What are corporate users using?

Windows on PCs, Linux is used mostly only on servers (RedHat/SuSe), hardware brands are usually HP, Dell and Lenovo.

I think that is my standard

Why? Do you expect companies to ask you to use your own PC for work instead of providing the tools you need? Be wary of those who do, using whatever personal PC for company work can lead to data breaches and that's a very serious problem.

World of Warcraft has its own anticheat that works on Linux no problem, if Blizzard can do it why Riot can't? It's not that WoW has more players than LOL so it could be justified, it's actually the opposite.

You can argue that copyright law should be revised.

It already has been, there is a ruling that allows an exemption to copyright law for the specific use of preservation by libraries and museums.

Maybe they could do more about it but what's already there is way way better than nothing.

It's not only the game industry unfortunately, it's every industry everywhere.

It's public trading - and all the financial speculations around it - that ruins companies, forcing them to earn more and spend less year after year, and when they have nothing else left to cut, they start cutting the workforce, with all the bad repercussions Swen described, like loss of institutional knowledge for example.

It's a financial model that's totally unsustainable, noone can grow indefinitely, they should change the way companies are valued, not looking at quarterly profits but a number of other parameters like respect for the environment for example, security, financial stability, things like that.

It won't happen tho so the only option today to be a good company is avoiding public trading, not many entrepreneurs are smart enough, or unselfish enough, to do it.

she didn’t really want to switch to Win 11

On which computer? Her own?

Does not the company provide a PC with the tools needed? If yes, she has no right to decide what goes on it, the company does and she should respect that, doing what you want on a company PC can get you in serious trouble, way more serious than finding out you're using a pirated version of Office.

If the company expects her to use her own PC, they should at least provide the needed software licenses, Office365 can be used on the web, no need to install anything and it can be used on Linux no problem.

BUT the serious problem remains of having company data on her own PC, the best thing to do in such a case would be creating a VM, encrypting the file system and keeping all company data contained inside the VM.

Tho in such a case I would change company, no serious company today would expect employees to keep company data freely on whatever personal PC, that could lead to data breaches, I would never want to be involved in case like that, tho I live in EU, we have very strict laws about data integrity and privacy, dunno about other countries.

I didn't add which GPU I have but I saw you asking in other posts so: currently NVIDIA 4070 with proprietary drivers.

I've been using NVIDIA on my Linux desktop for over a decade, it always worked very well tho you have to install proprietary drivers (opensource ones are not good enough if you use software that requires performance), Linux MX has a script (menu item) to install them, very easy.

In all this time, only a couple of times I had serious problems with a kernel update (something that can happen with any distro), but Linux MX always keeps boot entries for the last 3 kernels so when it happened I just booted with a previous one and waited a few days for devs to fix it (no tinkering on my part required).

NVIDIA cards have problems on laptops, those I only buy Intel, but a dedicated card on desktop is good.

Yeah Lutris has fantastic scripts that do everything for you, also the Steam store is really good even if you don't buy from them, checking that a game is verified for Steam Deck is a guarantee it will work on any other Linux PC.

Debain (alt Linux Mint DE) Pro: The most stable OS I’ve used, with a wide range of software support both officially in the distros package manager, or from developers own website. I am most familiar with this OS and APT Cons: Ancient packages which may cause issues with Davinci Resolve and Video Games

I don't use Davinci Resolve but I do play videogames, I build my own desktop for it and I use Linux MX (Debian), it's rock solid.

"Ancient packages" are not a problem with backports, there are also flatpacks if some backports are not enough for you, or DEB packages directly from software developers (I manually install a couple of those).

The only games you will have problems with are those implementing invasive DRM, but that's not a "Debian" problem, Linux in general doesn't support that kind of DRM (not yet at least), tho I personally don't mind since I think DRM is stupid and I've always tried to avoid it.

Thank you for what you do! :)

only the “free” product was downloaded and their sales folks essentially accused us of lying about using it for corporate use

According to Virtualbox site:

This VirtualBox Extension Pack Personal Use and Evaluation License governs your access to and use of the VirtualBox Extension Pack. It does not apply to the VirtualBox base package and/or its source code, which are licensed under version 2 of the GNU General Public License “GPL”

Extension Packs are also free to download, are you sure a pack wasn't downloaded as well? Oracle salesmen would have no ground otherwise (Virtualbox itself is GPL 2)

That was on the kernel 6.1.0-18, I had it too, fixed several days ago, but in OP picture the kernel is 6.1.0-17, that one wasn't affected.

Distro Hopping seems to be such a big part of the “Linux experience.”

It's not, it's just a way to find the distro that suits you best.

If you're already satisfied with what you have, there's no reason to change and you're not missing out on anything. If you're ever curious about other distros, install Virtualbox and try them in a VM.

I stopped distro hopping years ago when I started using Linux MX (Debian based), I'm so happy with it that I have no intention to change ever again.

The only other distro I really like is LMDE (Mint based on Debian instead of Ubuntu), so I put that one on my laptop (MX on my gaming desktop).

What CA are you getting your certificates from?

If Let's Encrypt, have you checked their alternative methods to certbot?

I think it depends on what you want to accomplish.

I agree Distrobox is perfect for any case you want to use software your distro doesn't support (you basically setup the target distro into a docker container), or for developers wanting to use different versions of software/libraries without risking breaking the host OS with tons of different packages that might conflict with each other, but I wouldn't say it can also completely replace the use of VMs.

For example, using a VM is the only way for me to use Linux on my company PC (Windows), it's easy to get permission to install Virtualbox/Vmware since VMs are isolated from your host and you can cut them out from the company network, it's an opposite use case than what you would use containers for.

VMs are fantastic to learn, trying the setup of a different distro if you're distro hopping or simulating multiple machines interacting with each other, you can't do that with containers.

This might be an unpopular opinion but I really don't get this trend of wanting to containerized just about everything, it feels like a FOTM rather than doing something that makes sense.

I mean, containers are fantastic tools and can help solve compatibility problems and make things more secure, especially on servers, but putting everything into containers on the desktop doesn't make any sense to me.

One of the big advantages Linux always had over Windows is shared components, so packages are much smaller and updating the whole system is way faster, if every single application comes with its own stuff (like it does on Windows) you lose that advantage.

Ubuntu's obsession with snaps is one of the reasons I stopped using it years ago, I don't want containers forced upon me, I want to be free to decide if/when to use them (I prefer flatpack and appimage).

Debian derivatives that don't "reinvent the wheel" is the way to go for me, I've been using Linux MX on my gaming desktop and LMDE on laptop for years and I couldn't be happier, no problem whatsoever with Steam either.

Yeah and sometimes it's not even just about customers, some people don't realize big enterprises (as in dozens of thousands of employees) are very different from smaller companies, they're like a "different world" on their own, not everything you can do on a smaller scale is feasible. They would probably need to work in one to really understand.

You can't do whatever you want if you're an employee in a big enterprise, there are company-wide rules and standards that you have to respect, you can't expect your colleagues to adapt to you nor you can decide which OS to install on your company PC.

That's not to say you can't use Linux at all, you can ask your IT to be allowed to install Virtualbox and use Linux in a VM, that's what I do, there are a lot of things that don't strictly require Windows and I use Linux for those.

I use Linux MX on my gaming desktop and LMDE on my laptop. I also have an encrypted LMDE VM that I use for some working stuff, since I have to use Windows on my company PC (but we're allowed to have Virtualbox on it).

The desktop is pretty new, I built it a month ago after almost 10 years, it's i9 and rtx 4070. The laptop is several years old (HP spectre), but since the previous one gave me so many headaches with nvidia optimus, I decided to go full Intel, I'm happy I did because I had no problems with it whatsoever, Intel only on laptops for me going on.

Nice! I was thinking about buying a deck, I'll wait for the new one, thanks for the news!

I never had to touch anything in uBlock Origin, not even once, I just have to remember to check for updates every now and then. I see some people saying sometimes they still get ads on youtube, not sure if it's youtube testing new targeting, but I've never seen ads on YT anyway, I guess I'm not interesting enough to them XD