I am trying to get my company to support Linux (Fedora) for engineers. Currently we support Windows and Mac. Does any of you have some good reasons for my case to make my argument for the business perspective?

Depends on your business.

what's the problem?

Why you want to go linux?

@devTea Mostly because I prefer working with Linux, easier to write scripts and use with git and similar tools.

@ddephor I mostly want to introduce it for the engineers managing servers and cloud providers like aws, azure and gce.

@Wolle can you write same script on macos?

@heyheni The problem is the support overhead and additional workload to get it working with our existing infrastructure. The biggest problems I am anticipating are Active Directory and Group Policies.

@devTea probably yes. But I'd rather use Windows than Mac. And there are a lot of employees that would also like to use Linux. The question is just how to sell that to the business/management as a good enhancement/improvement.

You can join an AD from Linux (sssd or Samba).
Unfortunately GPOs are only minimally supported with sssd, and only local login restrictions, groups and limited sudo rules.
Samba doesn't support them at all.

By the way: If your company uses Exchange for mails, use DavMail to use a 'normal' e-mail client (Thunderbird, Evolution), while still having most of the features available for you.

What support are you foreseeing that a well versed Linux user would need? Confused as to what "support" means.

@Demolishun A lot of our engineers including the interested ones are not (yet) "well versed". So they would might need getting our work applications, Ticketing, etc. running.

Number one prio for management is to make more money and save time.
So here's what you could do:
You could talk to the IT departments client engineering and ask how much setting up and operating a windows workstation cost (and windows server). And then find a number on the internet how much less linux costs to operate per year.
Also mention the efficency gain and the fact that the cloud runs on linux and that the company need this experience to advance above the competition

here some tricks
Focus on opportunity cost, those are theoretical incomes that are lost because of the business desicion only to support mac and windows. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Loss aversion is the psychological phenomenon that people value the prevention of a loss higher than a gain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Reciprocy, if you get something you instinctively want to give something back. Use wisely.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

@heyheni Thanks a lot.

@Wolle for selling things you have to know each features benfit. There is a good book about writing copy that sells. It'll help you with writing techniques to compile your reader and and your presentation for your higher ups on why they should allow the use of linux.

https://amazon.com/Copywriters-Hand...
The Copywriter's Handbook: A Step-By-Step Guide To ... - Amazon

I would say free updates. Rather than rebuying an os every other year. Plus red hat was designed for Enterprise applications.

So most of the engineers aren't into Linux so far. It's just you.

From a management perspective, it would cost less to train you so that you learn how to properly work with Windows.

Virtual Machine? I use those for developing linux inside windows all the time.

@heyheni awesome thanks again. I love good reading recommendations.

@Fast-Nop That is true, especially as I can do my work with windows. But there is also interest from other engineers to use Linux. And all our newer infrastructure is build on CentOS, Docker etc.

@Demolishun Some engineers here do that. Over the last year I was using the Subsystem for Linux a lot. But I believe a "fully" setup workstation with Linux might be easier to manage.

I'm a big Linux fan, at home I only use Linux.

But for automation and git you don't need it. Automating scripts are better done with a scripting language, e.g. Python/Ruby, so you are OS independent. For git CLI on Windows you can use git bash, MSYS/Cygwin or Linux Subsystem.

To attract your colleagues you can maintain an VM and provide that to others so they can try out without much effort.

At the end it's all about how a system suits the business. If you need a specific system it's useless to try to change to another system. So ask yourself how the environment would look like. Can you switch to Linux 100% or would every developer need a second machine?

What benefits does Linux have for your business? And being free of charge doesn't count, the change will not be free.

Thanks everybody, for your insights. I have to admit that my motivation for introducing Linux is very personally and the business value might not have the best ROI. An additional part is also making this change as a gift for the engineers that want more exposure to Linux. Thanks again :-D