[Gllug] conversion from WinXP to Linux

Wed May 5 10:38:34 UTC 2010

Hello Tim,

On Wed, May 5, 2010 07:54, t.clarke wrote:
> Hi,
>
> we have a number of PCs in the office running XP  (and even a couple
> running ME or 98 !) and I would like to convert them over to Linux.
>
> The big sticking points in getting people to accept something other than
> Windows
> (at least as far as we are concerned) seems to be:
> a) replacement for Excel
> b) replacement for Word

Like Jason said, you have different levels of usage. With OpenOffice
Writer, you can pretty much win over people from M$ Office 2003 and older
without too much hassle. Power users used to Office 2007's Ribbon
interface might feel a bit put out moving "back" to the stylistically
older interface of OOo, but in the end the more powerful features in
Writer will win over the more open-minded.

Excel is a different beast. Normal light(ish) users will be able to move
over to Calc without too much hassles, with some gotchas like these (there
might be more, but these should give you an idea):

(1) There are no seriously involved macros
(2) The worksheets aren't too big
(3) The worksheets does not contain pivot points (Calc can do similar, but
unlike with most macros, AFAIK there are no ways to "translate" these into
the OOo "native" pivot point workalike.

Excel can handle gigantic spreadsheets, something Calc is unfortunately
still doing catchup on. I've caught out Calc a few times with large CSV
files that I could import flawlessly into Excel, but not into Calc due to
the fact that they are absolutely enormous.

> c) printer driver support  (we use Kyocera lasers)

Kyocera laser printers are pretty much all supported. You can easily
Google this using CUPS and the Kyocera model numbers as search parameters.
In short, you should be good to go with 98% of everything out there,
provided that it's not a GDI printer (like the really cheap-as-chips
entry-level A4 laser printers made by HP, Lexmark etc).

> d) scanner support

This can be niggly in the low-cost arena. The models that works does just
that, it Just Works (tm)(c). You will have to do the research on scanner
make/model support for SANE. A good workaround in my experience is to get
something like a mid-range Canon (do the research!) for high(ish) quality
scans, and a lowish cost HP multi-function scanner-printer for low quality
scans. The HP models are almost all supported via the HPLIP printer
drivers and SANE plugins (see
http://hplipopensource.com/hplip-web/index.html for this).

> e) graphical ftp client

Filezilla is an excellent choice, and is a cross-platform program
(Win/Lin/Mac).

> Whilst these need not be the same, they do need equivalent functionality.
> In particular, I have been running OpenOffice on an XP machine and the
> document loading speed is absolutely apalling. I assume its because its a
> Java application (???).   Is this the same with Linux, or just a Win
> problem?

This could be because of the macro-handling portion of OOo being a
Java/Python/Uno conglomeration of code. The more isoteric the macros, the
more translation there will have to happen. The more up-to-date your Java
JRE is, the better. It goes without saying that to always have the lates
OOo!

> Also, does OpenOffice handle the new 'gzipped' style of Excel documents
> (most of our stuff is on Office95 I think,  but we receive
> spreadsheets/documents created using the lastest MSOffice incarnation).

OOo 3.2 can handle .docx and .xlsx documents insofar it can open then with
some success. AFAIK it cannot write them though.

> Any advice/suggestions gratefully received  - also what would be the
> 'best'
> distribution to use as a replacement for XP beraing in mind the users are
> pretty much computer-illiterate?

This is all pretty much of a muchness. I love Gentoo, but won't advise you
to use that! :-) For the rest I use mostly Ubuntu and Debian at home (and
on a few virtual servers at work), CentOS 5.4 as my work desktop and a few
Fedora boxen (11 and 12) here and there where CentOS 5.4 does not support
the hardware. For a corporate environment you need a seamless upgrade
environment, something the later Fedoras and Ubuntus will give you without
any hassles. You should still think of the respective repo forums as your
source of all goodness and research material before you jump in and go for
it, since using and supporting large-scale Linux installs in a corporate
environment can be every bit as challenging as any M$ environment. PXE
network booting with remote installs would be a good way to deliver new
installs, and something like Puppet to manage the whole environment would
be a good idea. There are numerous excellent ways to do this, so the first
challenge for you will be to get that all mapped out and decided upon
before you do jump right in and do it.

Good luck, you have a great opportunity to have large amounts of fun
kicking the dark side off your network! :-)

-- 
Regards,
Jan Henkins

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