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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?"
Get them used to the software and then the Operating System is less of an issue. Definately get StarOffice (or OpenOffice.org if it is appropriate for your needs) and Mozilla/Netscape or possibly Opera. The Gimp is also available for windows.
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If you have any users who actually use command line applications Cygwin is a great program and allows you to familiarise yourself with a unix enviroment without having to learn the whole system at once.
This slashdot article may be helpful
Using Windows w/ 100% Open-Source Software?
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/
This is why i love cross platform software.
Samba and Apache are a good way to save costs and reliable software, if your office has need for Network filestorage and a good webserver (you could run them of your Sun machine perhaps).
When you do install Linux make sure to install an up to date version of Wine and set up a few links so that they can run still run Minesweeper/Solitare and even MS Office in the unlikely event that StarOffice has a problem.
Moderators, this post is not Redundant, it is just reemphasizing a really good point.