this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2024
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Ours is. Last I heard, our Client Management team is already looking for different ways to disable it and make triple sure it stays off.
(inb4 "Switch to Linux": several thousand users, specialised software and a technologically conservative company would already make that a non-starter)
I don't disagree that it would be tough, but they had to start from nothing when choosing Windows originally. It all had to be learned and built up at some point. It can again, and hopefully on an open platform that won't fuck them over in the future. (I know, there's no chance, but there should be.)
Everyone always complains that whatever they want isn't on Linux. Well, it wasn't on Windows at some point either. Make a user-base for it on Linux or make it yourself. Someone did it in the past. It can be done again.
Inertia is a hell of a thing to try and overcome. It's a big deal for most companies to change out an important piece of software, let alone an entire OS and everything that comes with it. It could happen one day, I just don't expect to see it.
I use Linux privately, and haven't had a Windows OS on my PC in years except for a VM I needed for a university project. I'm all for hoping that specialised apps get developed for Linux too. I like mine and would probably enjoy using it for private purposes too, but it won't work with wine and learning different tools is obviously an additional time investment in my free time compared to the one I get paid for learning.
But I'm both quick and happy to learn. Many people are not (and I see that daily with my users). The cost of switching and disruption in productivity would probably be disastrous enough to ruin the company even before considering the fact that "industry giant unable to fulfill contractual obligations because they have to rebuild half their infrastructure from nothing" would be a crippling blow to its professional reputation in an industry where IT is still considered second-class at best, the ideological gain of no longer depending on Microsoft would net them nothing and in an economic system where short-term profitability is more important than long-term independence.
And that's not considering the difficulty of convincing company leadership that Windows really is that bad and Linux really is much better and that we only need to provide the financial incentive and invest the time and money to have someone port already expensive software to a different platform. FFS, we're still struggling to get people to see IT as a service rather than an expense.
Finally, even if they were to switch out their entire IT infrastructure, they'd start asking whether it would be cheaper to outsource our internal IT to a company that already knows the new stuff than to retrain all of us. I'd very much like to keep my permanent position, even if it means using Windows.
I totally agree. I hinted towards what you've said in my comment. It still doesn't change the fact that at some point Windows was chosen and everything was built. The implies another choice could still be made. It's just not going to happen with an established company most likely. It would be nice to see newer companies that don't have the same inertia switch to Linux at least and start the transition. So much is stuck in a "business culture" that treats Windows as the only option though, but again this wasn't always true and can be changed again if enough companies started to transition.
Eh, between the financial expense, the human reluctance to change and the still very real barrier of "We can't migrate where there's nowhere to go" with respect to the software landscape, I think we need to compare our definitions of could. It's not just a business culture issue either. All change brings friction, but trying to replace the entire infrastructure of a company (and it has to be pretty much everything - one selling point of MS is how thoroughly integrated its products are) is basically ripping out most of the internal organs and replacing them with transplants, but also trying to keep the patient alive somehow... and you need to sell the people with the money on the idea.
Throwing away and starting over is costly, no matter the context. So no, I don't think larger companies can even make that choice at this point.
Smaller companies without the same inertia, in industries where there are Linux-compatible tools? Yeah, they can, provided the software they need is there too.