this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2024
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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As an IT guy who has worked at a bunch of companies with exclusively Windows environments, Windows absolutely doesn't "just work."
I can't begin to list all the random problems I have with Windows in my day-to-day job.
Driver problems, hardware compatibility problems, software crashes, OS freezes, random configuration resets, networking issues, performance issues, boot issues, etc etc etc...
New hardware causes problems, old hardware causes problems.
Almost everything is harder to troubleshoot on Windows than Linux.
I have several test servers set up at my current workplace, they are old decommissioned desktops that are 10+ years old. I use them for messing around with Docker, Ansible, Tailscale, and random internal company resources like Bookstack and OpenProject.
All run Linux, all are a head and shoulders more stable and functional than the majority of much newer and more powerful Windows machines at our company.
Debian, Mint, CatchyOS, they all are far more dependable than most of the Windows machines. They install fast, on any hardware I use, decade+ old Quadro cards and Intel CPUs, doesn't matter, they all run nearly perfect. And the rare times I have an issue, it's so much faster to figure out and fix in Linux.
I switched over one of the computers in our department to Linux Mint. Threw it on a random laptop I had laying around. I did it just as an experiment, told the guy who was working on it to let me know if he had any issues using it. I planned on only having it out there for a week or two... It's been 4 months and he loves it.
He says it's super fast and easy to use, he doesn't have any problems with it. Uses Libre office for documents, Firefox for our cloud-based ERP system, Teams and Outlook as PWAs installed on Mint.
I use Ansible to push updates to it once a week, Timeshift in case something ever breaks. It's great. About a month ago I told him I would probably need to take it back because technically, it wasn't an official deployment and the experiment I was doing had long since passed. He put up such a fuss that I decided to just let it stay. I'll probably clone the drive, put it on his old tower, and take the laptop back, and let him keep using it indefinitely.
Linux absolutely isn't perfect, no technology is. But in my years of experience with both, Linux on the whole is far less finicky, and far easier to fix when it breaks.
I agree 110% but it's also worth mentioning that windows isn't as finicky as we complain about. If it was, companies wouldn't by and large rely on it. People are delusional if they think Windows is only around because of some conspiracy or historical precedent. "It works" plain and simple. As you scale you're going to run into issues regardless of the OS. It's naive to think Linux is the be all that end all. As much as anyone I want to be Linux only. My home computers have been Linux for decades now. I'm a realist. There's value and challenges with every OS. I hate the industry trend of Windows over Linux but I get it
It's important to acknowledge that desktop Linux was much jankier even 5 years ago. I don't think Windows 7 & Windows 10 would have been worse experiences on average than desktop Linux back in their heyday.
But times have changed pretty drastically. Desktop Linux has improved massively across the board. With so many applications going into the cloud and becoming web-based in recent years, Linux is more viable than ever.
Combine that with the fact that Windows 11 has become so bloated, so clunky, and just straight up unpleasant to use and maintain.
Historical precedent makes a big difference too. When an OS is dominant for so long, the ecosystem around it morphs to fit.
People are raised using Windows, go through school and college using Windows, get a job where their apps are all on Windows. Companies write software for their largest install base...which is Windows. And because the vast majority of companies and orgs use Windows, the IT ecosystem is based around managing Windows systems.
I worked at an MSP a few years back where almost every sysadmin there was far more experienced than me, I was the greenhorn. But when one of the sysadmins had their client's Xen hypervisor go down, they called me because, "We heard you're a Linux guy." At that point, I had less than 3 years of Linux experience at all, and had almost zero actual Linux admin experience, I only used it personally and as a hobby. But I fixed their issue in less than an hour, got their client's Xen hypervisor running which their entire ERP system ran on, all because I knew enough Linux basics to figure out what was going on.
Point is, people tend to become experts in what they use all the time. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. Microsoft experts and admins are a dime-a-dozen where I live, but Linux/Unix admins, I rarely see a job posting that isn't offering 20-40k more for people with those skills.
At my current company, roughly 50% of folks could be switched over to Linux without any issue. Their jobs all require basic document editing, email, Teams, and web browsing. All tasks that desktop Linux can handle now with zero issues.
I did something similar with 4 15 year old optiplexes for a student lab. IT wasn't happy until the saw how well they ran
It's pretty incredible how well it works. I installed Arch with Plasma 6 on a 2015 T450 thinkpad and it was so crazy how fast everything was.
Felt like a brand new machine, almost a decade old, and bottom of the line specs for that model, but it still ran cutting edge Linux like it was meant to.
My other desktops are even older, but it's the same with Debian 12 and Plasma, they are super responsive and stable. It's pretty wild to see a desktop that's over 10 years old feel smoother and snappier than Windows 11 on a 3 year old, enterprise grade laptop.
The only thing holding me back from asking for an Ubuntu laptop at work is email certificates that we need to install on windows for outlook. Otherwise I'd love to be able to switch
They don't even let us install wsl2, so annoying