My wife and I have used RH8 + KDE + OpenOffice + Mozilla + KMail since
October, and we have no complaints. I prefer KMail to Mozilla and Evolution
for email. I dislike how Mozilla hides all the email data in a deeply nested
directory under a dot file, and I don't like Evolution's calendering
functionality. I find KMail more intuitive because it does its job and
nothing more; it is a mail client. I am also impressed with Balsa. I have not
used the OpenOffice spreadsheet (Calc) because I find Gnumeric to be really
good. I can get Gnumeric to do things that I can't do with Excel.
My wife is a non-technical person, and she seems to get along just fine. She
doesn't complain to me, anyway. Working with her has taught me the importance
of technical support. Once in a while things in Linux break (just like
anywhere else). They aren't too hard to fix usually, but if I have to open a
console then my wife isn't going to figure it out. She doesn't mind the
occasional inconvenience because I am always here to help out. I would not
recommend Linux in an office of non-technical users unless someone (and it
only takes one) will be around to help when bugs and questions arise. Bugs
arise in any environment, but in Windows the apps get blamed, and in Linux
the OS gets blamed. Perhaps you could employ one part time highschool kid to
get everyone out of the occasional messes that they will cause, and to show
them how to do all the stuff that they can't figure out. That was my first
technical job.
That's my experience. I hope that you find it helpful. Let us know how things
turn out, I'm really curious. Your experience would make a great article to
share on slashdot. :)
Richard Esplin
On Wednesday 12 March 2003 11:08, Michael Ryan Byrd wrote:
> Ok, lets the company I work for is going to open a new office. There will
> be 5 cubicles in that new office. Each cube will have its own computer and
> they will share a printer. The office is supplied with a DSL connection.
> Each cube will need email, internet browsing, word processing (.doc),
> spreadsheeting (excel sheets), and presentations(powerpoint). (It is a
> non-technical division (human resources) of the company.)
>
> As I do not use linux for my desktop, which of the available window
> managers most closely replicates Microsoft Windows and is the most stable?
>
> Which opensource program most closely replicates the Microsoft Office
> Suite?
>
> In your opinion, would it be wise for me to recommend buying OS-less PCs
> for the new office and setting up linux on all of them? Could non-technical
> people cope with not having Windows?
>
> ideas?
>
>
> ____________________
> BYU Unix Users Group
> http://uug.byu.edu/
> ___________________________________________________________________
> List Info: http://phantom.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
____________________
BYU Unix Users Group
http://uug.byu.edu/
___________________________________________________________________
List Info: http://phantom.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
