Re: [Fwd: Re: [Fwd: Re: [seul-edu] RE: [why schools don't adopt OSS]]]

[Donald J Christensen <djc@cisco.com>]

Doug Loss wrote:
> > 3) We have grown very comfortable with Outlook/MS Exchange calendaring.  What
> > are the best Open Source alternatives?
> 
> I'll go out on a limb and suggest StarOffice as a good solution.  I've
> never used Outlook or MS Echange though, so I can't make an honest
> assessment.  The nice thing about StarOffice though, is that it's
> available for Windows as well as Linux.  This leads to another strategy
> for getting Linux into the schools - introduce StarOffice first, and
> switch over to Linux later.

Given the direction StarOffice is going (splitting into separate apps,
dumping email/calendar apps, etc), StarOffice is not a viable Outlook
replacement.  Evolution might be a better choice if using Gnome.  There
are apps more suited to KDE, aw well, but I'm not familiar with them.

> >
> > 4) Most schools will have some applications that are Windows client only and
> > that they must support (In my case it is our Fund Raising/Account/Student
> > schedule and grades combination of Blackbaud and GradeQuick.  I see no change
> > of changing the Blackbaud program and only limited change of changing
> > GradeQuick (the replacement would have to import classes and export grades
> > with Blackbaud).  Therefore, you would need to have addressed a method to run
> > limited Windows applications on Linux desktops.  ??Does this mean Win4Lin,
> > wine, a terminal set up or ???
> 
> I think it depends on the application itself.  If it works under wine,
> there's no need to get Win4Lin (which I believe is a commercial
> product).  Another possible solution is VMWare, which I *can* vouch for,
> wince I've been using it for about a year now.

Win4Lin is fabulous, except that it does not support DirectX, which
makes many games unrunnable.  It is a lot faster than VMware, and it
can be had for $40 retail.  Maybe they have educational licenses.

The problem with Win4Lin and VMware is that they both require a
licensed copy of Windows to be installed.  Wine avoids this, so it
is preferrable in that respect (I haven't used it recently, I've
always had difficulties configuring it and installing SW with it.
Maybe that's better now.

One other solution to this is to just have some Windows machines
around.  Heck, maybe the teachers can have their Windows machines.
They can use something like VNC to access the Linux machines
(to avoid license costs for something like ReflectionX).  It
isn't realistic (at least not yet) to think that all Windows
(and/or Mac) machines can be replaced in environments where
there is alrady an existing infrastructure.

-Don

--
Don Christensen       Senior Software Development Engineer
djc@cisco.com         Cisco Systems, Santa Cruz, CA
  "It was a new day yesterday, but it's an old day now."