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Linux in the corporate space

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.

118 comments

  • Linux in corporation fails in multiple ways, the most prevalent is that people need to collaborate with others that use proprietary software such as MS Office that isn't available for Linux and the alternatives such as LibreOffice aren't just good enough. It all comes down to ROI, the cost of Windows/Office for a company is cheaper than the cost of dealing with the inconsistencies in format conversions, people who don't know how to use the alternative X etc etc. This issue is so common that companies usually also avoid Apple due to the same reason, while on macOS you've a LOT more professional software it is still very painful to deal with the small inconsistencies and whatnot.

    Linux desktop is great, I love it, but it gets it even worse than Apple, here some use cases that aren't easy to deal in Linux:

    • People who need the real MS Office because once you have to collaborate with others Open/Libre/OnlyOffice won’t cut it;
    • Designers who use Adobe apps that won’t run properly without having a dedicated GPU, passthrough and a some hacky way to get the image back into your main system that will cause noticeable delays. Who wants to deploy GPU passthroughs for others? Makes no sense;
    • People that run old software / games because not even those will run properly on Wine;
    • Electrical engineers: Circuit Design Suite (Multisim and Ultiboard) are primarily designed for Windows. Alternatives such as KiCad and EasyEDA may work in some cases but they aren’t great if you’ve to collaborate with others who use Circuit Design Suite;
    • Labs that require data acquisition from specialized hardware because companies making that hardware won’t make drivers and software for Linux;
    • Architects: AutoCAD isn’t available (not even the limited web version works) and Libre/FreeCAD don’t cut it if you’ve to collaborate with AutoCAD users;
    • Developers and sysadmins, because not everyone is using Docker and Github actions to deploy applications to some proprietary cloud solution. Finding a properly working FTP/SFTP/FTPS desktop client (similar WinSCP or Cyberduck) is an impossible task as the ones that exist fail even at basic tasks like dragging and dropping a file.

    If one lives in a bubble and doesn’t to collaborate with others then native Linux apps might work and might even deliver a decent workflow. Once collaboration with Windows/Mac users is required then it’s game over – the “alternatives” aren’t just up to it.

    Windows licenses are cheap and things work out of the box. Software runs fine, all vendors support whatever you’re trying to do and you’re productive from day zero. Sure, there are annoyances from time to time, but they’re way fewer and simpler to deal with than the hoops you’ve to go through to get a minimal and viable/productive Linux desktop experience. It all comes down to a question of how much time (days? months?) you want to spend fixing things on Linux that simply work out of the box under Windows for a minimal fee. Buy a Windows license and spend the time you would’ve spent dealing with Linux issues doing your actual job and you’ll, most likely, get a better ROI.

    From a more market / macro perspective here are some extra reasons:

    • Companies like blame someone when things go wrong, if they chose open-source there's isn't someone to sue then;
    • Buying proprietary stuff means you're outsourcing the risks of such product;
    • Corruption pushes for proprietary: they might be buying software that is made by someone that is close to the CTO, CEO or other decision marker in the company, an old friend, family or straight under the table corruption;
    • Most non-tech companies use services from consulting companies in order to get their software developed / running. Consulting companies often fall under the last point that besides that they have have large incentives from companies like Microsoft to push their proprietary services. For eg. Microsoft will easily provide all of a consulting companies employees with free Azure services, Office and other discounts if they enter in an exclusivity agreement to sell their tech stack. To make things worse consulting companies live of cheap developers (like interns) and Microsoft and their platform makes things easier for anyone to code and deploy;
    • Microsoft provider a cohesive ecosystem of products that integrate really well with each other and usually don't require much effort to get things going - open-source however, usually requires custom development and a ton of work to work out the "sharp angles" between multiple solutions that aren't related and might not be easily compatible with each other;
    • Open-source requires a level of expertise that more than half of the developers and IT professionals simply don't have. This aspect reinforces the last point even more. Senior open-source experts are more expensive than simply buying proprietary solutions;
    • If we consider the price of a senior open-source expert + software costs (usually free) the cost of open-source is considerable lower than the cost of cheap developers + proprietary solutions, however consider we are talking about companies. Companies will always prefer to hire more less expensive and less proficient people because that means they're easier to replace and you'll pay less taxes;
    • Companies will prefer to hire services from other companies instead of employees thus making proprietary vendors more compelling. This happens because from an accounting / investors perspective employees are bad and subscriptions are cool (less taxes, no responsibilities etc);
    • The companies who build proprietary solutions work really hard to get vendors to sell their software, they provide commissions, support and the promises that if anything goes wrong they'll be there. This increases the number of proprietary-only vendors which reinforces everything above. If you're starting to sell software or networking services there's little incentive for you to go pure "open-source". With less companies, less visibility, less professionals (and more expensive), less margins and less positive market image, less customers and lesser profits.

    Unfortunately things are really poised and rigged against open-source solutions and anyone who tries to push for them. The "experts" who work in consulting companies are part of this as they usually don't even know how to do things without the property solutions. Let me give you an example, once I had to work with E&Y, one of those big consulting companies, and I realized some awkward things while having conversations with both low level employees and partners / middle management, they weren't aware that there are alternatives most of the time. A manager of a digital transformation and cloud solutions team that started his career E&Y, wasn't aware that there was open-source alternatives to Google Workplace and Microsoft 365 for e-mail. I probed a TON around that and the guy, a software engineer with an university degree, didn't even know that was Postfix was and the history of email.

    • Lots of justification in this. Just be the change you want to see.

      I only work with libre formats at work. If someone wants to collaborate, they can easily install libre office or gimp or freecad or gnu cash or whatever. Most libre software is free and cross-platform.

      • I salute you. Not many that are willing to do so. Maybe because most people don't have very deep convictions on using FLOSS. It is easier to just do what everyone else does, after all.

      • You can't do whatever you want if you're an employee in a big enterprise, there are company-wide rules and standards that you have to respect, you can't expect your colleagues to adapt to you nor you can decide which OS to install on your company PC.

        That's not to say you can't use Linux at all, you can ask your IT to be allowed to install Virtualbox and use Linux in a VM, that's what I do, there are a lot of things that don't strictly require Windows and I use Linux for those.

      • I only work with libre formats at work. If someone wants to collaborate, they can easily install libre office or gimp or freecad or gnu cash or whatever. Most libre software is free and cross-platform.

        Okay so tell me, you're working on a budget with a potential customer that uses MS Office. You want to win that customer and do a big project for him, would you "bitch" about him about using MS Office and ask him to install LibreOffice whenever the spreadsheet formulas don't work properly?

        What if said potential customer is a big company with strict IT policies? What if the person can't even install software or is older and unable do it but very proficient with Excel?

        Are you willing to lose a potential big customer, a project that will pay your bills for months just because a boomer can't or won't be able to install LibreOffice?

    • I've been a sysadmin for years and I worked longer on Linux than I did on Windows.

      Many of your points are management bullshit. The proof? In France the gendarmerie (country police) moved to Linux about a decade ago.

      The thing with windows is usually that management want a whole solution out of the box, from a renowned editor, so basically Microsoft. The key point is that they want a contract with a company so they can discard the responsability of failures on someone out of their own company. The second feature is that they are boomers or anti-nerds, so they are never going to be seen using something on a computer that's not mainstream.

      The last problem is from Microsoft that worked hard these last years to remove any compatibility between office and other softwares of this kind. They also enshitified office365 very hard so that is doesn't work well on Linux.

      The question of the price is a fraud. Large companies need an it service for Windows on top of the licences and infrastructure. It's way cheaper with Linux. The biggest work with an enterprise Linux is to make it compatible with the shitty Windows environment, and the compliance with the useless security thought for windows.

      • Many of your points are management bullshit.

        Yes, they are and I never said they weren't management BS. Nevertheless management pays the bills, management makes the decision.

        The key point is that they want a contract with a company so they can discard the responsability of failures on someone out of their own company.

        You're just saying what I said before...

        The last problem is from Microsoft that worked hard these last years to remove any compatibility between office and other softwares of this kind

        Yes, but the end result is that nobody sane would even risk not using MS Office and that's what it is.

        Large companies need an it service for Windows on top of the licences and infrastructure. It’s way cheaper with Linux.

        It depends, integration between MS products and services usually comes out of the box or working with minimal setup while with open-source solutions / Linux that isn't always the case. Also Windows sysadmins are usually cheaper because you can get more and they require less training to be "efficient" than Linux ones.

        The biggest work with an enterprise Linux is to make it compatible with the shitty Windows environment, and the compliance with the useless security thought for windows.

        Yes but you still have do it and it has a cost. Simply going full Windows is cheaper at that point.

    • Well thought out post and largely true.

      As a small counterpoint, I am supposed to use Windows at work but I use Linux. I would say that I am a “very heavy” but intermediate Microsoft Office user. That is, while I am not expert level in Office, I have to create and consume multiple documents per day. I give ( or submit ) several PowerPoints per week. These typically use templates supplied by Marketing or others. I create and consume multiple Excel files daily which almost always have multiple worksheets. I must admit that I have gotten authoring Word files down to maybe one per week but I open 3 a day at least.

      Of course, I do not actually use Microsoft Office most of the time. Most of the above is in LibreOffice. I spend a tonne of my day in Outlook which I use in a browser ( Office 365 ). If I am opening a document from an email, it will often open in Office 365 online ( in my browser in Linux ). So do I use Microsoft Office quite a bit but rarely author anything there. While I prefer Firefox, I use Microsoft Edge on Linux and most often that is where I have Outlook open. Sadly, I have at least 3 to 4 Microsoft Teams meetings a day. Teams and GoToMeeting are why I started using Edge. It is just a nicer workflow if Teams and Outlook are in the same browser.

      Anyway, I have very little problem exchanging documents. I had to switch to default fonts that Windows users will have of course but that was long ago now. So, I would not say that “alternatives such as LibreOffice aren’t just good enough” is a fair assessment for everybody. If I was an expert user in any one app ( in Finance maybe ) I could see this being true but I bet most office workers could use LibreOffice just fine these days.

      Outside of Office, most of what I use are web applications which work just as well on Linux. I use containers a lot and they work better on Linux. Linux is quite bit snappier on the same hardware.

      I am just a datapoint though and the issues you raise are real. I would perhaps just be less absolute about it. Trying Linux can still make sense. Also, you can try LibreOffice on Windows before jumping all the way to Linux.

      • I have very little problem exchanging documents

        Yes but you still have some little annoyances here and there. Is it worth having to fight your software to get your job done? Isn't just easier and more productive to use MS Office (ROI described above and whatnot).

        Teams and GoToMeeting are why I started using Edge. It is just a nicer workflow if Teams and Outlook are in the same browser.

        See this is what most people feel about Office, its just nicer to use the Microsoft thing and not ever having to worry about anything.

        While I agree that for some people LibreOffice might work, there's the following simple test:

    • You lost me at developers. Hard disagree.

      For what it's worth, my company issues macs by default, but allows Linux or Windows if you request it. We just use Google Suite. Zero problems collaborating, and I work in a customer facing role.

    • i mostly agree except its leagues ahead for sysadmins and devs, it isnt even a contest. to counter your specific example, filezilla works great. i havent used a tool for this specific niche on linux that wasnt much better.

      affinity photo is great on linux too if you are not too stuck with adobe. cant say much about other usecases you mentioned.

      also wine runs old software better than windows in some cases. i have better luck with it on linux. funnily enough old linux software is a pain on linux in the rare situations where i need it.

      • funnily enough old linux software is a pain on linux in the rare situations where i need it.

        Oh yes ahaha

  • In two of my previous jobs (I'm a software engineer) I could officially install any Linux distro to the company laptop (which I did of course) fully replacing the wintoys. Could use the machine as I liked, no corporate mandated BS spyware or anything. On of the provides a SaaS product and used Linux server/virtual machines. Otherwise it was mostly MS bits + sprinkle a little Atlanssian horrors to it.

    Unfortunately in my current job I'm limited a VirtualBox Linux running a corporate restricted wintoys machine in a MS environment. A long for the days when I was more productive with my Linux installation.

    It's just sad and funny how corporate world is that MS products it has to be (because reasons).

    • I was stuck in MacOS hell for some time. Now I won't accept jobs that mandate an OS for devs. It's either free choice, or I'm gone. Fuck that noise.

      Was also in a company where Linux in a VM was the only option because it was a windows shop. Glad I quit that.

      May the virtualized penguin bestow you with strength!

      CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

    • i'm stuck with windows, but i moved everything inside WSL... so at least vscode it's on Linux.

      i'm a heavy multitasker used to tiling WMs, multiple desktops on windows is torture.

    • I could officially install any Linux distro to the company laptop (which I did of course) fully replacing the wintoys. Could use the machine as I liked, no corporate mandated BS spyware or anything.

      Yes, and when the company gets hacked they can sue you for not keeping "your" computer secure enough. When I started my career on the field I also had those ideias that companies are evil and want to spy on everyone and enforce stupid policies on computer and whatnot.

      Eventually I moved to heavily restricted environments where once you see what's going on there you simply wouldn't even open WhatsApp on that machine, let alone surf unknown websites. You wouldn't do it not because the fear of being monitored but by the amount of liability you would be exposing yourself if you did. Trust me, the company isn't bad, predatory but at a certain level you simply think twice. In fact they even reconize that people might want to surf random websites or use some personal accounts and provide a secure virtualized extra browser (restricted from the internal network) but still no way in hell people even think about using it for something so simple such as WhatsApp.

      To be fair, this way of thinking might be the best. Just assume people will want to have a personal messaging app, email or whatever on the side and deploy some virtualized / restricted local or remote solution so they can do it without creating risks for themselves or to the company. At least this way you're still under control and people wouldn't be trying to bypass your security everyday...

      • Yes, and when the company gets hacked they can sue you for not keeping “your” computer secure enough.

        Sounds very American point-of-view. Installation and usage was officially sanctioned. Most developers in both companies preferred to use Linux, some used Macs, wintoys users were a minority. Neither company had any super restrictive corporate BS on their wintoys installation. Neither company is based in the Americas. Both are local companies in the EU.

      • This. Linux Management is a thing and needs to be more implemented. Immutable Distros and more can help here, and should totally be used.

  • While I'm told such places exist, I have yet to knowingly interact with a business officially doing this for employee computers.

  • 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.

    Scientists, HPC.

  • From what I've heard, it's more common in Europe and parts of Asia. I've personally never seen significant Linux use of any kind in the IT environments I work in, sadly.

    It's all Microsoft product stacks, the servers, the endpoints, the cloud environment, all MS. Sometimes their Hypervisor would be VMWare, and their NAS was a Synology. But other than that, basically all Microsoft garbage.

    I did work at one place that had a fair bit of Linux infrastructure. The lead network architect was a hardcore Linux/FOSS grognard. Really smart guy and was fantastic at his job, I learned a lot from him. But the only reason that company had Linux servers and a few FOSS implementations was because that guy insisted on it and managed all of it himself.

    I also worked at another place where one of the older IT guys had installed a handful of SUSE thin clients at various locations for employees to clock in with. But right after I started there, management wanted me to switch them out for Windows thin clients. I pushed back but they insisted, so there went the tiny bit of Linux at that company.

  • I have only ever used Linux at work. I tried amacbookd once, then switched back to Linux.

    • Honestly I deal with a lot of windows environments but I just run Windows VMs for everything.

      KVM and Virtio or great

  • 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'm lucky enough to be in a company where Windows is banned by the CEO. Granted, there are 4 (I believe) exceptions, but the vast majority of employees have an Ubuntu workstation and everyone has a macbook. A bit of a shame this macbook thing, really. A 2 grand thin client to ssh into my desktop when working remotely :D

    The exceptions being client testing envs.

  • I work in cyber security. Loads of businesses will do all the cybersecurity stuff using a combination of tools on Azure and security OS's like Kali and Parrot.

  • Anecdotally and perhaps of interest, my current workplace uses a regular Dell PC running lightly customised 10-year-old OpenSUSE. It's a UI control interface for a large machine

    Because the machine's expensive and production-critical, the PC isn't allowed to be connected to any networks (security airgap). It's sort of the antithesis of most corporate Linux usage: constantly online servers that do very little direct user interface

  • I use Linux at the office. I'm the only employee at my company who does.

    I haven't had many issues collaborating with others using libreoffice while they use MS office. I do keep a Windows VM running for those somewhat rare instances where I need Windows for something though. I also needed to invest quite some time to figure out Linux alternatives for everything (how to use company VPN, how to get MS Teams working, how to connect to network drives, etc).

    But so far so good. Been 100% Linux at work for maybe ~1.5 years?

    • you should keep a list and tell management how much software costs youre saving and how that can be scaled for every employee

  • I think there are a few small companies that use it. Additionally it is used by some developers.

  • At our office (and probably in many) the developers mostly use Linux and the other people often use windows for Microsoft stuff like Word, Excel, and other windows specific software. We can't really choose, everyone is forced to use Linux for development so we all have a more or less the same environment

  • The next job offer I will accept needs to have free choice of OS. I work with Linux systems and Kubernetes only, no Winshit but I am forced to use this shitty piece of crap of software. It is slow,buggy and clumsy as hell - maybe because of all the corporate software stuff and GPOs, the only office tools I need are outlook and teams, no word or excel but you cannot remove all the other stuff afaik. Updating is hell because it is controlled by our IT department, sometimes my laptop needs 3 restarts or is stuck in a boot loop. Just let me support myself and let me install some Linux flavor. Don’t need any support from corporate it besides vpn connection. Really fuck companies forcing *nix guys using windows. I know that for sure now. Never again.

  • 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?

  • companies that do IC design, do it under linux. traditionally they were using proprietary unixes, but today it is mostly linux and redhat or compatible systems.

    engineers are using rhel workstations from dell and hp that are supported by vendors to work under linux: let's say bios updates are possible to run from within linux.

    their whole workflow depends on unix with many custom scripts (shell, perl, tcl) and simulations, usage of shared filesystems, and even x forwarding.

    afaik IT departments in such companies aren't happy to support linux workstations and the trend is to move the workflew to linux servers and let the engineers to connect to those via ssh, vnc or x or commercial solutions like 'citrix'.

    my understanding is also that companies design some requirrments, though maybe based on what is available on the market, and love to have support and solutions that are integrated with each other. microsoft still has everybody hooked up, their 'active directory' feels to IT people necessary, they also use microsoft's disk encryption, and/or third party windows software which encrypts everything written to usb flash drives to prevent leakage of what they call 'intellectual property'.

    it is of course possible to do luks encryption of linux disk drives, but afaik rhel doesn't support it, or rhel versions these companies tend to use, since they tend to use very outdated systems, even eol unsupported systems, because 'customers still use those'.

    i am also not aware of linux versions of those draconian services that encrypt everything that gets written to the flash drives, or that monitor/control computer usage, web requests, etc, so companies are interested to concentrate unix systems in data centers and get rid of linux end user workstations because these require custom approaches or draconian control software is not available, while windows users can be controlled better, with available corporate solutions.

118 comments