Using Linux at Work: reactions, and moving in France - VLOG #1
2,734Where I'll talk about the unexpected reactions I got from colleagues while using Linux at work, and about moving to a new place in France.
Support the channel on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thelinuxexperiment
Follow me on Twitter : http://twitter.com/thelinuxEXP
My Linux-compatible recommended hardware:
http://www.amazon.com/shop/thelinuxexperiment
As some of you may know, I've been using elementary OS at work for 2 full weeks now, and it's been going great. While I'll make dedicated videos about this, I also want to go more in depth on the matter of how that's viewed. My company is mostly Apple driven. You can imagine the looks I got when they noticed my new laptop replacing the macbook air they gave me, even though that took a while, since it looks so much like a mac.
That's a problem I wasn't expecting, to be honest: I'm not a developer. Developers are allowed, even supposed to use Linux, so that doesn't shock anyone. The developers getting the weird looks at my workplace are the one that want to use windows. But I'm a product owner, and I'm "supposed" to want a Mac. So when I brought this computer, people asked me why. I had to explain that first, I prefer using Linux to OS X, second, that I also plan to do a video series on my channel, and third, that I do indeed have a linux youtube channel.
This raised a lot of eyebrows: why use Linux, why does your Linux look like mac os X (cause elementary OS does look like OS X at first glance), and what does that bring to your work. The answers weren't as easy as I thought they would. Why use Linux at work, when you don't need to use a command line, manage servers, or just write code ? I boiled it down to three points: habit, personal conviction, and challenge. I've been using Linux for almost 2 years non stop, now, and I'm used to the way it works, to the various desktop environments, and specifically to pantheon. I have my workflow, and I know where to find things, so it's not a real dive into the unknown.
Personal conviction didn't need much explanation: I firmly believe using an open source, secure, private, and user controlled OS is a lot more efficient, and generally better, than the closed source alternatives. It's also more empowering, and a good learning experience: it teaches you some computer skills that you just wouldn't have learned if you used Mac OS or Windows.
Finally, the challenge part was well received: I'm willing to try and make it work, and see if I can actually accomplish what I'm preaching.I know my use case is not the end all be all of work, everyone has different needs, and software they need to run, but I wanted to see if in my case, I could actually do all my work on Linux, and for now, I haven't encountered anything I couldn't handle easily.
In the end, the eyebrows lowered, and people generally accepted me using Linux as a quirk, if not the new normal. Some of my colleagues actually went to see me and ask me if they should move to Linux as well, and if it was better than Mac. I couldn't give them a straight answer: these are users that have ingrained habits on their macs, and depend on software only available on Apple's machine, and I just couldn't tell them to move to Linux, especially since it works so poorly on recent macs.
So, I'm moving. I'm staying in the same city, which is called Brest, an unfortunate name when pronounced in English. it's a medium sized city located at the far end of the western arm of France, in a region called Bittany, known for having invented crepes, and the obscene amount of rain it receives.
I'll leave my current flat, which I'm renting, to move into a bigger flat that I bought. It's 80 square meters, roughly 850 square feet, which is almost double the size of my place, but a quarter of that is a big veranda. It has a separate room which will serve as a recording studio and should help separate the time I spend on the channel from the time I spend relaxing. I think it will be nice.
I'll be moving on the 2nd of December, and it has been quite a journey. Buying a flat in France is complicated. You first have to visit, with a realtor in most cases, and make an offer. If the offer matches the price at which the flat is listed, it's accepted automatically, if not, the seller has to accept it explicitly. Once that's done, you sign what is called a "compromis", some kind of pre-contract. Once that's signed, you have 14 days to retract yourself without penalties.
Once you got the bank's agreement, you sign 200 pages of various papers and contracts that you only half read, and then you send that to the realtor, which arranges for a meeting with a notary and the seller. This will happen on the 26th of November, so pretty soon, but I still haven't got an exact time and place for that. Notaries tend to be forgetful, so if you don't ask them over and over, you might get postponed. Finally, there's the moving part, which will be easy, since I don't own much stuff.