Re: Migrating to open source
On Fri, Dec 26, 2003 at 05:33:15PM -0700, Gus & Maggie wrote: > Hello, > My name is Roy Havens and I own a small business. Currently I run > Windows XP Home but the browser I like to use is Mozilla. I am > interested in migrating all of my computer to open source. The only > thing that is preventing me from doing so is the MANY M$ programs I > currently use. What Windows emulators do you have for Linux that will > run MS's programs? For instance, I use Turbo Tax and Quicken. I need You seem to have more than one computer. Find a computer on which you can experiment. Make your transition gradual. There will be many 'small' problems. Each, by itself, will not be insurmountable, but if you have a customer waiting for a delivery when you run into a few hour delay, your customer, and you will be unhappy. Do not count on WINE. It will work for many things, but probably not all. I use Turbo Tax on a Mac. I buy a new version each year because the tax laws are always changing. I don't know who would do the development of yearly updates of an open source substitute. I wonder if I would trust them with my fate in a tax audit. Don't want to go there myself and can't recommend it to another. File formats of Quicken are, I think, public. Others can write data in these formats to transfer data from open source accounting programs to Turbo Tax. There are two classes of reasons for interest in open source: reasons having to do with freedom and reasons having to do with cost. If you get involved with open source for reasons of cost saving, be sure to look into the freedom thing. It may not be your bag, but at least understand it. You will need the help of freedom geeks. You may even become one yourself. Welcome. > Linux to work with Intuit's programs. Some of the other essential > programs I use are Floor Plan 3D and Front Page. I have heard of WINE; > however, the one who told me of WINE has not have much luck with it. > > Widows has made it very difficult for a person with a business to > migrate unless you have an emulator. > > Please contact me with any information. Please reply-all your response. > > > > -- > To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact > [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Paul E Condon [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Migrating to open source
Gus & Maggie said: > My name is Roy Havens and I own a small business. Currently I run > Windows XP Home but the browser I like to use is Mozilla. I am > interested in migrating all of my computer to open source. The only > thing that is preventing me from doing so is the MANY M$ programs I > currently use. What Windows emulators do you have for Linux that will > run MS's programs? For instance, I use Turbo Tax and Quicken. I need > Linux to work with Intuit's programs. Some of the other essential > programs I use are Floor Plan 3D and Front Page. I have heard of WINE; > however, the one who told me of WINE has not have much luck with it. WINE has given me mixed successes; some things just drop straight in, others require some fiddling, and still others just refuse to work no matter what I try. It's unfortunate. There are a couple of commercial WINE derivatives which have extra functionality over and above what comes out of WINE CVS, Crossover Office, in particular, is designed to run MS Office, which means that a lot of applications Just Work with it as well. But what you might like to try in a lot of cases is to find OSS alternatives. Then, not only will your operating system be open source, but so will most of your applications. For instance, there are several quality alternatives to Front Page, and a couple of quite excellent accounting systems (GNUCash for the small operation, and SQL Ledger for pretty much everything else). Haven't played with Turbo Tax, but it's probably just a report generator for Quicken, which means it'd be easy to rewrite for either of the two systems above. With some research and experimentation, you should be able to get alternatives for a lot of yourcurrent software. > Widows has made it very difficult for a person with a business to > migrate unless you have an emulator. And that's exactly how Microsoft likes it. > Please contact me with any information. Please reply-all your response. For practical matters, debian-consultants might be a good place to ask some questions about migration strategies, or a Linux Users Group close to you. Either one will be able to offer a lot of good advice on the practicalities of migration. - Matt
Bug#210879: marked as done (constitution.txt: revise odd language -- "K Developers"... "not integers")
Your message dated Fri, 26 Dec 2003 17:28:51 +1000 with message-id <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> and subject line close has caused the attached Bug report to be marked as done. This means that you claim that the problem has been dealt with. If this is not the case it is now your responsibility to reopen the Bug report if necessary, and/or fix the problem forthwith. (NB: If you are a system administrator and have no idea what I am talking about this indicates a serious mail system misconfiguration somewhere. Please contact me immediately.) Debian bug tracking system administrator (administrator, Debian Bugs database) -- Received: (at submit) by bugs.debian.org; 14 Sep 2003 13:09:31 + >From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sun Sep 14 08:09:29 2003 Return-path: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Received: from mx04.gis.net [208.218.130.12] by master.debian.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 1 (Debian)) id 19yWd7-000629-00; Sun, 14 Sep 2003 08:09:29 -0500 Received: from arf ([67.75.25.91]) by mx04.gis.net; Sun, 14 Sep 2003 09:09:26 -0400 Received: from alfie by Arf with local (Exim 3.36 #1 (Debian)) id 19yWe2-0002qC-00; Sun, 14 Sep 2003 09:10:26 -0400 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: A Costa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Debian Bug Tracking System <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: constitution.txt: revise odd language -- "K Developers"... "not integers" X-Mailer: reportbug 2.28 Date: Sun, 14 Sep 2003 09:10:25 -0400 Message-Id: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sender: A Costa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> X-BadReturnPath: [EMAIL PROTECTED] rewritten as [EMAIL PROTECTED] using "From" header Delivered-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] X-Spam-Status: No, hits=-5.0 required=4.0 tests=HAS_PACKAGE version=2.53-bugs.debian.org_2003_9_13 X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 2.53-bugs.debian.org_2003_9_13 (1.174.2.15-2003-03-30-exp) Package: doc-debian Version: 3.0.2 Severity: wishlist There's some odd language in '/usr/share/doc/debian/constitution.txt': 1 A resolution or amendment is introduced if proposed by any Developer 2 and sponsored by at least K other Developers... ...and the number 'K' is later defined, in part, as follows: 3 Q and K need not be integers and are not rounded. This implies fractional Developers. In line #2 above the author must have meant an integer, (or rather a natural number -- there aren't any negative numbers of Developers), but saying "at least" leaves room for doubt, especially since line #3 says K isn't rounded! Example: suppose K=4.4; but by line #3 'K' is not rounded, (if it were we'd know a quorum would be at least 5, or 4.4 rounded up), and if it's not rounded then .4 of a Developer means who knows what. For line #3 I suggest changing 'integers' to 'natural numbers' or 'whole numbers', and 'and are not rounded' to 'and are rounded up when counting people, but not when counting votes.' ...or something to the same effect. (Of course we all know a Constitution is by design not as easy to amend as a garden variety typo. Difficulty shouldn't justify errors though.) Hope this helps us become wholly impartial. -- System Information: Debian Release: testing/unstable Architecture: i386 Kernel: Linux Arf 2.4.21-1-k6 #2 Mon Jun 16 22:19:43 EST 2003 i586 Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C (ignored: LC_ALL set to C) -- no debconf information --- Received: (at 210879-done) by bugs.debian.org; 26 Dec 2003 09:59:00 + >From aj@azure.humbug.org.au Fri Dec 26 03:59:00 2003 Return-path: Received: from azure.erisian.com.au [64.235.236.133] by master.debian.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 1 (Debian)) id 1AZmXp-000344-00; Fri, 26 Dec 2003 01:38:01 -0600 Received: from aj by azure.erisian.com.au with local-bsmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1AZmRN-00072M-00 for <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; Fri, 26 Dec 2003 17:31:21 +1000 Received: from aj by cyan with local (Exim 3.36 #1 (Debian)) id 1AZmOx-0006Xs-00 for <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; Fri, 26 Dec 2003 17:28:51 +1000 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: close Message-Id: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> From: Anthony Towns Date: Fri, 26 Dec 2003 17:28:51 +1000 Delivered-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 2.60-master.debian.org_2003_11_25-bugs.debian.org_2003_12_15 (1.212-2003-09-23-exp) on master.debian.org X-Spam-Status: No, hits=0.0 required=4.0 tests=none autolearn=no version=2.60-master.debian.org_2003_11_25-bugs.debian.org_2003_12_15 X-Spam-Level: yawn
Migrating to open source
Hello, My name is Roy Havens and I own a small business. Currently I run Windows XP Home but the browser I like to use is Mozilla. I am interested in migrating all of my computer to open source. The only thing that is preventing me from doing so is the MANY M$ programs I currently use. What Windows emulators do you have for Linux that will run MS's programs? For instance, I use Turbo Tax and Quicken. I need Linux to work with Intuit's programs. Some of the other essential programs I use are Floor Plan 3D and Front Page. I have heard of WINE; however, the one who told me of WINE has not have much luck with it. Widows has made it very difficult for a person with a business to migrate unless you have an emulator. Please contact me with any information. Please reply-all your response.
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