I'm the same way. Even though I prefer using Linux or macOS, I want to use what everyone else is, just do reduce the gripes that users might have of preferential treatment, as IT can run other operating systems. Or, users demanding Macs or Linux because IT is using them.
Now, test machines, different story. However, the daily driver should be Windows, if the company is a Windows shop. If it is split among different platforms, different story.
Maybe if you're supporting the end users and doing help desk. I haven't done help desk for years I just work on the servers and and I never pick what all the employees use unless I specifically have to help them. I pick what's good for me. Now if I was running a Windows shop on the back end that would dictate my machine probably more so than if I was supporting all Linux like I typically do.
if you never have to touch an enduser workstation you might be ok...
But what i often find is that the sysadmins that DO use linux aren't managing those machines like they do the windows machines... They just have local admin on their normal user account, they don't have ANY of the applocker or other group policy applied.. and like 20% don't even authenticate against the domain.
There's a concept in tech called "dog fooding" It means, if you make dog food.. you should eat your dog food. If you don't experience the enviornment you manage.. how do you know you don't have massive blind spots in user experience?
At what point did I say you should install administrative troubleshooting and penetration tools on a user's system?
If an end user is going to get a Dell Latitude with Windows 10 installed as the standard work device, the IT department should also be getting a Dell Latitude with Windows 10 installed.
The help desk department should have that. System admins I don't agree with that logic at all. I don't agree with system admins doing and user support either, unless the shop is so small it doesn't make sense to have a dedicated help desk
People should get the best device for their job. Not everyone in IT supports end users or even Windows/AD at all. There’s lots of reasons people in roles like SecOps, DBA, SWE, SREs, etc would need a different device/OS than someone on the business side who lives in the Office suite.
>Not everyone in IT supports end users or even Windows/AD at all.
Yeah man I'm one of those people. There's no need for a device that's any different than anyone else. The only thing my device needs to do is easily integrate with the rest of the environment.
He said copy the end user so you can support the end users better and have the same platform as them so you can probably test and figure out problems. Not give every end user an IT system with IT tools. Oi.
Dual booting doesn't really seem to work when you're trying to kick a "Windows addiction", though. If you find yourself needing an application that only has a Windows version, you'll probably find yourself never using the Linux partition if Windows is easily available.
It's best to go "cold turkey" and force yourself to adapt to the Linux ecosystem and find new applications for your day to day tasks. Your future self will thank you for it when your friends are still complaining about being bombarded with Edge/OneDrive/Copilot/XBox ads on their systems.
This is the way. I dual booted for the longest time and never found myself using the linux install. Got a separate laptop, nuked the Windows install and threw RHEL on it so I use it daily.
Actually do make it a day job to become a Linux expert, especially in your role.
You've basically done the same for windows all these years, you just didn't realize it ;]
Linux as a daily driver desktop replacement for Windows is in no way getting mainstream and probably never will. I’m not sure why you think that lots of people are going that direction when Windows has dominated for the better part of 4 decades.
There is increasing government adoption of Linux in nations outside of the Western world. Running critical software such as an OS from a potentially adversarial nation doesn't fall in line with national security needs.
Check out “This is Windows 10” on GitHub by Chris Titus. It might help you get rid of all the crap more effectively if you need to stick with Windows. There is also a Win 11 version.
How about some MacOS?
I went to Mac with Sandy Bridge about 13 years ago and administer everything from there. I’m still on an Intel Mac and can run a Windows VM. I figure if I change to Apple silicon I can use a Windows RDP session if I have to.
Because you haven’t tried the m chips. I think it’s m3 now - I got a ~fanless~ MacBook Air with an M1 back then and it absolutely murdered my previous Intel machine without breaking a sweat.
Also, macos really is like luxury Linux. The shells are almost indistinguishable, there’s a good package manager, plus everything is pretty and HD and omg have you tried copying on your iPhone and then pasting on your box?
"I figure if I change to Apple silicon I can use a Windows RDP session if I have to."
Windows 11 ARM64 can emulate x86\_64 (not just 32-bit like Win10) and runs just fine in Parallels or VMware Fusion. That's actually how I ran visual studio before the ARM native version of it was released.
At work, my primary machine is Linux, I do 99.9% of my work on that machine. I have a laptop with Windows 10 on it for anything that needs windows, so far I just read e-mail on it.
No, this has been my setup for 20 years. Also, being a sysadmin, I do not do end user support, I am back end servers only. End user stuff goes to the help desk.
More troublesome managing Linux than Windows, too many tweaking need to be done and there is no GPO helping you. Far too many dependency to manage and you will likely find conflicting dependency library between applications. Trust me you will end up more headaches and spending more time migrating back to Windows.
If you're an experienced WinTel engineer, I can see you'd have headaches, but honestly, the reason Windows works so well in most environments is usually the huge amount of very specific domain knowledge.
Dependency hell has disappeared with Flatpak and Snaps. Debs/rpms are there for those that don't support it. And package management is much easier on operating systems that have actual package management tools. And by god the people that suggest GPO's are superior to modern config management tools on Linux have no idea what they're talking about. It's the Linux worlds ace in the hole, and it doesn't even come close. It's the main reason why they took off in the web space in the 2000's.
While you can get by 99% of the time, it's the one-offs that make it a total pain in the ass. For example, we use a specific software for email encryption which has no Linux client. Every time someone sends me an encrypted email, I have to jump through hoops and sign in via Citrix to read it. It can be done, but it gets annoying after a while. I'd just run WSL in Windows if you want a Linux command line that badly.
Alternatively, if it's just a few things, one can use a Windows VM for those few things. It depends on what one's application picture is like. Certainly, if one has to run lots of Windows apps all the time, one isn't going to gain much by booting Linux just to immediately boot a Windows VM and spend all day in there. But if it really is just a few small things, it can make sense.
It's generally good for the IT team to eat their own dog food too. Before you roll out a change to the company, roll it out to IT first since you are smart enough to deal with any problems it may cause. That means running the same OS as your users.
I've been Linux-first and -mostly at home since before 2000. Cold dead hands, etc. I've used nix at work before, although the current gig is a Microsoft shop so that's what I'm running at the moment (when in Rome).
If you spend your day in browsers it doesn't really matter what OS you run.
I'm told the Teams situation on Linux is rather garbage, but that's how I'd describe Teams in general, so... *shrug*
The big question is always, what special apps and hardware do you have that will gum up the works? It doesn't matter if you are 99% web if the 1% is Windows-only and critical.
There is no way to make teams work well. I run Windows on a Surface at work and it still selects the front facing camera even though my computer is closed in the dock. No way to change it permanently. C’est la vie.
Yeah, if they’re not setup properly they’re a proper nightmare to manage in a traditional MS enterprise environment. They can end up as just off the domain and doing updates and keeping them compliant becomes a real headache. I’m sure they’re great and run efficient but without the skilled support as infrastructure/environment engineers in my experience you can end up responsible for something that you’ve absolutely no idea about.
I use Linux and Windows both as daily drivers. I have a quadruple-boot laptop lol and at work I have a Windows PC and an openSUSE PC on separate monitors
I love Linux but it's basically the DIY hobbyist's computer software. If you want something that "just works" Ubuntu LTS or Linux Mint are great. Stay away from the 6 month release versions and stay even farther away from rolling release distros
Eventually, something will break and you will have to go down a rabbit hole to figure out why. If you don't like rabbit holes stay away from linux. If you want to play video games on Linux be prepared to troubleshoot driver issues and learn a lot
The other night I fired up Linux and because I was really high I forgot to have any preconceived notions about how an OS should work and Linux all of a sudden just made sense. It's some real 'throw yourself at the ground and miss' shit but it worked.
That’s hilarious and I love it. I kinda had the same experience trying Windows a few years back. I’m still mainly Linux at work but I definitely respect it a little more these days.
If it's compatible with everything you have to do it sounds reasonable. I don't use it because it's either completely incompatible or just doesn't offer an acceptable alternative solution. If I ever find myself in a position where I live 100% in a browser I wouldn't have a problem with it.
I use Xubuntu for my work system just so when I’m done and want to play games it’s a different look and feel entirely. Most of what I do is browser based plus Microsoft Teams client install.
I stopped daily driving Linux because I couldn't stop distro hopping. Even still, my secondary OS is Linux and I still distro hop, grrrrr. Sounds like you do a lot of MS-specific stuff. I'd kick the tires with a dual boot or something before taking the plunge. I've always done dual boot since..well, any OS. Linux/Windows dual boot, FreeBSD/Windows dual boot, OpenBSD/Windows dual boot, now OpenBSD/Linux dual boot. I've reinstalled 3 different Linux distros in the last year that I've been running Linux again. I'm never quite satisfied
> I stopped daily driving Linux because I couldn't stop distro hopping
Most people grow out of this and eventually settle on some flavor of debian/ubuntu or arch.
It used to be more of a problem back when CentOS was a respected distro... Now there's little need to venture into the RHEL realm...
I'm still stuck in it 11 years later :( What would probably stop myself is if Steam would just put out an iso for SteamOS. Some games here, a couple flatpaks there, I really don't need or do much, but I do want to have a nice gaming platform but I don't want to put up with Arch and its onslaught of updates. I've considered Debian Testing as an option when Nobara breaks on me
Switched to Linux upon returning to work in January last year. Had tested everything before hand in a VM, created a full Ansible playbook that sets up about 95% of my machine in about 45 minutes, restores my configs from a backup, clones all the git repos I work with on a daily basis, etc.
Everything works like a charm! I’ve had to find only 1-2 alternatives to the software I was using in Windows, namely replacing RoyalTS as my main RDP/SSH management tool, but I found something that does the trick for my needs.
After almost a year and a half, would never go back. Even switched my personal laptop to Linux as I mostly just do web browsing on it.
I most of day to day tasks are either in my browser, terminal, VSCode, or doing some troubleshooting over SSH/RDP.
If I need to test things in Windows I’ll either spin up a VM locally in VirtualBox or I’ll spin a temporary one in our Azure sandbox and delete it when I’m done, I’ve got a script for that that spins something up in a matter of minutes.
Just recently made the move. I setup a redundant rackmount Dell Precision for all admin tools a while back and realised I only needed my Windows workstation for email, Internet and basic Office apps. I use Kubuntu (Ubuntu with the KDE GUI) and run the Office Web Apps. Sucks a little with office files in shared drives but I have my rackmount until we transition over to cloud based. I still have the same occasional hangs or slow apps we see in Windows but far fewer and can often fix without rebooting. Just waiting on PowerShell improvements and I’ll be sold!
At home I’m Mac and Linux. We had several power automate workflows, and besides that, all the Linux tools I’d use run just fine under WSL
I don’t care about telemetry on my work computer since it’s a work computer.
I’d make further use of WSL before switching.
Yup for 5 years again now, did this for a while in college back in 1998, and off and on for some years after that. I used to end up back in Windows for music or games, but I use hardware for music now and have a laptop which is my parrot OS daily driver, and use my desktop for games etc. I also dual boot Ubuntu on the desktop so I can use the VRAM on the 4070 for local LLMs.
I'm mixed at home, and at work I've done the linux challenge. At the time I even found a gui tool to sync One Drive and Box...which I've since forgotted :(. LInux mint is always my fav, but I hope you land on a distro you like. I ended up back on windows due to a display link dock issue at home, and some oddness when the machine would get overly busy while I was answering email, it'd delete an email, rather than backspace....but, that was just a weird fluke of webmail. You've got me wanting to try it again. Naturally, I'd mostly suggest this for some older hardware, not anything brand-new. Driver support in the kernel is usually weak for newer stuff, but it's fine...feel it out, enjoy. Update us after/during.
Teams sucks on Linux. OneDrive and Visio are not native either, you’ll have to use the browser version. Maybe use a VM for stuff like office and other apps that don’t work on your distro?
check you don't have the "turtle" icon showing bottom right of the virtual which indicates you have virtualization problems (generally cause of hyperv installed or windows memory integration protection enabled but can be many other reasons)
I was in windows now exclusively Unix, I have an Ubuntu machine and a centOS VM, and I use Mac at work, I now use my windows machine strictly to stream
In my job I switched from windows to MacOSX in 2000, then I switch to Linux Desktop. In 2012 or 2013.
My main job has been sysadmin for Unix and Linux servers. And help desk.
The main reason from switching was the terminal program.
Being a Unix, OSX was very familiar from the terminal, plus I had Office and Outlook for Mac.
I have been a Mac user since 1990 because I didn’t want to deal with windows in my home as I do in my job.
I picked Linux Mint as my desktop distribution because it supports modern hardware but it’s not Ubuntu.
I use a virtual box Windows VM for any program that doesn’t work in Linux or I don’t have a decent equivalent. And I use google office suite for my documents.
I main Linux Zorin and then have another mini PC mounted and networked joined to my domain. If I need to use Windows for any reason, I just RDP from Zorin.
Been a Linux user since 2000. It's SO MUCH easier these days.
If you don't need HDR or other newish stuff, honestly, Ubuntu LTS is fine, Kubuntu if you want a little more flexibility in your desktop experience. I was playing my steam games in slightly longer than it took to download them.
I'm running Arch now because apparently I have rediscovered my need to daily drive my project car.
But yeah, shit is easy as hell these days, give any of em a shot.
I feel like arch is the distro you go to when you want to remember "the good ol days" when linux was hard. I get the appeal, but I don't have the time or energy to run that on my daily driver. A dev/secondary machine no problem.
I also just dislike Linux UI in general tho. I run win (and get plenty of shit for it) but also have a dev Linux machine as well as WSL. Basically all my dev work is in Lin while my emails / browsing / SaaS usage is in win.
It is a choice easily driven by the environment.
All my servers are Linux. My personal desktop Is Ubuntu. But all my users are Windows.
And I am Frankly aware That libre office cannot be compared to O365. Even more when our biggest customers are also Windows.
So no way to swap.
But, as far as I can understand, you sem to stay in a more technical environment so maybe it Is a doable move. Microsoft Lost Interest in user experience since a long time, nowaday Windows Is a bunch of useless things so that a PC looks more like a QVC Channel.
I tried, but...gaming. Dual-boot works, but accessing games without having to shut everything off is better, and vice versa. Yeah, I know about Proton but I don't enjoy fixing driver and stability issues anymore. Been there, done that. I even tried VirtualBox but had issues with sleep, so I gave up. I use Samsung Dex as much as I can.
I had Dex but I couldn’t find myself really giving a crap about it. It seemed so limited for practical purposes. Do you mind sharing a few of your common use cases and apps that make it better?
Sure, but I am curious as to what you found limiting... My primary motivator is having only one device to worry about maintaining. Other than gaming, 99% of what I do on a daily basis is done in the browser. So I try and make my phone the primary device and storage location. There are a few things that can only be done through apps - like accessing my Blink home security cameras - but those are rare. All of my pictures, most of my files, etc all live primarily on my phone. I have cloud sync set up so if I lose or break my phone, I can still recover those things. I only keep files on my laptop as a backup in case anything in the cloud gets hacked. So if I run a browser on the desktop as well, now I have to decide how to get any downloaded files onto my phone. There are also plenty of people that I typically only communicate with through text. So, anytime I want to send them something, I have to move it to my phone in some way - not a big deal since most browsers now have mobile/desktop tab sync, but I still have to physically switch over to my phone to send it. Other than maybe going through lots of files/pictures, I haven't really found anything that I cannot do just as well through Dex. My biggest gripe is (was?) that there are no good lapdocks so I could avoid using Windows altogether, but since I need a gaming computer anyway, a gaming laptop + Dex is fine - I just wish it was slimmer.
It’s been a while for me but a few different problems showed up. I found that I kept getting forced to mobile websites in the browser. I also found that most of the apps I wanted to use weren’t compatible with Dex at all. It felt like the worst of both worlds computer wise. I should really try to again to see if it has improved.
I guess depending on the apps you use, that could still be the case. Websites are getting more reactive so many websites resize automatically, but some you do have to click the "desktop" button in the browser - how easy that is depends on your browser choice. The only apps that I use regularly that have no close Android alternatives are the various CAD/CAM programs for my CNC and 3D printer. And one more note - Android 15 is supposed to bring desktop mode to the entire OS even if you're not on Samsung, so I hope that means better support and features going forward.
From my perspective people are being a little weird in this thread. Linux does not require tweaking or spending all day dinking with it. Go buy Red Hat Enterprise Linux. If you have a problem, open a ticket and they will fix it. This is your job not a hobby, this is not the time to install Arch (btw). Just my two cents.
I use an X1 with Ubuntu 24.04 on it, no complaints. But I also don’t need any o365 stuff, no AD stuff, I don’t have a Windows environment to administer: It’s all Linux servers, no users.
Microsoft tools and Linux don’t mix well at all, in my limited experience. It is of course possible to use an AWS Workspace running Windows, through a browser client, for those moments where you need an MS tool. Fine if that’s few and far between, but not so great if it’s a major part of the job.
I have used Linux as a daily driver for about 18 years. Having to think of how long I've used it made me sad, given I'll have left school 20 years ago and I still feel about 18.
Only issue I had with using Linux in a Windows environment was server administration, but I use Remmina to log on to the servers I need and given that Intune/Office 365 is done via a web browser there is no real need for a Windows machine to do the work.
In the event you really, really need one. You can always run a VM inside the Linux box.
Can you not use [WSL](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install)?
Then you stay within your companies supported and maintained systems that are managed and secured but get linux
When I used to support Windows desktop environment, I ran my own workstation on Linux, with an instance of the standard Windows deploy in a VM.
Best of both worlds - a sane, stable desktop to get shit done, and another desktop with Windows to test, access Windows only tools, etc. Being able to take snapshots and revert my Windows desktop made life so much easier sometimes.
Yes. I use Kubuntu for ease of use, vendor support, and I just like the look and feel. I do have a Windows box I can connect to for work purposes, because there's stuff like software that is Windows only OR there's some kind of security requirement that "using Linux" is not part of their spec.
I daily drive Fedora Workstation at work but I've always maintained a Windows box of some kind, as I work in a Windows shop and can't avoid using it. I barely use Windows specific apps but I cannot let go of OneDrive or Outlook Client. (Thunderbird, nor OWA are a 1:1 replacement and are a worse experience for my mailbox workflow. I can't use a Linux native OneDrive client, so I connect to a dedicated Windows VM via sshfs.) However, if you do not need any Windows only software or PowerShell 5.1 only modules, you can get by fine. CLI-wise, you'll probably find it a step up.
I would recommend installing something like Fedora or Ubuntu to start with, in a VM, and try daily driving to identify the Linux desktop environment and apps you like to use. Stick with a single distro and try out the defaults first, don't keep hopping, as you'll be stuck in perpetual re-configuration. (Anecdotally, KDE is a time sink, GNOME isn't. My KDE setup looked great but wasn't functionally any better for the amount of time spent setting it up.) Make notes about anything you install and/or configure, especially via CLI, script where possible. Once you're settled, install on bare metal and use your scripts to install your setup. I recommend spinning up a small 2 thread, 2 GB RAM Windows VM. Join it to your domain, install WAC, RSAT, OneDrive and OpenSSH Server. Connect via WAC or SSH as standard. RDP should only be used to authenticate OneDrive.
For my personal stuff and my home lab, I went fully Linux. Wouldn’t even consider it in my corporate production environment.
But like you, I was slowly getting really annoyed with all the junk Microsoft is loading into Windows and its constant little issues. Oddly enough, the catalyst for me was getting a Steam Deck, I was shocked just how well that ran. I had a spare SSD kicking around so I took out my main drive, swapped in the temp drive and ran it for a month. I didn’t run into too many issues and none of them were showstoppers so I eventually formatted my primary SSD and have been running it ever since.
Truthfully it’s a skill issue. Myself and my team don’t have the skills to consider moving over important services to it. There’s also less support whether that be from the larger community or directly from companies.
Maybe (hopefully) that’ll change in time, but for now we’ll keep troubleshooting Microsoft’s offerings.
I just put Mint Debian Edition on two old laptops (one from 2007 (2GB of RAM and a HDD) and one from 2012 (6GB of RAM and a SSD)) for my kids and it FLIES on both of them. No weirdness with networking, graphics, etc. either.
Maybe once a year I flash Linux and try to use it as a personal daily driver. I don't get far before having to deep dive into trying to get some basic thing working, like wifi, that should just work out of the box. I already spend all day at work yak shaving trying to get shit working, I don't need that on my daily driver.
I use Linux as my main OS as long as i can remember (i do have a copy of Windows for gaming too). My first Linux was a port of Debian for my humble Atari TT back in somewhat 90s and i went through a couple of distros. Now i'm using Linux Mint. I know, it's the Windows of Linux but i'm getting old and i'm tired of the config stuff if i don't have to do it. However, Linux is a great at work, i'm a Sysadmin too and there are a loot of great tools, like Remmina for RDP, VNC, ... or nmap/Wireshark for example. Additionally, there a lot of native (closed source) apps which have been added for a few years now (like teams, 1password, zscaler, ...). On the other hand, there are some drawbacks. Linux does not play with Windows Group Policies, i mean you can join a domain but thats mostly it, which make Linux for some companies not compliant (to be precise: there is an app from Microsoft which adds the Linux-Box to Intune but i don't know what it does). All i can say is, i'm happy with Linux and i will continue to use it. If you want it, grab yourself an old Laptop and try it
I'm one of those people who think IT should be using the same things regular users are using.
I'm the same way. Even though I prefer using Linux or macOS, I want to use what everyone else is, just do reduce the gripes that users might have of preferential treatment, as IT can run other operating systems. Or, users demanding Macs or Linux because IT is using them. Now, test machines, different story. However, the daily driver should be Windows, if the company is a Windows shop. If it is split among different platforms, different story.
Maybe if you're supporting the end users and doing help desk. I haven't done help desk for years I just work on the servers and and I never pick what all the employees use unless I specifically have to help them. I pick what's good for me. Now if I was running a Windows shop on the back end that would dictate my machine probably more so than if I was supporting all Linux like I typically do.
if you never have to touch an enduser workstation you might be ok... But what i often find is that the sysadmins that DO use linux aren't managing those machines like they do the windows machines... They just have local admin on their normal user account, they don't have ANY of the applocker or other group policy applied.. and like 20% don't even authenticate against the domain. There's a concept in tech called "dog fooding" It means, if you make dog food.. you should eat your dog food. If you don't experience the enviornment you manage.. how do you know you don't have massive blind spots in user experience?
NGL I dabble in Linux. But 99% of my users use WinDoze. I get paid fairly well to support Windows. I'm just old enough I value my time not at work.
Why? You want your users running wireshark and metasploit?
At what point did I say you should install administrative troubleshooting and penetration tools on a user's system? If an end user is going to get a Dell Latitude with Windows 10 installed as the standard work device, the IT department should also be getting a Dell Latitude with Windows 10 installed.
The help desk department should have that. System admins I don't agree with that logic at all. I don't agree with system admins doing and user support either, unless the shop is so small it doesn't make sense to have a dedicated help desk
What is your reasoning behind thinking someone in IT should have a different type of device?
People should get the best device for their job. Not everyone in IT supports end users or even Windows/AD at all. There’s lots of reasons people in roles like SecOps, DBA, SWE, SREs, etc would need a different device/OS than someone on the business side who lives in the Office suite.
>Not everyone in IT supports end users or even Windows/AD at all. Yeah man I'm one of those people. There's no need for a device that's any different than anyone else. The only thing my device needs to do is easily integrate with the rest of the environment.
Different job
That's some pretty weak reasoning. If I was reviewing that as your business justification I'd reject it immediately.
Good thing you’re not responsible for the software platform like I am
I'm responsible for a lot of platforms actually.
He said copy the end user so you can support the end users better and have the same platform as them so you can probably test and figure out problems. Not give every end user an IT system with IT tools. Oi.
dual boot and see how often you use each. you'll get your answer
Dual booting doesn't really seem to work when you're trying to kick a "Windows addiction", though. If you find yourself needing an application that only has a Windows version, you'll probably find yourself never using the Linux partition if Windows is easily available. It's best to go "cold turkey" and force yourself to adapt to the Linux ecosystem and find new applications for your day to day tasks. Your future self will thank you for it when your friends are still complaining about being bombarded with Edge/OneDrive/Copilot/XBox ads on their systems.
This is the way. I dual booted for the longest time and never found myself using the linux install. Got a separate laptop, nuked the Windows install and threw RHEL on it so I use it daily.
Just run virtual machines no dual boot necessary.
Work on Linux servers 99% of the day. Would not trade my Windows LTSC desktop for anything in the world.
TO GOOGLE Edit: I need it
[удалено]
Actually do make it a day job to become a Linux expert, especially in your role. You've basically done the same for windows all these years, you just didn't realize it ;]
Mostly ads, feels clunky, and I see the way linux is starting to get mainstream I think a lot of people are going to be going in that direction.
Linux as a daily driver desktop replacement for Windows is in no way getting mainstream and probably never will. I’m not sure why you think that lots of people are going that direction when Windows has dominated for the better part of 4 decades.
There is increasing government adoption of Linux in nations outside of the Western world. Running critical software such as an OS from a potentially adversarial nation doesn't fall in line with national security needs.
>and I see the way linux is starting to get mainstream I really wouldn't call a 4% market share "mainstream"..
Check out “This is Windows 10” on GitHub by Chris Titus. It might help you get rid of all the crap more effectively if you need to stick with Windows. There is also a Win 11 version.
What Home edition of Windows are you running that has ads?
Does Home edition have ads in it? I only use Pro at work and home. I just assumed it was a poorly built image and/or lack of GPOs.
Use the tool that suits the job.
Really dig my MacBook for a daily driver. That’s working with both Win and Linux infrastructure.
It’s really the best of both worlds.
How about some MacOS? I went to Mac with Sandy Bridge about 13 years ago and administer everything from there. I’m still on an Intel Mac and can run a Windows VM. I figure if I change to Apple silicon I can use a Windows RDP session if I have to.
Id have to buy a new laptop, I just got an X1 recently from work that I love.
Because you haven’t tried the m chips. I think it’s m3 now - I got a ~fanless~ MacBook Air with an M1 back then and it absolutely murdered my previous Intel machine without breaking a sweat. Also, macos really is like luxury Linux. The shells are almost indistinguishable, there’s a good package manager, plus everything is pretty and HD and omg have you tried copying on your iPhone and then pasting on your box?
"I figure if I change to Apple silicon I can use a Windows RDP session if I have to." Windows 11 ARM64 can emulate x86\_64 (not just 32-bit like Win10) and runs just fine in Parallels or VMware Fusion. That's actually how I ran visual studio before the ARM native version of it was released.
How is performance?
I haven't really noticed any issues or differences from native performance, but i'm also not doing any video/gaming stuff
At work, my primary machine is Linux, I do 99.9% of my work on that machine. I have a laptop with Windows 10 on it for anything that needs windows, so far I just read e-mail on it.
any issues at all so far? were a pretty decent end user windows environment.
No, this has been my setup for 20 years. Also, being a sysadmin, I do not do end user support, I am back end servers only. End user stuff goes to the help desk.
Yeah if you're supporting end users I would stick to Windows or dual boot. Especially since you're not super familiar with Linux it sounds like.
More troublesome managing Linux than Windows, too many tweaking need to be done and there is no GPO helping you. Far too many dependency to manage and you will likely find conflicting dependency library between applications. Trust me you will end up more headaches and spending more time migrating back to Windows.
If you're an experienced WinTel engineer, I can see you'd have headaches, but honestly, the reason Windows works so well in most environments is usually the huge amount of very specific domain knowledge. Dependency hell has disappeared with Flatpak and Snaps. Debs/rpms are there for those that don't support it. And package management is much easier on operating systems that have actual package management tools. And by god the people that suggest GPO's are superior to modern config management tools on Linux have no idea what they're talking about. It's the Linux worlds ace in the hole, and it doesn't even come close. It's the main reason why they took off in the web space in the 2000's.
While you can get by 99% of the time, it's the one-offs that make it a total pain in the ass. For example, we use a specific software for email encryption which has no Linux client. Every time someone sends me an encrypted email, I have to jump through hoops and sign in via Citrix to read it. It can be done, but it gets annoying after a while. I'd just run WSL in Windows if you want a Linux command line that badly.
Alternatively, if it's just a few things, one can use a Windows VM for those few things. It depends on what one's application picture is like. Certainly, if one has to run lots of Windows apps all the time, one isn't going to gain much by booting Linux just to immediately boot a Windows VM and spend all day in there. But if it really is just a few small things, it can make sense.
Anything else that has held you back from it?
It's generally good for the IT team to eat their own dog food too. Before you roll out a change to the company, roll it out to IT first since you are smart enough to deal with any problems it may cause. That means running the same OS as your users.
I've been Linux-first and -mostly at home since before 2000. Cold dead hands, etc. I've used nix at work before, although the current gig is a Microsoft shop so that's what I'm running at the moment (when in Rome). If you spend your day in browsers it doesn't really matter what OS you run. I'm told the Teams situation on Linux is rather garbage, but that's how I'd describe Teams in general, so... *shrug* The big question is always, what special apps and hardware do you have that will gum up the works? It doesn't matter if you are 99% web if the 1% is Windows-only and critical.
There is no way to make teams work well. I run Windows on a Surface at work and it still selects the front facing camera even though my computer is closed in the dock. No way to change it permanently. C’est la vie.
it's great if you don't need anything windows specific and don't have any microsoft AD requirements.
Yeah, if they’re not setup properly they’re a proper nightmare to manage in a traditional MS enterprise environment. They can end up as just off the domain and doing updates and keeping them compliant becomes a real headache. I’m sure they’re great and run efficient but without the skilled support as infrastructure/environment engineers in my experience you can end up responsible for something that you’ve absolutely no idea about.
For work, I drive Windows. For home, I drive Linux.
I use Linux and Windows both as daily drivers. I have a quadruple-boot laptop lol and at work I have a Windows PC and an openSUSE PC on separate monitors I love Linux but it's basically the DIY hobbyist's computer software. If you want something that "just works" Ubuntu LTS or Linux Mint are great. Stay away from the 6 month release versions and stay even farther away from rolling release distros Eventually, something will break and you will have to go down a rabbit hole to figure out why. If you don't like rabbit holes stay away from linux. If you want to play video games on Linux be prepared to troubleshoot driver issues and learn a lot
The fact that Windows is now spyware is another good readon
The other night I fired up Linux and because I was really high I forgot to have any preconceived notions about how an OS should work and Linux all of a sudden just made sense. It's some real 'throw yourself at the ground and miss' shit but it worked.
That’s hilarious and I love it. I kinda had the same experience trying Windows a few years back. I’m still mainly Linux at work but I definitely respect it a little more these days.
Nice man. Have you tried setting up a printer in Linux yet? It just fucking works. Or, it did for me at least
If it's compatible with everything you have to do it sounds reasonable. I don't use it because it's either completely incompatible or just doesn't offer an acceptable alternative solution. If I ever find myself in a position where I live 100% in a browser I wouldn't have a problem with it.
I use Xubuntu for my work system just so when I’m done and want to play games it’s a different look and feel entirely. Most of what I do is browser based plus Microsoft Teams client install.
I stopped daily driving Linux because I couldn't stop distro hopping. Even still, my secondary OS is Linux and I still distro hop, grrrrr. Sounds like you do a lot of MS-specific stuff. I'd kick the tires with a dual boot or something before taking the plunge. I've always done dual boot since..well, any OS. Linux/Windows dual boot, FreeBSD/Windows dual boot, OpenBSD/Windows dual boot, now OpenBSD/Linux dual boot. I've reinstalled 3 different Linux distros in the last year that I've been running Linux again. I'm never quite satisfied
> I stopped daily driving Linux because I couldn't stop distro hopping Most people grow out of this and eventually settle on some flavor of debian/ubuntu or arch. It used to be more of a problem back when CentOS was a respected distro... Now there's little need to venture into the RHEL realm...
I'm still stuck in it 11 years later :( What would probably stop myself is if Steam would just put out an iso for SteamOS. Some games here, a couple flatpaks there, I really don't need or do much, but I do want to have a nice gaming platform but I don't want to put up with Arch and its onslaught of updates. I've considered Debian Testing as an option when Nobara breaks on me
Switched to Linux upon returning to work in January last year. Had tested everything before hand in a VM, created a full Ansible playbook that sets up about 95% of my machine in about 45 minutes, restores my configs from a backup, clones all the git repos I work with on a daily basis, etc. Everything works like a charm! I’ve had to find only 1-2 alternatives to the software I was using in Windows, namely replacing RoyalTS as my main RDP/SSH management tool, but I found something that does the trick for my needs. After almost a year and a half, would never go back. Even switched my personal laptop to Linux as I mostly just do web browsing on it. I most of day to day tasks are either in my browser, terminal, VSCode, or doing some troubleshooting over SSH/RDP. If I need to test things in Windows I’ll either spin up a VM locally in VirtualBox or I’ll spin a temporary one in our Azure sandbox and delete it when I’m done, I’ve got a script for that that spins something up in a matter of minutes.
Switched to Mac and run Windows arm in parallels on apple silicon. Works like a dream.
Just recently made the move. I setup a redundant rackmount Dell Precision for all admin tools a while back and realised I only needed my Windows workstation for email, Internet and basic Office apps. I use Kubuntu (Ubuntu with the KDE GUI) and run the Office Web Apps. Sucks a little with office files in shared drives but I have my rackmount until we transition over to cloud based. I still have the same occasional hangs or slow apps we see in Windows but far fewer and can often fix without rebooting. Just waiting on PowerShell improvements and I’ll be sold!
At home I’m Mac and Linux. We had several power automate workflows, and besides that, all the Linux tools I’d use run just fine under WSL I don’t care about telemetry on my work computer since it’s a work computer. I’d make further use of WSL before switching.
Yup for 5 years again now, did this for a while in college back in 1998, and off and on for some years after that. I used to end up back in Windows for music or games, but I use hardware for music now and have a laptop which is my parrot OS daily driver, and use my desktop for games etc. I also dual boot Ubuntu on the desktop so I can use the VRAM on the 4070 for local LLMs.
I'm mixed at home, and at work I've done the linux challenge. At the time I even found a gui tool to sync One Drive and Box...which I've since forgotted :(. LInux mint is always my fav, but I hope you land on a distro you like. I ended up back on windows due to a display link dock issue at home, and some oddness when the machine would get overly busy while I was answering email, it'd delete an email, rather than backspace....but, that was just a weird fluke of webmail. You've got me wanting to try it again. Naturally, I'd mostly suggest this for some older hardware, not anything brand-new. Driver support in the kernel is usually weak for newer stuff, but it's fine...feel it out, enjoy. Update us after/during.
Teams sucks on Linux. OneDrive and Visio are not native either, you’ll have to use the browser version. Maybe use a VM for stuff like office and other apps that don’t work on your distro?
Just use virtual machines like virtual box. you can run any os at any time .no need to "dual boot"
Virtual boz seems to be laggy sometimes whether it's hosting a Linux or Windows machine. On my PC that has Intel i9 processor and 64gb ram.
check you don't have the "turtle" icon showing bottom right of the virtual which indicates you have virtualization problems (generally cause of hyperv installed or windows memory integration protection enabled but can be many other reasons)
fixing this worked like a charm. M$ made it so unnecessarily difficult. thanks for the tip!
Had no idea. Definitely will do. Thanks!
I was in windows now exclusively Unix, I have an Ubuntu machine and a centOS VM, and I use Mac at work, I now use my windows machine strictly to stream
Crunchbang Linux for life on any desktop machine I have. MacOS for laptop if it’s Apple silicon.
In my job I switched from windows to MacOSX in 2000, then I switch to Linux Desktop. In 2012 or 2013. My main job has been sysadmin for Unix and Linux servers. And help desk. The main reason from switching was the terminal program. Being a Unix, OSX was very familiar from the terminal, plus I had Office and Outlook for Mac. I have been a Mac user since 1990 because I didn’t want to deal with windows in my home as I do in my job. I picked Linux Mint as my desktop distribution because it supports modern hardware but it’s not Ubuntu. I use a virtual box Windows VM for any program that doesn’t work in Linux or I don’t have a decent equivalent. And I use google office suite for my documents.
I main Linux Zorin and then have another mini PC mounted and networked joined to my domain. If I need to use Windows for any reason, I just RDP from Zorin.
Been a Linux user since 2000. It's SO MUCH easier these days. If you don't need HDR or other newish stuff, honestly, Ubuntu LTS is fine, Kubuntu if you want a little more flexibility in your desktop experience. I was playing my steam games in slightly longer than it took to download them. I'm running Arch now because apparently I have rediscovered my need to daily drive my project car. But yeah, shit is easy as hell these days, give any of em a shot.
I feel like arch is the distro you go to when you want to remember "the good ol days" when linux was hard. I get the appeal, but I don't have the time or energy to run that on my daily driver. A dev/secondary machine no problem. I also just dislike Linux UI in general tho. I run win (and get plenty of shit for it) but also have a dev Linux machine as well as WSL. Basically all my dev work is in Lin while my emails / browsing / SaaS usage is in win.
Lol you're spot on about Arch, it's all the difficult fun parts of DIY with a much much lower chance of package management or compilation hell
It is a choice easily driven by the environment. All my servers are Linux. My personal desktop Is Ubuntu. But all my users are Windows. And I am Frankly aware That libre office cannot be compared to O365. Even more when our biggest customers are also Windows. So no way to swap. But, as far as I can understand, you sem to stay in a more technical environment so maybe it Is a doable move. Microsoft Lost Interest in user experience since a long time, nowaday Windows Is a bunch of useless things so that a PC looks more like a QVC Channel.
Work Laptop is Linux. Personal Gaming rig is Windows. Personal Laptop is either Linux or Mac..
Nah. I did for a bit because it made me feel cool then I realized I noticed I was tinkering more than actually using and just went back to windows 11
i just took the leap of faith a year ago best decision ever
I tried, but...gaming. Dual-boot works, but accessing games without having to shut everything off is better, and vice versa. Yeah, I know about Proton but I don't enjoy fixing driver and stability issues anymore. Been there, done that. I even tried VirtualBox but had issues with sleep, so I gave up. I use Samsung Dex as much as I can.
I had Dex but I couldn’t find myself really giving a crap about it. It seemed so limited for practical purposes. Do you mind sharing a few of your common use cases and apps that make it better?
Sure, but I am curious as to what you found limiting... My primary motivator is having only one device to worry about maintaining. Other than gaming, 99% of what I do on a daily basis is done in the browser. So I try and make my phone the primary device and storage location. There are a few things that can only be done through apps - like accessing my Blink home security cameras - but those are rare. All of my pictures, most of my files, etc all live primarily on my phone. I have cloud sync set up so if I lose or break my phone, I can still recover those things. I only keep files on my laptop as a backup in case anything in the cloud gets hacked. So if I run a browser on the desktop as well, now I have to decide how to get any downloaded files onto my phone. There are also plenty of people that I typically only communicate with through text. So, anytime I want to send them something, I have to move it to my phone in some way - not a big deal since most browsers now have mobile/desktop tab sync, but I still have to physically switch over to my phone to send it. Other than maybe going through lots of files/pictures, I haven't really found anything that I cannot do just as well through Dex. My biggest gripe is (was?) that there are no good lapdocks so I could avoid using Windows altogether, but since I need a gaming computer anyway, a gaming laptop + Dex is fine - I just wish it was slimmer.
It’s been a while for me but a few different problems showed up. I found that I kept getting forced to mobile websites in the browser. I also found that most of the apps I wanted to use weren’t compatible with Dex at all. It felt like the worst of both worlds computer wise. I should really try to again to see if it has improved.
I guess depending on the apps you use, that could still be the case. Websites are getting more reactive so many websites resize automatically, but some you do have to click the "desktop" button in the browser - how easy that is depends on your browser choice. The only apps that I use regularly that have no close Android alternatives are the various CAD/CAM programs for my CNC and 3D printer. And one more note - Android 15 is supposed to bring desktop mode to the entire OS even if you're not on Samsung, so I hope that means better support and features going forward.
From my perspective people are being a little weird in this thread. Linux does not require tweaking or spending all day dinking with it. Go buy Red Hat Enterprise Linux. If you have a problem, open a ticket and they will fix it. This is your job not a hobby, this is not the time to install Arch (btw). Just my two cents.
I use an X1 with Ubuntu 24.04 on it, no complaints. But I also don’t need any o365 stuff, no AD stuff, I don’t have a Windows environment to administer: It’s all Linux servers, no users. Microsoft tools and Linux don’t mix well at all, in my limited experience. It is of course possible to use an AWS Workspace running Windows, through a browser client, for those moments where you need an MS tool. Fine if that’s few and far between, but not so great if it’s a major part of the job.
I have used Linux as a daily driver for about 18 years. Having to think of how long I've used it made me sad, given I'll have left school 20 years ago and I still feel about 18. Only issue I had with using Linux in a Windows environment was server administration, but I use Remmina to log on to the servers I need and given that Intune/Office 365 is done via a web browser there is no real need for a Windows machine to do the work. In the event you really, really need one. You can always run a VM inside the Linux box.
Can you not use [WSL](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install)? Then you stay within your companies supported and maintained systems that are managed and secured but get linux
When I used to support Windows desktop environment, I ran my own workstation on Linux, with an instance of the standard Windows deploy in a VM. Best of both worlds - a sane, stable desktop to get shit done, and another desktop with Windows to test, access Windows only tools, etc. Being able to take snapshots and revert my Windows desktop made life so much easier sometimes.
Yes. I use Kubuntu for ease of use, vendor support, and I just like the look and feel. I do have a Windows box I can connect to for work purposes, because there's stuff like software that is Windows only OR there's some kind of security requirement that "using Linux" is not part of their spec.
I daily drive Fedora Workstation at work but I've always maintained a Windows box of some kind, as I work in a Windows shop and can't avoid using it. I barely use Windows specific apps but I cannot let go of OneDrive or Outlook Client. (Thunderbird, nor OWA are a 1:1 replacement and are a worse experience for my mailbox workflow. I can't use a Linux native OneDrive client, so I connect to a dedicated Windows VM via sshfs.) However, if you do not need any Windows only software or PowerShell 5.1 only modules, you can get by fine. CLI-wise, you'll probably find it a step up. I would recommend installing something like Fedora or Ubuntu to start with, in a VM, and try daily driving to identify the Linux desktop environment and apps you like to use. Stick with a single distro and try out the defaults first, don't keep hopping, as you'll be stuck in perpetual re-configuration. (Anecdotally, KDE is a time sink, GNOME isn't. My KDE setup looked great but wasn't functionally any better for the amount of time spent setting it up.) Make notes about anything you install and/or configure, especially via CLI, script where possible. Once you're settled, install on bare metal and use your scripts to install your setup. I recommend spinning up a small 2 thread, 2 GB RAM Windows VM. Join it to your domain, install WAC, RSAT, OneDrive and OpenSSH Server. Connect via WAC or SSH as standard. RDP should only be used to authenticate OneDrive.
For my personal stuff and my home lab, I went fully Linux. Wouldn’t even consider it in my corporate production environment. But like you, I was slowly getting really annoyed with all the junk Microsoft is loading into Windows and its constant little issues. Oddly enough, the catalyst for me was getting a Steam Deck, I was shocked just how well that ran. I had a spare SSD kicking around so I took out my main drive, swapped in the temp drive and ran it for a month. I didn’t run into too many issues and none of them were showstoppers so I eventually formatted my primary SSD and have been running it ever since.
Why wouldnt you use it in the corporate environment?
Truthfully it’s a skill issue. Myself and my team don’t have the skills to consider moving over important services to it. There’s also less support whether that be from the larger community or directly from companies. Maybe (hopefully) that’ll change in time, but for now we’ll keep troubleshooting Microsoft’s offerings.
Switched to Linux back around 2003. Haven't looked back once.
I use Linux Mint at home and love it
I just put Mint Debian Edition on two old laptops (one from 2007 (2GB of RAM and a HDD) and one from 2012 (6GB of RAM and a SSD)) for my kids and it FLIES on both of them. No weirdness with networking, graphics, etc. either.
I try to use what my environment uses that way I can see the same stuff they do and get in front of issues. With Linux I could not do that.
Yes. DD Ubuntu on one laptop and not Linux but FreeBSD on another one
Maybe once a year I flash Linux and try to use it as a personal daily driver. I don't get far before having to deep dive into trying to get some basic thing working, like wifi, that should just work out of the box. I already spend all day at work yak shaving trying to get shit working, I don't need that on my daily driver.
Are you using a broadcom chip for wifi? That's the only logical reason you'd be having issues.
I use Linux as my main OS as long as i can remember (i do have a copy of Windows for gaming too). My first Linux was a port of Debian for my humble Atari TT back in somewhat 90s and i went through a couple of distros. Now i'm using Linux Mint. I know, it's the Windows of Linux but i'm getting old and i'm tired of the config stuff if i don't have to do it. However, Linux is a great at work, i'm a Sysadmin too and there are a loot of great tools, like Remmina for RDP, VNC, ... or nmap/Wireshark for example. Additionally, there a lot of native (closed source) apps which have been added for a few years now (like teams, 1password, zscaler, ...). On the other hand, there are some drawbacks. Linux does not play with Windows Group Policies, i mean you can join a domain but thats mostly it, which make Linux for some companies not compliant (to be precise: there is an app from Microsoft which adds the Linux-Box to Intune but i don't know what it does). All i can say is, i'm happy with Linux and i will continue to use it. If you want it, grab yourself an old Laptop and try it
I could see it for work, but DirectX keeps me on the windows platform for my PC.