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Microsoft Windows is prohibited at Gitlab

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Re: Microsoft Windows is prohibited at Gitlab

#91

Post by Shorel »

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…

For many years, and in so many companies, the policy has been the opposite.

All company laptops must have windows, anything else needs to be vetted by the IT admin.

Now that the Edge browser works fine on Linux, there's really no need for all these licenses, and someone needs to start to break the unhealthy dependency every company has on Active Directory.

Re: Microsoft Windows is prohibited at Gitlab

#92

Post by MattGaiser »

mikeryan wrote: post #56
bzxcvbn wrote: post #10

Seems 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).

I had to look again and might have missed it, but I didn’t see where Gitlab expressed concerns about the cost of Windows Professional version. They had concerns with team members sourcing they’re own Windows laptops which would traditionally come with Home Edition and need to be upgraded adding to the IT overhead. Where were the cost concerns on buying windows licenses?

> macOS is preinstalled on Apple computers and Linux is available free of charge. To approve the use of Windows, GitLab would have to purchase Windows Professional licenses, as Windows Home Edition does not satisfy GitLab's security guidelines.

They are in favour of Linux for it being free, implying that they do not want to pay for Windows.

Re: Microsoft Windows is prohibited at Gitlab

#93

Post by jaclaz »

Reading 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 repair and expense. If the repair is going to take longer than a day then you need to make sure you have a back up laptop to work on that is non-Windows.

It seems like you need to have TWO Apple devices, to be on the safe side...

Re: Microsoft Windows is prohibited at Gitlab

#94

Post by grumple »

This is bad reasoning.

> Due to Microsoft Windows' dominance in desktop operating systems, Windows is the platform most targetted by spyware, viruses, and ransomware.

Being targeted less frequently != more secure. MacOS and Safari have had plenty of critical vulnerabilities in recent years.

> macOS is preinstalled on Apple computers and Linux is available free of charge. To approve the use of Windows, GitLab would have to purchase Windows Professional licenses, as Windows Home Edition does not satisfy GitLab's security guidelines. > 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.

Come on. A PC with Windows Pro is going to be way cheaper than a comparable mac. This is just disengenuous.

> Windows Home Edition is notoriously hard to secure.

Their last point was literally about how they would force users to get Pro, why does this matter?

I'd issue a counterpoint: there is far more expertise out there in securing fleets of Windows machines, and I'll guess most corporate Windows systems are more hardened to threats than the typical developer's macbook.

The real reason to use Macs is that you get a functional unix-like environment where you don't have to constantly jump through hoops in order to work with Rails. They don't have to fabricate security reasons.

Re: Microsoft Windows is prohibited at Gitlab

#95

Post by dsr_ »

rlv-dan wrote: post #55
dsr_ wrote: post #12

This 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.

As a long time multiple OS user and administrator, I can assure you that people figure out MacOS in the first two weeks. It's not anywhere near as strange as getting used to git for the first time.

We don't hire people in order for them to learn Linux, per se. We hire junior sysadmins who already have at least a home lab level of experience there -- a standard interview request is to describe a disaster that you caused, what went wrong, how you solved it, and what you could have done to prevent it and what you did do differently afterwards.

Re: Microsoft Windows is prohibited at Gitlab

#96

Post by nicce »

Xylakant wrote: post #21
habnds wrote: post #3

>> GitLab approves the use of Linux, and Apple's macOS. Microsoft Windows is prohibited for the following reasons: Due to Microsoft Windows' dominance in desktop operating systems, Windows is the platform most targetted by spyware, viruses, and ransomware. macOS is preinstalled on Apple computers and Linux is available free of charge. To approve the use of Windows, GitLab would have to purchase Windows Professional l…

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…

It is really weak argument. The software cost for example is included for MacBook price for sure. It just is not specifically separated.

Re: Microsoft Windows is prohibited at Gitlab

#97

Post by ironmagma »

lbotos wrote: post #67
ironmagma wrote: post #8

This is being posted just a day after this tweet: https://twitter.com/allenholub/status/1555324387087097856 I really wonder what it's like inside Gitlab. The product ticks all the boxes you'd want it to, but the user experience just resonates with sadness and misery.

I work there. (And have for the last 5 years.) Obviously I can't divulge anything confidential, but ask a more specific question and I'm happy to answer from my vantage.

What are the downsides of the culture?

Re: Microsoft Windows is prohibited at Gitlab

#98

Post by jaywalk »

politelemon wrote: post #54

> Due to Microsoft Windows' dominance in desktop operating systems, Windows is the platform most targetted by spyware, viruses, and ransomware. This is poor reasoning and a misunderstanding of how security works. Any org should be happy with any OS, as long as sufficient security controls for it exist. Anyone who oversees Windows estates, or works in desktop security, can tell you that they exist and are extensive, a…

I think there's a good bit of simple butthurt behind it as well, seeing as Microsoft owns their biggest (and far larger) competitor.

Re: Microsoft Windows is prohibited at Gitlab

#99

Post by trelane »

ziddoap wrote: post #63
arkitaip wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't had problems with viruses, spyware and ransomware on Windows for years. Microsoft's builtin spyware marketed as telemetry and diagnostics otoh is very difficult to counter even with dedicated tools like O&O ShutUp10. I get why companies don't want to risk giving business secrets to Microsoft.

> I haven't had problems with viruses, spyware and ransomware on Windows for years. That's great and all, but I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. That there isn't a problem of malware/ransomware? Because there certainly is, and for most organizations the risk of malware/ransomware is much more significant than the fact that Windows gets some error reporting and usage statistics and such.

Having such a supermajority of desktop operating systems in use means you get most of the developer attention. Unfortunately, it seems to surprise folks that malware also has developers responding to the overall market conditions.

Microsoft is certainly doing their best to mitigate the negative consequences of the monoculture, but it remains a fact and an issue. Just like in biological systems, diversity in software is also critically important for the health of the population.

Re: Microsoft Windows is prohibited at Gitlab

#100

Post by MattGaiser »

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…

Don’t they have software like Intune for this purpose?
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