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

One word

[MountainLogic]

FDISK

Re:Not so simple (you forgot the BSA)

[arivanov]

I am sick of people bitching about BSA and audits. You can get into a problem with BSA only if your network is shite and you are not keeping proper network inventory. Namely, all you need is to keep a proper audit trail. There is plenty of audit software out there. Most of it more or less works. So the only thing left is to force the users running it on casual basis. If your network for MicroS***t clients is properly set up and they are logging vs a domain you can force the audit to be done on every login. As a result the sysadmin and the accountant know every piece of software and hardware on the network including the selfinstalled ones. If you are running a business with an infoanarchy style WORKGROUP and no audit. Oh well... You have asked for it. And it is much more likely that someone will get to you through a hole in software that was not supposed to be on your network anyway long before the BSA. And that someone may cause you much more trouble.

Re:The other way around

[misfit13b]

So if someone comes out and says that they prefer Windows, that automatically makes them a paid deceptor sent by "The Enemy"...

Well at least /. never has to worry about running out of things to be paranoid about...