My employer’s IT policy is to require asking for permission to access a laptop’s administrator account, and have the sysadmin audit the log.

Unfortunately, as part of my special duties, I need to run an operating system that is not compatible with this framework.

> Unfortunately, as part of my special duties, I need to run an operating system that is not compatible with this framework.

Sadly the answer my employer has in that case: buy a VMWare Workstation License in the store and use you special snowflake OS in there. Still better than nothing but also a bit annoying.

Is this a problem?

I am sure it is not a common workflow, but I have done most of my work inside VMS pretty much exclusively for years.

It makes it so easy to freeze the state of a project, do backups, quick snapshots. Archive finished projects. Removes any fear of upgrading. Keeps work clean, I need to know project dependencies when starting a new one on a fresh VM.

It keeps my base system very barebones with respect to software installed. I can also get up and running with a new host machine upgrade by simply copying the vms to the new host.

What do you use for virtualization? And what do you use for graphics? (example Libvirt/VNC)

> My company's IT bans installing anything outside of their software application management/installation application.

I abhor these setups. Luckly every time I've been in them it's been realtively easy to get an exception.

I can't think of many situations I'd stay at a company like this unless it was very easy to get necessary software added within 3-5 business days.

In my experience, the IT friction is usually higher the larger the company. Since plenty of people work at large companies, restrictive IT departments is a frequent concern.