Basically title. Do you know of any companies that use desktop Linux?
I can think of two in my area in Brisbane - Adfinis and Red Hat. Both have a pretty small presence here from what I last heard (several employees each).
My employer allows the Linux team to use Linux but it's discouraged and our lives are made somewhat difficult.
Is there a law that prevents employers from docking someone's salary by the expensive proprietary software you opt-in for, instead of using a free option?
There are no tools that you need to pay for that are not free as gratis or libre.
But I would be OK with only charging for software that's not libre. So software thats gratis but not libre doesn't dock you, since you're contributing to something good that helps the world
That would genuinely make sense though, proprietary software (especially paid proprietary software) costs more money for any company then open source software. Windows needs more maintenance then an ultra stable Linux distro like Debian or even an LTS release of Ubuntu or Fedora. Meanwhile Microshaft ensures that any document made with office doesn't look the same unless it's viewed with office.
No, it doesn't, because the cost of that software is on the business because it makes them money. This person is literally smoking crack if they think it should ever be on the employee. There is never, ever, ever a situation where an employee paying an employer is a good thing.
Graphic designers makes sense, also a PNG made in a proprietary program can be viewed with any photo viewer. Documents editors are completely different.