I use Linux (Arch actually) as my daily driver - I’m the MD of a small IT business in the UK. I have at least one employee who is asking me to create a Linux standard deployment to replace Windows because they don’t like it anymore - W11 is quite divisive.
For a corp laptop/desktop you might need Exchange email - so that might be Evolution with EWS. You’ll want “drive letters” - Samba, Winbind and perhaps autofs. You’ll need an office suite - Libre Office works fine. There’s this too: https://cid-doc.github.io/ for more MS integration - if that’s your bag.
I often see people getting whizzed up about whether LO can compete with MSO. I wrote a finite (yes, finite) capacity scheduler for a factory in MS Excel, back in 1995/6 - it involved a lot of VBA and a mass of checksums etc. I used to teach word processing and DTP (Quark, Word, Ventura and others). LO cuts it. It gets on my nerves when I’m told that LO isn’t capable by someone who is incapable of fixing a widow or orphan or for whom leading and kerning are incomprehensible.
I remember back in 2017, I didn’t really need any big desktop apps anymore. All I used was Salesforce, Netsuite, O365, Postman… I asked my company to just give me a Chromebook. Now I hate Chromebooks and I could very much do my job on a Linux distro mainly using web apps if needed.
My IT dept would never allow it because they can’t install security software on it. Obviously I’d be pretty safe from malware, but they’d have to trust that I set up firewalls and password protection because they couldn’t enforce a group policy, and their data loss prevention tools wouldn’t work.
Not as “safe” as you think in that regard (I use arch btw), the reason they don’t want it is because you lose control as the administrator. Once everyone is running some flavour of Linux and people report problems, guess who’s gotta look at it? The IT department. It’s a management nightmare compared to windows.
I solved that by social engineering our IT to join my “Windows” computer into the domain, which was actually just a Windows VM. They didn’t notice, and I’m free to Linux away.
This may be a controversial opinion but I would rather use the web version of Outlook than Evolution. I have been trying to use Evolution since the Ximian days but I was never really happy with it. I gave up on it in favour of web Outlook a couple of years ago.
I use Linux (Arch actually) as my daily driver - I’m the MD of a small IT business in the UK. I have at least one employee who is asking me to create a Linux standard deployment to replace Windows because they don’t like it anymore - W11 is quite divisive.
For a corp laptop/desktop you might need Exchange email - so that might be Evolution with EWS. You’ll want “drive letters” - Samba, Winbind and perhaps autofs. You’ll need an office suite - Libre Office works fine. There’s this too: https://cid-doc.github.io/ for more MS integration - if that’s your bag.
I often see people getting whizzed up about whether LO can compete with MSO. I wrote a finite (yes, finite) capacity scheduler for a factory in MS Excel, back in 1995/6 - it involved a lot of VBA and a mass of checksums etc. I used to teach word processing and DTP (Quark, Word, Ventura and others). LO cuts it. It gets on my nerves when I’m told that LO isn’t capable by someone who is incapable of fixing a widow or orphan or for whom leading and kerning are incomprehensible.
I remember back in 2017, I didn’t really need any big desktop apps anymore. All I used was Salesforce, Netsuite, O365, Postman… I asked my company to just give me a Chromebook. Now I hate Chromebooks and I could very much do my job on a Linux distro mainly using web apps if needed.
My IT dept would never allow it because they can’t install security software on it. Obviously I’d be pretty safe from malware, but they’d have to trust that I set up firewalls and password protection because they couldn’t enforce a group policy, and their data loss prevention tools wouldn’t work.
Not as “safe” as you think in that regard (I use arch btw), the reason they don’t want it is because you lose control as the administrator. Once everyone is running some flavour of Linux and people report problems, guess who’s gotta look at it? The IT department. It’s a management nightmare compared to windows.
As arch users, we would never need the help of some low-level IT person though. That would be ridiculous.
Risk compliance forces the IT department to do certain things. Don’t hate on the chill guys
Good point. The company would not only save money by not buying windows, but by not even having an IT department
Ooh can you recommend me a new distro?
Zorin Grid looks promising…whenever that will make it to market
I solved that by social engineering our IT to join my “Windows” computer into the domain, which was actually just a Windows VM. They didn’t notice, and I’m free to Linux away.
I use Arch too, BTW.
I also usw Arch (,btw).
But lately I thpught about checking out nix for a change. I’ve heard some good things about it, but didn’t dare use it.
I feel like nix is kinda like the new arch in a way. Is that true?
This may be a controversial opinion but I would rather use the web version of Outlook than Evolution. I have been trying to use Evolution since the Ximian days but I was never really happy with it. I gave up on it in favour of web Outlook a couple of years ago.
I’ve personally had the best experience with Thunderbird, YMMV.