Got to speak with a guy who was stationed there over the winter. He said of the ~15 or so winter staff it was mostly engineering types, with the majority of the scientists there just in the summer months. Seemed like a pretty cool (heh) gig, but not too surprising that there’s a dearth of linux machines imo.
We’ve been using QGIS at my company for almost 8 years at this point and I really love it. The python integration and deep plugin repository render it head and shoulders above ESRI. Although I admit for enterprise solutions many will still require the turn-key solutions esri offer.