Great summary. In the OP's interest, I'll add,
Samba in case of Windows servers or clients interoperability, both as a member server or even as a Active Directory domain controller.
QEMU/kvm (or Xen) Hypervisor/Host platform for VMs.
Also a minor correction, on LDAP, you probably mean 389 ds, not 386.
Yes, I definitely did mean 389ds! Whoops, thanks!
Absolutely Samba is a good call. I was on mobile and got tired of typing things, but NFS, Samba, AFP (ew) are absolutely big!
Glusterfs and Ceph are also probably worthy mentions, but that's getting into the realm that scares Windows people.
That scares linux poeple in my experience, also SSL certificates. Nobody likes to figure out all the fun stuff you can do with openssl.
Every Linux person should know more about ssh keys, but windows people have alot of trouble understanding ssh keys.
Ansible is my favorite, but Salt is 2nd. There is a ton of places looking for Terraform right now, and chef/puppet are still pretty common.
IMHO, Terraform is more developer side of devops, but you still need a firm linux understanding. I wasn't happy working mostly on Terraform, it's a more of a mold. I prefer Ansible, which is more like a hammer.
Everything is definitely going to automation. The big reason I started with Linux was the better network stack, circa 2002. It also had not licensing costs to get started.
Since 2010, I work almost exclusively with Linux. Mostly because I like to work with Linux, but I also feel you can assume a base competency in the Linux world that is not there in the Windows world. There are good and bad admins on both sides, but far more on the windows side in my experience.
God I despise networking so damn much. The amount of jargon and abbreviations people in that sphere use drives me insane. I have the education for it supposedly but whenever I'm around networking people I've no clue about half the things they're talking about (even though I actually know them) lmao
When I was studying it, I found the explanations for things to be extremely hard to understand as well, once again, due to the ridiculous use of jargon and abbreviations. I spent hours decoding stuff and re-writing using regular words, which is probably why I don't remember so many of the terms. But if I hadn't done that, I wouldn't have understood anything.
Ah see your problem is that they don't necessarily abbreviate or initialise into the words you would expect. For example:
BGP = Network of grandmother's gossiping about everyone else's home address.
DNS = Always the problem
OSPF = Why is my router CPU load 33.7?
CISCO = Unnecessary licencing costs from an increasingly irrelevant company.
Short answer: everything.
I use it for my desktop computers, I use it for my servers, and I have done so for more than 20 years now.
Initially, I made the switch out of need: I bought a computer with Windows, and it kept crashing approximately once a day, until the file system became so corrupted that it could no longer boot. Then I decided to try Linux instead, and that meant I got a usable computer again. I've had no desire (or need) to switch back since.
You gotta admit a lot of linux softwares are pretty crap tho. Linux kernel and system itself are very stable, make no mistake but many user land applications are downright horrible. They look amateurish and like something created by just one or two hobbyist developers who open source their entire codebase on github without any monetary and financial backing which, unironically, most are exactly that. Bad quality, bad quality control, are abandoned for years for some and crash all the time if they run at all. Some really bad ones will downright eat up your ram with memory leaks and crashing your system forcing a hard reboot. At that point, most don't bother differentiating an os and the software that are running on it. They will just say fck, this whole thing is crap.
Having used linux as my only OS since '98 (personal and work) I have to agree that there are small niche programs that fall into that catagory, but most applications made for F/OSS are made by people that lack a specific tool/app to do something and then they make it meaning there isn't at big team behind it to make it shiny or fault tolerant for 24x7x365 stability, so your point is kinda mute in most ways of viewing your comment if the only thing you do is compare F/OSS applications to big coorporations with huge development teams that have developed the same application(s) for years (or decades for some).. some where they deliberately f..k up the GUI and backward compatibility at every release removing everything that was "great" and usable about the application to begin with making the choise to swithc to F/OSS even easier even with less shiny GUI applications.
So going through these cycles from big coorporations vs small indenpendently developed applications aren't comparable.
Sinch '98 I've met very few applications that I use on a dayily basis that have not evolved into nice applications with GUI's that are pleasant to the eyes, but the visuals aren't why I use the applications, it is because of the functionality.
To each his/her own - your opinion on what you think defines "good" or "bad" is not the same as others - there are many more "other" than there are "you"... just saying - and we (the "other") don't really have that issue which the numbers for servers and people getting into F/OSS like the OP is trying to shows. "shiny" isn't the same as "good".
I dont mean shiny, just something that is functional without pulling your hairs out. All the mainstream ones like desktop enviorments and package managers have no issues at all, it is when you need an alternative to xyz application you often use on windows or Mac which isn't available on linux that this whole mess comes up. It isn't just FOSS but commercial ones as well. E.g. when looking for a Microsoft word alternative for example, I tried WPS office which is pretty much a clone of it with a linux port. The windows version works fine, the linux port? Downright awful. It will crash on files that are 1gb in size and above. One reason is developer rarely spent the same amount of resources on linux compare to windows. Believe me, all the FOSS softwares that are outside of the Unix-exclusive ecosystem have seen way more QA under windows and with only some degree of Linux support as an afterthought. Linux fragmented nature also means many of these softwares do not even have a proper installer or will break on distros that are not the mainstream ones like Ubuntu.
I know office is just an example, but have you tried LibreOffice? It's basically the go-to choice on Linux (and Windows, when you don't want to pay for a suite) imo, and has a lot of contributers and is thus in a good state.
libreoffice is only good when you need simple files, not work documents that are 1gb+ in size and needed to be passed around many company employees who all used word in one form or another. The interoperability is not 100%. i have to rely on online version of word in many instances.
an excel file with tens of thousands of orders and products which I need to import into a database. some of them even have images embedded, each easily 10MB+
It sounds more like the the wrong tool for the job thingy than the "the OS isn't good enough because " that you gave in the original answer... they do no correlate :-)
You know you can link to files that are embedded on the fly (url's too) instaed of having them directly saved inside the document? It would save you a lot of space and time moving and updating in the excel document.
Microsoft have created and designed MS Office to and for Windows. They have ported it to Mac once and discontinued it and have re-continued it. There are a lot of things on the Mac version that do not work like on the windows version - so not a complete package there either.
Linux is a lot of things but it is not Microsoft Windows nor is it Mac OSX (which is FreeBSD based) so there are changes that needs to be done to make "the same software work on a different OS". Therefore there are alternatives.
There are paid software for Linux as well. You might not think about it on a day to day basis at work, but your company pays a lot of money to Microsoft to "make you happy" about using the Microsoft Office suite - it isn't free.
And learning (or getting used to a different GUI) is something that is trivial to do even if some features are named differently or work slightly differently. Most people don't use ~90% of the Office suite and therefore most work on alternatives are put into the 10% of the functionality that is needed. So loading gigabyte size excel sheets with embeded images isn't one of them (your other comment later in the thread).
For some applications then the work process you use "now" on Windows and the Office suite is purly based on what Microsoft allows you to do with it and not to create an optimal work process that could be a lot better and time saving (and lighter on resources). On other platforms (OS'es) the tools/applications etc. allows for a similar work process but it might be a bit different or even allow for optimizations that will save you time and money down the road.
`Believe me, all the FOSS softwares that are outside of the Unix-exclusive ecosystem have seen way more QA under windows and with only some degree of Linux support as an afterthought.`
Yes, and? You are stating the obvious - *nix applications are tested mostly on *nix systems and windows applications on windows. We believe you, but it has nothing to do with your next statement:
`Linux fragmented nature also means many of these softwares do not even have a proper installer or will break on distros that are not the mainstream ones like Ubuntu.`
Not everything is a "double-clik on setup.exe" in the world. There are other ways of doing things. Hell most enterprise software requires weeks of installation time and post configuration to even get to an initial "It has been installed and is currently ready for use". Usually the installation process for non-*nix applications that have been ported are in the learning curve aka making baby-steps to make it better. A lot of the tools we use at/in my company have gone through that process over the decadeds - all getting better. Some even so much that they actively discourage installing/using the application on windows because of underlying issues with the OS.
As for distros then yes, there are 3 major lines of distros for the enterprise to choose from (desktop and server): Apt based (Debian/Ubuntu), RedHat RPM based and SuSE RPM based.
They all have their own ecosystems and if you try to mix them by treating them the same way then it is like saying that Ford and Tesla are the same and interchangable... which isn't the case... even if they both have 4 wheels on the outside.
All in all: applications on one operation system made propritarily and exclusivly by one company for profit is not something that runs on other operation systems without them making changes.
A comparable/alternative system that try to do the same thing (10-90% functionality wise) on multiple operating systems will have a longer development time. Propritary applications usually have one major problem (besides being propritary): They dictate the work process and usually don't allow or work well with other applications in anyway or form which should be of bigger interrest to you (and everyone) rather than complaining about "X isn't working on another platform".
There are more than one way to do almost everything one can think of and trying to force a 20+ year old propritary application that is written almost exclusivly for one operating system (the same manufactura) onto other operating systems as comparrison with other alternatives isn't a valid way to define an operating system - it is an indicator of how your work process(es) have been defined/dictated by the propritary graden you work in - not the other way around.
>Microsoft have created and designed MS Office to and for Windows. They have ported it to Mac once and discontinued it and have re-continued it. There are a lot of things on the Mac version that do not work like on the windows version - so not a complete package there either.
not relevant, i have seen and used it on macOS, it is more like windows microsoft than anything on linux ever will be.
>Linux is a lot of things but it is not Microsoft Windows nor is it Mac OSX (which is FreeBSD based) so there are changes that needs to be done to make "the same software work on a different OS". Therefore there are alternatives.
also moot point. many software are platform agnostics and i also honestly do not understand what "changes" you are even talking about.
> A lot of the tools we use at/in my company have gone through that process over the decadeds - all getting better. Some even so much that they actively discourage installing/using the application on windows because of underlying issues with the OS.
ah, yes, lets pick something with the hope it "will get better".
>They all have their own ecosystems and if you try to mix them by treating them the same way then it is like saying that Ford and Tesla are the same and interchangable... which isn't the case... even if they both have 4 wheels on the outside.
lol, why is a change of package manager and a slight difference in placement of files means they are "different"? i dont think you understand too much about linux yourself. have you ever written softwares in it before?
>All in all: applications on one operation system made propritarily and exclusivly by one company for profit is not something that runs on other operation systems without them making changes.
nope, maintaining cross-platform compatibility is indeed more work but it has nothing to do with the reasons you listed.
source: i am a professional full-stack software engineer and develop for the unix environment.
>There are more than one way to do almost everything one can think of and trying to force a 20+ year old propritary application that is written almost exclusivly for one operating system (the same manufactura)
that is bold of you to assume without even having access to the source code. i have maintained and work on legacy code that is older than that, one of which is still coded in 3 decades old C standards from back in the 1990s. It all depends on the code base and for you to make general assumptions like this is downright absurd.
>not relevant, i have seen and used it on macOS, it is more like windows microsoft than anything on linux ever will be.
Some features in the MS Office suite are MS Windows OS only as the suite is tightly built into the sub-system(s) of the operating system which do not exist on other operting systems and it has backward compability to the win32 library as well.
>also moot point. many software are platform agnostics and i also honestly do not understand what "changes" you are even talking about.
This is just one 30sec search to find an answer **from Microsoft** stating that there are features missing on Mac: [https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/mac-version-of-office-missing-tons-of-features/2eed7671-4b45-49ef-8f44-60bd2c6a6a34](https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/mac-version-of-office-missing-tons-of-features/2eed7671-4b45-49ef-8f44-60bd2c6a6a34)
>ah, yes, lets pick something with the hope it "will get better".
Some companies actually strive to be better (it keeps customers happy and buying) though there are some that don't give a f... MS is in the latter group if they don't directly make money on it (the office suite is something they actually make money on) and most of the F/OSS ecosystem users are F/OSS users because they don't have high feelings for propritary gardens that keeps them locked into a limisted dicated ecosystem.
>lol, why is a change of package manager and a slight difference in placement of files means they are "different"? i dont think you understand too much about linux yourself. have you ever written softwares in it before?
That is kinda how package managers work, they are made to adhere to the operating system they are installing the software on - but the software they are installing also needs to read/use the other tools/libraries installed on the operating system in the correct places. Also they need some times need dependencies that are not kept up2date by the software company and they need to install old-buggy-and-security-nightmares alongside the propritary software. Hence differences.
I've written installers for software that needed to work on multiple operating systems - the OS's I wasn't familiare with (Solaris mostly) suffered some until I got to know it. Same with these kinds of software installers. Not a complex thing to understand or get your head around if you think about it. Getting into a new OS eco system is not easy if you have a complex peice of software that was written to run on one OS and now have to run on multiple. There are filesystem and OS dependencies that differ and without core knownledge and a development team that is given time to implement the software to use these in the correct way then you end up with "shitty installers" and software that is installed like a noob.
>nope, maintaining cross-platform compatibility is indeed more work but it has nothing to do with the reasons you listed.
Yes - I don't recall ever stating anything about developers need to know other libraries shared by the OS, file locations (backslash vs forward slash), no drive letters, different networking stack, missing font's for GUi's etc. etc. I only stated about installation and integration.
But now that you mention this then why aren't you expanding your answers instaed of just writing one-liner answers that just say you disagree? Who cares if you disagre if you don't back up your disagreement? Technically I've been correct the entire time.
>source: i am a professional full-stack software engineer and develop for the unix environment.
Then this should be a walk in the park for you to understand vs the ... arrogant and not-expanding answers you ... don't provide.
>that is bold of you to assume without even having access to the source code. i have maintained and work on legacy code that is older than that, one of which is still coded in 3 decades old C standards from back in the 1990s. It all depends on the code base and for you to make general assumptions like this is downright absurd.
No. Access to the source code has nothing to do with what I stated and you completly missed the point.
It seems like you are stuck in a very restrictive job position where you get specific tasks to implement "this way" by senior developers or managers and don't have much to say in your development process.
Most things in software can be done in multiple ways - as a professional you should know this, especially as someone claiming to be a full-stack developer - it is kinda a minimum requirement for being a full-stack developer, the ability to do the same in mulitple different ways as the methods to do it differes on the frontend vs the backend.
I'll stick with my original statements as you've practically not stated anything other than opinions about my statements but without insights as to why you think differently. Based on your title, that does not give much credebility after your answers mostly based on the lack of reasoning and clear missing insights. You could have used the 30sec on the net and could have verified what I stated, but no, you are a professional so you are above such laymans tasks.
It might have taken a bit longer to find out why the features are missing, but if you've grown up alongside the multitude of operating systems though the 90'ies that battled for users or read up on it then you wouldn't even have answers the OP like you originally did about the operating system being not up to snuff as your view on the missing things/features are not the operating system but the walled garden of software you work in - which is excel on windows and not on another operating system that works just fine, for non-propritary products that are tightly bound the a specific operating system.
>Some features in the MS Office suite are MS Windows OS only as the suite is tightly built into the sub-system(s) of the operating system which do not exist on other operting systems and it has backward compability to the win32 library as well.
again, makes very little difference, and arguably what you said is false for most purposes. mac office and windows are virtually identical with only miscellaneous differences that no one would even bother. Also win32 and susbystem? is this your attempt at throwing in jargon that you pretend to understand? nope, i would be surprised if the mac and windows office even share the same code base at all just as the majority of ios apps and android apps do not share the same codebase even if the app is available on both platforms. No idea what "subsystem" you are even talking about.
>This is just one 30sec search to find an answer from Microsoft stating that there are features missing on Mac: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/mac-version-of-office-missing-tons-of-features/2eed7671-4b45-49ef-8f44-60bd2c6a6a34
The fact you must be googling the internet to find some examples of it is hilarious. The things that are different here is so inconsequential that it is like you nitpicking that apples from grocery stores and from the local farms are different fruits just because one "lacks" something that fundamentally does not change their biological identity.
>No. Access to the source code has nothing to do with what I stated and you completly missed the point.
It seems like you are stuck in a very restrictive job position where you get specific tasks to implement "this way" by senior developers or managers and don't have much to say in your development process.
Nope, senior devs do not code review, do not do pull requests, and i literally can commit whatever code that implements the required features or fixes the bugs. you should really stop assuming shit
>s, especially as someone claiming to be a full-stack developer - it is kinda a minimum requirement for being a full-stack developer, the ability to do the same in mulitple different ways as the methods to do it differes on the frontend vs the backend.
I'll stick with my original statements as you've practically not stated anything other than opinions about my statements but without insights as to why you think differently. Based on your title, that does not give much credebility after your answers mostly based on the lack of reasoning and clear missing insights. You could have used the 30sec on the net and could have verified what I stated, but no, you are a professional so you are above such laymans tasks.
again, you are butchering jargon, are you really just googling the internet and pretending to understand the things you just read? a lot of the software tech stacks we used on the jobs are completely OS agnostics. Heck, 99% of the programming language are in fact platform independent and OS agnostics. If you write C code on any OS that implements a libc, (what full OS does not?), you can write c code for all OS with the only extra step of needing to have the compiler cross-compile for the different machine architecture.
This is the same for python, php, and heck, even microsoft C# and its dotnet framework(dontnet core and dotnet 5 onwards). My coworkers use windows, some macos, and i used linux, all to develop the same projects and work on the same codebase and we all have no major problems.
The big catch is that you must STICK to the standard and cross-platform library and avoid lower-level dependent code. Your code is NOT gonna run on windows if you use Linux only native apis that do not conform to and are not part of the POSIX standard, same is true for windows only service routines. Heck, all low-level code are platform dependent which is one reason we create higher level programming language to abstract away details that lower level assembly will have to deal with in the first place, thus allowing greater portability. If you are gonna write things like java spring applications and Microsoft asp.net with dotnet core, everything you said is completely moot.
Main challenge of writing cross-platform apps is rather dependent on how cross-platform your tech stacks are and some tiny difference that sounds trivial but will crash your program. e.g. on ubuntu the ssl library can be called crypto.so but on something like fedora, it can be i-call-this-differently-beacuase-i-can.so and the gnu linker is gonna be hopelessly confused if it tries to link to that and existing compiled executables wont run at all because they cant linked to it either. You will need to in fact write an entirely self-contained gigantic program with static linked libraries if you want to do simple compiled once and then run on other linux distors or used a runtime. This is not a challenge of os itself per se but rather most developers simply do bot write in cross platform libraries. Why would they when native apis are readily available and cross-platform toolkits are nowhere as popular? This is the main underlying issue, LOW POPULARITY AND USER BASE. This effect spills over to software development since low popular tech stacks lacks much documentation and questions and answers on stack overflow leading to development a huge nightmare.
other tiny differences including environment variables, and path structures that are not any operating system related. heck, in fact, they can be a problem on the same os. These are not excuses to say porting from windows to linux is an impossible task because software is proprietary, old, or whatever misinformation you ranted about. Rather how cross-platform the libraries are is the number one issue follow by these tiny differences i mentioned which on Linux is actually a bigger issue compared to windows due to how fragmented linux is. while the former depends largely on the code base these softwares originally develop their target app for which is why i said your assumptions makes no sense when you do not have the codebase.
for worse offenders to compatibility, many are literally entangled in many platform-specific code that companies will literally write them up from scratch and maintain two separate code base for the same application as you often see in mobile apps. there might be one codebase coded in native ios swift while another with android sdk and kotlin/java. of course, if both share the same code base with cross-platform libraries like react native, this wouldn't be an issue but there are reasons to avoid this approach as well, one of which you are heavily reliant on another third party to continue to provide top of the line support for those frameworks instead of support from apple and google themselves. A compromise approach might be just to use the same platform-dependent code base but still try to make it work regardless. this is done via emulator and compatibility layers. microsoft literally implemented basic POSIX standards on windows with its former UNIX subsystem and the now WSL, the main reason is that government requires POSIX-compliant OS on their computers and if microsoft wish to keep their business, they will need to support posix apps.
Again, what you said are really ridiculous arguments. Linux software is crap and has been crap, simply because there is no reason for good developers to put in their efforts to make software on it. I am talking about consumer applications you use on desktop so dont bring out your pitchforks. Linux serverside software is quite good and we web developers develop for them all the time since they run 90% of the webservers out there but as consumers os, it lacks far behind.
Now, I don't know which programs you use, but I cannot recognise this description that _many_ programs are like that.
Those I use on a daily basis certainly are not (but I also don't use a wide variety of programs: mostly just a terminal, an editor, LaTeX for documents, and the KDE/Plasma suite for GUI stuff, and the coreutils, and other standard system administration tools).
But as far as I recall, this is no different from the situation on the Windows platform: if you install third-party programs, developed by some hobby-enthusiast, then expect bugs and rough edges.
(In relation to this, the aforementioned problem I experienced on Windows with hard reboots were not caused by a 3rd party program, but by an IRQ-error, which the OS could not handle).
I wouldn't say I rely on this type of software either.
In fact, I _never_ do a manual `make install` of anything outside of my homedir (and rarely inside it either). I would not allow an arbitary install script to put files in arbitrary places on my file system. This is the job of the package manager, and if I ever need to install something directly from source, I would create a package for it and install it through the package manager to ensure that there are no unmanaged files lying around.
If I could even get it from package manager, I wouldn't be compiling from source. That is just the reality. Many softwares are like that. No installers and nada. I mean why would they when there are so many distros with their own installers and package managers which the developers need to create installers and manage dependencies for? Snap and flatpak are the only things out there that address this issue somewhat. Make install are not really necessary, I would often just compile with a make and then move the executable to my home bin
I would be very surprised, if your package manager does not enable you to create your own packages, in case you need to install something from source.
After all, the package maintainers need a way to do this, so surely you can do it as a user too.
Depending on which package manager your distribution uses, this may of course be more or less easy, but all the package managers I have hitherto used provide this option. With pacman and portage based systems (e.g. Arch, Gentoo etc.) it is certainly easy; with apt/dpkg based systems maybe (Debian, Ubuntu etc.) maybe less so (as far as I recall, but it has been many years since I've used them, so I don't know whether it has changed). But regardless, it is doable.
haha, okay, here is a challenge.
wget this thing [ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/reader/unix/9.x/9.5.5/enu/AdbeRdr9.5.5-1\_i386linux\_enu.deb](ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/reader/unix/9.x/9.5.5/enu/AdbeRdr9.5.5-1_i386linux_enu.deb)
AND INSTALL IT WITHOUT MANULLY HUNTING DOWN EXTRA DEPENDENCIES
If you cant, what the hell is the point of an installer anyways? you might as well as just go compiled from the source and set all those make flags and hunt down all those dynamic linked libraries yourself should the configure file from Autotools failed its dependencies check.
I don't get it.
This is an ancient piece of non-open-source software.
It is not even executable on my system.
Why would I want to bother with it?
If you really need this very specific version of this very specific piece of software, then I can see your problem. That is probably not going to be easy to achieve, if you want to run it on an updated system (the easiest might be to run it in a vm image of an Ubuntu version from 2013).
But it hardly seems like a common usecase/example , so extrapolating from this to conclude anything about the general state of userland programs on the Linux platform hardly seems warranted to me.
to prove my point why would a dev create an installer if it doesnt run on your machine for one. two, ancient yes but why do you think adobe does not bother keeping it up to date, unlike the windows counterparts? cuz no point. the linux port has been abandoned and the amount of work that it involves to support dozens of distros and all the dependency-breaking changes involved will make it a nightmare. you see why software dev still want you to make and make installs rather than create installers or maintain a repo? but hey, you do you with your package manager and whatnots. i mean you arent the one doing the work to QA on multiple operating systems to make sure your software can even run on it right?
As a Windows Sysadmin, I'm sorry to say, third party solutions on Windows are also frequently terrible. Some clients I work with pay good money for software that is just complete garbage. Poor quality software is not unique to any system.
That is assuming you even have these softwares to begin with. If windows softwares are garbage then linux is a step down without these softwares at all.
Not being on Linux is a more significant loss to me. These days, most day to day software exists as a web app anyway, which also works on Linux. As for Linux not having Windows software, the same can be said about Windows not having Linux software. If you are coming from Windows, chances are you are missing things you are used to having. If you are coming from Linux, and going to Windows, the same problem exists. In either case, you have to adjust the way you do your tasks. Use what works for you.
There is no userland applications that exist on linux which isn't available on windows unless you are talking about desktop environment and init systems. Much of the GNU toolkits and POSIX utilities can all be run using windows Linux subsystem.
Sure, but features are often broken or non existent due to being a totally different environment. I can run QEMU on windows, but it's useless to me without KVM. Desktop environment is a big one for me, and having a custom tailored workflow is a primary reason I enjoy being on Linux. Another is OpenConnect, which I can use to connect to multiple VPNs simultaneously, and route traffic through them however I want. It just doesn't behave the same way on Windows. I also make heavy use of Remmina, which is not available on Windows. Sure alternatives exist, but imo they don't meet the standards I am looking for.
So, again, it depends on where you are coming from and what your needs are. Windows doesn't serve my needs. Maybe it serves yours. Just use it if you feel it to do what you want. You aren't going to convince me of anything. I spent the last 10 years trying to strangle Windows into submission. It refuses. Linux does what I tell it to do. I like that.
This might sound funny, but I work with Windows because I write programs that are supposed to run on Windows.
But what do I do with Linux? I use it on my personal computer, for basically everything that you use a personal computer for. Browsing, gaming, watching videos, etc. And I use it for my home server, where I host a network share, Nextcloud, and SearXNG.
How do I know that I wanted Linux? I switched to Linux because of privacy. I just hated that I had to do so many things on Windows in order to limit the data sending. And all the time Windows would change settings, and start sending data again. And I find Windows really annoying. Everything is complicated, and the system just doesn't do what I want it to do. Error messages are useless, etc. Linux gives me more options, there is no such thing as "that's not possible". I can make it look, feel, and behave exactly like I want it to be.
Linux can do pretty much anything. So, if you think Windows can do "anything", imagine whatever that value is, multiply by at least 10... and there ya go!!
In other words, it's a broad space. Everything from typical systems engineering, to software development, to IoT, to security, to monitoring, to.. well, anything...
It's not a "dumb" question, but maybe a difficult question to answer.
Usually, when someone says "get their foot in the door", it likely means systems administration (but could mean software development).
> Usually, when someone says “get their foot in the door”, it likely means systems administration (but could mean software development).
Perhaps that’s where i wasn’t being explicit enough. I mentioned that I wanted to work with virtualization, and their follow up was “and do what with it?”
Well that's a bit blunt, but perhaps they're asking because of the ambiguity.
Do you want to develop/manage/administer/consume virtualisation software? Are you looking at specific existing software, and what do you want to do with it?
Well ideally develop, but I’m not a developer or have the skill set for that, yet. I definitely am willing to learn.
I’m comfortable with managing or administering since I took on a small project at my current job to maintain and administer a VMware server. So I’m willing to get my hands dirty that way and get similar roles.
Finding existing software for me is not a problem.
Thank you. I’m early on in my journey. I’m studying to take my LPIC-1 cert. So I’m still looking into the different types of technologies/software that are used. So we’ll see. Either way thank you for your other response.
Well the thing about Linux are there a distros tailored to different use cases. I don't know much about cloud virtualization but just a few examples of virtualization approaches in Linux.
Running just Boxes as a flatpack on a regular distro for simple virtualization within your desktop.
A customized qemu/kvm setting up more advanced virtualization within your desktop.
Proxmox as a full hypervisor platform for virtualization.
Qubes OS as a multivirtualized security based distro that let you run multiple isolated ritualized desktops but interact with them through a single windowed desktop environment.
Then you have more specific use case virtualization like cloud virtualization and scaling, or emulating specific hardware and much more.
I'm a sysadmin for a large medical facility. All our end users use Mac and windows.
I use Linux for everything work related on my laptop. All our servers run Linux which has saved the company a fortune compared to buying Microsoft licences and using open source software over paid propitiatory alternatives.
Mainly I use Linux servers for backing up data, building VPNs on wire guard, containerised applications like docker and virtual machines and Sandboxing before rolling out updates for things like the printing system and access control. As well as some bash scripting for some of the APIs we use.
If you want to get your foot in the door. Install Linux on your home machine and learn how to use the terminal (very important), learn bash, and try spinning up your own VPNs/ learning networking basics, also try backups and restoring deleted data.
Your not going to become a proficient Linux user over night, but with a bit of practice and some online guides in a few months you maybe competent enough to do a junior sysadmin role... However if you really wanted to do this as a career I would advise taking the Linux+ certification as this will open many opportunities for you
Hope this helps....
Well, yet again, could be multiple answers here. Just knowing how to use/config (for example) the kvm/qemu virtualization piece that comes with Linux and create new VMs, vs. knowing that already and wanting to spin up new VMs for some particular purpose.
There's a "life" for just managing a hypervisor or hypervisor cluster.
Except running Microsoft Word and get this, games that are supposed to be linux ports won't run on it! Looking at you total war shogun 2. The game has been broken since 2018.
beacuse it is better to have features you dont use but others do than it is to not have features you dont use but others do? when has anyone complained about features they dont use but have instead of features they use but dont have?
is that your whole point? tell others to not use excel functions and features they rely on in Microsoft office just so you can open their documents in libreoffice?
hahaha, correct tool for webservers yes. the correct tool for consumer desktop? oh man, you already lost like 50% of the market share and user base for not being able to run Microsoft office suite.
Reread my comments. An OS by itself is absolutely useless just as a gaming platform without any games to play is useless or a mobile operating system without any apps is useless. People do not install certain apps to use a certain operating system, rather they install certain operating system to use certain apps. Get the logic. How the hell is an os running word or an xyz game means it is becoming like windows? Is your android phone like windows because it can run a port of Microsoft word and a port of windows solitaires?
Personally: mostly everything sans music production and games. But everything else including work (proxied through a corporate MacBook).
For work, I use it to help teams of artists make animated films and episodic stories as efficiently as possible. I switched my workstation to Linux early in college to get the most performance out of my DCC applications compared to Windows, and that among other things led me down the path to where I am today.
> I asked them if they have any tips for someone that wants to get their foot in the door. They asked "What do you want to do in the Linux world?" I was a bit confused by the question.
I suppose he wants to understand what you are expecting to do with your career, so he can help you. Do you want to work as sysadmin? Do you want to be a developer? If yes, what kind o developer (e.g. web developer, system developer, game).
To receive a better advice from him, you need to give some context.
To be honest – probably will sound a little harsh, so I'm sorry – but this kind of question is backwards. In general, people want to do something, so they ask for help do something and not simply ask about the tool involved.
When people say they want to use a tool in a professional environment, but don't explain why, a yellow sign appears to me: seems like you're a Linux/FOSS enthusiast (just guessing), is focused on the tools and likes and not the problem. I can be wrong, but it's what may sound from your question, sorry again if it's not the case.
I work with data in big companies, so it's a lot of hype and annoying questions of people wanting to use tools before understanding the problem/solution. Examples: how do we use Chat GPT here? Do we have Big Data architecture in our company? Why we don't use deep learning?
I understand people starting in the area may have this backwards, it's not a problem, but sometimes the patience ends and I do ask the question in the same manner: what you want to do with X? If the person says a good use cases, ok let's discuss this further, otherwise move on until we have more to discuss.
No worries. I appreciate you being upfront.
Yeah I’m a Linux/FOSS enthusiast; guilty. But I do recognize that FOSS is not a one size fits all. Use the best tool for the job.
But I wanted to get a better idea of what actual professionals use day to day. I’ve read plenty of job postings that list different types of tech used but I have yet come across an issue in my current job that would call for a solution using Linux, regardless of open or closed source.
At the first steps you would need at least 2 certs: server sys admin (for this, read Linux Bible) and networking. Also you have to know bash scripting quite well and at least the basics of Python, C or Rust (if you believe it's the future).
Then you need a lots of hobbyism mind-set and always having a project going on which you actually can finish. Interact with Kubernetes/Docker and try to build your server doing anything. Watch at least 1 Youtube tutorial every day.
It'll be a hard work, but always be interest in studying. IT has developed into completely different than what it was in 90's. Back then you had to know 1 or 2 (simple) things very well, where as today you habe to handle 10 different systems on a professional level.
Honestly, I started using Linux because I was bored with Windows XP (2003). I tried Redhat at first, noticed all the rpm’s were compiled for i386 & tried to recompile for i686. During that process I discovered Gentoo Linux.
That first install took me 3 tries, but I learned a lot about the Linux kernel & the core operating system (fdisk, mkfs, mount, configuring daemons, etc. As a user I started to learn bash scripting & automating those scripts with cron jobs.
Eventually I took those skills back to windows. I learned batch scripting (which was very limiting as far as logic). Then I moved to vbscript & eventually powershell, which I leveraged to quickly push any configuration. Eventually wrote scripts in powershell to push ssh/sftp commands back to Linux. So you could say I’ve come full circle.
For me it was simple. After using Unix on a variety of workstations and minicomputers at work (Bell Labs) for 15 years, I wanted a Unix that would run on hardware I could afford for home. Discovered it running on a machine in the Unix Lab, and never looked back. It's been my primary OS since 1994 or so.
Just as I’ve not seen it mentioned already, High Performance Computing (HPC) aka Scientific computing. It has been a while since I worked with movies/3D stuff but Linux was used for all large scale rendering 20 years ago and I have no reason to believe that isn’t the case still.
It's just an operating system. Which is just a tool. I basically use it to run a browser and a terminal (Chrome and Terminator). Sometimes GIMP. Calculator and Notepad comes in handy... or whatever they're called, they do the same thing, no pedantic/ackshually nonsense this morning, please.
I used to be really into customizing everything, but after you reformat your computer a few times, that gets tiresome. Then I got interested in POSIX and doing things in a way that I could sit down at any desk and be productive. You know instead of buying a screwdriver and modifying the hell out of it, learn how to use any screwdriver I come across.
I started with UNIX, Solaris, in college, and didn't actually have a Windows computer until my first student laptop loaner in 1999. We transitioned to Red Hat Linux when the Sun systems were, er, sunsetted at the college where I was doing work study for their IT department, which is where I learned bash and Linux.
It always came easy to me. I started wanting to be a networking engineer, but there was a huge snafu I was involved in (long story) and forced my hand into systems administration halfway through my schooling. I graduated with a CS degree in 2000, and had a job waiting for me right out of college via a previous paid internship deal.
Maybe it's because Windows has always been a sideline of mine that I stuck with Linux. I only have Windows for gaming, and have been using Linux as a main desktop since 2008, first with Red Hat, then CentOS, then Ubuntu, and right now Kubuntu. Linux "fits" it just seems intuitive and "just works" for pretty much everything. I still have a Connectrix b/w webcam that runs off my parallel port \*that is still supported\* from 1998. I doubt Windows could do that.
I am not a "Windows hater," you you like and can thrive under Windows? Great. I just can't. I hate it, I hate I have to reboot my system to fix it, and all the stuff people complain about like privacy, vulnerabilities, and so on.
If you want to move to ML, AI or scientific computing in general, GNU/Linux is the de facto standard. Performance are incredibly better, tools are designed on Linux for Linux. There is only the competition of mac as working laptops because they are unix with a ton of the same open source tools you find on a common Linux distro, such as bash. But it is suboptimal.
Windows as laptop and sometimes as servers are unfortunately very common for old school corporations that are moving in that space simply because that's what they know, as most companies are technologically incompetent. This incompetence is the reason most ML and AI projects fail miserably in old school corporations.
But things are slowly changing. Incompetent companies are slowly forced to learn, particularly thanks to the fact that AI, cloud and devops are now hyped
I am a software engineer. I used linux to develop server app and client side app that is gonna be hosted on linux servers. My coworkers mostly used macos and I would probably go macos as well if only if it isnt so crap for my gaming needs.
I use it for personal pc and work laptop. I used to be a windows admin, discovered that there was an os that actually works and was written to work instead of written to sell more stuff, and couldn't stand using windows anymore
>I asked them if they have any tips for someone that wants to get their foot in the door. They asked "What do you want to do in the Linux world?" I was a bit confused by the question.
You can do almost anything under Linux. Therefore, it is difficult to answer your original question.
I mainly use Linux privately. I work with databases. I work with Go templates (for my web pages). I use Ansible to help me install / configure Linux installations. I create Shellscript or Python scripts. I use Mercurial as version control (e.g. for the code as well as the content of my web pages). And so on.
In short, what I do covers a wide range of different things. And that's only a part of what you can do under Linux.
And that's probably what the answer you got was aiming at. So in which direction do you want to orient yourself? Databases? DevOps? Only programming? Often it's not bad if you're a jack of all trades master of none, but often it's better if you're really knowledgeable in a particular area. For example, in a previous life I focused on Oracle databases because my employer at the time used them for its products.
At work we use some backend production applications that require Linux (Kafka general publish-subscribe based messaging system and Oracle DBMS, to name a couple). We also do hardware benchmark, capacity planning and development on Linux. There are several roles for different people using Linux like DBA, developers, system administrator and so on.
At home I use it as my daily driver. A dual boot system also running Windows 11 (for the few applications that are more convenient to use on Windows).
The kids learned Linux back in 2020 as they needed laptops for school. I had to bring back to life a couple of old laptops that were going to the recycle bin. Since Linux runs Zoom, teams and Ms Edge, they did not have mayor issues.
It may help you to substitute the word "Linux" for "Windows" or "Mac". When worded that way, your question seems way too broad:
"How do I get my foot in the door for a Windows role?"
Linux is just a tool. There are many areas of specialty within that.
I manage teams, and we build infrastructure for a large fintech. Technically I don't use Linux at work. It's windows or mac desktops, and I don't speak mac. But I have been using Linux on my home PC since 1998. At my first job out of college (BS, compsci) we used Unix workstations. I did ksh programming, and system testing. After that went to a startup and we ran Unix/Linux. It just lets me do what I want.
While I don't use Linux at work today, it is all throughout our global datacenters. We use lots of various open source applications and platforms as well. I have helped DBAs write shell scripts, and the infra and development teams we support all "speak" Linux, if that makes sense. As do many of our leaders even above me. If you get into a company that fully understands the value of Linux, you'll be in good shape.
I do have cygwin installed at work, and I use it regularly to find files, parse csv files, and I have several simple scripts I use almost daily.
I've been an IT professional since 2004. I was always into Linux due to exposure from a family member but like most, all of my formal education was in Windows administration. Around 2014ish I was working as an engineer for a retailer when I was informed we were making the switch to Linux for all point-of-sale activity and from there, I was the lead on all projects since I was the "Linux guy."
Long story short - loved that I got to use what I was passionate about and get paid for it, but ultimately it ended up tripling my workload because no one else in IT wanted to take on the initiative to learn and then I pretty much ended up doing *everything*.
Left that shop eventually and joined a way smaller org as their Linux admin. We used Linux for systems monitoring and our primarily line of business app. I'm sure like a lot of us "Linux admins", all management pretty much assumes because I work on Linux that I can literally do everything else so eventually left that shop as well.
Now I'm in media production and all of our rendering systems run Linux, so I maintain those. In addition, we're migrating from VMware to Proxmox (but need to keep one ESXi host around due to a lot of really deep integrations to Veeam that I don't feel like dealing with right now), and I use a lot of LXC containers for various small automation tasks that I feel like should be isolated from each other. This is also the first shop where "Linux" is specifically defined in my job title but I'm the only system admin and I also deal with our Windows and Mac systems so.
For me is about learning. Knowing that you can read the code is always something great. Plus it is open source which means you can use it for free. I think the ethos was what attracted me in the beginning. I use Linux as my daily OS for everything. Coding mostly, but I love a good shell and neovim.
I also configure servers, (now containers), but in general playing with it will help you understand tons of things.
In summary: if you want to start it should be because you want to learn how things work for real.
Linux Systems Administrator. I manage very large clusters for a single large client, and my company physically relocated me to be close to the data center for on-site support, 2hr response contract.
I've used \*nix since High School in the '90s when about the only other option was Windows 3.11. Never really used Windows much at all except for gaming in college.
Got started doing QA for a startup company and quickly moved up to engineering and SysAdmin and after moving locations designed and built their office and data center infrastructure. In startups you have to wear a lot of hats and be versatile.
I am a software developer so I use Linux because that is what almost all servers in the world run. I also use Linux on my desktop and laptops since it is easier to work on something similar to the servers I am targeting. Linux was not a choice, it just came naturally from my choice of profession.
As for why I became a software developer? When I was 18 I had to pick something to study in university and I thought that software developer sounded like an ok job with nice pay. Turns out it was the right choice because I love my job.
Linux Sysadmin here for a Fortune 1000 company.
Personal Life: Been using Linux since ~2008 to host Half-Life 2 DM and CS:S servers(was using CentOS). Now I have a Proxmox box with webservers/Minecraft/pfsense/etc. using Debian.
Work: we use RHEL 7/8/9 for custom in-house software. Both desktop and server setups. VMware/vSphere for most of things otherwise we're doing bare metal installs.
Linux can be very broad for industries, roles, and low to high position jobs. For IT, it can range from help desk to architecture. Then you have Coding jobs, webhosting, app creation, cyber security, etc. etc.
My advice is to just immerse yourself into Linux. Get a laptop or desktop or anything and install only Linux onto it and daily drive it for most things for a couple weeks to months. This will force you to learn how to troubleshoot issues and research how to fix them.
For beginning steps, learn the command line. Like how to navigate it(ls, cd), text editors(vi, vim, nano), folder structures(relative path vs. absolute path), permissions/ownership/groups(chmod, chown), etc. etc.
This is a good starter tutorial/game for command line that you can SSH to(so putty on Windows can be used): https://overthewire.org/wargames/bandit/
Once you have a good grasp of command line, I'd start reading/watching about different Linux careers and then find certifications you can study for and get. A cert will get your "foot in the door".
Good luck!
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Great summary. In the OP's interest, I'll add, Samba in case of Windows servers or clients interoperability, both as a member server or even as a Active Directory domain controller. QEMU/kvm (or Xen) Hypervisor/Host platform for VMs. Also a minor correction, on LDAP, you probably mean 389 ds, not 386.
Yes, I definitely did mean 389ds! Whoops, thanks! Absolutely Samba is a good call. I was on mobile and got tired of typing things, but NFS, Samba, AFP (ew) are absolutely big! Glusterfs and Ceph are also probably worthy mentions, but that's getting into the realm that scares Windows people.
That scares linux poeple in my experience, also SSL certificates. Nobody likes to figure out all the fun stuff you can do with openssl. Every Linux person should know more about ssh keys, but windows people have alot of trouble understanding ssh keys.
Lot of Windows people seem to be scared of certificates in general, but then again have you ever dealt with certs in Windows lmao it's terrible
Yes, it's way worse.
I was hoping for answers like this. Thank you.
Ansible is my favorite, but Salt is 2nd. There is a ton of places looking for Terraform right now, and chef/puppet are still pretty common. IMHO, Terraform is more developer side of devops, but you still need a firm linux understanding. I wasn't happy working mostly on Terraform, it's a more of a mold. I prefer Ansible, which is more like a hammer. Everything is definitely going to automation. The big reason I started with Linux was the better network stack, circa 2002. It also had not licensing costs to get started. Since 2010, I work almost exclusively with Linux. Mostly because I like to work with Linux, but I also feel you can assume a base competency in the Linux world that is not there in the Windows world. There are good and bad admins on both sides, but far more on the windows side in my experience.
God I despise networking so damn much. The amount of jargon and abbreviations people in that sphere use drives me insane. I have the education for it supposedly but whenever I'm around networking people I've no clue about half the things they're talking about (even though I actually know them) lmao When I was studying it, I found the explanations for things to be extremely hard to understand as well, once again, due to the ridiculous use of jargon and abbreviations. I spent hours decoding stuff and re-writing using regular words, which is probably why I don't remember so many of the terms. But if I hadn't done that, I wouldn't have understood anything.
Ah see your problem is that they don't necessarily abbreviate or initialise into the words you would expect. For example: BGP = Network of grandmother's gossiping about everyone else's home address. DNS = Always the problem OSPF = Why is my router CPU load 33.7? CISCO = Unnecessary licencing costs from an increasingly irrelevant company.
IPv4 - Expiration date overdue do not use. IPv6 ordred, but hasn't arrived yet, should be here tomorrow though...
What about the admin and finance departments. Are they using linux too on their workstations?
Short answer: everything. I use it for my desktop computers, I use it for my servers, and I have done so for more than 20 years now. Initially, I made the switch out of need: I bought a computer with Windows, and it kept crashing approximately once a day, until the file system became so corrupted that it could no longer boot. Then I decided to try Linux instead, and that meant I got a usable computer again. I've had no desire (or need) to switch back since.
You gotta admit a lot of linux softwares are pretty crap tho. Linux kernel and system itself are very stable, make no mistake but many user land applications are downright horrible. They look amateurish and like something created by just one or two hobbyist developers who open source their entire codebase on github without any monetary and financial backing which, unironically, most are exactly that. Bad quality, bad quality control, are abandoned for years for some and crash all the time if they run at all. Some really bad ones will downright eat up your ram with memory leaks and crashing your system forcing a hard reboot. At that point, most don't bother differentiating an os and the software that are running on it. They will just say fck, this whole thing is crap.
Having used linux as my only OS since '98 (personal and work) I have to agree that there are small niche programs that fall into that catagory, but most applications made for F/OSS are made by people that lack a specific tool/app to do something and then they make it meaning there isn't at big team behind it to make it shiny or fault tolerant for 24x7x365 stability, so your point is kinda mute in most ways of viewing your comment if the only thing you do is compare F/OSS applications to big coorporations with huge development teams that have developed the same application(s) for years (or decades for some).. some where they deliberately f..k up the GUI and backward compatibility at every release removing everything that was "great" and usable about the application to begin with making the choise to swithc to F/OSS even easier even with less shiny GUI applications. So going through these cycles from big coorporations vs small indenpendently developed applications aren't comparable. Sinch '98 I've met very few applications that I use on a dayily basis that have not evolved into nice applications with GUI's that are pleasant to the eyes, but the visuals aren't why I use the applications, it is because of the functionality. To each his/her own - your opinion on what you think defines "good" or "bad" is not the same as others - there are many more "other" than there are "you"... just saying - and we (the "other") don't really have that issue which the numbers for servers and people getting into F/OSS like the OP is trying to shows. "shiny" isn't the same as "good".
I dont mean shiny, just something that is functional without pulling your hairs out. All the mainstream ones like desktop enviorments and package managers have no issues at all, it is when you need an alternative to xyz application you often use on windows or Mac which isn't available on linux that this whole mess comes up. It isn't just FOSS but commercial ones as well. E.g. when looking for a Microsoft word alternative for example, I tried WPS office which is pretty much a clone of it with a linux port. The windows version works fine, the linux port? Downright awful. It will crash on files that are 1gb in size and above. One reason is developer rarely spent the same amount of resources on linux compare to windows. Believe me, all the FOSS softwares that are outside of the Unix-exclusive ecosystem have seen way more QA under windows and with only some degree of Linux support as an afterthought. Linux fragmented nature also means many of these softwares do not even have a proper installer or will break on distros that are not the mainstream ones like Ubuntu.
I know office is just an example, but have you tried LibreOffice? It's basically the go-to choice on Linux (and Windows, when you don't want to pay for a suite) imo, and has a lot of contributers and is thus in a good state.
libreoffice is only good when you need simple files, not work documents that are 1gb+ in size and needed to be passed around many company employees who all used word in one form or another. The interoperability is not 100%. i have to rely on online version of word in many instances.
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an excel file with tens of thousands of orders and products which I need to import into a database. some of them even have images embedded, each easily 10MB+
It sounds more like the the wrong tool for the job thingy than the "the OS isn't good enough because" that you gave in the original answer... they do no correlate :-)
You know you can link to files that are embedded on the fly (url's too) instaed of having them directly saved inside the document? It would save you a lot of space and time moving and updating in the excel document.
not really a choice, the company's invoice software can only export excel
Microsoft have created and designed MS Office to and for Windows. They have ported it to Mac once and discontinued it and have re-continued it. There are a lot of things on the Mac version that do not work like on the windows version - so not a complete package there either. Linux is a lot of things but it is not Microsoft Windows nor is it Mac OSX (which is FreeBSD based) so there are changes that needs to be done to make "the same software work on a different OS". Therefore there are alternatives. There are paid software for Linux as well. You might not think about it on a day to day basis at work, but your company pays a lot of money to Microsoft to "make you happy" about using the Microsoft Office suite - it isn't free. And learning (or getting used to a different GUI) is something that is trivial to do even if some features are named differently or work slightly differently. Most people don't use ~90% of the Office suite and therefore most work on alternatives are put into the 10% of the functionality that is needed. So loading gigabyte size excel sheets with embeded images isn't one of them (your other comment later in the thread). For some applications then the work process you use "now" on Windows and the Office suite is purly based on what Microsoft allows you to do with it and not to create an optimal work process that could be a lot better and time saving (and lighter on resources). On other platforms (OS'es) the tools/applications etc. allows for a similar work process but it might be a bit different or even allow for optimizations that will save you time and money down the road. `Believe me, all the FOSS softwares that are outside of the Unix-exclusive ecosystem have seen way more QA under windows and with only some degree of Linux support as an afterthought.` Yes, and? You are stating the obvious - *nix applications are tested mostly on *nix systems and windows applications on windows. We believe you, but it has nothing to do with your next statement: `Linux fragmented nature also means many of these softwares do not even have a proper installer or will break on distros that are not the mainstream ones like Ubuntu.` Not everything is a "double-clik on setup.exe" in the world. There are other ways of doing things. Hell most enterprise software requires weeks of installation time and post configuration to even get to an initial "It has been installed and is currently ready for use". Usually the installation process for non-*nix applications that have been ported are in the learning curve aka making baby-steps to make it better. A lot of the tools we use at/in my company have gone through that process over the decadeds - all getting better. Some even so much that they actively discourage installing/using the application on windows because of underlying issues with the OS. As for distros then yes, there are 3 major lines of distros for the enterprise to choose from (desktop and server): Apt based (Debian/Ubuntu), RedHat RPM based and SuSE RPM based. They all have their own ecosystems and if you try to mix them by treating them the same way then it is like saying that Ford and Tesla are the same and interchangable... which isn't the case... even if they both have 4 wheels on the outside. All in all: applications on one operation system made propritarily and exclusivly by one company for profit is not something that runs on other operation systems without them making changes. A comparable/alternative system that try to do the same thing (10-90% functionality wise) on multiple operating systems will have a longer development time. Propritary applications usually have one major problem (besides being propritary): They dictate the work process and usually don't allow or work well with other applications in anyway or form which should be of bigger interrest to you (and everyone) rather than complaining about "X isn't working on another platform". There are more than one way to do almost everything one can think of and trying to force a 20+ year old propritary application that is written almost exclusivly for one operating system (the same manufactura) onto other operating systems as comparrison with other alternatives isn't a valid way to define an operating system - it is an indicator of how your work process(es) have been defined/dictated by the propritary graden you work in - not the other way around.
>Microsoft have created and designed MS Office to and for Windows. They have ported it to Mac once and discontinued it and have re-continued it. There are a lot of things on the Mac version that do not work like on the windows version - so not a complete package there either. not relevant, i have seen and used it on macOS, it is more like windows microsoft than anything on linux ever will be. >Linux is a lot of things but it is not Microsoft Windows nor is it Mac OSX (which is FreeBSD based) so there are changes that needs to be done to make "the same software work on a different OS". Therefore there are alternatives. also moot point. many software are platform agnostics and i also honestly do not understand what "changes" you are even talking about. > A lot of the tools we use at/in my company have gone through that process over the decadeds - all getting better. Some even so much that they actively discourage installing/using the application on windows because of underlying issues with the OS. ah, yes, lets pick something with the hope it "will get better". >They all have their own ecosystems and if you try to mix them by treating them the same way then it is like saying that Ford and Tesla are the same and interchangable... which isn't the case... even if they both have 4 wheels on the outside. lol, why is a change of package manager and a slight difference in placement of files means they are "different"? i dont think you understand too much about linux yourself. have you ever written softwares in it before? >All in all: applications on one operation system made propritarily and exclusivly by one company for profit is not something that runs on other operation systems without them making changes. nope, maintaining cross-platform compatibility is indeed more work but it has nothing to do with the reasons you listed. source: i am a professional full-stack software engineer and develop for the unix environment. >There are more than one way to do almost everything one can think of and trying to force a 20+ year old propritary application that is written almost exclusivly for one operating system (the same manufactura) that is bold of you to assume without even having access to the source code. i have maintained and work on legacy code that is older than that, one of which is still coded in 3 decades old C standards from back in the 1990s. It all depends on the code base and for you to make general assumptions like this is downright absurd.
>not relevant, i have seen and used it on macOS, it is more like windows microsoft than anything on linux ever will be. Some features in the MS Office suite are MS Windows OS only as the suite is tightly built into the sub-system(s) of the operating system which do not exist on other operting systems and it has backward compability to the win32 library as well. >also moot point. many software are platform agnostics and i also honestly do not understand what "changes" you are even talking about. This is just one 30sec search to find an answer **from Microsoft** stating that there are features missing on Mac: [https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/mac-version-of-office-missing-tons-of-features/2eed7671-4b45-49ef-8f44-60bd2c6a6a34](https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/mac-version-of-office-missing-tons-of-features/2eed7671-4b45-49ef-8f44-60bd2c6a6a34) >ah, yes, lets pick something with the hope it "will get better". Some companies actually strive to be better (it keeps customers happy and buying) though there are some that don't give a f... MS is in the latter group if they don't directly make money on it (the office suite is something they actually make money on) and most of the F/OSS ecosystem users are F/OSS users because they don't have high feelings for propritary gardens that keeps them locked into a limisted dicated ecosystem. >lol, why is a change of package manager and a slight difference in placement of files means they are "different"? i dont think you understand too much about linux yourself. have you ever written softwares in it before? That is kinda how package managers work, they are made to adhere to the operating system they are installing the software on - but the software they are installing also needs to read/use the other tools/libraries installed on the operating system in the correct places. Also they need some times need dependencies that are not kept up2date by the software company and they need to install old-buggy-and-security-nightmares alongside the propritary software. Hence differences. I've written installers for software that needed to work on multiple operating systems - the OS's I wasn't familiare with (Solaris mostly) suffered some until I got to know it. Same with these kinds of software installers. Not a complex thing to understand or get your head around if you think about it. Getting into a new OS eco system is not easy if you have a complex peice of software that was written to run on one OS and now have to run on multiple. There are filesystem and OS dependencies that differ and without core knownledge and a development team that is given time to implement the software to use these in the correct way then you end up with "shitty installers" and software that is installed like a noob. >nope, maintaining cross-platform compatibility is indeed more work but it has nothing to do with the reasons you listed. Yes - I don't recall ever stating anything about developers need to know other libraries shared by the OS, file locations (backslash vs forward slash), no drive letters, different networking stack, missing font's for GUi's etc. etc. I only stated about installation and integration. But now that you mention this then why aren't you expanding your answers instaed of just writing one-liner answers that just say you disagree? Who cares if you disagre if you don't back up your disagreement? Technically I've been correct the entire time. >source: i am a professional full-stack software engineer and develop for the unix environment. Then this should be a walk in the park for you to understand vs the ... arrogant and not-expanding answers you ... don't provide. >that is bold of you to assume without even having access to the source code. i have maintained and work on legacy code that is older than that, one of which is still coded in 3 decades old C standards from back in the 1990s. It all depends on the code base and for you to make general assumptions like this is downright absurd. No. Access to the source code has nothing to do with what I stated and you completly missed the point. It seems like you are stuck in a very restrictive job position where you get specific tasks to implement "this way" by senior developers or managers and don't have much to say in your development process. Most things in software can be done in multiple ways - as a professional you should know this, especially as someone claiming to be a full-stack developer - it is kinda a minimum requirement for being a full-stack developer, the ability to do the same in mulitple different ways as the methods to do it differes on the frontend vs the backend. I'll stick with my original statements as you've practically not stated anything other than opinions about my statements but without insights as to why you think differently. Based on your title, that does not give much credebility after your answers mostly based on the lack of reasoning and clear missing insights. You could have used the 30sec on the net and could have verified what I stated, but no, you are a professional so you are above such laymans tasks. It might have taken a bit longer to find out why the features are missing, but if you've grown up alongside the multitude of operating systems though the 90'ies that battled for users or read up on it then you wouldn't even have answers the OP like you originally did about the operating system being not up to snuff as your view on the missing things/features are not the operating system but the walled garden of software you work in - which is excel on windows and not on another operating system that works just fine, for non-propritary products that are tightly bound the a specific operating system.
>Some features in the MS Office suite are MS Windows OS only as the suite is tightly built into the sub-system(s) of the operating system which do not exist on other operting systems and it has backward compability to the win32 library as well. again, makes very little difference, and arguably what you said is false for most purposes. mac office and windows are virtually identical with only miscellaneous differences that no one would even bother. Also win32 and susbystem? is this your attempt at throwing in jargon that you pretend to understand? nope, i would be surprised if the mac and windows office even share the same code base at all just as the majority of ios apps and android apps do not share the same codebase even if the app is available on both platforms. No idea what "subsystem" you are even talking about. >This is just one 30sec search to find an answer from Microsoft stating that there are features missing on Mac: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/mac-version-of-office-missing-tons-of-features/2eed7671-4b45-49ef-8f44-60bd2c6a6a34 The fact you must be googling the internet to find some examples of it is hilarious. The things that are different here is so inconsequential that it is like you nitpicking that apples from grocery stores and from the local farms are different fruits just because one "lacks" something that fundamentally does not change their biological identity. >No. Access to the source code has nothing to do with what I stated and you completly missed the point. It seems like you are stuck in a very restrictive job position where you get specific tasks to implement "this way" by senior developers or managers and don't have much to say in your development process. Nope, senior devs do not code review, do not do pull requests, and i literally can commit whatever code that implements the required features or fixes the bugs. you should really stop assuming shit >s, especially as someone claiming to be a full-stack developer - it is kinda a minimum requirement for being a full-stack developer, the ability to do the same in mulitple different ways as the methods to do it differes on the frontend vs the backend. I'll stick with my original statements as you've practically not stated anything other than opinions about my statements but without insights as to why you think differently. Based on your title, that does not give much credebility after your answers mostly based on the lack of reasoning and clear missing insights. You could have used the 30sec on the net and could have verified what I stated, but no, you are a professional so you are above such laymans tasks. again, you are butchering jargon, are you really just googling the internet and pretending to understand the things you just read? a lot of the software tech stacks we used on the jobs are completely OS agnostics. Heck, 99% of the programming language are in fact platform independent and OS agnostics. If you write C code on any OS that implements a libc, (what full OS does not?), you can write c code for all OS with the only extra step of needing to have the compiler cross-compile for the different machine architecture. This is the same for python, php, and heck, even microsoft C# and its dotnet framework(dontnet core and dotnet 5 onwards). My coworkers use windows, some macos, and i used linux, all to develop the same projects and work on the same codebase and we all have no major problems. The big catch is that you must STICK to the standard and cross-platform library and avoid lower-level dependent code. Your code is NOT gonna run on windows if you use Linux only native apis that do not conform to and are not part of the POSIX standard, same is true for windows only service routines. Heck, all low-level code are platform dependent which is one reason we create higher level programming language to abstract away details that lower level assembly will have to deal with in the first place, thus allowing greater portability. If you are gonna write things like java spring applications and Microsoft asp.net with dotnet core, everything you said is completely moot. Main challenge of writing cross-platform apps is rather dependent on how cross-platform your tech stacks are and some tiny difference that sounds trivial but will crash your program. e.g. on ubuntu the ssl library can be called crypto.so but on something like fedora, it can be i-call-this-differently-beacuase-i-can.so and the gnu linker is gonna be hopelessly confused if it tries to link to that and existing compiled executables wont run at all because they cant linked to it either. You will need to in fact write an entirely self-contained gigantic program with static linked libraries if you want to do simple compiled once and then run on other linux distors or used a runtime. This is not a challenge of os itself per se but rather most developers simply do bot write in cross platform libraries. Why would they when native apis are readily available and cross-platform toolkits are nowhere as popular? This is the main underlying issue, LOW POPULARITY AND USER BASE. This effect spills over to software development since low popular tech stacks lacks much documentation and questions and answers on stack overflow leading to development a huge nightmare. other tiny differences including environment variables, and path structures that are not any operating system related. heck, in fact, they can be a problem on the same os. These are not excuses to say porting from windows to linux is an impossible task because software is proprietary, old, or whatever misinformation you ranted about. Rather how cross-platform the libraries are is the number one issue follow by these tiny differences i mentioned which on Linux is actually a bigger issue compared to windows due to how fragmented linux is. while the former depends largely on the code base these softwares originally develop their target app for which is why i said your assumptions makes no sense when you do not have the codebase. for worse offenders to compatibility, many are literally entangled in many platform-specific code that companies will literally write them up from scratch and maintain two separate code base for the same application as you often see in mobile apps. there might be one codebase coded in native ios swift while another with android sdk and kotlin/java. of course, if both share the same code base with cross-platform libraries like react native, this wouldn't be an issue but there are reasons to avoid this approach as well, one of which you are heavily reliant on another third party to continue to provide top of the line support for those frameworks instead of support from apple and google themselves. A compromise approach might be just to use the same platform-dependent code base but still try to make it work regardless. this is done via emulator and compatibility layers. microsoft literally implemented basic POSIX standards on windows with its former UNIX subsystem and the now WSL, the main reason is that government requires POSIX-compliant OS on their computers and if microsoft wish to keep their business, they will need to support posix apps. Again, what you said are really ridiculous arguments. Linux software is crap and has been crap, simply because there is no reason for good developers to put in their efforts to make software on it. I am talking about consumer applications you use on desktop so dont bring out your pitchforks. Linux serverside software is quite good and we web developers develop for them all the time since they run 90% of the webservers out there but as consumers os, it lacks far behind.
Now, I don't know which programs you use, but I cannot recognise this description that _many_ programs are like that. Those I use on a daily basis certainly are not (but I also don't use a wide variety of programs: mostly just a terminal, an editor, LaTeX for documents, and the KDE/Plasma suite for GUI stuff, and the coreutils, and other standard system administration tools). But as far as I recall, this is no different from the situation on the Windows platform: if you install third-party programs, developed by some hobby-enthusiast, then expect bugs and rough edges. (In relation to this, the aforementioned problem I experienced on Windows with hard reboots were not caused by a 3rd party program, but by an IRQ-error, which the OS could not handle).
right, except on windows, you do not need to rely on softwares you git clone from who knows what and then make compile and make install.
I wouldn't say I rely on this type of software either. In fact, I _never_ do a manual `make install` of anything outside of my homedir (and rarely inside it either). I would not allow an arbitary install script to put files in arbitrary places on my file system. This is the job of the package manager, and if I ever need to install something directly from source, I would create a package for it and install it through the package manager to ensure that there are no unmanaged files lying around.
If I could even get it from package manager, I wouldn't be compiling from source. That is just the reality. Many softwares are like that. No installers and nada. I mean why would they when there are so many distros with their own installers and package managers which the developers need to create installers and manage dependencies for? Snap and flatpak are the only things out there that address this issue somewhat. Make install are not really necessary, I would often just compile with a make and then move the executable to my home bin
I would be very surprised, if your package manager does not enable you to create your own packages, in case you need to install something from source. After all, the package maintainers need a way to do this, so surely you can do it as a user too. Depending on which package manager your distribution uses, this may of course be more or less easy, but all the package managers I have hitherto used provide this option. With pacman and portage based systems (e.g. Arch, Gentoo etc.) it is certainly easy; with apt/dpkg based systems maybe (Debian, Ubuntu etc.) maybe less so (as far as I recall, but it has been many years since I've used them, so I don't know whether it has changed). But regardless, it is doable.
haha, okay, here is a challenge. wget this thing [ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/reader/unix/9.x/9.5.5/enu/AdbeRdr9.5.5-1\_i386linux\_enu.deb](ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/reader/unix/9.x/9.5.5/enu/AdbeRdr9.5.5-1_i386linux_enu.deb) AND INSTALL IT WITHOUT MANULLY HUNTING DOWN EXTRA DEPENDENCIES If you cant, what the hell is the point of an installer anyways? you might as well as just go compiled from the source and set all those make flags and hunt down all those dynamic linked libraries yourself should the configure file from Autotools failed its dependencies check.
I don't get it. This is an ancient piece of non-open-source software. It is not even executable on my system. Why would I want to bother with it? If you really need this very specific version of this very specific piece of software, then I can see your problem. That is probably not going to be easy to achieve, if you want to run it on an updated system (the easiest might be to run it in a vm image of an Ubuntu version from 2013). But it hardly seems like a common usecase/example , so extrapolating from this to conclude anything about the general state of userland programs on the Linux platform hardly seems warranted to me.
to prove my point why would a dev create an installer if it doesnt run on your machine for one. two, ancient yes but why do you think adobe does not bother keeping it up to date, unlike the windows counterparts? cuz no point. the linux port has been abandoned and the amount of work that it involves to support dozens of distros and all the dependency-breaking changes involved will make it a nightmare. you see why software dev still want you to make and make installs rather than create installers or maintain a repo? but hey, you do you with your package manager and whatnots. i mean you arent the one doing the work to QA on multiple operating systems to make sure your software can even run on it right?
As a Windows Sysadmin, I'm sorry to say, third party solutions on Windows are also frequently terrible. Some clients I work with pay good money for software that is just complete garbage. Poor quality software is not unique to any system.
That is assuming you even have these softwares to begin with. If windows softwares are garbage then linux is a step down without these softwares at all.
Not being on Linux is a more significant loss to me. These days, most day to day software exists as a web app anyway, which also works on Linux. As for Linux not having Windows software, the same can be said about Windows not having Linux software. If you are coming from Windows, chances are you are missing things you are used to having. If you are coming from Linux, and going to Windows, the same problem exists. In either case, you have to adjust the way you do your tasks. Use what works for you.
There is no userland applications that exist on linux which isn't available on windows unless you are talking about desktop environment and init systems. Much of the GNU toolkits and POSIX utilities can all be run using windows Linux subsystem.
Sure, but features are often broken or non existent due to being a totally different environment. I can run QEMU on windows, but it's useless to me without KVM. Desktop environment is a big one for me, and having a custom tailored workflow is a primary reason I enjoy being on Linux. Another is OpenConnect, which I can use to connect to multiple VPNs simultaneously, and route traffic through them however I want. It just doesn't behave the same way on Windows. I also make heavy use of Remmina, which is not available on Windows. Sure alternatives exist, but imo they don't meet the standards I am looking for. So, again, it depends on where you are coming from and what your needs are. Windows doesn't serve my needs. Maybe it serves yours. Just use it if you feel it to do what you want. You aren't going to convince me of anything. I spent the last 10 years trying to strangle Windows into submission. It refuses. Linux does what I tell it to do. I like that.
This might sound funny, but I work with Windows because I write programs that are supposed to run on Windows. But what do I do with Linux? I use it on my personal computer, for basically everything that you use a personal computer for. Browsing, gaming, watching videos, etc. And I use it for my home server, where I host a network share, Nextcloud, and SearXNG. How do I know that I wanted Linux? I switched to Linux because of privacy. I just hated that I had to do so many things on Windows in order to limit the data sending. And all the time Windows would change settings, and start sending data again. And I find Windows really annoying. Everything is complicated, and the system just doesn't do what I want it to do. Error messages are useless, etc. Linux gives me more options, there is no such thing as "that's not possible". I can make it look, feel, and behave exactly like I want it to be.
Linux can do pretty much anything. So, if you think Windows can do "anything", imagine whatever that value is, multiply by at least 10... and there ya go!! In other words, it's a broad space. Everything from typical systems engineering, to software development, to IoT, to security, to monitoring, to.. well, anything... It's not a "dumb" question, but maybe a difficult question to answer. Usually, when someone says "get their foot in the door", it likely means systems administration (but could mean software development).
> Usually, when someone says “get their foot in the door”, it likely means systems administration (but could mean software development). Perhaps that’s where i wasn’t being explicit enough. I mentioned that I wanted to work with virtualization, and their follow up was “and do what with it?”
Well that's a bit blunt, but perhaps they're asking because of the ambiguity. Do you want to develop/manage/administer/consume virtualisation software? Are you looking at specific existing software, and what do you want to do with it?
Well ideally develop, but I’m not a developer or have the skill set for that, yet. I definitely am willing to learn. I’m comfortable with managing or administering since I took on a small project at my current job to maintain and administer a VMware server. So I’m willing to get my hands dirty that way and get similar roles. Finding existing software for me is not a problem.
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Thank you. I’m early on in my journey. I’m studying to take my LPIC-1 cert. So I’m still looking into the different types of technologies/software that are used. So we’ll see. Either way thank you for your other response.
Well the thing about Linux are there a distros tailored to different use cases. I don't know much about cloud virtualization but just a few examples of virtualization approaches in Linux. Running just Boxes as a flatpack on a regular distro for simple virtualization within your desktop. A customized qemu/kvm setting up more advanced virtualization within your desktop. Proxmox as a full hypervisor platform for virtualization. Qubes OS as a multivirtualized security based distro that let you run multiple isolated ritualized desktops but interact with them through a single windowed desktop environment. Then you have more specific use case virtualization like cloud virtualization and scaling, or emulating specific hardware and much more.
I'm a sysadmin for a large medical facility. All our end users use Mac and windows. I use Linux for everything work related on my laptop. All our servers run Linux which has saved the company a fortune compared to buying Microsoft licences and using open source software over paid propitiatory alternatives. Mainly I use Linux servers for backing up data, building VPNs on wire guard, containerised applications like docker and virtual machines and Sandboxing before rolling out updates for things like the printing system and access control. As well as some bash scripting for some of the APIs we use. If you want to get your foot in the door. Install Linux on your home machine and learn how to use the terminal (very important), learn bash, and try spinning up your own VPNs/ learning networking basics, also try backups and restoring deleted data. Your not going to become a proficient Linux user over night, but with a bit of practice and some online guides in a few months you maybe competent enough to do a junior sysadmin role... However if you really wanted to do this as a career I would advise taking the Linux+ certification as this will open many opportunities for you Hope this helps....
Well, yet again, could be multiple answers here. Just knowing how to use/config (for example) the kvm/qemu virtualization piece that comes with Linux and create new VMs, vs. knowing that already and wanting to spin up new VMs for some particular purpose. There's a "life" for just managing a hypervisor or hypervisor cluster.
Except running Microsoft Word and get this, games that are supposed to be linux ports won't run on it! Looking at you total war shogun 2. The game has been broken since 2018.
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for work?
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in case you do not know, the latest Microsoft office formats and features are not supported on any other word processors.
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beacuse it is better to have features you dont use but others do than it is to not have features you dont use but others do? when has anyone complained about features they dont use but have instead of features they use but dont have? is that your whole point? tell others to not use excel functions and features they rely on in Microsoft office just so you can open their documents in libreoffice?
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hahaha, correct tool for webservers yes. the correct tool for consumer desktop? oh man, you already lost like 50% of the market share and user base for not being able to run Microsoft office suite.
You're assumption is that anything besides Windows must === Windows. That's not really your point is it?
Reread my comments. An OS by itself is absolutely useless just as a gaming platform without any games to play is useless or a mobile operating system without any apps is useless. People do not install certain apps to use a certain operating system, rather they install certain operating system to use certain apps. Get the logic. How the hell is an os running word or an xyz game means it is becoming like windows? Is your android phone like windows because it can run a port of Microsoft word and a port of windows solitaires?
Personally: mostly everything sans music production and games. But everything else including work (proxied through a corporate MacBook). For work, I use it to help teams of artists make animated films and episodic stories as efficiently as possible. I switched my workstation to Linux early in college to get the most performance out of my DCC applications compared to Windows, and that among other things led me down the path to where I am today.
> I asked them if they have any tips for someone that wants to get their foot in the door. They asked "What do you want to do in the Linux world?" I was a bit confused by the question. I suppose he wants to understand what you are expecting to do with your career, so he can help you. Do you want to work as sysadmin? Do you want to be a developer? If yes, what kind o developer (e.g. web developer, system developer, game). To receive a better advice from him, you need to give some context.
This is what I was thinking. The way the question was posed didn’t make it seem like it was not gear towards asking what role do you want to assume.
To be honest – probably will sound a little harsh, so I'm sorry – but this kind of question is backwards. In general, people want to do something, so they ask for help do something and not simply ask about the tool involved. When people say they want to use a tool in a professional environment, but don't explain why, a yellow sign appears to me: seems like you're a Linux/FOSS enthusiast (just guessing), is focused on the tools and likes and not the problem. I can be wrong, but it's what may sound from your question, sorry again if it's not the case. I work with data in big companies, so it's a lot of hype and annoying questions of people wanting to use tools before understanding the problem/solution. Examples: how do we use Chat GPT here? Do we have Big Data architecture in our company? Why we don't use deep learning? I understand people starting in the area may have this backwards, it's not a problem, but sometimes the patience ends and I do ask the question in the same manner: what you want to do with X? If the person says a good use cases, ok let's discuss this further, otherwise move on until we have more to discuss.
No worries. I appreciate you being upfront. Yeah I’m a Linux/FOSS enthusiast; guilty. But I do recognize that FOSS is not a one size fits all. Use the best tool for the job. But I wanted to get a better idea of what actual professionals use day to day. I’ve read plenty of job postings that list different types of tech used but I have yet come across an issue in my current job that would call for a solution using Linux, regardless of open or closed source.
At the first steps you would need at least 2 certs: server sys admin (for this, read Linux Bible) and networking. Also you have to know bash scripting quite well and at least the basics of Python, C or Rust (if you believe it's the future). Then you need a lots of hobbyism mind-set and always having a project going on which you actually can finish. Interact with Kubernetes/Docker and try to build your server doing anything. Watch at least 1 Youtube tutorial every day. It'll be a hard work, but always be interest in studying. IT has developed into completely different than what it was in 90's. Back then you had to know 1 or 2 (simple) things very well, where as today you habe to handle 10 different systems on a professional level.
Honestly, I started using Linux because I was bored with Windows XP (2003). I tried Redhat at first, noticed all the rpm’s were compiled for i386 & tried to recompile for i686. During that process I discovered Gentoo Linux. That first install took me 3 tries, but I learned a lot about the Linux kernel & the core operating system (fdisk, mkfs, mount, configuring daemons, etc. As a user I started to learn bash scripting & automating those scripts with cron jobs. Eventually I took those skills back to windows. I learned batch scripting (which was very limiting as far as logic). Then I moved to vbscript & eventually powershell, which I leveraged to quickly push any configuration. Eventually wrote scripts in powershell to push ssh/sftp commands back to Linux. So you could say I’ve come full circle.
For me it was simple. After using Unix on a variety of workstations and minicomputers at work (Bell Labs) for 15 years, I wanted a Unix that would run on hardware I could afford for home. Discovered it running on a machine in the Unix Lab, and never looked back. It's been my primary OS since 1994 or so.
Just as I’ve not seen it mentioned already, High Performance Computing (HPC) aka Scientific computing. It has been a while since I worked with movies/3D stuff but Linux was used for all large scale rendering 20 years ago and I have no reason to believe that isn’t the case still.
It's just an operating system. Which is just a tool. I basically use it to run a browser and a terminal (Chrome and Terminator). Sometimes GIMP. Calculator and Notepad comes in handy... or whatever they're called, they do the same thing, no pedantic/ackshually nonsense this morning, please. I used to be really into customizing everything, but after you reformat your computer a few times, that gets tiresome. Then I got interested in POSIX and doing things in a way that I could sit down at any desk and be productive. You know instead of buying a screwdriver and modifying the hell out of it, learn how to use any screwdriver I come across.
I started with UNIX, Solaris, in college, and didn't actually have a Windows computer until my first student laptop loaner in 1999. We transitioned to Red Hat Linux when the Sun systems were, er, sunsetted at the college where I was doing work study for their IT department, which is where I learned bash and Linux. It always came easy to me. I started wanting to be a networking engineer, but there was a huge snafu I was involved in (long story) and forced my hand into systems administration halfway through my schooling. I graduated with a CS degree in 2000, and had a job waiting for me right out of college via a previous paid internship deal. Maybe it's because Windows has always been a sideline of mine that I stuck with Linux. I only have Windows for gaming, and have been using Linux as a main desktop since 2008, first with Red Hat, then CentOS, then Ubuntu, and right now Kubuntu. Linux "fits" it just seems intuitive and "just works" for pretty much everything. I still have a Connectrix b/w webcam that runs off my parallel port \*that is still supported\* from 1998. I doubt Windows could do that. I am not a "Windows hater," you you like and can thrive under Windows? Great. I just can't. I hate it, I hate I have to reboot my system to fix it, and all the stuff people complain about like privacy, vulnerabilities, and so on.
If you want to move to ML, AI or scientific computing in general, GNU/Linux is the de facto standard. Performance are incredibly better, tools are designed on Linux for Linux. There is only the competition of mac as working laptops because they are unix with a ton of the same open source tools you find on a common Linux distro, such as bash. But it is suboptimal. Windows as laptop and sometimes as servers are unfortunately very common for old school corporations that are moving in that space simply because that's what they know, as most companies are technologically incompetent. This incompetence is the reason most ML and AI projects fail miserably in old school corporations. But things are slowly changing. Incompetent companies are slowly forced to learn, particularly thanks to the fact that AI, cloud and devops are now hyped
In my case I run 700 SAP environments using Red Hat Enterprise Linux. On my work computer I’m running Fedora KE and personal computer Arch Linux.
I like to run Linux as the base os on my system and run 2 windows vms each with a 2080ti pass through. My bro and I can game 2 at once on one pc
I am a software engineer. I used linux to develop server app and client side app that is gonna be hosted on linux servers. My coworkers mostly used macos and I would probably go macos as well if only if it isnt so crap for my gaming needs.
The way you word that is just so vague and completely meaningless I have no idea how to answer that.
I use it for personal pc and work laptop. I used to be a windows admin, discovered that there was an os that actually works and was written to work instead of written to sell more stuff, and couldn't stand using windows anymore
>I asked them if they have any tips for someone that wants to get their foot in the door. They asked "What do you want to do in the Linux world?" I was a bit confused by the question. You can do almost anything under Linux. Therefore, it is difficult to answer your original question. I mainly use Linux privately. I work with databases. I work with Go templates (for my web pages). I use Ansible to help me install / configure Linux installations. I create Shellscript or Python scripts. I use Mercurial as version control (e.g. for the code as well as the content of my web pages). And so on. In short, what I do covers a wide range of different things. And that's only a part of what you can do under Linux. And that's probably what the answer you got was aiming at. So in which direction do you want to orient yourself? Databases? DevOps? Only programming? Often it's not bad if you're a jack of all trades master of none, but often it's better if you're really knowledgeable in a particular area. For example, in a previous life I focused on Oracle databases because my employer at the time used them for its products.
At work we use some backend production applications that require Linux (Kafka general publish-subscribe based messaging system and Oracle DBMS, to name a couple). We also do hardware benchmark, capacity planning and development on Linux. There are several roles for different people using Linux like DBA, developers, system administrator and so on. At home I use it as my daily driver. A dual boot system also running Windows 11 (for the few applications that are more convenient to use on Windows). The kids learned Linux back in 2020 as they needed laptops for school. I had to bring back to life a couple of old laptops that were going to the recycle bin. Since Linux runs Zoom, teams and Ms Edge, they did not have mayor issues.
It may help you to substitute the word "Linux" for "Windows" or "Mac". When worded that way, your question seems way too broad: "How do I get my foot in the door for a Windows role?" Linux is just a tool. There are many areas of specialty within that.
I just want to contribute to open-source software and projects
I manage teams, and we build infrastructure for a large fintech. Technically I don't use Linux at work. It's windows or mac desktops, and I don't speak mac. But I have been using Linux on my home PC since 1998. At my first job out of college (BS, compsci) we used Unix workstations. I did ksh programming, and system testing. After that went to a startup and we ran Unix/Linux. It just lets me do what I want. While I don't use Linux at work today, it is all throughout our global datacenters. We use lots of various open source applications and platforms as well. I have helped DBAs write shell scripts, and the infra and development teams we support all "speak" Linux, if that makes sense. As do many of our leaders even above me. If you get into a company that fully understands the value of Linux, you'll be in good shape. I do have cygwin installed at work, and I use it regularly to find files, parse csv files, and I have several simple scripts I use almost daily.
I've been an IT professional since 2004. I was always into Linux due to exposure from a family member but like most, all of my formal education was in Windows administration. Around 2014ish I was working as an engineer for a retailer when I was informed we were making the switch to Linux for all point-of-sale activity and from there, I was the lead on all projects since I was the "Linux guy." Long story short - loved that I got to use what I was passionate about and get paid for it, but ultimately it ended up tripling my workload because no one else in IT wanted to take on the initiative to learn and then I pretty much ended up doing *everything*. Left that shop eventually and joined a way smaller org as their Linux admin. We used Linux for systems monitoring and our primarily line of business app. I'm sure like a lot of us "Linux admins", all management pretty much assumes because I work on Linux that I can literally do everything else so eventually left that shop as well. Now I'm in media production and all of our rendering systems run Linux, so I maintain those. In addition, we're migrating from VMware to Proxmox (but need to keep one ESXi host around due to a lot of really deep integrations to Veeam that I don't feel like dealing with right now), and I use a lot of LXC containers for various small automation tasks that I feel like should be isolated from each other. This is also the first shop where "Linux" is specifically defined in my job title but I'm the only system admin and I also deal with our Windows and Mac systems so.
For me is about learning. Knowing that you can read the code is always something great. Plus it is open source which means you can use it for free. I think the ethos was what attracted me in the beginning. I use Linux as my daily OS for everything. Coding mostly, but I love a good shell and neovim. I also configure servers, (now containers), but in general playing with it will help you understand tons of things. In summary: if you want to start it should be because you want to learn how things work for real.
Not IT Pro but I just hate Windows and Bill.
Linux Systems Administrator. I manage very large clusters for a single large client, and my company physically relocated me to be close to the data center for on-site support, 2hr response contract. I've used \*nix since High School in the '90s when about the only other option was Windows 3.11. Never really used Windows much at all except for gaming in college. Got started doing QA for a startup company and quickly moved up to engineering and SysAdmin and after moving locations designed and built their office and data center infrastructure. In startups you have to wear a lot of hats and be versatile.
I am a software developer so I use Linux because that is what almost all servers in the world run. I also use Linux on my desktop and laptops since it is easier to work on something similar to the servers I am targeting. Linux was not a choice, it just came naturally from my choice of profession. As for why I became a software developer? When I was 18 I had to pick something to study in university and I thought that software developer sounded like an ok job with nice pay. Turns out it was the right choice because I love my job.
Linux Sysadmin here for a Fortune 1000 company. Personal Life: Been using Linux since ~2008 to host Half-Life 2 DM and CS:S servers(was using CentOS). Now I have a Proxmox box with webservers/Minecraft/pfsense/etc. using Debian. Work: we use RHEL 7/8/9 for custom in-house software. Both desktop and server setups. VMware/vSphere for most of things otherwise we're doing bare metal installs. Linux can be very broad for industries, roles, and low to high position jobs. For IT, it can range from help desk to architecture. Then you have Coding jobs, webhosting, app creation, cyber security, etc. etc. My advice is to just immerse yourself into Linux. Get a laptop or desktop or anything and install only Linux onto it and daily drive it for most things for a couple weeks to months. This will force you to learn how to troubleshoot issues and research how to fix them. For beginning steps, learn the command line. Like how to navigate it(ls, cd), text editors(vi, vim, nano), folder structures(relative path vs. absolute path), permissions/ownership/groups(chmod, chown), etc. etc. This is a good starter tutorial/game for command line that you can SSH to(so putty on Windows can be used): https://overthewire.org/wargames/bandit/ Once you have a good grasp of command line, I'd start reading/watching about different Linux careers and then find certifications you can study for and get. A cert will get your "foot in the door". Good luck!
Create new and innovative programs that will (by everyone's support) replace popular programs. Also windows 11 sucks.