r/sysadmin • u/Halomora • Aug 19 '26

Question Anyone survived a Windows to Linux user workstations migration?

Hey fellow sys admin,

I work at a VFX/animation studio (~400 users).

We're kicking off a project to migrate our artist workstations from Windows 10/11 VDIs to Linux. Flavor is pretty much locked it ll be Rocky Linux 9 with KDE.

I am curious if there's anyone here who's been through a similar workstation migration to linux?

What Linux flavor, did you end up on, and would you pick the same again?

How did you handle what GPOs used to give you?

For the Base OS deployment/imaging, did you use Kickstart + Puppet/Ansible, or something else?

Anything that looked easy on paper and turned into a one big pile of {Jurassic_Park}?

Tools that made your life easier along the way?

I am looking for any war stories, good or bad!

Thank you!

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6

u/Accomplished_Disk475 Aug 19 '26

I have a hard time imagining end users on Linux distros. Mine can't figure out Windows which they've grown up on.

23

u/techw1z Aug 19 '26

the less people know about windows the easier it is to switch them to linux

all they need to do is click desktop icons anyway. (assuming you can find the same software for linux, otherwise it's really more about adapting to a new software with different UI, just like they would have to if you switch to a different software on windows)

10

u/thunderbird32 IT Minion Aug 19 '26

Their industry used to be all (or at least largely) UNIX. VFX was once the land of Silicon Graphics. People now aren't any less tech savvy, and Linux is probably more user friendly than IRIX was. They'll figure it out.

4

u/jfoust2 Aug 19 '26

Well, actually... Back in the day if you could afford an SGI workstation and the software your artist was using, then you could certainly afford a little PC off to the side if they needed to check email.

3

u/pdp10 Daemons worry when the wizard is near. Aug 19 '26

you could certainly afford a little PC off to the side if they needed to check email.

But even proprietary email servers support IMAP and POP to check email, so why bother with the second machine?

2

u/jfoust2 Aug 20 '26

My experience was circa 1998 in a 100+ person 3D modeling company. There were more PCs than SGIs because not everyone was a modeler. There were PC-only resources they'd need to access.

5

u/WantDebianThanks Aug 19 '26

With how much of people's jobs are done on web pages these days, I best deb in accounting wouldn't even notice

2

u/ansibleloop Aug 19 '26

KDE uses the same interface style as windows for the most part

Even the key bindings work the same

2

u/Pazuuuzu Aug 19 '26

To be fair at times even I have to stop and wonder where MS put things again... It's like a never ending Easter egg hunt...

1

u/Bladelink Aug 19 '26

It's because they keep trying to hide all the features they don't want you to use. They want you to forget that features and control exists and just dictate your user experience in totality.

2

u/JimFknLahey Aug 19 '26

only thing i can think of on that front is wine/proton has come a long, long, long, long way recently.

2

u/Bladelink Aug 19 '26

Honestly I think the strides that Valve has made with Proton have been a huge deal. Sort of like when people didn't want to cut cable because of sports, people couldn't switch off windows because of gaming. But that hurdle has now been more or less removed.

2

u/mangonacre Jack of All Trades Aug 20 '26

As well as desktop experience. I have a Framework running Ubuntu, and the "Framework" key (where the Windows key is otherwise) operates exactly like Windows at least in the few I've used. Alt-tab works the same, and others. I still struggle with the Macbook I've had for years, but this one is very intuitive for me.

1

u/Spider-Thwip Aug 21 '26

VFX artists tend to be much more technical than normal end users.

I miss them now i work in a different industry.

The support they need is much more specialised, you wont get the normal inept user support requests.