Ask HN: Linux Desktop in Startup

2 points by ktpsns ↗ HN
We are currently planning/carrying out a startup in Europe (currently 4 founders, up to 50 employees end of 2021). We will move in (1500 square meters of) office space in February and currently plan the grand IT picture. We will definitely hire up to 4 IT guys (DevOp, SecOp or how you call them today).

As we will do basic R&D and lab work, we have a big need for security. As we are all technically skilled people, we favour Linux on the desktop.

Here is my question: What's the modern way of an enterprise level Linux infrastructure? Given that I would not want to use a notebook where I have not root, what's the best way to implement a functional concept?

I just wonder whether the answer is to go to some Linux vendor (such as RHEL) and buy everything in.

I would love to hear opinions or keywords from the HN community.

6 comments

[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 26.4 ms ] thread
I think they're called IT person. Guys excludes many qualified people.
Please read this with a sense of humor. I guess here on HN most of us are IT guys (me including). Persons which share some skill set (such as basic computer understanding, programming, more or less networking experience, no fear of the command line, etc).
I think the commenter above is mad at you because they interpreted "IT guys" to be a reference to the gender of the people you will be hiring. In other words, they assumed you to be literally saying you will only be considering men for the job, since traditionally "guys" was used to refer to groups of men (but often no longer is).

This may seem absurd, but where you are starting a company it's a good wake up point to familiarize yourself with the latest in politically correct terminology. Right now it's a random person on the internet, but in the future it might be an employee complaining to HR that you are creating a hostile workplace.

Whether you should apologize or just try to move on, well that's a topic of much debate. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25084506

tldr: s/guys/people and you'll be fine.

"guys" is slang since about 1970 for 'everybody', probably from the American Mid-West.

My first experience of the term as distinct from meaning 'males' was the 'Mary Tyler Moore Show' when Ted Baxter, one of the newsreaders, always entered the room saying "Hi, Guys" when saying 'hello' to all the people in the room.

I remember thinking back then that it 'didn't sound right'. However over time, I found myself using the term more and more.

You might want to buy into the Red Hat world and also buy some consultancy from them.

They pioneered advanced security on GNU/Linux across the whole stack and depending on your needs they might help you define security policies and also implement them.

Checkout MDM and VMWare Airwatch definitively