Migrating Your Office from Windows to Linux?

bastiji asks: "I work at a mid-sized company, around 50 people and 90% M$ shop (10% being the Sun server doing our backups). Most of my users are using Office 85% of the time with some specialized apps thrown in for good measure. With the upcoming licensing changes from M$ my finance guys are worried about increased spending on even the software that we already own. I've been to told to look for alternatives and I'm asking for your help. How does one begin to do migration from a totally dependent M$ shop to the least expensive options. Are there any examples for mid-sized firms taking this route and any public examples of cost-savings?"

Comments

low cost office

[VAXGeek]

I suggest moving your server to an Intel 386DX/33 with at LEAST 16 mb of RAM. That should have no problem running a pre-1997 version of Linux. For Internet connectivity, you can get a 56k modem very cheaply from Best Buy. You should be able to lease a 24 hour 56k baud line from Earthlink at about $60 a month. This will be much cheaper than the costly T1 you have now. Move the clients to VT320s. You should be able to find a few terminal servers at Salvation Army, or perhaps K-mart. As for Office Software, hand out LaTeX manuals and have your users use vi for inputting, and then they can run LaTeX for the nice output. This should save on licensing costs on the server/clients, and a VT320 is a lot easier to maintain than a full PC. Instead of Outlook, teach your users how to use mailx. Instead of IE, give them a few lessons in lynx. You might want to limit the amount of users that you let surf the web concurrently, because with 16mb of RAM, we don't want the server thrashing too hard. Backups should be no problem. You should be able to fit all of the server's data files onto a zipdisk, which you can connect through the parallel port on the PC. Also, junk all your old HP LaserJets and pick up some old DEC LP printers. They can do quite a few pages an hour, as long as you don't mind the noise. If you implement my plan, I bet your users will be smiling all day!

Good way to show reduction of costs...

[toupsie]

Give me your business name and location. I will call the BSA to perform a free audit of your company. I am sure after the friendly BSA auditors finish, your boss will see the reduction of cost moving to Linux will be. Don't worry about paying my consultancy fee for assisting you in this matter, I am sure the BSA will kick back some bucks to me because, without a doubt, your finance guys forgot to pay for every license for every software package on your company's computers.