Tales of Conversion - Using Ubuntu at Work

madgreek writes "Here is a short story about my switch to Ubuntu from XP at work. I have been Microsoft-free for 3 months now at a Microsoft heavy shop. Few people know I am using Open Office and Linux. I create countless documents that people open using Word, Excel, PPT and nobody can tell that they were created using Open Office. From the article: 'When I first started my experiment I was trying to keep it a secret out of fear of attacks from angry Microsoft worshipers (especially from the admins and desktop support). What I am finding out is that most of the folks that I was hiding from are sick and tired of supporting Windows and are proponents of Linux. Several of them are using Linux at home. One of the guys I talked to has Vista and XP installed on his laptop. He swaps out the hard drive when switching between OS's.'"

Comments

Re:Applications are more important than the OS

[martinelli]

"Ubuntu is still far behind Microsoft Windows, when it comes to Windows compatibility." This may be the case, but Microsoft Windows happens to be far behind Ubuntu, when it comes to Linux compatibility.

Re:Sorry but...

[NickFortune]

As long as you are the only guy in your company who does things "your way" as opposed to "their way", as long as you use OSS yourself but adapt it to MS software when used for any collaborative purpose, you are helping nobody and doing nothing but wasting time and being an extra pain in the ass for the sysadmin.

Furthermore, there's no point in walking anywhere unless you can walk right around the world. So until someone gets around to draining those nasty, inconvenient oceans, you might as well just sit on your ass, because if you can't walk everywhere there is to walk, then there's no point in walking anywhere at all.

If you want to be truly MS free, get your company to drop MS. Get EVERYONE to kick the habit.

I can see it now:

Linux Guy: I think we should migrate to GNU/Linux
Chief Technical Officer: I'd be interested in the results of a pilot project. Will it do everything we need in the company?
LG: I... um ... I think so...
CTO: You only think so? You mean you haven't tried this out for yourself?
LG: I was going to, but this guy on Slashdot said not to install it unless the entire company did, and, um ...
CTO: You're an idiot! Get out of my sight!

Yep. I expect that'd work real well.

Re:Ubuntu drive partition

[turing_m]

Ah, the internet... where men are men, women are men, children are FBI agents and rich, successful, good looking guys with gorgeous wives spend their free time trolling on slashdot.

Tomorrow on Slashdot

[thegnu]

But Linux is on everyone's radar scope (it's unusual not to hear it's deployment discussed in IT meetings), and the small holes in the dams are beginning to outnumber Ballmer's fingers.

Tension Mounts As Eleventh Hole Is Plugged

Re:Wait wait wait!

[phoenixwade]

Strangely enough there aren't many people calling for your blood when you don't use a particular OS. You must be new here.