What about the fact that they all are using Windows on the desktop? I'm a Linux person and I can't use anything else. I've been using Linux for 15 years.
I asked if they can let me install Linux on the computers, they said I have to use a VM.
I'm fine with a VM but I also need my window manager of choice (i3-wm) and so on.
Would it be okay if I install Arch Linux on VirtualBox and I fullscreen the VM? What about performance then?
All the other developers are using Windows and putty shells and Sublime Text as their editor.
I asked if I could bring my own laptop but they said I can't.
Suggestions welcome.
Have you actually tried VirtualBox? Depending on the underlying hardware, the performance really might not be an issue.
Changing from Linux to Windows is indeed rather painful. As others have mentioned, depending on deployment/process etc -- you might still be better off trying to live on the windows side.
I'm not a windows dev, but from what I've seen mentioned by others -- running php on windows w/IIS and SQL server works fine -- but you'll want to have a test/dev environment that matches prod -- or you'll just constantly run in to pain points -- especially if the team isn't on board/interested in investing in a full heterogeneous environment.
For a small example with node, see eg:
https://github.com/keithamus/npm-scripts-example/issues/5
Hopefully your new team has some automation in place -- it's unlikely it'll work out of the box under linux if it's never been tested/linux has never been a requirement.
On the bright side, vim works fine under windows, and with some mingw32/64[2], things aren't entirely painful. If you're used to script things with ruby, that should be even easier. Having to work with cmd.exe and it's nasty find.exe rather than grep, feels like running with one leg tied behind your back.
Lack of proper tabbed/keyboard-friendly window manager is probably the biggest productivity drain -- thought there are some alternatives for that too[3].
[1] http://www.hanselman.com/blog/SwitchEasilyBetweenVirtualBoxA...