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I'm considering replacing the entire PC fleet at work with Macs.

We use;

Internet (IE and Firefox)
Mail and Collaboration (Lotus Notes/Domino)
Office (MS Office 2003 SBE)

Firefox and Lotus Notes/Domino both happily run on Mac - amongst other platforms.
If I can demonstrate pretty much 100% Office 97 compatibility with OpenOffice, then I'll be happy.

Also - The free Lotus Symphony version of Open Office is built into Notes 8 so we're going to get that anyway.

It depends on the outcome of my testing but I've started to get fed up with the Microsoft world.

Vista is a sorry excuse for an OS. It is bloated, slow, insecure, and unstable... among other things. It is not worth using. Stick with XP as long as you can.

Once you have to get something new, I recommend either:

1) getting a Mac (if you're a non-technical user) or
2) installing Linux (if you're a technical user)

(I highly recommend the latter, but that's just my opinion.)

Kiski,

What would you recommend for me to try with Linux - Ubuntu??

I want to do a test in the corporate environment so it needs to be very stable and very easy to use.

I've had a quick look at several flavours of linux but so far they all seem like they'd only confuse my users - who aren't very computer literate anyway - what would be the easiest for them to get used to?

Ok so it takes my PC 1min and 13 seconds to boot to the login screen and 12 seconds to shut down. Yeah.... thats really sluggish.

These People who put Vista on the Internet are ruining Americian Economics.[ We`re in dept to China at the Moment.] Quite screwing over America in General. Get Linux or get a Mac but PIRATING SCREWS AMERICA!! !! !! !!

Normally I'd agree but in the case of Vista, I think America is screwing the world.


Proof of bad software - they put a pirate version on the internet and nobody downloads it.

Well, I would have to say Ubuntu is the easiest to get used to, especially for non-technical users, but may or may not be the best in a corporate environment.

Fedora and OpenSuSE (the community versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, respectively) would probably be better for use in a corporate environment. (Personally, I've found Fedora very easy to use, yet powerful enough for most techies. I'm not sure about OpenSuSE; I haven't used it, but I've heard many good things about it.)

I highly recommend Ubuntu for new/non-techie users, but if that doesn't work out then try Fedora and/or OpenSuSE.

Also, take a look at Distrowatch.com. It has information on most, if not all, of the major distributions.

As a comment, I'd say that there is little to choose between distributions: they all tend to be stable. Some are "ultra-stable", and lag a little behind, in terms of features. Others are "bleeding edge", so you may wish to avoid those (however, this is usually pretty obvious - i.e. running Debian with the "unstable" repositories is a bit of a clue that you might catch the odd cold).

What prompted me to speak, really, was that I was just reading the Fedora 8 review (Rating 9/10) in my Linux Format magazine, and came across mention of "revisor".

Fedora is a spin-off from Red Hat Linux. Fedora 8 comes with all the latest goodies (eye candy, and so on), but appears to be largely a "consolidation" release, so pretty solidly stable.

Anyway... I've no idea why I'm banging on about it, as I haven't tried it myself, even.

vista came with my computer i bought 2 months ago. Its nothing but crap. I deleted vista and put kubuntu on it and my computer is 3 times faster

I hope you enjoy all the games you won't be playing on Linux.

You should be able to play most DOS games under linux with DOSBox.

There's also a lot of OpenSource games available and engines for older games.

So that leaves the newer games only - and even then, many of them are supposed to work on linux. (eg: Neverwinter Nights 2).

I hope you enjoy paying for all the games that are free under Linux.

An interesting new development... AstroMenace is free for Linux, but you have to pay for the Windows version.

I think I'll live

Just like every other tool, it's usefulness is decided on what you need it for.
I want to get things done instead of spending my time trying to get my computer to work, also, I work as a programmer and I'm not a gamer, so I use a mac.
There are, by the way, a lot of interesting OS games available: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open_source_games
And a game doesn't need to have good graphics to be good, and I have found that it's quite often inversely proportional.

If I had a "regular" PC (considering my Mac has PC hardware, the distinction is vague), I would probably run Linux on it, because the alternative would be Windows, and that's just not an alternative.
The three games I like that I would need Windows for, I have already played a number of times, and if I want to replay them, I have an old PC somewhere in the cellar.

I recently got a new job, and the reason for that was because of Open Source.
You see, my employer used to run Windows on all the computers.
This meant:
They had to pay a license for all of the hundreds of computers.
They had to have one computer guy per 50 computers, on site, to fix them when (not if) they broke.
They were seriously limited in many ways due to Window's innate inferiority.
So recently, they switched all the computers to Ubuntu.
This means:
They don't have to pay anything, which means that the savings per year alone would allow them to employ no less than 4 full time programmers (and that's where I come into the picture)
They can now have one computer guy administrating thousands of computers if needed, from anywhere in the world, and not if they break, but to install software or help out with minor problems.
They don't need to upgrade hardware as often.
The sales people are delighted, because not only does everything work better, faster and more secure than before, but everything looks more pretty, which is bonus points in their eyes. (They love Beryl)

By the way, most Windows games can be played on Linux using Cedega. Cedega isn't free or open-source, but it works quite well. See transgaming.com for more information.

Linux has better Games compatibility than Vista.