Linux

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.

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drives, but afaik rhel doesn't support it, or rhel versions these companies tend to use, since they tend to use very outdated systems, even eol unsupported systems, because 'customers still use those'.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.

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?