[Nottingham] Linux in the Office.

[Steve Dickman]

Hi,

I've been subscribing to this list for a few months now and while the 
inner workings of Linux are interesting, we now seem to be getting on to 
more interesting topics, well for me at least!

I am a trying to set up a business in Information Management Consultancy 
(as described in ISO17799) and have discovered that using Linux (and 
other associated technologies) has distinct advantages in the field of 
Information Security Management Systems - both for small and medium 
businesses.

- less prone to attack, various reasons - less popular, open source, 
inherent security structure etc.
- less risk in software piracy and theft - it's license free after all!
- lower total cost of ownership
- longer investment cycle in computer hardware

Notwithstanding the above, there are several hurdles to deployment

- ms inertia
- people's understandable fear of something new
- the misguided impression that they actually know how ms works!
- the rather esoteric way in which Linux/Unix is configured (One post 
indicated that perhaps users could use the 'man' pages, even though they 
contain way more information than equivalent ms pages - they need to be 
html structured!)
- the (again) misguided impression that support for Linux is more 
expensive - I find that this is caused by the fact that the CEO's nephew 
tends to maintain the SME's systems and thinks he knows ms, ".. in the 
land of the blind...".

I have spent the last 4 months removing every trace of ms from my three 
systems (iMAC, 2 dell PCs -one XP, one Suse), however I'm still using ms 
Office even on my Mac, so I have every sympathy with the secretaries in 
the Church deployment being nervous. Versions of OO before 1.1.2 had 
serious issues and the X11 for the Mac was very unstable, although I may 
have another effort soon.

I am very interested in your experiences deploying Linux (and AMP) into 
small to medium business, from how to convince management to deploy and 
deployment issues you encountered. I am also interested in replacement 
software that runs on Linux - such as a Visio equivalent, utilities 
(such as backup and restore) that are easy to use for users - i.e. 
desktop/browser UI - not shell.

Steve