Google did this 15+ years ago, and while the transition took a couple of years, they never looked back. Productivity shot up for all the usual reasons.
Microsoft Windows is prohibited at Gitlab
231–240 of 324 posts
Re: Microsoft Windows is prohibited at Gitlab
#232I'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…
Realistically... Microsoft owns GitHub, and the weird Azure devops-ish solution for git. If an enterprise is on Microsoft, they're going to use one of those two solutions instead of GitLab.
Making IT's life _vastly harder_ to allow employees to maybe use Windows and see a solution the testing team didn't see is not a good trade-off.
That's not even going into how, exactly, Windows is going to make anyone's life better than using a Mac. Realistically, they're at least at parity.
The trade-off here is "make every IT support and supply line more filled with friction" to gain "people can use Windows if they'd really prefer, instead of Mac or Linux". That's a terrible trade-off, and GitLab is making good decisions.
Re: Microsoft Windows is prohibited at Gitlab
#233Seems weird to harp on the cost of a windows license when they're buying Mac OS licenses instead (although hidden in the device's prie).
No harping on cost was done. This is a overhead issue, and the same things apply to IBM and Oracle software. Whenever the product needs artificial management to only deal with the specifics of contracts and licences that's just a drain on the business.
Re: Microsoft Windows is prohibited at Gitlab
#234This is pretty similar to the policy at my company: you get a Mac, unless you specifically request a Linux laptop. If you need Windows for testing, Microsoft makes VM images available with a browser pre-installed at https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/v...
As a long time Windows user, it would take me a considerable amount of time to get used to the operating system and all applications and utilities that I need to be productive. Not saying Windows is great, but it works for me. And I'm pretty sure they don't hire people to learn an operating system.
Would you not apply to a role because you aren't comfortable with the main programming language used?
Learning is a part of the on-boarding experience at any new job and technical learning usually pales in comparison to learning about the business domain and company specific practices.
Re: Microsoft Windows is prohibited at Gitlab
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unsurprisingly, they don't run CI on developer laptops, which the linked page is about.
So their developers do indeed use Pixie dust when debugging Windows build pipelines and compilers.
I am running a Linux laptop, and I regularly run and test code on Windows, macOS, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, DragonFly BSD, and illumos. Basically, all the systems Go supports minus Solaris and AIX because they're proprietary and I can't "just download" them AFAIK, and Plan 9 because I found it too confusing/hard to set up (and is so obscure I don't really care too much either).
The "Pixie dust" is QEMU and a zsh script.
GitLab doesn't outright ban Windows for any and all usages; you just can't run it on your laptop as the main system (although exceptions are allowed).
Re: Microsoft Windows is prohibited at Gitlab
#236The 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…
What if they're worried about the telemetry that would be going to their biggest direct competitor? Not a defense, just a curious thought.
Telemetry can be turned off. You can do it at org level, at department level, or individually. Use WPD, best tool for this.
Re: Microsoft Windows is prohibited at Gitlab
#237Reading further on the page, the "Laptop Repair" part is interesting : >If your laptop is broken and needs to be repaired you can take it into an Apple repair store. You should ensure that you have a recent backup before doing so, and that your laptop is not your only registered device for iCloud two-factor authentication. >If the repair is not going to be too expensive (more than $1000 dollars USD), go ahead and rep…
That‘s very funny since almost all repairs on apple devices that I‘ve seen took longer than a day. Apple had [1] some very funky policies about shipping spare parts that essentially required the repair shop to have the laptop on their workbench before ordering the spares. [1] or even still has, it‘s been a while
That's was my experience while trying to replace a battery. I proposed to pay in advance and only leave it there for the swap, but they can only order the battery if I hand over the macbook. Moreover, where I live they take at least a week to give your computer back for a simple battery swap. I ended up giving up.
Re: Microsoft Windows is prohibited at Gitlab
#238I believe: 1) The reasons shown as to why Windows is prohibited are essentially parallel construction. 2) The real reason is because someone has an agenda against Windows and Microsoft. 3) This is quite alright. It might be a net loss in the short term for everyone, but a net win in the long term for everyone. Microsoft has a lot of bad stuff coming their way, for good reason.
> Microsoft has a lot of bad stuff coming their way, for good reason. There are several good things that are currently coming out of microsoft: - vscode - typescript - github - npm - edge (at the moment, microsoft at least as strong supporter of PWAs as Google; and possibly even stronger) Windows is probably not one of them.
- github was acquired, not their "invention"
- edge and chrome are same stuff under the hood. Firefox is better.
Re: Microsoft Windows is prohibited at Gitlab
#239> As many purchases of laptops have occurred with employees making the purchases and then being reimbursed by GitLab, a remote employee would typically be making a purchase of a laptop pre-loaded with Windows Home Edition. Windows Home Edition is notoriously hard to secure. This is a totally valid point. Anyone who has worked for big companies know how companies secure systems using security policies which are not av…
>Windows Home Edition is notoriously hard to secure. This is bullshit. In Windows 10 Home the Group Policy Editor is removed, and domain-join is not supported, however bulk security changes (i.e. Security Policies) can still be implemented directly to the registry with scripting.
>Windows Home Edition is notoriously hard to secure.
This is more from the perspective of a company to be able to control the security policies of the system and remotely manage it.
In an organization with thousands of people, no one has time to help someone setup custom security policies manually.
Re: Microsoft Windows is prohibited at Gitlab
#240Having to use a Windows laptop for work is the main reason I rejected working for Microsoft. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great OS, but not for me and I just couldn’t bring myself to using it. I get their logic to have engineers use this, but it was a great dealbreaker for me.