my employer using windows on their machine is their problem. i could be faster via bash in several instances, wouldn't have to wait ours for updates to be done ... but i get to drink tea and listen to complaints about outlook from my co-workers.

it's okay. i get paid.

I believe to be the only one running linux on the work laptop at the company. I told them I'd like to use linux when I applied and they told me "fine, but you will have to install and maintain it on your own, we have no support personal for this".

I installed arch linux and have been happy for years. MS Teams runs in my browser.

Full Linux shop here. Love it...

Desktops, laptops, servers.

For those rare customer teams meets, we just do it in the browser.

Office 365 and teams work fine on Linux in Chrome or Firefox, including voice calls, video calls and screen sharing, and notifications with pop-ups and sounds.

Excel, in particular, is 100% inside Office365 in the browser when I have to interact with it. In the past, I have created Excel files in LibreOfffice and uploaded them to Office365 to convert. Though I haven't been tempted to do so in a few years.

Most of my coworkers are not aware that I run Linux at work. My boss knows and doesn't care. My peers are just surprised when I mention it, because I use the same tools without issue.

Zoom works great on Linux, as well, both in bowers and as the native app. Many corporate VPNs are compiant with open standards, and so don't even require any additional install. Cisco's isn't made right, but they provide a Linux client that works fine.

Slack works fine in browser, including full first class notifications. I haven't sought out a dedicated client app, but I recall having some options.

DropBox and Google have particularly decent Linux client applications, and of course, fully functional web tools.

There's also some excellent ways to run Android apps nearly seemlessly inside an Android emulator of Linux. In theory, I could resort to those, but I haven't because everything I need works in a web browser now.

I've heard that the two glaring exceptions are AutoCad and Adobe Creative Suite. I understand that neither works on Linux or in a browser (per other threads on Lemmy).

Oh yeah, and Linux has more and better ways to produce nice PDFs than Windows does, and of course reads them without issue

Oh, and yes, mandatory compliance stuff like antivirus tools and CrowdStrike also have compliant options for Linux. Some of the really shitty spyware level invasive stuff probably hasn't been ported to Linux, but the "keep me virus free" stuff seems pretty available - because they want to sell copies for Linux servers.

Edit: If this seems needlessly thorough, it is because I worked to independently verify all of these details before my upgrade. I figure my notes might help someone making the case to switch, or just researching whether they need to not switch.

I'm a teacher and I make Linux work for me. Open doc formats get converted to pdf for the shitty windows 7 running the printer in the printing room, and the Android/Windows only app for communications I just run on my phone. PPTs run fine. When there was a problem with the projector, 'IT guy' went to my laptop, got confused (it's Gnome), I told him not to interfere with it because it's Linux. He proceeded to say 'Ah, not working because it's not windows.' Later that day he actually came to fix the cable to the projector.

Debian at home. Red Hat at work. I have tried to talk them into better OS choices, but really I'm just glad to not be on Windows.

Yes, I'm forced to use Windows at work and that's part of why I only use Linux in my personal life.

Window is so stupid and annoying. It needs to reboot like twice a day for updates. Not to mention individual apps that need to update in the middle of usage. Also the news/spam and stuff. It's garbage. I'm the guy who's constantly telling everybody that we should switch to Linux.

(Also, even though my work laptop is Windows, I do most of my real work connected to a Linux server/IDE.)

Company went "here's your budget for ordering a laptop. Put on it whatever you want", and so there's NixOS running on it :)

(To be fair though: small-ish, tech focused company)

Professor here facing the same problem. I am bounded by administrative procedures with grandma school administrators.

I use Linux at home, of course. Debloated my Win11 machine at work but hope to use Linux instead everyday.

I am an electrical engineer, so even beyond Teams and MS Office, several of the engineering and CAD programs we use are not supported or only partially supported on Linux (i.e. hardcoded to only work on a specific version of Ubuntu, lol).

I have spoken to our IT guy, and he would be completely on board with using Linux, but even he acknowledges that there is no reasonable path to us doing so, so I just sort of accept it.

I'm allowed my own laptop cuz most of my work is ssh to a server and fix shit. You have to register your laptop on the network first though.

Office, Team: these can work via the browser if your company/organizations pay for the subscription. In fact, the web versions run much better than the standalone desktop ones for me.

Code editor, terminal, programing in general: These work much much better in linux. You open a terminal and you write commands to install stuff. Editors are even easier, i.e. nano, vim, vscode, emacs.... etc. just pick your poisons..

Email: now I login to my exchange email using the browser. That works for 100% of the stuff I need to do: basic emails stuff, accept/decline meetings...etc. Unless you absolutely need to use Outlook, there should be no problems.

Now... the real problem lies in specialized software like CAD, CAE tools. I like Linux but there isnt a free CAD / CAE tool that is comparable to what the industries are using. In academic? absolutely you can use for research.

The last several places I worked gave me a choice between Windows and Mac OS, so I picked Mac OS.

I recently got my Linux-laptop in a heavy MS-based company. It is enrolled via Intune and I can access all company resourcws an MS365 apps through Edge.

Apart from having to use Edge for all of that, it is a great experience compared to what I am used to.

But it took a while and a lot of complaining about being allowed to use more appropriate tools for our job. But the bottom line is: ask for it. Tell them why you need it. When they say no, try again later, document why your current setup fails and why getting a Linux-machinee would work. Maybe you will succeed. IT here has gone from "we don't use open source" (actual quote) to giving us Linux-laptops and setting up Linux-servers on OT. They grow from this also.

No. We are a proper engineering company.

I have to use 11 at work. In a way I'm thankful because I've been exposed to how shit it is and it makes me appreciate Linux more. I can't see them changing anytime soon as it seems like we're getting more dependent on their shit.

Yes, but maybe it's not so bad. It creates a clear separation between work and play. Windows is for boring work and office stuff. Linux is the happy place at home.

Its not my machine, so I don't really care. As long as it doesn't prevent me from doing the work, then that is the employers problem what OS they want to enforce.

On my personal computer, I run what I want and will continue to do so where possible. Hence, why I like using Linux.

I used to work as a software dev before mass layoffs got me. Our work was technical enough that most of us used Linux to the point that finding a Windows user to test things was a real problem.

Linux admin grey(ish) beard here, work provides a MacBook and I just use it as a web browser and terminal.

Internal chat, mail, etc are all browser based, Google Docs is the office suite of choice for anyone I have to work with.

I get a decent terminal (iterm2), together with ZSH, tmux and Python is all I really need. We do have a bunch of GNU core utils installed as well, although coming from a UNIX background, I don't mind the BSD versions that ship on MacOS either.

Would I prefer Linux? Yes, I would. But at the same time, the M4 performance is awesome, the touchpad is glorious and I don't have to foot the bill, so I'm not complaining!

I use an M2 Caddy with a 1TB NVME SSD to boot into Aurora Linux on my work laptop.

The laptop keeps it's Windows license intact and when I need to move to a new laptop, it's plug and play work.

CUPS works with every printer in my office out of the box.

I am the user with less IT support tickets, I don't require Windows, Office nor Adobe licenses.

IT is happy, I'm happy. Every day is pure bliss.

Web dev, Linux at home and work. Works fine for my scenario.

We're a Linux shop at my work. We do have a windows PC due to corporate policies...but everything we do on our windows PCs we could do from Linux.

Outlook? Website. Excel? Website. Jira? Website. Teams? Website. Nearly everything we do front end wise is all web based. Which, I know electron sucks, but from a "Linux as a main desktop environment"...I'm pretty damn happy with everything being web based nowadays. It's all OS agnostic.

I'm a MLOps engineer. Rules at my current company is that you need Windows or MacOS. According to the IT department it won't work if you use Linux.

So I installed Linux anyway and everything is working perfectly. My manager don't care that I use Linux but the IT department is not happy.

I'm a Linux sysadmin. I was issued a Windows laptop. But I have been allowed to add a second NVME drive to it that has Debian 12 installed. So Debian 12 has been my main working environment.

I also have a desktop in my cube running Windows.

I rarely boot my laptop to windows. But if I need to do something with modifying Windows smb shares or active directory I just remote into my Windows Desktop. I'm also running a ssh server on my windows desktop so about half of my windows active directory work is done via powershell over ssh.

My university forces us to use Microsoft products and I hate it.

The only good thing is that most MS products are available through web browser nowadays, but they have random quirks that make me bash my head against the desk.

Yup, and every time I have to deal with Windows bullshit at work, I get a little bit happier that I don't have to deal with it when I go home.

Nah, I'm free to do what I want with my laptop as long as I can do the work. I work in IT and everyone uses windows. But so far so good. Would like to get outlook classic to run on Linux though

I'm not forced to, but occasionally my job kinda requires it so I dualboot (most of my coworkers who are on linux run a windows virtual machine when they need it).

But my previous job required windows due to all the industry specific software only working on windows. No chance of getting that to work on linux sadly. Then I just used windows at work. It's always my employer's hardware anyway and I like to keep work and free-time separate so it was ok.

Current workplace: Windows computers with all development being done in Linux VMs. Management and a few younger devs are pushing for WSL, while several older devs are demanding Linux-only laptops.

Previous workplaces: One more with Windows + Linux VMs. One with Windows + X remote desktop to development servers. One with Linux PCs.

I have been exclusively applying for jobs that promised Linux development though.

Forced to use Windows 11 at work, my brand new laptop with 32GB or RAM takes 10 to 20 seconds to open the explorer or view an image. It's horrendous. It's absolutely not because of the application I need to use because I literally do EVERYTHING in Google Chrome. This year IT uninstalled Excel and Word from our laptops because we are supposed to do all the work in Google Drive. Updates always need minimum 2 reboots and you need to attend to the computer because rebooting will get stuck on the encryption password. I hate it, but it always been like that so...

Nope, software dev here.... work gave me a budget, told me to pick a computer and I put Linux on it. My Boss (the VP of Engineering) also runs Linux. We're a small company and some people do run Windows but we have google workspace so there hasn't been anything I've needed windows for.

Luckily not. I work in the infrastructure team at a small company, everything we do is managed using Ansible (even Windows), so developing on Linux is a much nicer experience.

For communication we use Mattermost and Jitsi plus many other open source tools and services.

I'm lucky that I work from home (have done since before the pandemic) and pretty much all my work is done in a browser, and my bosses don't care what I use as long as the work gets done. So I just work on Fedora on my regular desktop.

No, instead I'm forced to use macOS at work.

And Microsoft Teams, which is terrible, but somehow still better than Cisco Webex, which we had before.

Im self employed so I can use what I want.

I have a few assisstants who use win 11.

Yes, unfortunately

Software engineer. Last company that made me use Windows was one I left 3 years ago I think. Since then it's been MacOS or LInux, and I love both. I actually prefer Linux at home and MacOS for work. Just add brew (obviously) and a tiling window manager and I'm done. With Linux at home I tinker more, I actually used to use Gentoo for gaming...

Nope: My lathe runs Linux.

That's what shadow IT is for.

You try through the normal channels, explaining why, and if it's not enough, you find a way to still be productive DESPITE the rules of the place. Then eventually you move on to a saner place.

I use Linux on my work computer

Mac, actually. Its a different kind of bad. At least I can use many of the same cli tools.

I count myself as one of the lucky ones that isn't forced to use Windows by the company I work for. We even have our internal (ubuntu-based) distro, and despite being passable proficient with Linux, I can count on having support if I ever need it.

That’s all fine and dandy but at work I am forced to use Windows, Office, Teams, and all that.

Yeah, me too. But all of those (except Windows of course) can be used on the browser

We in engineering are allowed to use whatever the heck we want so long as IT agrees that it is useful and safe and costs less than other options.

So we run a bunch of open source stuff. But the biggest one is Python. We connect arduinos and rpies to run complex machines. Meanwhile CAD runs on windows unfortunately along with all the bullshit spreadsheet, word and PowerPoint.

Linux is awesome and I see Windows day's numbered. So long piece of shit obsolescence software! One day you will be no more.

I am working in company where about 35% of users are on Windows, 40% on Linux and 25% on Mac. In Linux, official way to use MS Office is web apps, but Libreoffice is quite heavily used too.

sure am and it fucking sucks

just today I ran into a new issue - when you try to close an Excel document without saving, it asks if you want to merge your changes with the server.

I do not, I want to close without saving, so I choose no.

then it asks if I want to save the document.

I do not, I want to close without saving, so I choose don't save

The document finally closes. I reopen the document, and guess what's there? my unsaved changes. if I try to close the document, the cycle repeats.

Microsoft fucking removed the ability to close a document without saving

I tried this on Windows 10 on one computer and Windows 11 on another computer with the exact same behavior

My job involves maintaining Linux servers so there are no problems with Linux as my desktop.

Currently Arch Linux as the desktop OS.

I was managing with virtual box on the work machine. But following win 11 the performance under hyper v is so appalling that I gave up.
In the end my solution is a 2nd hand ThinkPad off FB marketplace that I use for work.
Browser apps cover all the word/excel/outlook/teams requirements.
Winboat is covering the very limited set of other apps.
Everything else I do works better in Linux, or at least better on a device I have admin for.
Yes I am out of pocket but not significantly, and not having to deal with windows has been completely worth it for me.

Our engineers can use Linux desktop if they want, and I suppose anyone else could as well, but Microsoft Office is really what keeps me on Windows at work. I could use the browser based apps for 80% but that last 20% is nasty. And yes, I use libreoffice at home. The cross compatibility just isn't there without loads of extra time that I don't have.