[Techtalk] Leaving Win$ for linux.

[Ian Balchin]

hi, all,

Over the years I have played with linux a lot. It is on my laptop, I 
write perl scripts in it to massage text databases, and use it for 
quite a bit of personal email, browsing, etc. nothing too serious I 
guess.

The news that win2000 will not be supported after the end of this 
year is another reminder of the treadmill that we are on. If I have a 
crash and have to reinstall win2000 in 2008 clearly this will be full 
of all the loopholes and security breaches that have been fixed by 
patch after patch for the past years. Even the patches on the patches 
must be patched by now. Clearly M$ is looking to relieve me of more 
of my precious third-world resources to stay with it.

I have long thought of a total move to linux, which of course is not 
likely to be painless in itself. With some experience behind me I now 
have two major hurdles that prevent me from moving.

First is that I love Pegasus Mail, having used it since the old DOS 
days. I don't see any alternative to the power and features of 
Pegasus in the linux world, and if you haven't used it then don't 
knock it please.  Am I missing something out, and I am not keen to go 
to an OE lookalike, Pegaus has this beat in looks, performance, and 
features. I'm not going to use mutt and Ximian doesn't look very 
exciting although I haven't really looked at the latest offering. For 
all of linux's heritage, the email situation looks thin. So any 
comments there.

The second hurdle is that I have a lot of database stuff developed 
over the years in Paradox, hours of my coding is sitting there. I 
know that there are solid databases available, but what about the 
front end, I rarely see mention of those, and Paradox provides a 
complete development environment with its own language ObjectPal. I 
don't want to have to start from ground zero all over again coding 
access in perl. I have staff who need something similar to what they 
are used to. Again, comments from those who have had experience with 
Paradox development would be welcomed. Making forms, reports, 
queries, Pdox made this as easy as it could be for a computer 
literate user who did not  necessarily need to be a computer fundi 
with $ prompts shining out of his eyes..

These two hurdles prevent a complete move to linux. the first may be 
a matter of compromise, but the second is a matter of pure business. 
No Paradox, no business.

So not wanting to start any sort of anti M$ war or forum here, but 
maybe the time is coming when tough decisions have to be made. All 
input valued and read with thanks.

Regards
Anne--
Fables Bookshop (Proprietor: Ian Balchin) Est. 1990
119 High Street, Grahamstown, 6139, South Africa.
Tel/Fax: Shop  +27-(0)46-636-1525
Tel: Home office:  +27-(0)46-622-2474
cell: 
Skype: fablesbooks    (subject to my being at the computer station).
http://www.fables.co.za/
subscribe to our email africana catalogue:
http://lists.imaginet.co.za/mailman/listinfo/fables-list
email: aesop at fables.co.za
ici on parle francais
Founder member Southern African Book Dealers Association