Windows 11 - the catalyst to move to Linux

For us, as an ISV, Windows 11 has become the catalyst to move to Linux. The arbitrary hardware requirements of Windows 11 make this more compelling now.

Currently, all our customers use Windows 10 with O365, along with our ERP application. Last year, we rolled out a large number of industrial IoT HMI devices with Windows 10 which has Celeron J1900. Now, with the new hardware requirements of Windows 11, it will not be possible to upgrade any of these devices.

Windows 11 with WSL2 - without the arbitrary hardware requirements - would have been an ideal combination for our industrial IoT and business application requirements. Windows 10 IoT core seems to be abandoned now. As a result, our best option at this point, is to have Linux on all our industrial IoT and business desktop requirements. We will continue to use C#/.NET/ASP.NET for our cross-platform application development.

I have been evaluating various Linux flavors for our automation and industrial IoT o/s requirements. At present, DietPI fulfills the needs for all our industrial IoT requirements. The learning curve on moving to Linux, is getting the mindset to using command line to perform most of the operations. With Microsoft, as well, there appears to be a shift in functionality, towards using PowerShell and other command line tools.

However, the business desktop move to Linux is a work in progress. I feel that a suitable lightweight Linux alternative to O365 will evolve in the next couple of years.

We are updating our ERP user interface to .NET MAUI and the .NET6 Core Services to Docker based containerization. Currently our database is MS SQL which we are planning to move to PostgreSQL

As we move along, I will post our experiences and what we learn, so it might be a useful resource for companies who may want to make a similar transition.

We shall have to wait and see how all this develops.

Acknowledgment: The Microsoft Windows 11 and Linux logos used are copyrighted and owned by the respective corporations.