Yes, the company OS policy doesn’t specify which OS to use as long as it actively supported and the security tooling can be installed.

I don’t work at an office, but at a bicycle workshop. We just have the one computer at the frontdesk to register sales and new memberships (we’re a non-profit association). So the PC doesn’t have TPM 2.0 so I convinced the board to install linux on it, since it’s a security risk to keep using Windows after it’s going to be discontinued. But that wasn’t easy ! Especially because one of the board member is an Apple fanboy and keep saying things like: “If it’s free, it’s probably not very good”. :[

I started unplugging the Ethernet cable when I leave for work so IT can’t do any behind the scenes when I’m away.

It’s not your computer, why do you care?

All that’s going to do is make you an annoyance and potentially end up with you being called into a special meeting.

The smb server is Linux, my desktop is Linux.

The office workers use a debloated Windows 11.

I installed pihole at the same time as the server swapped from Windows to Linux, so now they believe the Linux server magically sped up the Internet.

Convince?

Im a software dev. If you don’t use linux or macos youre a weirdo

Most places I’ve been at have only OS restrictions when the corporate IT doesn’t support it. To be honest, while not perfect, WSL on Windows is great.

I used to work at a place where it was just a small operation of us three in the IT dept. helpdesk goon me, network engineer, and IT boss. I wanted more experience on Linux in a corporate environment. IT boss saw this as a learning opportunity and gave the green light so I switch my machine over.

Then network guy switched. IT boss thought this was fine too. “We learn some lessons the hard way” he mused.

This lasted several weeks and we had basically no issues. We were actually more productive than he was. He eventually was getting frustrated this little experiment of his wasn’t going the way he wanted and mandated we “had to use windows because our customers were using windows.”

We switched back. Everything went back to shit but it was familiar shit so he was fine with it.

I brought in an old surface pro X and used it. Technically still complying and it did help us figure out some issues some of our other ARM based customers had. Any it worked better than the shitty dells we were given.

To me it’s the opposite, my boss (and owner of the company) is frustrated that we cannot install linux due to some technical requirements. It is possible to change that, but this will require reshaping of the entire work process

I didn’t need to.

Once I had to write a utility and made sure it works on other OSes except GNU/Linux. The CTO asked in review why doing so? I explained, he said no, make it Linux only, if somebody needs to use it, they will have to install Linux then use it.

Something I appreciate about that place till this day.

In a large organization, IT team/Organization policy will never allow to let you use Linux as your OS unless it is required for project or mandated by client.

With ransomware attacks on ever rise, IT will always try to control all aspects of your office laptop/desktop. As they think they got it sorted for Windows, they will fight tooth and nail if you ever submit it ticket to get your OS replaced with Linux without project requirements.

In my view, as long as I’m allowed to install whatever on my personal devices even while working from home, I’m fine.

Office devices aren’t really my property. For me, Windows during office hours, and Linux thereafter.

Not so much convinced as in that I always just installed Linux, period, and then proceeded to do everything I was told I wasn’t going to be able to do on linux

At my current job they asked what OS I wanted for my laptop and Linux was an option. I do have a Windows desktop at the office that I remote to that needs to be Windows for technical reasons, but my main device is Linux.

At my job before this I worked for one year on my own Linux laptop, until one day I asked for a laptop lent temporarily because I was going to travel and my wife needed mine, and it had to be Windows. I never minded much because it was temporary, but when I came back I was told that I was supposed to always have been using a Windows machine and that I shouldn’t use a Linux machine anymore (even though our product was a website deployed to Linux servers). That was one of the reasons I eventually took another job, not the main one, but an important one nevertheless.

Before that the company also offered Linux.

And before that it was a very small company when all of the owners were software engineer guys using Linux themselves. I remember one day we were discussing OS and someone said “can we take a moment to recognize we’ve been talking about this for 15 minutes and no one even considered Windows as an option”.

I started unplugging the Ethernet cable when I leave for work so IT can’t do any behind the scenes when I’m away.

Speaking as an IT guy, don’t do this. Its not your computer, and it’s our job to manage it. If you don’t like the company’s policies go work somewhere else. This is how you get my boss to call your boss into a meeting.

I work for a big enterprise, we have very strict policies when it comes to work PCs, no way anyone would be allowed to change the operating system.

BUT I got permission to install Virtualbox so I can happily use Linux for many things nonetheless.

My work allows RHEL, but it’s a specialized configuration that doesn’t get updated very often. I tried it for a while but it was so out of date that I couldn’t build half the tools I needed, so I ended up switching back to Windows. It was about 10-15 years ago when the C++ standard was undergoing a lot of changes, and the company-approved version of GCC was several years old and didn’t support any of the newest features.