Real answers to the question 'œCan you run your business on Linux and open source?'

David M Williams
Monday, 26 November 2007 06:12

Opinion and Analysis

The first response was again very positive. “I have [a] connection with a number who do this and all reckon they have saved lots of money” he said.

Yet, two issues had emerged in their experience. Both related to the entrenched position of Microsoft Office both internally and externally.

“You will always be interfacing with outside people who need MS files (consider PowerPoint or Word). Therefore it is important that staff understand these issues and act accordingly. I have one contact that saves everything in MS formats. All others use OO formats but ship out in PDF with MS as last resort.” he said.

Additionally, “Many people in an organization are very familiar with MS Office suite. For many, the first assumption is that a ‘free office suite’ will be keystroke-for-keystroke equivalent for MS software. Obviously not so. Therefore it is important to a) bring the new software in steps and b) have a "toolsmith" - a person whose job is to be on hand to train others and help with small features.”

This latter point was echoed by others, also encouraging training for Open Office and not simply providing it an expecting staff to use it without guidance. One extremely experienced respondent said he “was part of the Turkish Central Bank migration towards complete Linux desktop and OpenOffice. We designed and delivered the trainings given for OpenOffice 2.x. What we saw is that, apart from a small group of finance experts, everyone became comfortable with OpenOffice 2.x after 3 days of well structured training. The finance experts used almost every feature of VBA and macros. So they could not find most features in OO. The Central Bank Training Department should also take credit in guiding us on exactly what they expected. Anyway, 3 days could be 5 or even more depending on condition.”

He continued, “For the client OS migration, we are experiencing a large scale project for the Turkish Military now. 5.500 clients will migrate to Pardus (a Turkish government-backed Linux distribution.)”
He concluded with some words of advice to make a desktop Linux deployment be successful: “For the client, you need a usable distribution (Pardus, Kubuntu, Suse, etc) with support for Flash, Java, PDF files, and every imaginable multimedia format right out of the box. That is, if you install Linux with just clicking on next and these come. Then almost 99% of ordinary desktop users will be satisfied.”

One writer advocated a staged approach. “Start with rolling out Firefox as a replacement for Internet Explorer, or OpenOffice.org for MS Office. Find some applications which can be replaced under Windows, get the users used to them for a couple of months.”

Next, he said, “Find the people in the organisation who have simple application needs and have been supportive of the first round roll out. I always recommend clients go with new hardware with Linux on it for the early adopters group as a bonus for switching. Once they are happy continue to roll it out.”

He concluded with sage advice, “Do your homework. Consider the existing software, new software, which flavour of Linux, the hardware and most importantly the users. If the users aren't happy productivity will drop and the project will fail. One or 2 unhappy users can make your life hell - identify the likely "trouble makers" and deal with them early on.”

So there you go! Companies around the globe – even governments – using Linux in their organisation. This is the truth, from the implementers themselves, reporting on their real-world experiences. It’s not speculation, it’s not guesswork. It’s what happened. Forget the fear, uncertainty and doubt.