

Never been allowed to switch web browser, so a whole new operating system is out of the question. But I did ask once at a previous job, to get shot down.

Only place I've seen desktop Linux irl has been my own bedroom.

Not currently... 😢 Our final product only runs on Linux, yet we develop on macOS. Even that is super annoying because we basically have 2 different buildchains we have to maintain. I was told "the tooling works" to develop on Linux... except the tooling is slow as hell and doesn't work all the time because we have bugs (I end up debugging the tooling). If we were on Linux, we could delete all this unnecessary tooling.

I officially switched my work laptop to linux after the security wonks made it impossible for me to have both network interfaces up amd connected at the same time. As a network engineer working in an airgapped lab prepping new equipment for deployment, it made it pretty hard for me to transfer and install software to the new equipment and consult online documentation. I asked, I received a non-answer, so I just did it. I don't keep it a secret, I follow all of the recommended security practices, and no one has complained to me.

I failed at convincing anyone at every company I’ve worked with. Getting a MacBook is the only alternative for me.

What is your job?

My previous job, yes! A few people had that fight years before I started and won. It was decided on the basis that we're Linux sysadmins who already operate a sizeable fleet of Linux systems and running our own desktops would be beneficial and self-supported.

Sadly my current employer doesn't share this view. We used a crippled Linux desktop through Apache Guacamole which is a bit average to say the least. I have to put up with the constant bullshit that is Windows and all of its ads, news headlines and trash that I don't want on my computer at work. I hate it but I have very little influence in that space.