8 ms·

Because Windows is foisted upon people in corporate environments. Not everyone gets to run their OS of choice.

putinontheritz 9y ago
Foisted is a very apt term
F00Fbug 9y ago
Good point - as Mel Brooks said, "It's good to be the king!" In my last job, I was IT; I dread going to some place where they force Windows upon me!
- digitalsushi 9y ago
  I work at a very corporate place with forced windows laptops. There are zero systems in the company we can sit down at and log into, except our laptops. The OS version is updated, and upgraded, automatically, even including major versions. I was just force upgraded to windows 10 and lost support for my programming environment. I had to recreate it in a new toolset because the one I have a thousand hours in is no longer supported. (It would work, it's just not supported - I cannot install it, but it would work fine if I could). One arm of my company allows macs. This one does not, period. We have a 0% non windows 10 user base. We can have temporary admin access for 12 hours if we will out a report, but everything we do is recorded. It doesnt work if we're on wifi or battery. We are not allowed to install browser extensions, even if we are developing against the web. My last job let everyone have admin/root. I had everything I ever wanted. My workflow was glorious. I was so comfortable. I was able to work 3 to 4 times faster on average, i.e. my yearly output was probably 3 to 4 times more productive. I invented new things, scratched my itches, and felt like the king of the world. But this job will let me retire.
  - jackstraw14 9y ago
    I work in the public sector and our sysadmins have actually made a game out of tricking people into updating to Windows 10 (and allowing them to take back admin rights in the process). Like offering Office 2016 upgrades, but only if you upgrade to Windows 10 too. I understand it’s much easier for them to manage things this way, but they’re not going to have the results they want by going about it this way. When my Windows 10 “upgrade” comes, I’ll just be dedicating one of my monitors to my own Arch (maybe Qubes) box where I can actually get shit done. I’m a C# dev too, which makes even less sense, but requesting permission to install simple dev tools is not going to happen. Life is too short for this nonsense.
    - F00Fbug 9y ago
      Sounds pretty common! About Qubes: I was just playing with it a couple of weeks ago. It's interesting, and I'd consider using it except for one thing. When you're running a browser, the cursor doesn't change when hovering over a link. I know it sounds nitpicky, but I kind of want/need that. I did some digging around and didn't get any solution. Are you OK with that, or did you find a workaround?
      - jackstraw14 9y ago
        I used Qubes for a few years and don’t remember running into that, but I’ve used Vim keybinding extensions in the browser for a while and may not have noticed. It’s that way in all browsers for you?
        F00Fbug 9y ago
        I'm pretty sure it happened in both Firefox and Chrome. It seems to be a common complaint, but I couldn't find a fix (and didn't really look too hard).
    - cptskippy 9y ago
      What's your opposition to Windows 10 if you're already running Windows? We're running Windows 7 and I'm begging to get into the pilot for Windows 10. As time passes more and more things break in Windows 7 and it becomes less useful. Most of Intels drivers are garbage and their Bluetooth stack is next to useless. I'm running VMs ontop of my Windows 7 install for all development work. Anything that's Windows based is either a 10 or 2016.
      - jackstraw14 9y ago
        I guess I should have noted that I do all my C# dev work in Windows 7 and run Arch VMs for everything else. My Windows 10 setup won’t be much different, but I just don’t trust Windows 10 and won’t be running my VMs on it. I haven’t followed up on whether this “feature” made it into an actual Windows 10 update, but I remember reading about keylogging to the cloud as a way to pre-load your start menu with things that might be relevant to what you’re doing. Maybe it’s just being a developer and knowing what this kind of casual abstraction can cause, but I’m not okay with the philosophy that gets it into a test release of Windows 10. Microsoft is doing cool stuff these days but they still haven’t won me over.
  - cptskippy 9y ago
    Our laptops are all Windows based and I've moved all of my development to VMs that I have admin rights over. I don't think I'd ever go back at this point regardless of what my desktop OS was. It really helps with new developer onboarding as well. You can just provide them with a handful of VMs instead of spending time configuring a new machine with all of the dev tools your team uses.
  - Perseids 9y ago
    Honest question: Why did you take the job? I've heard such horror stories from previous companies of current coworkers as well, but they didn't suffer as much as non-developers. I myself make it a point to ask in job interviews whether I will be able to install and administrate my OS of choice.
outsideoflife 9y ago
It was foisted on me, but I created a group in our approved software policy with just me in it, added Virtualbox to the group and managed to get the change request signed off! I use Ubuntu now for everything but MS Office and the dreaded ERP client.
- liopleurodon 9y ago
  good lord. I would've gone the hyper-v route, that comes with Windows 10 pro, doesn't it? (another linux only user here, so idk). Should perform better than Virtualbox too
  - 0xcde4c3db 9y ago
    I found out the hard way that Hyper-V prevents other virtualization software from running, notably including the x86 Android emulator.
    - sangnoir 9y ago
      My guess is virtualization software is mutually exclusive. On Linux, I can't run VirtualBox and KVM at the same time: if I want to run one, I have to unload the kernel modules belonging to the other.
      - tinus_hn 9y ago
        Actually, it’s virtualization hardware that is exclusive. Microsoft pulled an old trick out of their sleeve and implemented a feature, Device Guard, that requires virtualization. And of course it blocks other uses of the virtualization hardware, except, surprise surprise, their own virtualization solution. D-, does not play well with others. If your company requires Device Guard you can only use software based virtualization or Hyper-V.
    - nlawalker 9y ago
      There's another gotcha here too: if your deployment uses Windows 10 Credential Guard and/or Device Guard, the Hyper-V hypervisor is installed even though Windows reports the Hyper-V role as not installed, and you will not be able to run other virtualization solutions. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3204980/virtualization-applications-do-not-work-together-with-hyper-v--device https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3204980/virtualizat... https://exoticbaryon.anset.org/2017/09/18/when-virtualbox-wont-let-you-start-64bit-vms-windows-defender-device-guard/ https://exoticbaryon.anset.org/2017/09/18/when-virtualbox-wo...
thecrumb 9y ago
I'm working now to move my Win 8 install to a VM then I can format this damn machine an install a real OS. All I need Windows for really is Skype and MS Teams.
hungerstrike 9y ago
Obviously somebody in those corporations chose it. Running a large fleet of non-Windows computers means writing your own software to manage them, just like Google had to do [0]. Not every business wants to do that. [0] https://9to5mac.com/2013/11/27/how-google-manages-over-40000-macs-without-much-help-from-apple/ https://9to5mac.com/2013/11/27/how-google-manages-over-40000...
- deadbunny 9y ago
  Assuming a Linux fleet you can use config management tools just as easily for desktops as servers.
zjaffee 9y ago
Part of this though is because software was historically built for windows in a way that it isn't anymore. Even at tech companies, where the majority of employees are using macbooks, you'll often see people in the finance department using windows machines. I imagine as the growth of SaaS continues we will see less of this, especially because it's much easier for the IT department to manage one type of computer where macs tend to have a higher build quality than most windows based machines.

Foisted is a very apt term

Good point - as Mel Brooks said, "It's good to be the king!" In my last job, I was IT; I dread going to some place where they force Windows upon me!

digitalsushi 9y ago
I work at a very corporate place with forced windows laptops. There are zero systems in the company we can sit down at and log into, except our laptops. The OS version is updated, and upgraded, automatically, even including major versions. I was just force upgraded to windows 10 and lost support for my programming environment. I had to recreate it in a new toolset because the one I have a thousand hours in is no longer supported. (It would work, it's just not supported - I cannot install it, but it would work fine if I could). One arm of my company allows macs. This one does not, period. We have a 0% non windows 10 user base. We can have temporary admin access for 12 hours if we will out a report, but everything we do is recorded. It doesnt work if we're on wifi or battery. We are not allowed to install browser extensions, even if we are developing against the web. My last job let everyone have admin/root. I had everything I ever wanted. My workflow was glorious. I was so comfortable. I was able to work 3 to 4 times faster on average, i.e. my yearly output was probably 3 to 4 times more productive. I invented new things, scratched my itches, and felt like the king of the world. But this job will let me retire.
- jackstraw14 9y ago
  I work in the public sector and our sysadmins have actually made a game out of tricking people into updating to Windows 10 (and allowing them to take back admin rights in the process). Like offering Office 2016 upgrades, but only if you upgrade to Windows 10 too. I understand it’s much easier for them to manage things this way, but they’re not going to have the results they want by going about it this way. When my Windows 10 “upgrade” comes, I’ll just be dedicating one of my monitors to my own Arch (maybe Qubes) box where I can actually get shit done. I’m a C# dev too, which makes even less sense, but requesting permission to install simple dev tools is not going to happen. Life is too short for this nonsense.
  - F00Fbug 9y ago
    Sounds pretty common! About Qubes: I was just playing with it a couple of weeks ago. It's interesting, and I'd consider using it except for one thing. When you're running a browser, the cursor doesn't change when hovering over a link. I know it sounds nitpicky, but I kind of want/need that. I did some digging around and didn't get any solution. Are you OK with that, or did you find a workaround?
    - jackstraw14 9y ago
      I used Qubes for a few years and don’t remember running into that, but I’ve used Vim keybinding extensions in the browser for a while and may not have noticed. It’s that way in all browsers for you?
      - F00Fbug 9y ago
        I'm pretty sure it happened in both Firefox and Chrome. It seems to be a common complaint, but I couldn't find a fix (and didn't really look too hard).
  - cptskippy 9y ago
    What's your opposition to Windows 10 if you're already running Windows? We're running Windows 7 and I'm begging to get into the pilot for Windows 10. As time passes more and more things break in Windows 7 and it becomes less useful. Most of Intels drivers are garbage and their Bluetooth stack is next to useless. I'm running VMs ontop of my Windows 7 install for all development work. Anything that's Windows based is either a 10 or 2016.
    - jackstraw14 9y ago
      I guess I should have noted that I do all my C# dev work in Windows 7 and run Arch VMs for everything else. My Windows 10 setup won’t be much different, but I just don’t trust Windows 10 and won’t be running my VMs on it. I haven’t followed up on whether this “feature” made it into an actual Windows 10 update, but I remember reading about keylogging to the cloud as a way to pre-load your start menu with things that might be relevant to what you’re doing. Maybe it’s just being a developer and knowing what this kind of casual abstraction can cause, but I’m not okay with the philosophy that gets it into a test release of Windows 10. Microsoft is doing cool stuff these days but they still haven’t won me over.
- cptskippy 9y ago
  Our laptops are all Windows based and I've moved all of my development to VMs that I have admin rights over. I don't think I'd ever go back at this point regardless of what my desktop OS was. It really helps with new developer onboarding as well. You can just provide them with a handful of VMs instead of spending time configuring a new machine with all of the dev tools your team uses.
- Perseids 9y ago
  Honest question: Why did you take the job? I've heard such horror stories from previous companies of current coworkers as well, but they didn't suffer as much as non-developers. I myself make it a point to ask in job interviews whether I will be able to install and administrate my OS of choice.

outsideoflife 9y ago

It was foisted on me, but I created a group in our approved software policy with just me in it, added Virtualbox to the group and managed to get the change request signed off! I use Ubuntu now for everything but MS Office and the dreaded ERP client.

liopleurodon 9y ago
good lord. I would've gone the hyper-v route, that comes with Windows 10 pro, doesn't it? (another linux only user here, so idk). Should perform better than Virtualbox too
- 0xcde4c3db 9y ago
  I found out the hard way that Hyper-V prevents other virtualization software from running, notably including the x86 Android emulator.
  - sangnoir 9y ago
    My guess is virtualization software is mutually exclusive. On Linux, I can't run VirtualBox and KVM at the same time: if I want to run one, I have to unload the kernel modules belonging to the other.
    - tinus_hn 9y ago
      Actually, it’s virtualization hardware that is exclusive. Microsoft pulled an old trick out of their sleeve and implemented a feature, Device Guard, that requires virtualization. And of course it blocks other uses of the virtualization hardware, except, surprise surprise, their own virtualization solution. D-, does not play well with others. If your company requires Device Guard you can only use software based virtualization or Hyper-V.
  - nlawalker 9y ago
    There's another gotcha here too: if your deployment uses Windows 10 Credential Guard and/or Device Guard, the Hyper-V hypervisor is installed even though Windows reports the Hyper-V role as not installed, and you will not be able to run other virtualization solutions. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3204980/virtualization-applications-do-not-work-together-with-hyper-v--device https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3204980/virtualizat... https://exoticbaryon.anset.org/2017/09/18/when-virtualbox-wont-let-you-start-64bit-vms-windows-defender-device-guard/ https://exoticbaryon.anset.org/2017/09/18/when-virtualbox-wo...

thecrumb 9y ago

I'm working now to move my Win 8 install to a VM then I can format this damn machine an install a real OS. All I need Windows for really is Skype and MS Teams.

hungerstrike 9y ago

Obviously somebody in those corporations chose it. Running a large fleet of non-Windows computers means writing your own software to manage them, just like Google had to do [0]. Not every business wants to do that. [0] https://9to5mac.com/2013/11/27/how-google-manages-over-40000-macs-without-much-help-from-apple/ https://9to5mac.com/2013/11/27/how-google-manages-over-40000...

deadbunny 9y ago
Assuming a Linux fleet you can use config management tools just as easily for desktops as servers.

zjaffee 9y ago

Part of this though is because software was historically built for windows in a way that it isn't anymore. Even at tech companies, where the majority of employees are using macbooks, you'll often see people in the finance department using windows machines. I imagine as the growth of SaaS continues we will see less of this, especially because it's much easier for the IT department to manage one type of computer where macs tend to have a higher build quality than most windows based machines.