I work in a corporation with an IT-department that is all in on whatever Microsoft is offering. My team has for some time gotten more and more autonomy in tooling as IT is overloaded and forced to relinquish some control, but we still rely on them for supplying compliant machines that have access to our resources.
I requested a Linux machine just over 5 months ago, and I finally got it this week. It is running Ubuntu with GNOME, not my first choice, but the only thing that is Microsoft Intune compliant as far as I know.
So far it is such a relief. A better specced machine with less bloat running on it. It should be far between any OOM-issue I get now… Slightly annoying having to use Edge for any service requiring corporate SSO, but I’ll swallow that pill…
Very nice! Jealous. We’re Windows 11 only, but I make do with WSL.
What’s the laptop? ThinkPad?
Yeah, T14s Gen 5
Sadly my current work is 100% windows only. My previous job was all linux, which I really, really miss.
Ubuntu, GNOME, Edge… I mean, it’s technically an upgrade. Just a disappointing one.
Someone has obviously not been forced to work with Windows 11? :p
It’s a massive upgrade and miles better than what I came from, and while not ideal, I’m certainly not letting perfect be the enemy of the good here. Edge is just for those MS365 apps I need to work with once in a while (and a couple of other services that rely on SSO, most annoyingly GitHub). I’ll live
Also, I’m a KDE person, but so far I don’t hate GNOME.
I’ve been using KDE for 6 years now and Gnome is not my vibe but I still consider it a massive upgrade that’s not disappointing.
Congrats! For me it also has bin godsend that the company allowwes Linux for developers as an exception. In my case it also means that you yourself are responsible for everything yourself, backup, upgrades, security, etc. The only thing they make sure is that the Cisco VPN is also working (it’s shitty but anyway) with Linux.
But that is exactly what I want. They do offer a corporate Ubuntu image, which I used one time but hated it, so I blasted it and installed Arch (btw.).
I still need to run MS office and Teams, but I do that in the Browser (have to use Chromium for it because it doesn’t work well in Librewolf). But like you say, those pills are much easier to swallow compared to winning Windows 11 on a daily basis, especially as a IT professional.
Teams actually has Linux builds on the AUR. Obviously they are wrapping the web version, but it does integrate much more nicely with the GUI. I’m running the version that uses your already installed electron. I don’t have to use chrome for teams, which is the real upside for me.
My work uses all browser based apps. They have Linux workstations in most areas and these are set to login and go directly to a Windows 11 server remote desktop.
Do you have to use Teams?
Yes. Using it through Edge with no issues so far.
Internal team communication goes outside of Teams though (we self-host Mattermost).
ETA: No more issues than the native app under Win11, I meant to say.
I use flatpak version of teams-for-linux which is propably just electron app, but it works surprisingly well, no issues and almost always up to date :)
What laptop model did you receive?
ThinkPad T14s Gen 5
I am terribly jealous. Congratulations on finding a company with a (somewhat) sensible IT policy.
Yeah, but it has also required many hard fought battles internally, and I can be happy with my coworkers and team lead for taking the charge in several of those. It helps having had multiple examples of their policies getting in the way of getting stuff done, and that we are able to accomplish our jobs when we get our way.
Worst part is that we’re not a terribly big company - but the IT department can still make it feel like I work in a multinational megacorp some times. I can only imagine what it is to actually work in one of those…
… it’s a policy driven hell
I’m in a similar boat, except I had to white-knuckle the install myself. White-knuckle, because I had to set up unique to my laptop certs beforehand to get on the corporate VPN. And if it disn’t work, I’d be off the VPN unable to connect (I work remote). Got it working, but, fun fact, my ubuntu laptop is running Microsoft Defender! (per requirements) I feel super protected.
This tracks; aws offers Ubuntu workspaces for their managed directory service since a couple years ago
