A lot of the corporate IT workforce is heavily invested in Microsoft systems. It creates somewhat of a co-dependency.
I only run Linux at home. My mom also runs Linux, though she doesn't really know a lot about it. If I could I would have run only Linux at my previous corporate jobs. But the IT people balk: how will windows defender work in Linux? At one point they did install windows defender on Linux and it ground a fine machine basically to a halt.
> But the IT people balk: how will windows defender work in Linux?
They don't think that at all. They probably know more about Linux than you do because I guarantee half the systems they manage are already running it.
What they think about are the applications that the people who actually make the decisions at your companies refuse to migrate away from. They know the cost of hiring Linux sysadmins vs Windows sysadmins. They think about everyone in every other company and how much harder they are to hire when suddenly none of them know how to use their office computer when they're hired. They think about the half dozen or so business critical applications which genuinely don't have Linux equivalents. None of the executives, nobody in HR, nobody in accounting or business. Nobody in sales. Let alone... nobody in the actual non-tech industry that most businesses operate in.
And it's not the college graduates they're worried about. It's the people with 5, 10, or 15 years experience who will just not want to work at a company where they have to compromise and use non-standard software.
It's still not economically viable for any corporation outside of exactly a small tech industry start-up to switch away from Microsoft, and it has nothing to do with the cost of operating system licenses or support.
In my example they literally demanded to run Windows Defender on a Linux server that I requested. There was no Linux experience on the IT team whatsoever.
Well, that's the thing. That's not as stupid as you're trying to make it sound.
There IS Microsoft Defender on Linux because there's multiple products that Microsoft calls Defender. There's the product that ships in Windows for the consumer market, which is just the basic antivirus product that you probably think they're talking about. However, Microsoft's full endpoint protection software is also branded Defender, and there is a Linux version.
And while you might think that it's silly to run that on Linux, (a) your business is probably already licensed for it so will be cheap to add a client, (b) it's what their infrastructure is already using so it's minimal setup, and (c) having security software everywhere is critical simply for saving thousands of dollars in insurance costs. The software nearly pays for itself in reduced premiums at any company of any size even if it does nothing. With how catastrophic ransomware attacks and data breaches are, insurance companies now require annual environmental surveys for evaluating risks.
So you're trying to make this IT team sound stupid, but as someone in the industry I can't even tell from what you said if they are.
I'm not trying to say they were stupid. I'm explaining my lived experience where I needed a lightweight linux server for an internal app and it worked great until a 100% Windows-based IT team policy required that Defender be installed on it, after which it became extremely slow and crashed regularly due to Defender-related issues in the logs.
I prefer having a beefy workstation at home and connect to it remotely from a cheaper laptop, as I find laptops are noisy and weak unless you spend a sizable fortune.
What are you comparing it to or what do you feel is missing? Remote desktop has gotten way better on Linux since the days of only X-Forwarding or VNC, at least from a performance perspective.
I tried just about everything a couple of years ago. Various VNC variants, X2Go etc.
They all sucked in terms of speed/performance compared to Windows-to-Windows RDP, and none allowed for starting a new desktop session if user wasn't already logged in, or resuming existing session if present. Both essential to me.
Many lacked some features like clipboard, file transfer, sound. First two are hard requirements as well.
I see things have been moving, so I'm hoping things become viable in a year or three.
why not just use sunshine/moonlight? RDP (and the other junk like X11 forwarding/VNC) has always been too slow for my use-cases. Movies or gaming would bring it to a halt. Meanwhile Moonlight gives me a clean 4k60fps with only ~25ms latency across the country.
Too specific to gaming, and AFAIK NVIDIA-specific. Plus, RDP disconnects the physical console, so the screen stays off and keyboard/mouse can't interfere. There is some software like NX that can blank the screen (actually, make it black or show some silly gradient animation) and inhibit the keyboard/mouse, but the screen stays on; and it's not even by default. Does anybody here know an open-source business-grade remote desktop software for Linux? I'd be really interested to deploy it.
RDP uses h.264 for rapidly updating regions. I've played near-fullscreen YouTube videos over RDP via the internet without realizing I was doing so remotely.
I've also gamed over RDP. It wasn't the best experience, though to be fair I was on an island literally on the opposite side of the globe, and ran the game fullscreen. But I'm sure a dedicated solution like Steam or Sunshine/Moonlight would fare better for such.
Though at least with Steam the console has to be unlocked, which is a problem if I'm away.
I prefer it. Always have. Don’t have any objection to logging in with my online account, in fact I would even if I didn’t have to so all my stuff just syncs. Getting a new PC is now finally as easy as getting a new phone, just sign in and let it sync. Anyone who owns a cell phone and is worried about the privacy issues here is being ridiculous.
Mac users fellate themselves over Mac usability. But if I click a file in Windows and hit the delete key you know what it does? It deletes the file. You know what Mac does? It makes the “bonk” sound and nothing happens. (Or at least it did, been years since I used it.)
I tried to like Mac for years, even using it as my daily driver for two straight, because their hardware is so good, but I just never could because of 100 little things like that. MacOS sucks.
The concerns of the people who inhabit this tiny little enclave of the internet are alien to 99% of the population at least.
The game industry uses the same argument that other industries use as well; tiny user base and the distribution is a mess.
I understand those arguments; they are valid, to a point... but if Autodesk uses mostly NodeJS and Python and OpenGL for Fusion360, why can't they ship a linux version, too?!?
The biggest category of games that don't work on Linux are those that demand a root kit (where they attempt to justify it as anti-cheat), and not letting a root kit on one's computer is desirable for many reasons.
At this point, there are very few games where I've personally had to switch back to windows. I don't play online though so not impacted by Anti-cheat systems
That's sort of like asking a motorbike enthusiast why they don't just drive a car instead.
There's a big difference in the input scheme between PC and consoles. Playing with a controller might not be satisfying for someone used to keyboard and mouse. The latter also provides a higher skill ceiling for competitive play.
The lower end hardware used in consoles also does not allow for high framerates and high resolution monitors, while with PC gaming one can get as much performance as they're willing to pay for.
In addition to what sibling comment wrote well, there are also a bunch of games that aren't "couch-friendly" and not even available on console.
I like consoles (borderline prefer them to PCs) but there are some experiences I can only have on PC.
Another aspect is that sticking a console onto my desk and plugging it to my PC monitor wouldn't be very practical, and I don't want to commit my living room to my gaming whims, and even less want to get another TV+couch-like setup in my office.
I would buy a PS5 if I didn't already have a gaming rig tbh. For PC I enjoy the tinkering and the ability to basically do anything with it, but nowadays the cost compared to console is stupid and after a long day's work the last thing I want to do is see another desktop UI. Different toys for different purposes.
Last time I saw them they were having alien input controls. I used to press M for portable Medkit. And J for Jetpack. And all keyboard is meaningful. Stand-alone gaming systems are having limited amount of buttons on their alien input controls and packing diverse actions into disgusting combos. This could probably be solved by Cronus Zen.
The only good thing about alien input control was smooth movement. Wooting Two emulates this by pretenting to be both human and alien input controls. Would be nice if such keyboards would be more widespread.
This made me realize that even though my PS4 has USB ports, I've never really enjoyed playing first-person shooters on consoles — would rather use a mouse.
There are a few applications that simply do not run well enough on Linux. It's easy enough to find a list with an internet search. Mostly graphics and video editing packages, and DRM protection. However I think for a majority of people Linux should work just fine.
Several reasons: RDP (found nothing that works as well as the integrated one of Windows), software (Altium, Adobe Illustrator). Regarding Illustrator, I might switch to Inkscape the day it fully supports CMYK color, spot colors, overprinting, and such things... for now I just feel it's not ready yet every time I try it.
And server-side: specific software I need to run for my team, like Autodesk Vault. For the rest, 95% of our servers run Linux.
Same. But at home, I have a desktop (Linux Mint), a NUC server (Proxmox w various VMs/containers) and a MacBook Air M2/iPad that wife/kids use. I am starting to see them use the Linux Mint desktop more and more (main web browsing, word processing, etc) since I dropped Windows about 4 years ago. I did maintain a separate Win10 install for games but SteamDeck (and Win10 becoming EOL) made that obsolete but I am starting to get my feet wet in Linux gaming with my nvidia GPU but haven't really tried all the distros to pick one yet.
Is this the year of the Linux desktop? Unlikely, but I've started to donate more regularly to the Linux Mint team and same with any OSS that helps me maintain our privacy which I suspect is driving more and more to look into options instead of accepting the status quo.
Well at least you should then have that on a dedicated gaming machine - treat it like a console. Not the same box you do your surfing, socials, banking and coding etc on. I think the intersection of people who can afford a rig for competitive online gaming but can't afford to keep it separate should be very small. Or at least put the gaming in an isolated Windows VM with GPU passthrough (fun times with anticheat). Git gud.
I wish I was good enough for competitive gaming. It’s just where my friends hang out - I shouldn’t need a separate machine/boot just to play games with friends
> Or at least put the gaming in an isolated Windows VM with GPU passthrough
> I shouldn’t need a separate machine/boot just to play games with friends
Yet here we are... It's not safe to trust a modern rootkitted Windows gaming setup with sensitive personal stuff and will become less so moving forward.
Your best bet is treating it like a console and do your real computing elsewhere.
For me, I (very rarely) boot into Windows for gaming. And I sometimes use a Windows 10 mini PC for Fusion 360 and Lightroom (because emulation is too slow).
