[PLUG] questions on an office-wide conversion

["Jackie Patti" <jpatti@mainline-consulting.com>]

I run a small consulting business.  We primarily use Linux on servers
currently, which we access over our LAN via putty.

I'm getting frustrated with the time it takes to setup and maintain
Windows workstations and am seriously considering a move to Linux on
the desktop.

I have a few questions for you folks:

1. My previous experience with Linux has been primarily through MC on
our servers rather than GUI-based.  My husband set up a small box with
KDE on Redhat recently and when I was playing with it, it seemed
really slow.  The box had 64 Meg of RAM and appeared to me to be
significantly slower than Windows 9X on a 32 Meg box.  Are we just not
figuring out the best implementation yet?  Is Gnome better?  Or does
putting a GUI on Linux make it slower than a Windows box and I just
have to plan to need lots of RAM?

2. We do a lot of MS Access development work.  Does anyone have
experience running Access97 or Access2000 on WINE?  Is it do-able?  Or
am I just going to need to keep a box set up with Windows for this
type of work?

3. My sales and admin people aren't actively opposed to changing, but
they are already familiar with Windows and will need training.  Anyone
know a good end-user course for StarOffice?

Thanks in advance for your comments and suggestions.


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