Ask HN: Is your company Linux friendly or not?
5 by mothsonasloth | 3 comments on Hacker News.
As a developer who is on the lookout for a new job, one of my criteria for accepting a job offer is, "does your company support/allow Linux OS for developing on?" Alas many of the responses say "No" followed by the phrase "We only support Mac, why would you develop on anything else?" I find it strange that in an age of LXCs and Docker containers, we have many companies (big and small) who are not offering Linux PCs to their developers. This is anecdotal on my side, but out of the 10 companies I have interviewed with 9 said they wouldn't or couldn't provide me with a Linux machine. The other one offered a Windows laptop which I could hack away till my heart's content. For me a Macbook is a terrible piece of hardware and software combined; it overheats, has a touchbar, weird keyboard symbols (Alt and Ctrl key in particular), and uses 4GB of RAM just to run OSX. I can't choose my desktop environment and have to configure my shell through a series of awkward steps. The retorts from recruiters and devs about why they don't support Linux normally fall into one or more responses below: * It makes security easier to have all machines the same * Linux is hard to support * We don't want 20 different people running 20 different distros * Company policy, we buy Macbooks in bulk at unit price * Why would you want to use linux? * Our VPN and other tools are licensed only for Mac / Windows * Macbooks are cool, why do you want a Laptop/PC Most of these seem to be out of laziness, ignorance or corporate bureaucracy. So HN, does your company support development on Linux? If not, why?