Timeshift has turned my system breaking updates and tinkering into a non-issue. I just set up all my systems with it right off the bat. One snapshot per day, one weekly, and one monthly.

Since doing that, I’ve never had to toss a totally borked install.

I was one of the lucky users who used Manjaro on my old laptop for over a year and never had any real problems.

I was very confused when I started getting more involved in the Linux community and kept hearing about how terrible Manjaro was.

For me, vanilla Fedora has actually been the most consistently problematic distro. I’ve had more random issues getting it set up and working properly than any other distro.

God bless Mint though, it has been basically flawless for years.

Yeah, it really bites. And no, they don’t allow anything personal other than phones.

At least I get to use the Thinkpad, even if it is gimped with Windows. They initially weren’t even going to allow that, because their company deploys only HP laptops.

But I made a strong and slightly pathetic case to the manager and he relented. Angry that I had to kiss the ring, but right now I need the money, and I really hated their clunky HP laptops.

For sure, I’m on it already.

Harsh but fair, edited lol.

Thank you, I might join in spirit heh 👊

Sadly, that’s been my experience for years in IT, at least where I live in the US.

I rarely encounter an IT person who knows what Linux is beyond “a hacker OS” or some arcane system from the 80’s that’s still running deep in a basement somewhere.

FOSS = janky freeware in their minds. They’ve usually never even heard of XCP-ng, OpenShift, TrueNAS, Bitwarden, PFSense, or any of the other professionally supported and enterprise-grade open source technologies.

For sure, already reaching out to recruiters and applying to some job postings.

Thank you 🫶

I am careful, but not concerned. The new company’s IT doesn’t give a damn about anything that I set up or implemented. Their reactions when I was describing my work and job role before the buyout was essentially, “Aww, the cute little sysadmin was making scripts and using Linux, isn’t that sweet.”

As far as they’re concerned, all the old hardware and software are e-waste and are being scrapped. They are ripping out everything, literally. From our phone system, to our physical devices, to our firewalls, network switches, Active Directory, and file server.

They are replacing every single part of our infrastructure. Everything I built is useless in their eyes.

Already backed up securely and anonymously :)

Oof, that’s rough. My spouse is a software engineer and has been through a similar thing recently.

Yeah, it’s rough. I am trying to look on the bright side, that I learned a lot that will help my career going forward, and what I did implement worked very well and helped make a few people’s lives easier.

Thank you 👊

Thank you 🤜🤛

My work laptop is a Thinkpad running Debian with the Plasma DE, I love it so much. Everything is snappy and clean, set up and tuned perfectly to my preferences.

It’s getting wiped in a few days. I requested to keep it as a personal device if I wiped it, they denied that request. I even offered to buy it back from the company, but still no.

At least I get to keep it instead of using their bulky, crappy HPs, but replacing my sleek Debian system with Windows 11 feels so wrong.

I tried to push back, but they are a much larger company and they made it clear that I would be playing by their rules, not mine.

I was thinking of quitting immediately, but at least in my region of the country, the IT market is really rough right now, so I can’t afford to be out of work for months.

I won’t last long here though. They are half owned by a private equity firm, so they run everything based on the bottom line. Their IT team is understaffed, underpaid, and they are always looking for excuses to lay folks off or fire them. Their turnover rate is pretty high, burnout is rife.

For sure, I’ve learned a ton in the last year. Hopefully I can land a Linux focused job this year and get away from Windows support once and for all.

Thank you 👊

Sorry to hear that, sounds rough too! Thanks for the well wishes, I’m talking with a few different recruiters right now and applying to some positions.

Still have my job currently, but hopefully I can make the jump soon to a Linux environment.