I’m just tired. On the last post about having Linux at our work, many people that seems to be an IT worker said there have been several issues with Linux that was not easy to manipulate or control like they do with Windows, but I think they just are lazy to find out ways to provide this support. Because Google forces all their workers to use Linux, and they have pretty much control on their OS as any other Windows system.
Linux is a valid system that can be used for work, just as many other companies do.
So my point is, the excuse of “Linux is not ready for workplaces” could be just a lack of knowledge of the IT team and/or a lack of intention to provide to developers the right tools to work.
Not an IT expert, not a sysadmin, not a tech guru by a long shot, but as Linux user, I call this post bullshit.
The biggest problem wouldn’t be about having it manage all the machines in a network; it would be having to deal with every dick and jane complain about how they can’t change their desktop background or some other trivial thing they can do on windows or how a specific program is not available or doesn’t feel the same.
Transition into an all-Linux production environment would require a top-down non-negotiable decision and the willingness from top brass to provide trainning down the line and deal with a good deal of shennanigans from middle management.
And no virus on Linux? Yes, it has some built in features that make a bit more robust but there are rootkits and other malware out in the wild capable of hurting a linux system. And if popularity is to come to Linux, at some point there will be a need to harden the standard security protocols to ensure system safety, not forgetting that 90% of the time the main problem is between the chair and the keyboard.
I feel like OP has never worked in a corporate IT job before and has zero clue what it actually entails to manage a large fleet of desktop PCs used by the average office worker.
Not just that, for majority of corporate customers the OS is the last thing on their mind. Your office workers are going to complain about anything unfamiliar.
Yes. So much yes.
Sure, at least half of the FAANG use Linux. But they use a homegrown Linux flavor often maintained by an entire dedicated team. Not some random ass Ubuntu or Mint ISO you downloaded; these images are custom tailored to the workflows, dev needs, security needs, and even package management needs of the corporation. They often carry a complete profile template that integrates with whatever they’ve chosen to enforce authentication, have a lavish on-board remote monitoring system, you name it.
I do have, let’s not assume things. My Mac device isn’t connected to that IT infrastructure, we have no support to connect to the company network neither, and I work for a pretty big company. So my question is, for the lack of support I get for the Mac, why can’t I just use Linux as many devs on my work are requesting the same if there isn’t any support for Mac, Windows Defender also runs on Linux and all can work perfectly.
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Yeah for a “red hat certified engineer” that seems like a weird hyperbole to die on
Well, there are virus as any kind of device that runs any logic, the thing here is that is harder to get hacked than with this kind of tools that Windows uses.
And I mean getting viruses like this:
- On Windows -> https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/21/microsoft_key_skeleton/
- On Mac -> https://citizenlab.ca/2023/09/blastpass-nso-group-iphone-zero-click-zero-day-exploit-captured-in-the-wild/
So yeah, I don’t need many apps that my Mac has and could be used to hack me with 0 click interaction or with valid Windows certified programs. Still, the “no virus” is not the only reason, updating a Linux system is just a few seconds and your work could have their own repository mirrored and monitored.
(not a virus directly from a package manager or distro tho).
However nothing prevents someone from hosting malware on github, or fake “safe” distros.
There can also be a slip and people not seeing a project turned into malware.
I know about this issue, I have read about it already. No one uses this unless noobs watching YouTube tutorials.
Cannot be compared to the vulnerabilities I pasted (0 click exploit). Any system can be hacked, Linux is the most used OS and still have fewer viruses issues as others, but it still has as any system has.
Wtf are you talking about. Linux isn’t a distro.
And the example isn’t a “only noobs use it”.
It’s an example of an exploit existing since many years. And which could have appeared in a random package, while staying invisible.
I said distro instead OS, Linux is the most used OS, many people behind working in secure the Linux environment. The example of this exploit also exists on Mac and Windows for years, and it will always happen.
An admin user will know what they are doing, and I doubt they will install a package from an external source downloaded randomly on internet, for the non-admin users, without sudo they can’t install/infect that malware on your Linux.
The linux kernel is not completely secure by default, neither is any specific distribution. No internet connected device could possibly be “set and forget”. Security can not be taken lightly
Yup, that is right, any device can be hacked.
But it’s kind of true in practical experience. Show me one Linux virus that spread and made its way through some network.
I can show you more than i have fingers that have been affecting windows.
When it comes to workplaces, you can expect people to deliberately craft a virus and/or try that break into your system specifically. A lot of the world runs on linux, a lot of hackers try to break in to this world.
For personal use it may be true enough to be fine in practice, but it’s a very dangerous thing to believe for a professional setting with probably expensive equipment and valuable data.
Yeah, I remember your previous post. They were irritated at you secretly subverting security restrictions put in place by your company to use an unapproved OS on THEIR company machine and network without their permission. Not that it’s “not ready”. They were also warning you that you were treading in dangerous water, legally.
Now you’re manipulating us by telling us it was just all about IT admins “not being ready” for Linux, not about it being a major security breach.
You have no rights on other people’s machines and networks that you do not own unless explicitly granted. Period. The same would apply if you were to bring a Windows workstation into a Linux-based organization.
My previous post? Was not mine, I don’t do that to my work company laptop, I stick with what I have, Mac.
Downvoting because of point #4. That’s a catastrophically naive mindset, and a sure recipe to get your shit pwned if you’re running an IT org and you think that’s an accurate statement.
it’s important to mention wherever that incorrect point is brought up:
the only reason people say there are no viruses on linux (which is wrong from the get go) is because there just isn’t enough market share for lots of malware to be written and distributed with a linux target in mind. it is out there and it is a risk, just much rarer than windows malware. if more people start using linux, user-targeted linux malware in the wild will likely become just as common (and effective) as the stuff targeting windows.
never assume your system is safe by default and requires no hardening or awareness from the user/org.
The only truly secure computer is one that’s air-gapped, disassembled, the components put in a faraday cage, which is then lowered into a hole and filled with concrete. And even that’s not necessarily a sure thing, in the context of possible future technology.
The only safe computer is one that doesn’t exist.
Linux is very targeted by hackes, Linux is the OS (most used by servers/infrastructures) that keeps most personal data while Windows is just to hack users that miss click or gets hack by Windows vulnerabilities. Hackers do targets to Linux systems as all servers and infrastructures runs Linux. They do target, but it’s just different intention or methods.
while you are correct that linux systems are targeted by bad actors all the time, the distinction that i am making here is that a vast majority of the time malware is targeted towards organizations and their linux servers, which could be both unapplicable and unseen to a home linux user. not much of that hacker effort is going into distributing malware that would find and infect a personal linux user like myself through, for example, a compromised public web page. instead, most of that user-targeted malware is made to infect windows users simply because they outnumber linux users by a large amount.
i guess what i mean to say is that there is plenty of malware for every type of popular system as well as people and organizations to exploit it, but due to the effects of having a small user market share, home linux users can develop this misinformed notion that traditional malware you might get from a web download or malicious email does not exist for linux.
Very true. Also the degradation due to installed programs hasn’t been a thing for some time. Even if something does happen you can refresh without losing any data very easily these days.
My server with 2.4 kernel would like a word with point 4?
The issue is that OP made a sweeping blanket statement of “there is no Linux malware” which is demonstrably false, and a deeply unsafe narrative to push.
the only thing I’ll say is the piece about “no viruses” would kinda go away if desktop Linux picked up at all. the security on a default Linux system is worse than macos and windows with substantial hardening efforts needed. the only reason viruses and other malware isn’t common on Linux as is is because of the tiny user base.
with all this said, if enterprise use got more common, security would quickly become an important aspect.
This feels like it was written by someone who hasn’t done sysadmin of a Windows network in a long time. Everything is online and is almost always one click now. Provisioning, removing permissions, updating email filters, adding users. Each item is so much easier now than it used to be. I loving running my PopOs install but let’s not pretend that SysAdmin is the 90s nightmare it once was.
Linux is ready for workplaces and has been for a very very long time. That is irrelevant if workplace IT support is not ready for Linux and has no budget or time to get ready for it. All your points are meaningless and have never been the problem. The problem is with management, policies and getting in house support for things and all the work involved in that. Depending on the size of the company it can take a lot of time effort and money to retrain IT staff to support Linux. And IT staff are already overworked, under-budgeted and don’t always have the time to support extra things.
Why are you posting a screenshot of text instead of just linking to the source?
Downvoted. Were better than this.
If you want, I can delete the photo, so we can talk about the topics, it’s just a screenshot from Quora responses.
The only thing better than good in the world of business is standard. Windows may be bad, but it’s the industry standard for a ton of commercial applications. A lot of software that companies use are designed for Windows, from antivirus software to Microsoft’s office suite to audio and video editing software and more. Every copy of Windows is also a lot more standard than Linux distros; the customizability of Linux makes it a lot harder to provide support compared to every single Windows user being locked into certain things. As far as the IT team being “lazy” or having “a lack of knowledge” on supporting Linux, they’re working on the company’s dollar, and unless there’s a strong, justifiable reason to increase their workload by supporting another operating system, it’s an unnecessary expense for the company. There certainly are cases where there are strong, justifiable reasons such as with Google, who maintains two Linux based operating systems and needs their staff to know how to work with them, or in situations where Linux substantially outperforms Windows for the tasks employees are doing to the point that supporting Linux is worth it, but “it can do most of what Windows can alongside features that don’t matter to the companies’ operation” isn’t the best selling point
I work for a small company and I run Linux for work without issues. However we’re small enough that we don’t have an IT department. Most of our tools are web tools or are platform independent.
In contrast my girlfriend’s company uses Windows over a remote connection via thin client. It’s a high security job though most of her work is in Microsoft Office and SharePoint.
Setting her job up with only Linux would be a million times harder.
What about enterprise user and permissions management? AD is a draconic thicket of confusing spaghetti, but once setup it works. What’s the Linux alternative?
I mean yeah it’s possible, but the reality is that most people in the company will likely want Windows anyway, and use things like Microsoft Office and a heap of other Windows only software. Probably not the developers, but accounting, HR, and so on. There’s also sales but nowadays they demand MacBooks because of status symbol and apparently it sorta matters, at least according to sales.
As an IT department, if you can get away with supporting only one platform and even one model/brand of computer, it’s much easier. Maybe two so sales and devs get their MacBooks. Adding a third is asking a fair bit from the IT department, and it starts adding up to a really rare skillset. I know very few that are absolutely proficient in all three main OSes.
There’s also the compliance aspect. The reason my current company can’t support Linux users is InfoSec/compliance. Not because Linux is insecure, but because all the standards are written for Windows. You can argue all you want about how Linux doesn’t need an antivirus, tough luck, SOC2, ISO and also insurance policies all explcitly require “controls against malware” and firewalls with every OS held to the swiss cheese security of Windows. So each OS basically requires the InfoSec and IT department to write out unnecessarily detailed procedures and policies about all the security measures, for every OS in use. What antivirus runs, is it a reputable brand, how do you validate that it runs, how do you test that it detects malware, how do you validate and ensures that the incident gets reported, what tooling does the software gives you to establish the root cause and entry point, what exact user action happened that led to the exploit chain, what was the exploit chain, how you’re going to mitigate and clean up after exploitation, how do you know exactly what data was compromised, and so on and on and on.
Right now most vendors support barely support the current version of Windows and macOS (especially macOS, I swear the AV software is always holding back major updates for several months every release). Very few support Linux. So either you have an entirely separate policy and audit for Linux, or you just don’t support Linux.
We’ll see companies open up to Linux when all the vendors also start supporting Linux, and even then, with those that do, it’s a shitshow of only supporting the last version of Ubuntu or RHEL with pinned kernel versions and blatant GPL violations and GPL condoms and binary only kernel modules with no hope of recompiling/adapting them to the current version. The ClamAV trick no longer works, auditors now want real AV software with the whole exploit chain tracking I described. Which is also why those company computers are so damn slow, much slower than you’d expect. They scanning everything and tracking everything, every process tree, what spawned it, what user action led to it. My MacBook started feeling like a Dell Latitude from 7 years ago once they loaded up all the crapware on it. We had to reserve a whole bunch of extra capacity on the Linux servers just for AV to exist and do nothing because it’s all locked up in containers and SELinux policies and it takes a pretty bad 0day to pwn those.
If I was the IT guy, I would also struggle to even begin to make a case for supporting Linux and justifying the time and cost. I don’t like my OS, but I do my work on it, cash my paycheck and move on to enjoy my Linux machines off work.
The thing is a little simplistic: Linux is perfect if your job is coding, working with enterprise web UIs, sending mail and/or using Office Suites, which to be fair is like 90% of office jobs.
For the other 10% use cases, Linux isn’t just ready yet because, for example, the company that produces analytic equipment doesn’t even bother to acknowledge the existence of Linux for their data log software. And then there is Adobe. Adobe are just a bunch of cunts.Point 2 is a reason it’s not used or used for very specific use cases within a company. Companies don’t want to make a custom distro that they have to support themselves, that costs money.
The final point you made yourself the IT guys don’t have Linux knowledge but they do have Windows knowledge. Easier and safer to stick with what you know than what you don’t.
About the point 2, it says that Windows cost much more than making your own distro which can be made by 1 single person if you know enough of Linux.
About the final point, that is the excuse, “stick with what you know” so they aren’t really doing their job providing us our needed tools to work with… That’s what I blame, get some Linux IT expert and give support.
Do you know how much cost is involved in developing a peace of software?
Get what you need > a lot of time and good view of the company is needed.
Then either get a company to do it > expensive + no control on the software.
Or/
Make it yourself > extremely expensive + control on the software.
Get the right people > hiring campaign > expensive
Then these hired people represent more people to pay each month > expensive.
If there aren’t right people, you need to teach the devs how to work on it > expensive formations and it’s done on the working time, so double expensive.
Then time invested in creating the Linux distro adapted to the company > time, testing, mistakes, redo, undo… expensive.
(let’s not forget about taxes and obligations towards the new workers).
And then factor in that it needs a team to maintain it, to prevent future compatibility issues or vulnerabilities, which is also expensive.
But you realize Google did this already? I don’t think they are wasting any money on Windows unless for market domination.
Do you know how much money Google has? It’s enough to do whatever with that, even just keep the people away from competition.
Why Google did that or if it’s even true? Not sure.
However Google is a big tech which develops software for a multitude of platforms, even Linux. They work on their own Linux mod : Android.
So they have all the people already in the company to do whatever they want on Linux.
They also have specific needs which may not need windows.
We however use excel and the advanced feature Power query and power Bi. So as long as a Foss alternative doesn’t get to the level of the current insanely powerful excel and power bi, we’ll be stuck on windows.
So because it’s Google means they waste their money? Nope, they just know why they are using Linux, and I’m sure they are spending less money than what they should if they used Microsoft/Apple technologies.
Sure. But google does waste money if it brings them profit. It would be rather called an investment.
However the example of Google is extremely bad, because it can only be applied to very large tech companies who already have people developing for Linux.
It’s not a waste of money, it’s a bad example.
But other companies can do the same as Google did, I saw distributions maintained by 1 single person, what stops companies to do the same? I think that is the lack of knowledge of how Linux works. Google is a good example and could work for many big companies, small companies normally allows already to work with Linux or I have been lucky to find dev job positions on small companies that work with Linux already.
I won’t comment on point 2 as I think that has been answered suffiently. On the final point Linux support is more expensive. First line Linux support pays better than first line windows support because well. It is still nieche so workers can command better pay.
You will also have to go through your whole application library and make sure it works, if it doesn’t can you get it to work or do you have to move applications? That will be expensive and time consuming, more than likely someone does something once a year which is really really important who gets missed and you swapped over 6 months ago and now you have to hack a way for this process to work in 2 weeks to meet the deliverable.
This isn’t including training your staff. You have to retrain everyone which is going to be expensive. To be blunt a lot of regular users barely know how Windows works and any change to their way of working is going to be hell. Then you have the cost of retraining the whole IT department which is going to cost more than the regular users.
Sticking with what you know may not be the right thing to do but it usually is the safest option.
Don’t get me wrong I would love Linux to take over the office space but I can’t see that happeing in the next 20 years. Maybe in a startup it’ll work but, moving from something so entrenched in your company is a very big and very scary ask.
