> I cannot imagine that Google engineers would live with such deeply broken systems as daily drivers. So whatever that secret is, whether it consists of drivers, known hardware configurations, or even just config files they use to ensure optimal operation – that's what I'd like them to Open Source. I'm happy to buy whatever laptop spec Google uses for gLinux for myself to go along with their OS.
Then your imagination could be improved in a few ways:
1. Google has complete say over the software you're allowed to run at work. They can mandate using whatever tools they want as terms of your employment.
2. Google has complete say over the hardware they purchase you. Random drive incompatibility isn't a thing. They pick hardware that's been validated to work so they don't have random IT complaints.
3. This is a IT / compliance / security thing. The grand total of UX people dedicated to this probably amounts to designing the splash screens. The grand total for bug fixing is for issues impacting an obscene number of users. If you f'ed up your OS install you'll basically have to fix it yourself (IT will offer to reimage your machine and you'll be responsible for making sure you correctly managed your backups by hand - you get limited storage space at least when I worked there, so you had to make sure to exclude certain folders from backups).
4. They do have a slightly better story for Android development but most of that relies on Google3 / Blaze. I think they're doing some work to migrate to Bazel finally but I imagine they'll always have a bit better internal dev story.
About the only value-add they could be giving here is the hardware configurations but they're not really different from stock Linux laptops you'd buy as a consumer.
Then your imagination could be improved in a few ways:
1. Google has complete say over the software you're allowed to run at work. They can mandate using whatever tools they want as terms of your employment.
2. Google has complete say over the hardware they purchase you. Random drive incompatibility isn't a thing. They pick hardware that's been validated to work so they don't have random IT complaints.
3. This is a IT / compliance / security thing. The grand total of UX people dedicated to this probably amounts to designing the splash screens. The grand total for bug fixing is for issues impacting an obscene number of users. If you f'ed up your OS install you'll basically have to fix it yourself (IT will offer to reimage your machine and you'll be responsible for making sure you correctly managed your backups by hand - you get limited storage space at least when I worked there, so you had to make sure to exclude certain folders from backups).
4. They do have a slightly better story for Android development but most of that relies on Google3 / Blaze. I think they're doing some work to migrate to Bazel finally but I imagine they'll always have a bit better internal dev story.
About the only value-add they could be giving here is the hardware configurations but they're not really different from stock Linux laptops you'd buy as a consumer.