Indeed. After a couple of years of using Linux at work because no one gave shit what I used as long as I got my work done, a few weeks back I was given a new Windows PC and told I had to use it, because the company now cares about cybersecurity and everyone has been ‘upgraded’ to Win11 and Office 365.
I had an argument with my boss where he was trying to stop people checking out source code to company laptops because they could be lost. My retort was that the company uploaded all it’s company documents, spreadsheets, and other data to the cloud including employee personal data, and that was far for likely to experience a data breach. Those breaches would result in legal issues for the company, rather than a slight embarrassment.
He was apoplectic. How dare I question company policy.
At least in your case they didn’t give the false hope. In my case two years ago company just stated that we “enrolling in ms ecosystem”. That meant that to use your PC within company’s domain, you had to authorize it with MS account or none of sites would work. Weirdly, MS does support that not only on windows, but also on linux and MacOS. And if MacOS is simple (and supported by our tech team), linux installation is awful — it requires ubuntu lts + to install ms antivirus, that will override some system filles on top of that and will have root access afaik. Well, I don’t want company to control my personal device anyway, so I just installed win11 in qemu with tpm emulation and gpu passthrough and activated this “company account” shit there. Good luck spying on not activated bare w11 copy.
If job market wasn’t fucked, probably would just leave instead tho.
I’m a freelancer. Cause I had to run from my country that decided to start a war for some reason. And let me tell you - no one wants to hire a migrant from russia. So yeah, upper mentioned company won’t provide hardware for freelancers, but as alternative they do provide azure virtual desktop - which sucks and also doesn’t work on linux (due to how ms implemented auth via their token).
I can request asylum and live on government support, will probably get a rejection in the long term tho, cause according to EU and other countries - russia clearly is a safe country to live.
Realistically, company shouldn’t enforce such integration in the first place, even if my distro did supporter it (I won’t install RHEL on my home desktop, dude).
They justify it by “security”, but beyond changing group policy to enforce constant password rotation and system update, haven’t noticed anything that would really justify it. I guess the only real reason of this integration existing, is that they can lock me out of my own PC if they wanted to. And considering that I’m a freelancer, that can happen at any given moment.
Oh, I agree completely that it’s bonkers to require this for your personal machine. Just pointing out for anyone else reading that it isn’t limited to just Ubuntu
Indeed. After a couple of years of using Linux at work because no one gave shit what I used as long as I got my work done, a few weeks back I was given a new Windows PC and told I had to use it, because the company now cares about cybersecurity and everyone has been ‘upgraded’ to Win11 and Office 365.
I had an argument with my boss where he was trying to stop people checking out source code to company laptops because they could be lost. My retort was that the company uploaded all it’s company documents, spreadsheets, and other data to the cloud including employee personal data, and that was far for likely to experience a data breach. Those breaches would result in legal issues for the company, rather than a slight embarrassment.
He was apoplectic. How dare I question company policy.
Welcome to corpo land. Nobody was ever fired for choosing Microsoft.
At least in your case they didn’t give the false hope. In my case two years ago company just stated that we “enrolling in ms ecosystem”. That meant that to use your PC within company’s domain, you had to authorize it with MS account or none of sites would work. Weirdly, MS does support that not only on windows, but also on linux and MacOS. And if MacOS is simple (and supported by our tech team), linux installation is awful — it requires ubuntu lts + to install ms antivirus, that will override some system filles on top of that and will have root access afaik. Well, I don’t want company to control my personal device anyway, so I just installed win11 in qemu with tpm emulation and gpu passthrough and activated this “company account” shit there. Good luck spying on not activated bare w11 copy.
If job market wasn’t fucked, probably would just leave instead tho.
What kind of company requires employees to buy their own device to do their work?
I’m a freelancer. Cause I had to run from my country that decided to start a war for some reason. And let me tell you - no one wants to hire a migrant from russia. So yeah, upper mentioned company won’t provide hardware for freelancers, but as alternative they do provide azure virtual desktop - which sucks and also doesn’t work on linux (due to how ms implemented auth via their token).
I can request asylum and live on government support, will probably get a rejection in the long term tho, cause according to EU and other countries - russia clearly is a safe country to live.
Fair enough. Though I still feel that a company either provides the device and can enforce policies, or they don’t and they can’t.
You have my sympathies for your situation ( though I am aware that doesn’t help you very much :( )
Intune portal is supported on RHEL also; I have Rocky on my work laptop, with intune and entra SSO.
Realistically, company shouldn’t enforce such integration in the first place, even if my distro did supporter it (I won’t install RHEL on my home desktop, dude).
They justify it by “security”, but beyond changing group policy to enforce constant password rotation and system update, haven’t noticed anything that would really justify it. I guess the only real reason of this integration existing, is that they can lock me out of my own PC if they wanted to. And considering that I’m a freelancer, that can happen at any given moment.
Oh, I agree completely that it’s bonkers to require this for your personal machine. Just pointing out for anyone else reading that it isn’t limited to just Ubuntu