> Well, that seems to be the stem of the argument. My boss's claim is that
> if Windows can do everything Linux can then why use Linux at all? I cannot
> answer that well. Also, she is suspect of the nature of support that Linux
> offers and compatibility issues with MSWord, Excel, etc. And I am no
> expert..
As far as the nature of support goes, the expertise that exists on this
and other linux lists is vastly superior to what MS offers (if one ever
gets through to a real live human at MS).
In terms of compatibility with MS office packaes, I've been using
StarOffice for about 6 months now and none of my colleagues who I exchange
docs with have not noticed. There are other options as well, (Abiword,
gnueric, Applix ...) but I haven't used them too much.
>From your original post I gathered your work with the boss involves math -
if this also means you will be writing technical documents/articles with
many equations than a very strong reason to go to linux would be the
availability of a very good LaTeX distribution (tetex). For writing these
types of works, LaTeX really outshines Word (imho). While you can get good
latex distributions for Windows, they do not come bundled with the OS and
you need to install them. I've also found that tetex is better supported
with more installed packages than Miktex, which is a good distribution
under Windows.
In addition to Octave and Scilab which I mentioned yesterday, there are
other mathmatical/computational packages available under linux that you
may want to explore (these are all freely available ones)
R (very similar to the S+ statistical language)
Xlispstat
Ox (another good matrix oriented programming language)
In response to your bosses point that windows can do everything that linux
can do, (and therefore why switch), I would argue that at only a very
superficial level is this true. All of the packages above are available
for windows, that is true. However, they are also ported to many other
operating systems including linux. So from this perspective the question
should be phrased, what does ms offer that linux doesn't. Well, costly,
buggy, closed source operating systems for one;) The facts are that linux
is free, well supported, very stable and rapidly growing in popularity,
and these are just some of the advantages that linux offers over windows
(of any flavor NT, 98 ...).
>From a personal point, I wish that when I was a first year graduate
student I had the choice of linux over ms, that you have now. I don't want
to date myself but let's just say it wasn't an option then. Now as a
researcher and professor I am very strongly encouraging my graduate
students to use linux. For modeling, computational programming and data
analysis, one would have to spend a very large amount of money to get the
same capabilities under windows that are freely available for linux. So
from a graduate student perspective, this is a major consideration. From
an educational perspective, I feel much better about requiring the use of
open-source and GPL'd software in my lab courses, compared to proprietary
and closed-source packages. The former enable students to work outside the
lab on their own machines at home, without having to break any
restrictive laws!
Finally, while many software companies do offer substantial price
discounts to students, some see this a way to secure larger market share
once these students leave their studies and are hired in jobs for which
they will use the full-cost version of these packages. Again, I see little
reason for continuing to support such practices as an educator, especially
when there are better GPL'd alternatives available.
I don't want to take up too much bandwidth here, but your original post
hit on a point close to home for me. I see linux offering very important
benefits to graduate education. I hope these points help your case.
Good luck,
Serge
Sergio J. Rey http://typhoon.sdsu.edu/rey.html
Editor, International Regional Science Review http://irsr.agecon.uiuc.edu
Associate Professor
Department of Geography http://typhoon.sdsu.edu
San Diego State University http://www.sdsu.edu
San Diego, CA 92182
phone 619.594.8929
fax 619.594.4938
