Thanks for all the replies. I wish to respond to many remarks and post some new questions.
1. Linux Laptops Linux laptops are hard to come by, especially on short notice. Unfortunately, most of the time when I have to get a computer for a colleague, it's, "I NEED A LAPTOP NOW!" So, I have to run out to a store and buy it, configure it for our network and install office software. Basically, that's it. I have found a company that sells over the Internet Linux-based computers. But as I recall, I think the cheapest such laptop starts at $2000. Outrageous! I haven't been able to find any laptops for sale without an OS, but will take into mind some ideas others have written about. As for Walmart, they don't sell laptops with Linux. Furthermore, the computers they sell with Linux have Lindows on them. A Linux OS that I don't trust at all. No time to talk about that here. The advantage to Mac OS X is that it's preinstalled and I know I don't have to spend hours, if not days, configuring it to work correctly. (Maybe) 2. Windows Users A problem with probably many offices is the fact many users have been working with Windows for years and don't want any change. Of course, I have found that for many users a convincing argument is the fact that they will no longer experience a crashing computer (the BSOD). This is the reason why I see KDE as an important stepping stone toward getting people using Linux. Personally, I myself find Aqua frustrating. But, this is something I'll have to get used to and perhaps try to reconfigure. 3. Office suits The whole point of the move from a Windows to a Unix/Linux environment at our office is to get away from paying for a product that really doesn't work so well and must constantly be serviced. So, MS Office is also out of the question. All the more so as I find OpenOffice very good. Final words. I think you guys have done a good job in perhaps convincing me to give OS X a try. Actually, I have an G3 iBook, which I have been using for about 2 weeks now. I'm a little pissed at Apple cause when I bought it I knew 10.2 would be coming out and felt that I had bought it recently enough that I should be able to get 10.2 at a reduced rate. All the more so as many people seem to be saying that 10.2 is really more a fix than an upgrade. It sounds very MSish. Sigh..... One thing I haven't seen in any literature for OS X is centralized logins. I would think that OS X would work with LDAP or PAM. I haven't implemented either yet, but LDAP is the preferred method for Linux. Any comments here? You see we have a policy of changing passwords periodically. I also haven't seen anything about logon scripts, located on a server. I would assume that this is also configurable for OS X. Final problems for me (at this point). (NB. I am not pointing these things out to ask for help, but just to say that these problems should be more easily resolvable.) Network printing (haven't figured this one out yet) Printing while on the road (in Korea they use only some weird Korean printers, for example) NIS NFS (Samba, however, works great. I find it strange that a Unix OS is better adaptive to SMB than NFS!) MS Windows-like (or KDE-like) desktop Curtis ------------------------------------------------------- This sf.net email is sponsored by:ThinkGeek Welcome to geek heaven. http://thinkgeek.com/sf _______________________________________________ Fink-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/fink-users
