Linux Sys Admins, do you work on Linux or Windows office laptops?

Windows 11, and the group policies doesn't allow us to use WSL. We also can't directly SSH into any servers so we have to go trough a Citrix session to a Windows 10 "admin server" and then SSH or RDP to a Linux server. And Windows Terminal isn't installed on the Windows 10 server, so it's either CMD or the Powershell terminal.

It's absolutely fucking miserable. I'm a Linux sysadmin who do a lot of automation (ansible etc) but also Python development. Try it yourselves and see how long you last! I'm jumping the fucking ship in a month though, thank the gods.

All the result of an over confident "security organization", with a lot of hubris.

But the best part? It's a $5000 work laptop, and my 6 year old Thinkpad (with Linux) runs laps around the thing any day of the week. Opening the file explorer takes, most of the time, 5+ seconds...

Fuck my life, and fuck this company.

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.

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.

I don't use Windows anymore. Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those "Linux purists", if other people wanna use Windows, go ahead. But I'm not using it. I swear to god, if it becomes mandatory to use Windows at my company, I'm leaving the next day.

i use a linux laptop; but then they got bought out and our new overlords won't let me get another one.

i've had it for 5 years now since i didn't want switch to mac during the last 2 refresh periods; but it's only a matter of time before it dies.

i think i'll just switch jobs when it does. lol

Wdym with linux can be broken?

Don't mess woth the system and go atomic. Fedora atomic kde or gnome or wm

My current company is being absorbed into a much larger company right now, got bought out earlier this year.

I was the only IT for the smaller company, and I was using 100% Linux (Debian with KDE Plasma) on my laptop to administrate everything in our environment, which is mostly Windows.

• Our DC with AD on it, I used Remmina to RDP into it for admin tasks.
• O365 and Azure/Entra stuff was all in the browser.
• Our ERP system is cloud-based, so browser was fine for that too.
• Our access control system was cloud-based and the RFID card reader/writer was plug-n-play on Linux.
• Our company SMB share worked fine with Linux in Plasma using my AD credentials.
• I set up my company OneDrive sync using rclone, it also worked flawlessly.
• Our Fortigate firewall VPN has a native Linux app which, although ugly as sin, works without issue.
• I used OnlyOffice for a while, then switched back to LibreOffice. Both worked basically perfect, a few very minor font bugs, (bullet lists having a slightly different style for the bullets, etc.)
• Teams, I used a wrapper flatpak for a while, which worked fine, then switched to the browser version of Teams. No major issues, I had a bunch of meetings, screen shares, webcam, presentations all on Teams in Linux, pretty seamless.
• Email, Outlook in the browser is fine. I also used Thunderbird for a bit, but didn't like how buggy it was in the Flatpak version, and the Debian package was way too out of date for my taste.

Now that we got bought out, I am being forced off my Linux laptop and onto the new company's Windows laptop, which really sucks. I am planning on quitting soon, as I hate using Windows and I am very underpaid at my current job as it is. Only real perk was not having to report to any IT manager/CTO, and being able to use Linux.

Mixed environment, bunch of windows servers and a bunch of Linux servers. I currently run NixOS on my company owned Framework laptop, with the caveat that I have to deal with or work around any weirdness that comes up.

I've been wanting for a while now to fix up my config (weird sleep waking issues, broken hibernate, implement full disk encryption) or maybe switch to Fedora. Just haven't had the time.

Remmina is great for RDP, OnlyOffice preserves Microsoft office formatting well, KDE's network manager has working VPN connections for Cisco and Palo Alto, and I do a lot from the browser (email, O365 admin,etc).

There is friction, though. As mentioned the sleep issues. Never fun getting to a site and finding a hot, dead laptop in my bag because it decided to wake up and not go back to sleep.

For things that HAVE to be done in Windows I have a VM I haven't powered on in a months or two, and a "tech" server to rdp to with more network access.

I'd also like to get more familiar with Nix. I can handle system settings and packages from the Nix repositories, but packaging my own software is something I'd like to learn (software and printer drivers for Ubuntu/fedora, etc).

MacOS, nearly everyone who does anything with development or ops is using a MacBook. Though lately more “normal” employees have been getting MacBooks too.

Yes, I use Fedora and love to break the permissions of shared Office-Documents. /s

The only thing I have learned is not to go too deep into customisation. Because people watching me using hyprland are some kind of disgusted.

I just use KDE with dark breeze theme. That's enough and nobody gets hurt.

Previous job: Windows, because it was a company issued laptop. Plus a lot of the company was built around the MS ecosystem.

Current job: Linux, because I got to keep the perfectly decent Dell laptop when I left. I wanted to make sure I purged everything, so it's running LMDE now. Plus, there's not much outlook and teams stuff that I have to use.

When I got into the company I was allowed to use Linux. But a few years ago the company was bought and merged with a much bigger company and the new IT policy made Windows mandatory.

Right now I'm stuck on a Mac laptop. I hate it, but after our Network team could not manage to get Global Protect working on Linux, and my boss decided keeping them happy was easier than keeping me productive, I didn't have much choice (Mac or Windows). I've worked in environments before where I was able to run Linux on my laptop/workstation, so long as I was able to support myself and do the required work. I used remote desktop (Or a Windows VM) for my Windows work; my browser and Java for most everything else. Now even Office is a shitty webapp for the most part, and Teams "works" on Linux (As much as Teams works at all).

Even here, I have to wait until Helpdesk manages to build out support for new Mac OS releases, so I'm still on 14.6.

I told them prior that I would be leaving the company if they forced me to migrate to Mac. I'm currently looking for a better position elsewhere and will tell them exactly why when I turn in my notice. Not that it will change anything, it'll help me feel better.

After using WSL for 6 years to do 99% of my work, our IT finally started to support Linux, so I re-imaged my notebook immediately. It's not perfect and we do have some mandatory security and backup solutions that slow things down a bit, but the good news is that they allow us to re-nice them, so it's not that big of a deal. The biggest challenge is Libre Office versus MS Office, because things don't always convert the formatting correctly, but it's still worth the hasle to avoid Windows PITA issues.

I'm currently more of an generic sysadmin than linux admin, as I do both. But the 'other stuff' at work runs around teams, office, outlook and things like that, so I'm running a win11 with WSL and it's good enough for what I need from a workstation. There's technically a policy in place that only windows workstations are supported, but I suppose I could run linux (and I have separate laptop for linux-only stuff). At the current environment it's just not worth the hassle, spesifically since I need to maintain windows servers too.

So, I have my terminals, firefox and whatever I need and I also have the mandated office-suite, malware protection/IDR/IDS by the book and in my mindset I'm using company tools for company jobs. If they take longer, could be more efficient or whatever, it's not my problem. I'll just browse my (personal) cellphone while the throbber spins on the screen and I get paid to do that.

If I switched to linux I'd need to personally take care of my system to meet specs and I wouldn't have any kind of helpdesk available should I ever need one. So it's just simpler to stick with what the company provides and if it's slow then it's not my headache and I've accepted that mindset.

I manage the few linux servers at my company. I use a windows laptop to ssh to my servers. Windows for me is fine, but I do very little on it outside of ssh or emails. However, I would never use windows outside of this.

What are your experience?

My last "real" Windows experience was with WinXP and every time I have to touch Windows at the PC of a customer, which happens sometimes when the stars align, I feel like the first human that ever walked the earth.

I have no idea how people get any work done on a system that is constantly nagging for attention, popups, restrictive Enterprise environment and non descriptive error messages. Nothing in this world seems to make sense or is presented in a unified way. Every dialogue or sub system seems to be it's own isle stemming from another decade of tech. The experience for someone who is simply not used to Windows any more due to missing exposure is horrible.

Heck a Mac feels alien to me too but in the end that's still a system I could deal with given some time.

Mebbe I'm spoiled by stuff like systemd, PipeWire, Wayland, btrfs and all that candy we get nowadays on a Linux desktop. I'm not even talking about privacy or FOSS principles at this point. Just the fact that the system doesn't get in my face with ads or AI or "very important reboots" seems to be a revelation in 2024.

My work laptop is windows sadly. It has to run a bunch of endpoint sec stuff. I get it, but still sucks. On occasion I do dual boot (separate drive) when some update breaks something and I have to have a PC to fix something asap.

I use office 360 in the browser.
I'm not a typical sysadmin but I use linux anyway. Somehow I always found some workarounds, but I am also not the only one using Linux in our company so the IT needs to work with us to some degree.

Not a sysadmin, but a programmer. My work machines have been:

• 2003-2008 Windows 7
• 2008-2011 Ubuntu
• 2011-2019 Arch
• 2019-2024 NixOS

Probably going to keep using NixOS. This is a very cool OS.

When I could get away with it at work, I did.

In the last.. I want to say six or seven years, issuing Macbooks to sysadmins has been a common thing in the sectors I work in. Rather than put up with us going rogue and messing up license tracking by rebuilding our stuff with a distro of choice, management just throws OSX at the problem (us, we're the problem) because operationally it's close enough for our purposes.

It's not my choice or preference, but the money's green.

Most places seem to issue Mac's now for the role. I just create a 90% cpu & memory Linux VM on them and work from within that, with the exception of teams or zoom meetings being native on the Mac (no echo cancellation on linux VM's, it seems). Works mostly well, but it is arm64 based linux, as the Mac's currently are M series.

Ended up going with Arch for arm64, as it had the simplest way to add widevine support to my browsers.

Much better than being native on the Mac... Mac doesn't give me the two select&paste linux 2nd copy buffer, doesn't provide focus follows mouse, no auto-raise, and type in partially covered windows without raise. Essential for my workflow.

Ive just started in a government IT role; everything is windows, I use windows myself at home for games, but run WSL for hobby dev, home server management and stuff like that.

This is my first sysadmin role, having come from a Dev background, and administration on windows feels like such a chore. Everything takes ten steps to do, lots of issues, and feels very counter intuitive. I am not enjoying it at all. I suppose actual large scale Linux adminning probably has the same issues and I'm putting it down to lack of experience, but there's so many small niggly issues that I know I could solve if this was a Linux environment that I can't due to how windows is set up.

I'm hopefully getting to move into a more hybrid dev/admin role for some web stuff, but I firs thave to convince my boss to let me install WSL so O can have a sane dev environment for web dev.

Using linux hardware, pretty much one of the requirements for my job, otherwise I look elsewhere. For RDP the only downside being wayland not working with it, so you have to stay with X11.

I'm in the lucky position that I always could work with Linux. I was working with people that couldn't be bothered to run Windows on their Desktops (administering mostly Linux Servers anyway). In my first job we had a "Standardized" Fedora desktop that was actually attached to our AD so you could log in at any desktop with your domain user. However we did have internal tools and some software requirement that only were available on Linux meaning everyone in our department had a Windows VM for using those tools (kinda overkill but ok). My last job we didn't have any standard other than the system had to be encrypted and had Eset installed other than that we could set it up he was we liked.

Could I work with a Windows desktop? Sure I'm on the Terminal sshing into systems 98% of the time anyway but at the end of the day I love to simply be on Linux having a workflow I'm used to.

Regarding Office I was just using Office online for anything that needed it.

Getting Linux Systems into AD is possible (but of course requires cooperation on the side of the IT department)

Proxy and VPN should mostly be doable (but of course might not be able to be deployed via Group policies)

Well... i am feeling somewhat heretical writing this... but i am a happy ChromeOS user for years now. In my opinion its a very good middle ground between a super stable platform that JUST WORKS and with the integrated Linux VM i have the opportunity to Install the necessary tools for my work.

I got my IT department to allow me to use WSL2, because I have to clone and patch the Linux kernel for our embedded linux device.

😁now I can install stuff, for which I otherwise would have need windows admin privileges, into WSL2, like steam (just for the fun of playing a windows game over proton on a ubuntu install on WSL2 which is just linux hyper-v emulation on windows -> games run very bad and seem do not use the nvidia card in the laptop 🤭)

So my setup is for work windows running WSL if needed, at home, I have a macbookpro11,3 dual boot BigSur and up to date endeavourOS(Arch+KDE) as allrounder devices, a game PC running endeavourOS(Arch+KDE) (NVIDIA 970), a raspberry Pi W2 running my homebridge, an iPad pro for easy webapps (configure *arr services) and streaming. Other not so much PC coputing devices available are PostmarkedOS pine phone, TvOS running Atv, various game consoles with most CFW installed, and many iPhones (collected over time, self bought is only iPhone 4s, 5, 6, X and 12mini)

So, I use them all big OSs 🤔 well, not really android anywhere.. 😁 I just recognised that my router is BSD based (OpnSense)

Most of our sysads use macOS. A few use linux but they have limited choices with distros and can only use fedora I think.

all the windows shit runs in citrix, i run linux at work from home for the host system.

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.

Windows 10 Enterprise with a ton of group polices applied, no issues ever. The Windows Terminal app is really good.

I'd use Linux for homelab if there was native Fusion, since I need that for school.

I use a Windows laptop because that's what is supported by our infrastructure, our endpoint protection and our cybersecurity insurance.
Also, to help test changes before they are rolled out to users.

I am a Windows admin but two of my colleagues who are Linux admins use Linux machines that are running Ubuntu+a few internal tweaks to make it better fit us. The Linux platform is developed primarily by one of the developers at the company and some others (primarily developers) also use Linux. The vast majority of the company uses Windows.

There are also a few hundred Macs.

I have been considering getting our flavour of Linux installed on a VM or maybe even dual booting for testing.

everyday

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bloatness

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experiences

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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?