You mean 99% of companies out there?

Large companies will surely have that locked down. Most companies don’t

Protip: don’t ask, just do it.

I don’t work at an office, but at a bicycle workshop. We just have the one computer at the frontdesk to register sales and new memberships (we’re a non-profit association). So the PC doesn’t have TPM 2.0 so I convinced the board to install linux on it, since it’s a security risk to keep using Windows after it’s going to be discontinued. But that wasn’t easy ! Especially because one of the board member is an Apple fanboy and keep saying things like: “If it’s free, it’s probably not very good”. :[

I’ve had Linux on my work desktop for the past twenty years.

I work for a big enterprise, we have very strict policies when it comes to work PCs, no way anyone would be allowed to change the operating system.

BUT I got permission to install Virtualbox so I can happily use Linux for many things nonetheless.

At my current job they asked what OS I wanted for my laptop and Linux was an option. I do have a Windows desktop at the office that I remote to that needs to be Windows for technical reasons, but my main device is Linux.

At my job before this I worked for one year on my own Linux laptop, until one day I asked for a laptop lent temporarily because I was going to travel and my wife needed mine, and it had to be Windows. I never minded much because it was temporary, but when I came back I was told that I was supposed to always have been using a Windows machine and that I shouldn’t use a Linux machine anymore (even though our product was a website deployed to Linux servers). That was one of the reasons I eventually took another job, not the main one, but an important one nevertheless.

Before that the company also offered Linux.

And before that it was a very small company when all of the owners were software engineer guys using Linux themselves. I remember one day we were discussing OS and someone said “can we take a moment to recognize we’ve been talking about this for 15 minutes and no one even considered Windows as an option”.

working at a research institute, nobody set any restrictions for what os i install. there are guidelines, but only to make sure that people keep their os secure. i’m using fedora, my boss uses mint, a colleague uses macos. everyone is free (as long as it’s within a somewhat tight budget)

For sure. I worked in IT for a long time. After we switched from the mainframe to os/2 I ran it for a decade on my desktop while the company went to Windows. Then once I couldn’t run os/2 anymore due to newer hardware I switched to Linux. Ran it from the late 90s until my retirement 5 years ago.

I had to support it all myself but they let me since I was also the security guy and they realized that Windows sucked.

As an engineer, yes. I managed to get a pilot program off the ground at my last company. As a recently public company with a lot of IT debt, the biggest challenge was around making those devices compliant with security and IT processes, and easy for IT to provision and monitor.

It helped that I made an effort to build good connections into IT and IT leadership. The clincher was a clear proposed timeline, a commitment that it would not require any additional workload from IT, and that we wouldn’t expand it without their sign off.

Unfortunately, layoffs meant I couldn’t roll it out beyond the initial group, and when a second round of layoffs came around I took the opportunity to leave. I haven’t been looking much yet, but “allows Linux” is one of the criteria I’m measuring companies against.

To me it’s the opposite, my boss (and owner of the company) is frustrated that we cannot install linux due to some technical requirements. It is possible to change that, but this will require reshaping of the entire work process

In a large organization, IT team/Organization policy will never allow to let you use Linux as your OS unless it is required for project or mandated by client.

With ransomware attacks on ever rise, IT will always try to control all aspects of your office laptop/desktop. As they think they got it sorted for Windows, they will fight tooth and nail if you ever submit it ticket to get your OS replaced with Linux without project requirements.

In my view, as long as I’m allowed to install whatever on my personal devices even while working from home, I’m fine.

Office devices aren’t really my property. For me, Windows during office hours, and Linux thereafter.

I can’t even install Rust…

Didn’t need to, our developers work on Linux because that’s what their tooling uses.

Granted it’s either Ubuntu LTS or RHEL because of compliance, but they make it work. Unfortunately Linux is a second-class citizen to central IT, so when they make changes, they don’t really consider Linux users, they’re on their own.

Used Ubuntu LTS in a VM at a bank, a tech company and now using it as an officially sanctioned OS at my workplace.

I’ve been sysadmin where I work for 12 years, Ive been using Linux as my OS there all that time except the first month. After that month I asked the IT manager if he cared what OS I use. He said he didn’t care so long as it didn’t impede me getting the work done. The junior sysadmin who started a year ago now also uses Linux and my manager wishes he could too (he does too much Microsoft office to get away with it)