Any Tipps on how to do that in a business environment? Preferably from people who are actually using Linux in a professional environment? I’m using Linux at home for more than a decade now, and I don’t miss Windows at all, but transforming a smallish company to use Linux in a way that is remotely as comfortable as the Windows stuff seems impossible for now. I need to find solutions that don’t make it harder for our staff to get their work done, because they are busy enough with actual work.
Simply replacing MS Office with LibreOffice and Nextcloud for example does not cut it. The tight integration of MS Teams, Office and Cloud functionality is seen as a huge benefit there and I can’t just take that away from them unless I find a combination of tools that work in a similar fashion. Using Google products instead is obviously not a viable alternative. Every cloud based solution I have found so far is underwhelming at best and lacks a good integration.
Serious answers appreciated.
As it stands Linux isn’t really viable in a business environment. You can make it work but it will involve lots of pain and suffering along with toms of custom scripts and configurations.
It is great for servers but Linux desktops are hard to manage and are unfamiliar to most folks.
With that being said, supposedly fleetdm can manage Linux devices
It’s easier than you think to try out on dual boot. You can also run your windows apps through a virtual machine!
Is dual boot a good way to ease yourself in? I literally just made a new nvme partition to try a dual boot
Don’t do it on a machine that holds valuable data or one that you need the machine to stay functional for work. I repeatedly fucked up my installation trying to get dual boot setup initially. Bootloader are easy to mess up. Even on a working installation, a Windows update would sometimes break the dual boot.
Its not difficult to set up a virtual machine inside your Linux installation. That way you don’t have to reboot and lose your other workflow to access your windows apps.
If you can, dual boot by having each OS on a separate physical drive.
Or if you make two efi partitions, one for Linux and one that Windows uses. Then use the Probe Foreign OS in Linux to make a chainloader entry to windows. Set Linux as UEFI bootloader. Windows doesn’t know about the other partitions and leaves them alone.
And then fuck it up by pointing Linux at your windows EFI partition, end up with neither system bootable and make things worse as you panic and try to rush a fix without understanding what you’re doing.
If you’re new to how it all works and having a working machine is important, best to keep it simple and as separated as you can.
I’m also not convinced that “Windows doesn’t know about the other partitions”, that sounds like the kind of thing that’s true until it isn’t and it overwrites your Linux bootloader.
Or just run a live disc.
It is so easy for everyone to just answer this question for themselves rather than read articles about it. And it takes about the same amount of time and effort.
With Linux, I can change just about everything. If I want a real-time kernel, I can switch. If I want a different desktop environment, change. If I want more control from my keyboard, Linux has my back.
As much as I agree with the sentiment of the article, this is a terrible reason and more likely to scare people away from Linux rather than get them to install it.
If you know what a “real-time kernel” is, you’re probably already using Linux and you are a highly technically literate user. Any “normal person” user is going to look at that and think “Oh, I guess I need to understand technobabble in order to use Linux”. Normal users care about easy, preset defaults, not customization.
Once again, Linux adoption is kneecapped by its own users, who forget what normal people really care about.
Linux adoption is kneecapped by its own users, who forget what normal people really care about.
Yep. My primary goal has always been: ‘It just works’. I’m fairly techy, but I don’t want to fix shit constantly.
What finally got me to switch was Windows no longer ‘just working’. Every update was another assault that required active effort on my part. PiHole, debloating, O&O Shutup, etc, etc. This coupled with Steam bringing Linux gaming into the prime-time, means the OS that most resembles ‘is just works’ is no longer Windows.
For most users, Linux just works. That is the angle that should be pushed. Particularly right now there is a massive opportunity to swap your family members over. No reason for Gran to throw away her facebook machine just because it doesn’t like Windows 11. Throw Mint on there, point her to the Firefox icon, and she is good to go!
I just wish games worked fine on Linux.
What games? Because a lot of games do work fine, maybe even most of them. The problem is that the outliers are often games that a lot of people are playing (see https://areweanticheatyet.com/). Those games are usually not my cup of tea anyways.
The two I tried recently that were problematic were wow and last epoch.
Allegedly they both work fine. They don’t though.
I’m usually playing steam games, and I often will find a solution to make it work on protondb if I have issues. Most of my games I can just install and run though. But I understand it being frustrating if your favourite games don’t work or require lots of tinkering. I have played a few older games outside steam as well. I usually use Bottles for that, as it creates a wine prefix for me that’s set up with DXVK, etc out of the box.
They do
I’ve read people saying this here on lemmy often.
But it really hasn’t been my experience at all with very few exceptions.
Good news, an overwhelming majority does work fine, and a significant number of those actually run better than on windows. I just switched to Linux on my desktop pc (because of win 10 EOL and because fuck microsoft) and I’m amazed how smooth the experience has been.
I read people online saying this often. But I’ve neve been able to play things without hiccups on Linux before.
With very very few exceptions.
One of the biggest things keeping me from jumping into Linux as my primary OS is because of nvidia’s performance issues, particularly with DX12 games on Linux. I’d be taking like a 10%-30% performance hit. I know the games will “run” but I want them to run well, that’s why I spend so much money on my GPU.
Linux doesn’t really have better security. It is actually worse from a purely security perspective.
The key difference is privacy and freedom. A high security prison might be secure but you probably don’t want to be there.
Why worse?
Not OP but - Windows is being bombarded by malware every second of every day. Linux, with its 6% of desktop user market share - not so much. This kinda’ guarantees Windows has a pretty good resilience (these days).
On top of that - in Linux you can change/break anything, which means bad actors could have you run malware by posting “helpful” comments on help threads. You know, “just run this .sh with
sudo”.Then you have situations like Arch has been going through - DDOS attacks on official repos and malware injected into a couple of packages in AUR. Sure, it got caught - but how many users installed the malware? How many other packages are under less scrutiny and are still serving malware in AUR?
And, I’m certain, someone out there is reading this and preparing to write a hot take on how “AUR is what it is, you’re not supposed to blindly install stuff from it” - but that’s exactly the problem. Because 99% of users have no clue what they’re doing.
Thanks for the summary!
Windows is being bombarded by malware every second of every day. Linux, with its 6% of desktop user market share - not so much.
Linux dominates the server space. Basically any company with access to lots of capital or trade secrets is running Linux servers. It is a massive, massive opportunity for hackers to hit jackpots. Linux gets bombarded by attackers constantly and holds steadfast. I’m not sure where you get this idea that this isn’t the case…
Edit: Just to really drive this point home, 65% of Microsoft Azure servers are Linux. Let that sink in, the majority of even Microsoft’s cloud servers are Linux. That is the one company you would think would be pushing Windows, yet here they are talking about their high quality Linux offerings!
“With over 65% of Azure workloads running Linux, our commitment to delivering high-quality Linux VM images and platforms remains unwavering.” - Microsoft
Linux dominates the server space
But the discussion is about user-space. Not everything from server-Linux translates 1:1 into desktop-Linux.
For example, there are no anti social engineering security measures in Linux. Just
sudoand break anything and everything. Whereas on Windows, if you try doing something stupid, most probably Windows won’t let you, or will at least make you jump through some hoops.There are no anti social engineering security measurements in Linux, for instance. Just sodo and break anything and everything.
Windows gives you a UAC prompt or needs one to run a cmd prompt as admin, both of which are functionally the same as sudo…
Windows is being bombarded by malware every second of every day. Linux, with its 6% of desktop user market share - not so much.
But, to circle back to the core statement. Yes it is. And Linux holds steadfast.
They’re very much not, that’s the point. There are things that require the
NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEMaccount permissions. Admin can do a lot in Windows, but not everything.EDIT: also, Windows throws the UAC prompt around much less than Linux asks for the root permissions. ANY software update on Linux needs root. Even regular users are starting to get that if they see the UAC prompt, something big is about to happen.
You do have a point—Linux does not warn users against running superuser commands constantly and naggingly. Also not the beginner-friendly distros like Zorin, Mint and Ubuntu (as far as I know).
To me that’s fine, because I know not to just run any command, but my grandma who gets an email from a trustworthy-sounding person telling them to run “sudo install this keyboard logger and Rustdesk scripted installer” will not know better.
So then that begs the question, given you seem to know something about it: how should this be addressed? (I assume you know something about this—I don’t even know what an UAC prompt is.)
On the other hand: How does Windows stop users from running the .exe file a trustworthy-sounding person emailed them? You could argue that’s easier to ask people to do than to open the terminal and write a command in there.
The computer savvy folks don’t need to be reminded. The non savvy folks who don’t have time to learn Linux are stuck with windows/apple.
Many tech-savvy people just haven’t made the switch to Linux - often out of convenience rather than capability. Focusing on broader adoption first could make it easier to introduce Linux to less technical users later.
still have game holdouts that need windows, waiting until they are dropped by the friend group
Yeah I’ve only switched two of the 20 I need to do. It’ll probably be months after Win10 loses support before I get it all done.
The first one (MS account) is so weird to me…
I mean, I get it, people are just allergic to “anything MS”, but it’s just silly.
Set up a “burner” MS account. Use it to set up the OS, get your BitLocker recovery key and the OS license backed up automatically for easy use. Create your regular local account, switch, remove admin rights from the MS account, never use it again.
Job done, problem solved.
The third one (better performance) is disingenuous. Better performance… where? On what hardware? Nvidia drivers are notorious for causing issues. Many games, even on Proton, run like crap or just… don’t run.
The last one, security, is also a bad reason. Linux is not inherently more secure than Windows, it’s just less attacked due to a lower desktop market share. What Linux does have, however, is that it’s massively easier to break by a clueless user, especially when following online advice when something isn’t working - and that’s going to be a common occurrence, especially with freshly-switched newbies. Windows will prevent noobs from breaking or exposing a lot of stuff.
The urban legend that Linux is more secure than Windows needs to die.
I’m always amused at the hoops that some Windows users will jump through in a vain attempt to sidestep Microsoft’s telemetry and surveillance—rather than just using an OS that respects your privacy to begin with. It’s gotta be Stockholm syndrome or something.
It’s the nvidia performance issues that keep me on Windows. I’d love to use an operating system that values and respects my privacy. But I’m not willing to take a large gaming performance hit to do it. That day this gets fixed I am dropping Windows and never looking back.
I’m always amused at people just randomly talking about telemetry (without understanding what it is), even unprompted.
Pray tell, why did you feel the need to say it, especially say it this way? I never mentioned anything about telemetry in the first place…
Oh, wait! Do you believe that the existence of an MS account on your device changes something related to telemetry…?
I mentioned telemetry because Windows (by default) regularly shares information collected from your computer with Microsoft. Some people try to work around that when they could instead invest that time elsewhere (say, installing Linux).
Yes, it does, but telemetry is not what people think it is.
Remember how Microsoft regularly kills those “cool features” for “no reason at all”? That’s because those that use them have telemetry blocked, so - from MS point of view - it seems like nobody is using them. Why waste dev time on something that nobody uses?
That’s telemetry. It’s anonymous. It tells them which parts of the OS work, which cause issues, which features are utilised, which aren’t. It’s not spying, it’s diagnostics.
- You’re trusting Microsoft’s word that telemetry is anonymous, because you can’t inspect the Windows source code to find out what they’re actually sending.
- Microsoft’s word isn’t worth very much, especially on the topic of privacy.
You’re trusting Microsoft’s word that telemetry is anonymous
Do you honestly and truly believe that nobody has ever analysed these packets? That nobody in any security position, especially in business, has ever checked if sensitive information wasn’t being transmitted? That the entire IT and Data Security world just goes “huh, I guess they’re spying on us, nothing we can do about it”?
Microsoft’s word isn’t worth very much:
Microsoft doesn’t publish detailed breakdowns of telemetry collection, which is a red flag in itself
especially on the topic
Oh yeah, Recall, the absolutely horrible… ummm… *checks notes* fully local and encrypted system… That isn’t even implemented yet… but when it is, you’ll need to manually turn it on…
Yeah, truly, the death of privacy is upon us.
of privacy
Have you read the article you linked?
I’m always amazed at the hoops some home owners will go through in a vain attempt to renovate an existing bathroom in their house, rather than just burning their house down and building a new one from scratch. It’s gotta be Stockholm syndrome or something.
Despite it being literally the biggest barrier brought up anytime someone suggests people should switch to Linux, it’s like you guys just can’t seem to get it through your head that literally 99.9% of PC users lack the technical knowledge needed to make the switch and find the amount of time and effort needed to learn how intimidating to the point that, yes, those “hoops” you mention are actually the easier option.
5 reasons you should not ditch Windows:
-
Your hardware is incompatible or you do not want to fiddle with settings or command lines
-
Your applications/games only work well on native Windows (and not wine)
-
You need serious group policy support or other device/software lockdown methods
-
Your company policy requires it
-
Makes helping Windows users harder if you cannot walk them through the same things they are doing
Of course if any of these apply you can always dual-boot or use a VM. I’m not saying you shouldn’t use Linux at all.
you do not want to fiddle with settings or command lines
Kinda the reverse for me
I need to fiddle with Massgrave and various debloat scripts to run win
Your applications/games only work well on native Windows
Windows for docker, winboat, etc
serious group policy support or other device/software lockdown methods
I would argue sudo and normal file permissions do the same
Makes helping Windows users harder
???
-
The only thing holding me back at this point is a thin thread called my favorite game only supports and requires anti-cheat on Windows. :(
And money but hopefully that’ll solve itself soon.
Money is stopping you from using Linux? What does that mean?
You see Linux is free so what will you spend your money on?
It means that I need more storage space to do what I want to do
Real-time Kernel?
Like my popcorn?
Desktop environment
Jimmy I work in an office. What are you talking about?
- Your average Windows user… Probably.
Security: Linux doesn’t need antivirus, just don’t install infected software. Riiiight? Sorry, but this is silly.
Centrally managed repositories help a lot, here. Linux users tend not to download random software off of sketchy websites; it’s all installed and kept up to date via the package manager.
Yes, Linux malware and viruses exist, and we shouldn’t pretend otherwise. The usual reason for installing Linux virus scanners is because you’re hosting a file/email server, and you want to keep infected files away from Windows users, tho.
Linux users tend not to download random software off of sketchy websites; it’s all installed and kept up to date via the package manager.
No experienced/power users do that. Those are who just so happen to install Linux.
If you want Linux for everyone then you will get the users who will install anything, and you need a way to keep them reasonably safe.
To me, that’s the same as “Five reasons not to invite a renowned scammer and con artist into your home”. Unfortunately, my work colleagues think its normal and what else can they do but shrug.
i worked in a specific financial subindustry and the three software packages that were the best in the industry were not supported on linux (i did not test with WINE). the only software package that had linux support was absolutely awful. interface designed by business majors, not industry specialists.
i wish it were easy to work on linux, but hoping doesn’t get them to change.
I am in a similar situation but in healthcare. Nothing save as the web-front ends are any use in linux. Some information systems are built on linux, but we need a Windows machine to use them, Hopefully the slow European gentle tilt to FOSS might help.
