Asking for a Linux (or non-Windows) laptop during a job interview?

I’m interviewing for a software dev job currently (it’s in the initial stages). If things work out, I’d absolutely prefer a work laptop with Linux installed (I personally use PopOS but any distro will do), a Mac will be second choice, but I absolutely cannot tolerate Windows, I abhor it, I hate it… (If all computers left on earth have Windows I’d either quit this field or just quit Earth).

Sometimes it’s possible to tell if they use Windows or not, for example, jobs with dotnet/C# are most likely using windows, but not in my case.

Anyways, is it too weird to ask what kind of laptop they provide to their employees? And to also specifically ask for a Linux (or anything but windows) work laptop?

wwwgem,
@wwwgem@lemmy.ml avatar

If only asking the same thing for non-computer jobs would be accepted. I always have to use my personal laptop.

d3Xt3r, (edited )

Even in an IT job I prefer using my own gear (laptop+keyboard+mouse). Corporate laptops (+ peripherals) almost always universally suck. Therfore I won’t accept a job unless they have a decent BYOD scheme. At my current workplace for instance, most of our core apps are cloud-based already, and for the few legacy apps, we can access via Citrix; plus they also reimburse me (to an extent) for using my own laptop, which is nice. With my own gear, I can spec it however I want and use my own favorite apps, without needing to go thru approvals and red tape, and more importantly - I can use my own distro/DE of choice. Like, imagine if a company offered Linux laptops, but you were forced to use Ubuntu or something worse like Oracle Linux… So yea, BYOD FTW.

@flakpanzer if I were you, I’d ask if BYOD is an option, and if so what their BYOD scheme is like. As a Linux person, it’s always better to use your own gear, than whatever el cheapo locked-down system the company offers.

Presi300,
@Presi300@lemmy.world avatar

I KNOW I’m gonna get A LOT of hate for typing this, but if a MacBook is cheaper than the laptop you want, you should get a MacBook…

OsrsNeedsF2P,

Nah linuxreviews.org/Macs_%26_MacOS:_Greener_Grass%3F

possiblylinux127,

What does that even mean?

explore_broaden,

The Apple M_ processors are great for performance to power usage ratio (and peak performance in general), so a MacBook is a good choice of laptop (even to run Linux on it).

herrvogel,

Linux is currently not available on Apple silicon as anything other than a half baked alpha build with a ton of essential stuff missing. Not even remotely ready to be used as the primary OS. And that’s on the M1. It’s even worse on the more recent chips.

explore_broaden,

I run Asahi Linux on the M1, and it’s been working great for the last six months or so.

Edit: I wouldn’t necessarily recommend buying one to run Linux at the moment, for one thing they’re overpriced, but I was clarifying why the original comment would have suggested an M1.

lightnegative,

No way. Even if you try to run Linux on it, the keyboard is a mac mangled keyboard.

You’re better off leaving it on MacOS, which is still better than Windows but not by much

fruitycoder,

If the laptop I want is more expensive that a MacBook its because it has some serious hardware or very specialized feature set. If you want an average spec machine save the money and just get it instead of MacBook

atzanteol,

FWIW I get along pretty well with a virtualbox vm running on my employer provided windows machine. Performance is good and virtualbox even supports multiple displays pretty well.

You do need to square things with corporate IT and security though. Some places really lock their systems down. I’d ask about how “developer friendly” their security policies are.

possiblylinux127,

Virtual box is very slow compared to something more native. I prefer KVM on Linux if I can get it and I’m pretty sure Hyper-V is going to be faster even though it is a tremendous pain in the ***

atzanteol,

VirtualBox performs just fine for me and I’m not exactly light on how I use it. I have a development environment with multiple IntelliJ instances running, and Oracle database running in Docker, etc. And the desktop integration is much better than Hyper-V. KVM is not an option if the host is Windows.

With VirtualBox I can run full screen with multiple monitors - aside from the Windows Key being caught by Windows it’s nearly complete immersion to the Linux desktop. I can then switch to “window mode” if I need to do anything from Windows. And even in “windowed mode” I still have multiple monitors (it does one window for each).

Raw performance isn’t everything. The user experience here is much better than what the hypervisors provide.

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