4 ms·

Comparable to what? To Windows 11?

by fph 1y ago

ZeroConcerns 1y ago
Yeah, sure. I'm getting heavily downvoted here, and that's fine, but truth of the matter is that nothing gets even close to Windows 11 when it comes to Enterprise-ish deployments, and failure to acknowledge that is why possibly-better alternatives are losing. Source: I'm sort-of the IT manager for several around-50-employees businesses. All of these offer a choice of Windows, Mac or Linux laptops, because that's what needed to attract quality employees these days. For Windows, it's really simple. Order HP or Lenovo without an OS, put on the Windows 11 Enterprise image, and send it on along with the Entra credentials. User powers the machine up, selects 'for work', enters the AD credentials and gets a working desktop with AV, firewalling, Office and so on. MacOS? Slightly more involved story: we need to provide instructions on how to successfully navigate the forced Apple sign-in story, then download some dependencies to get to the point where the Windows users already were. Linux? Oh, boy... Even when standardizing on something like Ubuntu LTS, basic compliance and policy enforcement is a huge pain. As in: hours and hours of support. I've evaluated several supposedly-solutions for this, and, ehm, no... And: to be perfectly clear: I'm wide-open to suggestions for something better! If you can offer Ubuntu LTS, (or, well, anything) but with AV, firewalling and basic policy enforcement that can be remotely attested, I'm all ears!
- BizarroLand 1y ago
  We are not talking about enterprise. We're talking about individual users, people who buy a computer for their kids or for themselves. Fancy hosted domain and entra setups and enterprise activations are not relevant to this discussion.
  - slowmovintarget 1y ago
    This. There will be many people "stuck" with Windows for work (or even choosing it for some particular piece of software). For me, work is MacOS and Apple hardware, and home is Linux on the desktop and my NAS.
    - ZeroConcerns 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - slowmovintarget 1y ago
        Like I said, for my personal use, it's Linux. For work, I don't choose, it's chosen for me. My company oriented to "zero-trust" remote work even before the pandemic. That means that transition away from being a Microsoft shop was easier (they were Windows / .Net before 2017, but cloud-everything changed that). For personal use I will 100% advocate Linux over Windows. You're advocating Windows because it's easier for you to ship boxes to employees. Not because it's better for the employees.
  - ZeroConcerns 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - BizarroLand 1y ago
      Sorry you misread a straightforward, no-nonsense reply as angry.
    - tomhow 1y ago
      Snarky commenting like this is not welcome on HN. We have guidelines that ask us to avoid commenting like this and to make an effort to push standards up rather than dragging them down. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

Comparable to what? To Windows 11?

by fph 1y ago

Comparable to what? To Windows 11?

Yeah, sure. I'm getting heavily downvoted here, and that's fine, but truth of the matter is that nothing gets even close to Windows 11 when it comes to Enterprise-ish deployments, and failure to acknowledge that is why possibly-better alternatives are losing. Source: I'm sort-of the IT manager for several around-50-employees businesses. All of these offer a choice of Windows, Mac or Linux laptops, because that's what needed to attract quality employees these days. For Windows, it's really simple. Order HP or Lenovo without an OS, put on the Windows 11 Enterprise image, and send it on along with the Entra credentials. User powers the machine up, selects 'for work', enters the AD credentials and gets a working desktop with AV, firewalling, Office and so on. MacOS? Slightly more involved story: we need to provide instructions on how to successfully navigate the forced Apple sign-in story, then download some dependencies to get to the point where the Windows users already were. Linux? Oh, boy... Even when standardizing on something like Ubuntu LTS, basic compliance and policy enforcement is a huge pain. As in: hours and hours of support. I've evaluated several supposedly-solutions for this, and, ehm, no... And: to be perfectly clear: I'm wide-open to suggestions for something better! If you can offer Ubuntu LTS, (or, well, anything) but with AV, firewalling and basic policy enforcement that can be remotely attested, I'm all ears!

BizarroLand 1y ago
We are not talking about enterprise. We're talking about individual users, people who buy a computer for their kids or for themselves. Fancy hosted domain and entra setups and enterprise activations are not relevant to this discussion.
- slowmovintarget 1y ago
  This. There will be many people "stuck" with Windows for work (or even choosing it for some particular piece of software). For me, work is MacOS and Apple hardware, and home is Linux on the desktop and my NAS.
  - ZeroConcerns 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - slowmovintarget 1y ago
      Like I said, for my personal use, it's Linux. For work, I don't choose, it's chosen for me. My company oriented to "zero-trust" remote work even before the pandemic. That means that transition away from being a Microsoft shop was easier (they were Windows / .Net before 2017, but cloud-everything changed that). For personal use I will 100% advocate Linux over Windows. You're advocating Windows because it's easier for you to ship boxes to employees. Not because it's better for the employees.
- ZeroConcerns 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - BizarroLand 1y ago
    Sorry you misread a straightforward, no-nonsense reply as angry.
  - tomhow 1y ago
    Snarky commenting like this is not welcome on HN. We have guidelines that ask us to avoid commenting like this and to make an effort to push standards up rather than dragging them down. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.