Is There a Migration in Your Future?

What is open source enviroment? from the point of view of the software side, I dont mind. so many people do I suggest. because most of them dont know what the system is doing when they typewrite. what he hope is good to use and less charge.

None can do everything. he has to need help with others as well as move, no halt, if he hope to live a good life .

Its really a simple question.

I am in the process of implementing a migration right now. I have been at it for several months, and expect the process to take about two years to be complete. I have a small engineering consulting firm. I am migrating to Ubuntu 7.10.

My primary reason for migrating away from Windows is that Windows is NOT what I consider a stable work platform. It requires a significant investment of time to incorporate new processes and software. Much of what I have relied on for the past few years is now considered "legacy" software, some of which will not even run on Windows XP, let alone Vista. A couple of years ago, I did a cost analysis of what it would cost in software to regain the functionality I had with Windows 98- it came to something like $7000, which may not sound like much to some of you, but I am not in a position to spend that kind of money every three or four years when Microsoft or someone decides it is time to upgrade- especially since the software I am familiar with works fine and gets the job done in a reasonable time. I am not averse to upgrading if you can demonstrate a real advantage (features I want but don't have, greater speed that actually reduces the time I spend on a project, etc.), but I do not see any reason to upgrade just to get some eye candy that has nothing to do with productivity.

Note that I am migrating to Ubuntu 7.10, not the latest 8.10. 7.10 was current when I started this process, and that is what I am sticking with. The real clincher for deciding to proceed with the migration was the fact that with virtualization software, I can preserve a lot of the legacy applications I have that I like and am comfortable using.

Linux is a bit light in technical applications. I will stay with Excel 2000, running in a virtual box running Windows 98. Excel 2003 I tried and discarded. I have not looked at the latest version of Excel. Open Office spreadsheet can not hold a candle to Excel. This is one example of legacy software I am happy with (one of the issues is that I have written some macros that do not work in later versions of Excel). Other situations include instrumentation software for equipment that still works but is not supported by the manufacturers any more (they would rather sell new equipment than help get you up and running with a new operating system). Much of this works in a virtual box,and it is a whole lot easier to preserve legacy capabilities under Linux and virtual software than it is to learn a whole new way of doing business.

We have already migrated our accounting from Peachtree to GnuCash- an open source solution that gives us everything we need, is easy to use, and runs under Windows and Linux. I personally am not happy with Open Office word processing, but that is only a small part of what I do, and others in the organization can struggle with that.

These are just some of my thoughts on the subject- I could probably write a book on this subject, if I had the time...