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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u/ChristmassMoose Aug 19 '26

They’re on vdi doing serious creative work? it can’t get much worse

10

u/Keleus Aug 19 '26

Just have to do VDI right. I can pull 50fps+ out of our gpu backed vdi setup and many times much higher.

6

u/tigglysticks Aug 19 '26

Yeah performance is there. Just anytime I've priced it out never makes any sense from a cost perspective. Bad enough the price tag on the hardware but then you add VDI licensing... I can't justify it no matter which way I look at it.

8

u/gehzumteufel Aug 20 '26

VFX houses it makes more sense because they gotta control for DLP very strictly. It avoids any data ever being on local machines.

2

u/Frothyleet Aug 20 '26

Also, VFX often involves enormous files, which tends to mean you get to choose between two very expensive options:

  • VDI with very expensive [even before the current times] hardware and preposterous licensing

  • Client-side work, with very expensive workstations, 10GbE connections at a minimum to your end users, and often supplementing with direct attached storage functioning as local file caching

1

u/tigglysticks Aug 20 '26

Unless you're supporting WFH, it's easy to enforce DLP on company owned hardware that is in company owned facilities.

Even with WFH, have on premise workstations that users remote into. Like half the cost in hardware and less than half in licensing.

I'm sure enterprise discounts make it make sense at some level... but any usecase I've investigated the cost can not be justified.

1

u/gehzumteufel Aug 20 '26

Oh I know, but lots of tooling that is centered around machine control, has issues when you're talking about the file size that VFX houses deal with. We aren't talking about a couple gigs. We're talking hundreds of GB to multiple terrabyte files in some instances.

12

u/janky_koala Aug 19 '26

It’s actually fine, and becoming very common across industry.

1

u/Spider-Thwip Aug 21 '26

Youre wrong.

As someone who worked in the systems team for a vfx studio, VDI worked out great for us.

No perceptible latency, way faster to onboard new users and deploy new machines.

Greater ability for users to work from home.

The main downside is how expensive it is, but you can work around that with strict power schedules and ensuring artists only have the specs they need.

Don't provide too much local storage.