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Microsoft Windows is prohibited at Gitlab

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Re: Microsoft Windows is prohibited at Gitlab

#111

Post by nix23 »

eminence32 wrote: post #32

I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that gitlab is fully remote. In an office where you have on-site IT staff, and a local corporate LAN, you can require every windows machine to be part of AD, have group security policies pushed out, and generally have tools available for central management. But with gitlab, everyone is working in their own networks around the world. That sounds like a very hard enviro…

>But with gitlab, everyone is working in their own networks around the world.

VPN? You know like dial in into your lan?...the original use-case for vpn's?

Re: Microsoft Windows is prohibited at Gitlab

#112

Post by wruza »

sonofhans wrote: post #50
horsawlarway wrote: post #9

I'm no fan of Windows myself, but I find this a fairly bad policy. If nothing else - what's not used is not tested. And if you expect any real population of users to be using Windows machines with your products, you should have developers/PMs/QA/support interacting with your products using Windows machines. I see this as: We're saving a bit of money and making ITs life easier, and in exchange users will get a worse p…

I agree. If nothing else they won’t be able to replicate Windows typography, which is different from Linux and OS X. Base fonts are different; kerning and anti-aliasing are different. Web design is still 90% typography, and cutting the largest install base out of your test matrix seems silly to me.

Do you mean px issues, which web standards ought to solve, or just how typography looks from a design point of view?

Re: Microsoft Windows is prohibited at Gitlab

#113

Post by salzig »

horsawlarway wrote: post #51
salzig wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gitlab is essentially a website, and Microsoft Edge is just Chrome. I think there isn't any reason to test on windows anymore.

Developing "essentially a website" is my full time job - if you genuinely don't think there are differences between platforms, you aren't paying attention. The browser is wired into the OS in real ways, and they matter. Everything from "How does the os manage passwords" or "how are system notifications presented" or "How much screen real estate do I have have on a given window size (scrollbars...)" to subtle differen…

Have you been using Gitlab lately? I don't think they have any interest in nuances, as they still have problems with basic stuff.

Overall i'm pretty sure that "list about 20 differences" is relevant in some cases/procucts/websites, but not for gitlab - they just proved that by disallowing working on Windows (which wouldn't disallow testing on a VM).

Re: Microsoft Windows is prohibited at Gitlab

#114

Post by Xylakant »

mikeryan wrote: post #68
Xylakant wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I‘m a bit surprised that they care about the cost so much - the Dell laptops and the Apple Laptops come in at a price point of 2000 - 3000 USD and the Dell they specifically recommend for Linux use comes with Windows Pro preinstalled. The price difference to the equivalent Linux version is around 70USD. That‘s a negligible difference, especially when you start comparing to the employees wage (It‘s probably about 1 ho…

Where did they mention cost concerns? I’m reading this that it’s an IT/procurement hassle dealing with the Windows Pro upgrade licenses, on a platform they don’t feel is secure, not a cost issue.

The linux laptop they propose comes by default with an included Pro license, home edition would need to be selected extra. I haven‘t used Dell in a while, but I‘d assume that it behave like Lenovo and has the License Key baked right into the EFI, so there‘s literally no need to deal with any upgrade license if you proscribe which Laptop Model people are allowed to purchase (which they do)

They also mention multiple times that Linux and MacOS are free, as opposed to Windows Pro - which can reasonably be read as „we don’t want to spend money here“, since otherwise you could just strike these arguments and revert to „we don‘t believe Windows Pro is secure“, which incidentally they never say.

Re: Microsoft Windows is prohibited at Gitlab

#115

Post by bob1029 »

pjmlp wrote: post #22

I guess Gitlab doesn't care about having customers that work on Windows platforms. Meanwhile Github works just great for us.

100% Agreed. The really aggressive "fuck Microsoft" rhetoric is going to burn a lot of these startups over the long haul. It's incredible to me the number that still seem to be operating in an ideological bubble that was originally created 2 decades ago.

A lot of Serious Business happens on top of Microsoft technology right now, and the companies responsible for tending to solutions in this space are made extraordinarily uncomfortable by this kind of aura being given off by vendors like Gitlab.

Can Gitlab really afford to alienate double-digit % of its TAM in favor of this ideological position? It seems like they are already having financial difficulties based upon other recent articles.

Re: Microsoft Windows is prohibited at Gitlab

#116

Post by prmoustache »

Xylakant wrote: post #33
jhickok wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although not even hinted at in the doc, I personally find the tedium of buying and provisioning and monitoring licenses worse than the cost of it. I suppose you are also inviting risk in the form of an audit.

Most windows laptops today come with a license key baked into the BIOS. So no need to manage licenses here.

No post body was provided.

Re: Microsoft Windows is prohibited at Gitlab

#117

Post by nix23 »

gizmo wrote: post #16

The pretext for banning Windows is comically bad. Paying extra for Mac hardware is perfectly fine (no, encouraged!), but paying $100 or so to upgrade Windows Home to Windows Professional is prohibitively expensive? That's such a joke. I have no trouble with companies mandating one OS or the other. But when the justification for the policy is so bad it looks petty and ideological as opposed to the result of a level-he…

And make a screenshot to verify that you encrypted your disk ;))))

The lost art of (fleet-)administration.

Re: Microsoft Windows is prohibited at Gitlab

#118

Post by jareds »

I'll make sure to mark Gitlab off a company I apply at if I look for a new job. I'm totally blind and have been using Windows screen readers for the last 25 years. The switching cost to Mac or Linux appears to be incredibly high. I've attempted to use both and after brief usage was not able to get close to my productivity on Windows. Maybe that would change if they were my only option but I'm not going to risk poor productivity at a new job on that. I focus on back-end development and since WSL came out, I've not run into any situation where I can't do what I need using Windows, WSL, and VS Code.

Re: Microsoft Windows is prohibited at Gitlab

#119

Post by trelane »

sumtechguy wrote: post #101
jhickok wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not believe those are sufficient for enterprise licenses, which must be provided separately.

I was looking at a quarter million for a few dozen machines and 2 AD servers and 4 SQL servers. Nearly on par with the cost of the hardware I was buying. Until some bright spark realized it was all testing/dev/qa for those machines, MSDN suddenly was way better cost wise. If all you are doing is testing/dev then MSDN is usually the choice you want (but grab your lawyer to dig into the terms on that one). But in a rea…

Also the always-looming threat of Microsoft telemetry and BSA audit. You can do everything right as far as you can tell, abd they can still come in and make your life miserable.
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