The last Linux version came - what? 2004? That was 17 years ago, and we used to struggle to get basic hardware functionality from it back then. Today it is as plug-n-play as it gets.
I do understand that there is a resistance to transition from Windows to Linux, and weak reasons for doing so - but that is based on assumptions and gut feelings. There is no mechanism to actually quantify this - which is what I ask for here...
With your extensive experience as an administrator of CAD environments, you are a great example of the type of input I'd like to see. What would be the easiest and least problematic to run - a network of pure Windows, pure Linux (or *NIX), or a mixed machine park?
Throw in concerns such as "we do not really want to put our R&D in a cloud, because of rampant hacking and ransomware, especially since our military contract explicitly excludes any condition where our data is a) online, and b) hosted on foreign servers. Which goes counter to the increased "connectivity" and telemetry that comes with Windows.
My limited experience as IT monkey comes from many situations where the company does not realize the difficulty level of deploying software and wants to play as little as possible. "Can you install this? It has to run tomorrow. Our budget is one dollar and a pack of cigarettes". And I find that the world where I can smash in Linux and LibreOffice and whatever is an order of magnitude less encumbered with snafus than the cobweb of licensing and registration, with scores of usernames and passwords required, that I find myself in when it comes to Windows.
Also, I find it weird that so many companies choose MacOS as the secondary redhead stepchild. Apple has a marketshare in the single digit percent. Linux powers a billion devices and the only reason it does not take over the desktop is because of the very lack of mission-critical user software. It could replace both Windows and MacOS in a split second if the applications were there.
