[Techtalk] WHY everyone should use Linux

[Julia Christianson]

Conor Daly wrote:
> If you can convince someone with some clout to allow you to, install
> OpenOffice.org on certain users' machines and tell them it's the latest
> 'Office'.  They'll put in the extra effort to learning it and pride in
> 'having the latest version' will prevent them from complaining.

I'm very close to making the desktop switch in our office (the servers 
have been Linux since 1998).  The reason we haven't done it before now 
is that I was waiting for OpenOffice.org to be "ready".  Unfortunately, 
it's still not, and given the nature of the problems I have with it, I'm 
not sure it ever will be.

So I'll be going with Microsoft Office apps running under Crossover 
Office (from the Wine folks at codeweavers.com) and hoping that at some 
point there will be a viable alternative.  Given that I've had them 
using Netscape-> Mozilla from day one, I'm expecting the transition to 
be fairly smooth; learning to log in and log out is going to be the 
biggest problem, I think.

I've also spent a fair amount of time installing "carrots" -- secure 
webmail, a web-accessible database I commissioned, spam and virus 
filters, etc. -- and educating them about the benefits of dumping 
Microsoft.  At this point most of the staff (and most importantly, the 
Director) are eager for the switch.

(Unfortunately, the accounting department really wants to go Linux too 
but I have yet to find an accounting package that does what we need it 
to do.)

-- Julia