Linux in a propreitary environment
Hello again.
Now, I have a daunting task. In order to further the life of our aging fleet of PII workstations, we are either facing motherboard upgrads and "upgrades" to Winblows XP. I really hate Windows, and so does my boss. And due to our Novell server, we either face "upgrading" to XP Pro and Office XP, or replacing NetWare/GroupWise with Windows 2000 Server/Exchange. That's alot of money out of my IT budget for this year. In fact, with the number of workstations, that's almost all of it.
Today, however, I enabled the POP server on our GroupWise mail server. I hate Novell, but it works. I'll never be able to get rid of it. So, I suggested that we upgrade the machines to a *nix variant. Both my immediate boss, and my other boss, the CEO are very receptive to this idea. I have already been using RedHat on my personal workstation as long as I've worked here, but I've never really messed with Office-esque programs and POP clients. Heh, the only mail readers I really use are Mutt and Pine.
However, my users will need something different. They will need something that won't require me babysitting each one for the entire first day while they mess with it. I just don't have time for that. What I'm looking for is an Office environment and a POP client that are the easiest to use for the end user. I guess it would help if I would tell you that we are going to be using RedHat 8 on these machines, and I'm going to really lock down the systems beyond the users home directories. They are all pretty much the same systems, either PII/350's or PII/450's with 128 or 256 MB of RAM.
They are all currently running 98 SE or NT4 (there are only two of those)with either Office 98 or 2001. Thank you Microsoft for not renewing our licenses and forcing an upgrade, or else I never would have gotten Windows off my network :). But really, I haven't ever used a POP client in Linux beyond Mutt or Pine, and have only briefly flirt with StarOffice. When I need to write papers and such, I just use Office.X on my iBook running MacOSX. Or I use vi, the way God intended.
So, has anyone done this before? Any helpful tips on getting this Windoze users to Linux without too much pain for me? I've got all of my other bases covered, it's just the POP client and Office suite that worries me.
Any input is greatly appreciated in advance.
Now, I have a daunting task. In order to further the life of our aging fleet of PII workstations, we are either facing motherboard upgrads and "upgrades" to Winblows XP. I really hate Windows, and so does my boss. And due to our Novell server, we either face "upgrading" to XP Pro and Office XP, or replacing NetWare/GroupWise with Windows 2000 Server/Exchange. That's alot of money out of my IT budget for this year. In fact, with the number of workstations, that's almost all of it.
Today, however, I enabled the POP server on our GroupWise mail server. I hate Novell, but it works. I'll never be able to get rid of it. So, I suggested that we upgrade the machines to a *nix variant. Both my immediate boss, and my other boss, the CEO are very receptive to this idea. I have already been using RedHat on my personal workstation as long as I've worked here, but I've never really messed with Office-esque programs and POP clients. Heh, the only mail readers I really use are Mutt and Pine.
However, my users will need something different. They will need something that won't require me babysitting each one for the entire first day while they mess with it. I just don't have time for that. What I'm looking for is an Office environment and a POP client that are the easiest to use for the end user. I guess it would help if I would tell you that we are going to be using RedHat 8 on these machines, and I'm going to really lock down the systems beyond the users home directories. They are all pretty much the same systems, either PII/350's or PII/450's with 128 or 256 MB of RAM.
They are all currently running 98 SE or NT4 (there are only two of those)with either Office 98 or 2001. Thank you Microsoft for not renewing our licenses and forcing an upgrade, or else I never would have gotten Windows off my network :). But really, I haven't ever used a POP client in Linux beyond Mutt or Pine, and have only briefly flirt with StarOffice. When I need to write papers and such, I just use Office.X on my iBook running MacOSX. Or I use vi, the way God intended.
So, has anyone done this before? Any helpful tips on getting this Windoze users to Linux without too much pain for me? I've got all of my other bases covered, it's just the POP client and Office suite that worries me.
Any input is greatly appreciated in advance.
