Concerns when Switching Offices to Linux and StarOffice?

Reezle asks: "I am a reluctant Microsoft Engineer who has a few customers sitting on the fence whether to go the XP route, or bite the bullet and switch an entire office over to Linux. I would love to assist them, and educate myself at the same time, but am unsure of the limitations of file type interoperability between MS Office, and Linux programs (Star Office is the only one I'm familiar with). I assume anything they create could be saved in formats that their business partners will be able to open (i.e. RTF), but what happens when they receive attachments encoded with Office 2000 or XP (ie DOC, XLS, PUB, etc)? I'd love to encourage them to make the switch, but would hate to see them unexpectedly cut off from the people they need to communicate with. Any help/advice would be appreciated."

Comments

The reaction of management is the main concern.

[Anonymous Coward]

You are really going to have test the waters with your company's staff and management. It is unrealistic to expect any product (open-source or otherwise) is going to be able to read every future proprietary Microsoft file format. If important people are going to view this as a shortcoming of the non-Microsoft product, then don't initiate change if you like your job. I'd just pass a cost analysis and relevant caveats along to management, and wait and see if greed eventually brings about change (i.e. your ass is covered).