Linux Sys Admins, do you work on Linux or Windows office laptops?

Psyhackological@lemmy.ml to Linux@lemmy.ml – 130 points –

I'm getting sick every day at this Microsoft Windows slowness and bloat. I am trying to use as much Linux VMs as possible. I feel so unproductive on Windows. I also tried installing Linux on the office laptop. The problem is that Windows is officialy supported and the Linux is DYI. Once the IT departament changes it will sync up with Windows but Linux can be broken and you are no longer able to work. Next job I want to have full Linux laptop or at least Mac.

Besides:

  • Microsoft Office
  • Active Directory
  • Some proxy and VPN bullshit

Everything seems manageable and even better on Linux.

What is your experience?

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Same here. I really really tried with WSL but the experience is miserable.

Swapped to MacOS and like night and day. I'd be perfectly happy with a £300 linux laptop though.

What about the experience is miserable? I’m just curious as I really like it.

Yeah, I do all my development in WSL2 (Ubuntu) at work every day. I use VSCode on the Windows 11 host. It’s great!

Would I prefer to use Linux natively? Sure, but I also have to support some Windows-only legacy code and a D365 environment or two, so Windows makes sense.

I am happy with WSL as well. I don’t try to get Linux GUI running.

I use vscode remote ssh session. I run docker natively on Linux, not on windows.

The trick is to get DBUS services running in whatever flavor of Linux you install. Don’t try running a full UI session.

The biggest problem I have on Linux is time drift after laptop goes to sleep. it is easy to deal with manually.

Do you have a guide that makes this possible?

And what do you mean by using vscode remote ssh session? Does this vscode instance is started from the WSL via some kind of ssh- Y?

Vscode is installed on windows. Then you install vscode ssh plugin from Microsoft and open ssh connection from vscode to any Linux including WSL hosted Linux.

Yeah, it is slow in the end, not native, many things to configure (like proxies) and so on...

Great! Was it hard also to switch to MacOS as a Linux user for work?

I actually run away from Mac. Mac OS X is long time as not Linux.

WSL is a way better option than whatever VM option is on Mac.