Just my .02: I haven't attempted this on such a scale myself; but I did
almost drive my former tech director nuts after he said I could have a
linux workstation in a completely windows company. If I had to run lots
of mandatory windows programs on linux, I'd probably use one of these
distributions: http://www.netraverse.com/ or
http://www.xandros.com/ which contain some windows emulation goodies
built in. I never got the Ximian Exchange Connector to function in a
reasonably acceptable way as far as scheduling appointments with Windows
users, so hopefully that functionality has improved recently.
Crossover's Powerpoint viewer is worthless IMO, but so is Powerpoint
itself ;). I very rarely get pdfs that I can't open with linux
programs, especially not with Adobe Acrobat's more recent linux
versions. Good luck finding a MS Access drop-in replacement. I think
Codeweavers is working on bundling that with their latest Crossover
Office support. You could try StarOffice's "Adabas" database, but I
don't know how it works or if can open Access files. If I had to deal
with this problem, I'd migrate any new Access projects to MYSQL and use
their new Control Center GUI to manipulate tables, etc.. As far as
accounting applications, as a former finance director, I would be very
loathe to even attempt to emulate a for-windows software package under
linux. It's hard enough to get accounting software to function even in
it's native environment and I feel that a linux migration to accounting
should be done very carefully and probably last. I would not be alive
today if I attempted to migrate my staff to linux accounting software.
If you can't wait, I would either get some native linux accounting
software (good thing you probably don't need fund accounting software
for linux), or run it under VMWare which is super costly, or best of
all, get some web-based accounting software that the accounting staff
accesses through a browser, which I'm seeing more and more of (and
allows purchase orders and reimbursement requests to be sent via
email). Oracle's got some good web-based accounting software which they
acquired from netledger.com and improved. Hope this helps in some way...
-eric
On Mon, 2003-06-16 at 13:48, John Clay wrote:
> Have any of you migrated a professional services company from Windows to
> Linux?
>
> I work for a 30 person office of a 400 person consultancy that's wed to
> Windows NT server and Windows workstations with the usual Windows
> applications (Office 97, Outlook 98, Exchange 5.5, Access and so on).
> Over the past year or so I've been teaching myself Linux to the point
> that I have the following GNU elements in good operational order (RedHat
> 7.3 based):
>
> * LTSP server with 3 client terminals (two users - me and a part
> timer)
> * A Linux/NT workstation
> * OpenOffice.org
> * Ximian Evolution using our local Exchange LDAP, POP and SMTP
> functions
> * Samba (no winbind - just same passwords as NT domain)
> * LinNeighborhood
> * Internal (to the LAN) ftp server (for testing)
> * DHCP server (on the LTSP server) for the entire LAN
> * CUPS
> * AOL Instant Messenger
> * Netscape etc.
> * Xpdf and Adobe PDF reader
>
> I've been using these elements exclusively for 6 months or so. The
> system works well in our NT domain. We (in this office only) are about
> to try to get 2 or 3 staff members moved to the LTSP system (for
> testing) and I'd be interested to hear about the experiences of any of
> you who have undertaken a similar project:
>
> * What worked, what didn't.
> * How did you handle mandatory applications that weren't available
> on Linux or that just didn't work so well (like some pdf files
> that work under windows but don't open properly under linux, or
> accounting applications and timesheets (BST product) that aren't
> suppported under linux).
> * How did you handle the fact that most users documents and
> applications will still be windows - only the test users will be
> in linux - but linux and windows users will require access.
> * Were there any unforeseen big problems?
> * Did you find it reasonable to convert and edit OO.o docuneeded a
> document (generated by a linux app) in an MS format - as good as
> OO.o is, some reformatting would be generally required in my
> experience.
>
> Any comments, cautions or ideas appreciated.
>
> John Clay
> Tallahassee
>
>
>
>
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