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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Asking for a Linux (or non-Windows) laptop during a job interview? (self.linux)

submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by flakpanzer to c/[email protected]

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I'm interviewing for a software dev job currently (it's in the initial stages). If things work out, I'd absolutely prefer a work laptop with Linux installed (I personally use PopOS but any distro will do), a Mac will be second choice, but I absolutely cannot tolerate Windows, I abhor it, I hate it... (If all computers left on earth have Windows I'd either quit this field or just quit Earth).

Sometimes it's possible to tell if they use Windows or not, for example, jobs with dotnet/C# are most likely using windows, but not in my case.

Anyways, is it too weird to ask what kind of laptop they provide to their employees? And to also specifically ask for a Linux (or anything but windows) work laptop?

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[–] lightnegative 15 points 9 months ago (2 children)

In my experience most non-Microsoft organisations use Mac's for development but deploy to Linux in production.

It's rather insane because this of course creates lots of subtle differences between Dev and prod, although not as many as if dev was a Windows box.

To answer your question though - just ask in the interview what the deal is so you know what you're in for.

If you deviate from the norm (i.e request a Linux box when everyone else is using MacOS) you're always going to be the guy with issues that nobody else has.

If the company has any kind of standard mobile device management - it probably won't work on Linux.

This will trigger the security team and probably the IT team because there's always this outlier device that can't run the standard VPN client or can't have DNS config pushed to it or the Linux version of some app has bugs that don't surface on the Mac version

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Im Linux all the way, but saying the difference from Windows to prod is bigger does not take wsl into account. It is way more near linux production environments than Mac.

[–] aksdb 3 points 9 months ago

Thanks for saying that. I have no idea why that gets overlooked so often.

As much as I like to shit on Windows, WSL is ingenious and many dev tools integrate it nicely.

I really don't get why Apple doesn't offer anything in that direction, where devs are a big target audience for them and they already ride the POSIX train.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Those differences between Dev and prod are usually mitigated by containers to be fair.

[–] flubba86 1 points 9 months ago

We use containers in our work whenever possible, to reduce the problems caused by different development environments and deployment environments. And as a Linux user I embrace the idea (Linux dev containers for every project!) but it has unfortunately made things harder for our Windows developers. Docker on windows is a difficult to get right. Throw Docker-Desktop and WSL2 in the mix, you have a nightmare. They all come to me with "why isn't my Docker environment working?!".