I made this post because I am really curious if Linux is used in offices and educational centres like schools.
While we all know Windows is the mac-daddy in the business space, are there any businesses you know or workplaces that actually Linux as a business replacement for Windows?
I.e. Mint or Ubuntu, I am not strictly talking about the server side of things.
end users of any type don’t use linux because of a mixture because that’s what they’re used to using; but end users can’t do shit w/o the service backbones which are dominated by linux and depended upon by end users.
Linux the past 15 years across 4 different companies. CentOS, Ubuntu, then Arch. Now I’m stuck with MacOS, and it’s worse in every single way except laptop battery life of the M2. Which, is nice when moving around. I’d still prefer a more powerful desktop computer since I’m 99% of time time in one of two places.
We use Ubuntu at my work. Custom built image PXE booted so every restart is fresh. Has its pros and cons. Libre office does a decent job at replacing Office but we use Google workspace so most users are moving off local files. 90% of our users work could be done entirely through a Web browser so OS doesn’t really matter as much any more.
We use windows at my work (I’ve been using Linux for 2 decades on home computer). I’m trying to migrate our work CPUs to Linux but the biggest road block is my unfamiliarity with librecad, I’m used to autocad. I use cad command line a lot and it’s hard to live without auto suggest commands. Libre has the capability but it’s very rough and not mature.
When I worked in VFX it was mostly Scientific Linux. A few macs were around for concept artists using Photoshop, and editorial using a proprietary video codec with Final Cut. Most business folks (in vfx called “coordinators” and “producers”) used tools that were web-based and cross platform (for example, Autodesk Shotgrid, Confluence, and Jira). A lot of internal development is done in Python so no worries there, either.
In game dev unfortunately it’s exclusively Windows. If you bring up even using os.path.join, instead of hardcoding \ into paths, devs who have never worked in another OS look at you like some sort of paranoid maniac.
Several years back, I was 100% Windows based, and only knew Linux from the web hosting scene and running VPS Systems. I landed my current job which uses 100% Linux based OS’s on their customer’s equipment and software, Since then, I’ve gained a mountain of knowledge in the Linux admin and user space to feel comfortable enough to use it full time 100% in my household and administer it.
I think you would be surprised to see Linux more widespread out there, for example, a Raspberry Pi running Raspbian out in the wild mid reboot on signage or other displays, or being part of the brain boxes in industrial machinery. Then of course, - if you have an Android phone - well…that’s a form of Linux as well. :)
I know some schools in my country use their own linux distribution on pair with windows. And my organization has also their own linux distribution but it is barely used really. I dont know anyone who uses it, but I do know it exists.
25 years ago I worked at a university computer lab that was Windows-heavy because Dell wouldn’t stop donating PCs. However we didn’t have enough UNIX workstations as we had to pay for Sun / HP / IBM out of pocket. Converting them to Linux workstations would be nice because the Dells had more grunt than the aging RISC workstations.
I proposed to switch a few desks worth to Debian and was given the go-ahead. After a few days learning how to preseed an installation image and getting a PXE server going I had 8 machines running CDE just like the AIX and HP/UX boxes. Users that didn’t need one of the commercial engineering applications tied to one OS or another didn’t notice any difference between the free (now as in both speech and beer) Dells and the proprietary workstations.
A couple of months after we got the pilot rolling, the university’s IT director came to check it out and told me we’re on the “lunatic fringe” for deploying an OS developed by volunteers, but otherwise offered approval as long as we could maintain security and availability.
Now every student in our local school district gets issued a Chromebook running Linux under the hood. Who’s the lunatic now?
There was an interview with Dreamworks ( i think that was the Animation house) they use linux for everything.
In engineering CAD and large manufacturing corporations RHEL and SUSE are the two certified distros for running Teamcenter Product Lifecycle Management softare and Siemens NX CAD/CAM/FEA software (up to version 12) it is a smaller market than Windows versions, but probably took the place of the original unix versions prior to 2000
Any web hosting company will use Linux for all servers, and many developers will use it as their workstation as they tire of kludging together dev environments in windows. The devops engineers will most certainly be on Linux as that is where their tool chains live.
There are government agencies that use Linux exclusively. The DoD used to have a mandate to use oss. I’m not sure if it is still the case.
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