In addition, there's nothing close to Outlook. Thunderbird works okay, but it's definitely not an acceptable replacement. I'd sooner use Outlook's webmail.
Was a heavy user myself but years ago moved to Apple Mail and never look back
Not that poster, but in my experience there are often plugins that make it difficult to switch from Outlook to other clients. In many cases you can find a replacement plugin, but it takes time and resources to evaluate new software. Also, at a more general level, even though LibreOffice is a good replacement for the base functionality of the Microsoft Office suite, many VBA macros would need to be ported over.
The desktop was always a RedHat based derivative. Preloading desktops with Anaconda kickstart via PXE. I believe we started with Fedora and switched to CentOS for the predictability. And recently switched to Rocky Linux because of the new positioning of CentOS.
However nowadays we mostly use our Linux desktop with Google Workspace (Spreadsheets, Drive, etc.) and no longer self host OX, AFS, etc.
I can just work with client files as they all use Windows, I can use all my favorite development tools, I can play my favorite games. Contrary to what a lot of people seem to have experienced, all my Windows devices have been plug and play for the longest time. I can make pretty presentations in Powerpoint and just send them to customers. I can collaborate on Word documents with other people, get spell checked, have actually humane formatting (I'm looking at you OpenOffice, Libre)... anyway, I'm just listing benefits, I could go on for a long time.
What advantages would switching to Linux bring me at this point? I run all my servers on Linux and wouldn't switch that to Windows for ideological reasons.
Frankly, people aren't usually interested in the last 10% to 'make it work' if it isn't a labor of love for them OR they're getting paid to make the last 10% work. When its no longer fun, they want to move onto the next thing. A LOT of a successful software product simply isn't fun, its just work that needs to get done.
For me the killer is Outlook which has all my client info and the ability to print on my Dymo printer. I can live with Libre Office for docs and I can probably find other work arounds but the transition doesn't look easy.
Unless you switch to a GNU/Linux phone (Librem 5 or Pinephone).
I am hoping to get off of Windows by the end of the year (currently on Win8.1 which clocks out in January) then probably move to a phone not controlled by Google next year.
Outlook is a killer application, I agree. The web version is actually pretty useable IMO, so much so that it's all I use anymore. Evolution is an open source Outlooky application that I used to use and does work quite well, if you prefer native.
Printing to Dymo should be possible, I did a cursory search and a few people seem to have gotten it to work. Won't be as straightforward as Windows, I'm sure.
I think the biggest thing missing in Linux is Excel, which luckily I don't use or need to use these days. The LibreOffice equivalent is nowhere near as easy to use IMO. Anyone who uses Excel heavily I probably wouldn't promote Linux to.
I don't need nor want this. Also, as I mentioned, I don't want to be on Windows as they turn the screws to lock it down and farm/spy on me. The precursor to this is MS had an S-Mode version of Win10 when it first came out which blocked you from installing anything not from the MS store but you could disable it. How long will that be an option, Win12?
In any case, I am out and probably going to move to Linux before the end of the year. My primary PC is Win8.1, a Win7 bench PC for cloning and a Win10 laptop for service work. I did some research already and Dymo kinda-sorta has support for Linux drivers and others got it working so I am hopeful.
I did a little research on Dymo and they kinda-sorta provide driver support for Linux so some have been able to get it to work.
1) They wanted training on any software. These were not "techies". These people who ran or worked in small businesses, and did not care if their machine was Windows, or their apps were Microsoft or whatever...as long as they were trained, and ideally some training/hep docs were available to them, they were happy.
2) As long as files that they needed to send/receive with/from their customers and other partner firms was ok, and not botched/messed up...then they were happy. For some of my customers, this became the biggest sticking point, and some times not in their control. For some customers, i could pivot them into different directions, for example, create web portals so their customers didn;'t need Word docs sent to them in the first place, or maybe send a PDF (exported from LibreOffice), etc. Some customers were open to different directions, others felt uncomfortable.
I will add that if i were a better sales person (I'm a way better wingman to sales, but not great at closing slaes on my own)...for item #2 above, there were plenty of opportunities to create apps/services that could be sold to customers to semi-automate the creatuion of more "conventional" office file formats. I had little success, not because of tech constraints, but moreso because i could not close deals. The challenge is changing the minds of customers towards solutions that could be cheaper, better in the long term...Microsoft's hold on business mindshare is not easy to undo.
Affinity Photo/Designer/Publisher
Ableton Live
Various Native Instruments gadgets
Serum
Scrivener
Linux is fine. It just doesn't have the software I need. No, none of the things you want to mention will do. Yes, I used them extensively before I had what I have now. I feel the need to say this because people will often stroll in with the assumption that I just don't know what's available or tried it too long ago for the experience to be credible.
Are you aware of any tools that approximate Scrivener under Linux?
- Hated the looks of it - Something got borked - Had issued with drivers - None of my apps run well on it.
I need Windows because it does what I need it to do: Operate my system. I don't use Office nor Outlook because I never send emails or write documents and if I HAVE to write a document I'll jot it in Notion or just in EditPadLite. I just need Windows because it runs all my apps properly, all the time. I'm sure a Mac can as well, but I'm not going to spend 2500 on a laptop that overheats and has a terrible keyboard. Linux, any blend, is just out of the question for me. And seeing what Microsoft has been doing to make Windows more developer friendly, now all tools that used to require a Linux command line, now work fine in Windows CMD. I'm talking about node, npm, chocolatey, python, php. It's all just installed and working fine. And therefore I don't want to switch. At all.
Since then I am using Linux only when there is no other option possible - either in VM or on RPi.
There are definitely pain points, but also substantial productivity gains. For anybody trying this, my advice would be to attempt to ship the lowest number of possible HW configurations internally - with the ideal being having everybody on a same model of a laptop.
Not a business owner. Programmer who was a sysadmin in a former life and is familiar with all three O/S and a few others, e.g. embedded firware, etc.
In every organization, there is usually one app that ties a particular user to a non Linux OS, e.g. usually it's Adobe products, sometimes active directory, sometimes it's because "we have Access and it does everything we need it to and no we don't know what it does anymore", we need X software for X platform because skillsets and training.
A lot of lawyers would still (and some still are) be on WordPerfect if they could be, some accountants are probably still on FoxPro somewhere out there, but IME most users just need a Chromebook and a subscription to o365. Maybe ChromeOS Flex is an option for them?
If they have custom needs then they IME don't need much more than a CSV file and a simple ruby script that can import their label addresses from a CSV and spit them out to the printer a la ruby's Prawn.
The argument for training loses weight when each version of Windows and macOS changes fairly drastically you have to relearn with each major upgrade. Usually forcing hardware upgrades too well before the machine has stopped being viable. Whereas learning Linux once and that being all you have to know forever and can blast onto any machine, copy your files over, run your setup flat files or whatever you use to bootstrap your setup and IMO the training argument should push more to Linux but it never will for one simple reason. Support. If the manager can't offload a user needing help to support then all bets are off.
I started my business (handyman/contracting) five years ago. It's been on Linux from day one. Why would I bother with anything else when Linux fills all my needs?
As for perm staff, computers are cheap since they can last for years. Windows, and Macs aren't that expensive in the grand scheme of things.
I do have a handful of Raapberry Pis in a food wearhouse but I'm not doing to demand any analyst to stop using Tableau on their mac when they digging through my order book looking for oppurtunities.
Fancy Word formatting / referencing? Breaks in LibreOffice.
Excel with macros? Also breaks.
Spatial desktop stack? Pretty poor on Linux, compared to Windows anyway.
The spatial ETL tools I need are also better on Windows.
And then there's the support model. Of all my in house customers and clients, perhaps 2 or 3 out of potentially 100+ regular contacts have ever booted a Linux machine. Windows is familiar to them. Their customers, clients, and suppliers also use Windows for the most part.
All the above said, our cloud machines and most of our server stack are on Linux.