[Fwd: Re: [Wine] What Windows apps stand in the way of switching to Linux at your shop?]

[David Johnson]

I accidentally sent this to Molle instead of the list ...

-------- Forwarded Message --------
> From: David Johnson <johnson_d at cox.net>
> Reply-To: johnson_d at cox.net
> To: Molle Bestefich <molle.bestefich at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Wine] What Windows apps stand in the way of switching to
> Linux at your shop?
> Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2005 21:50:17 -0500
> On Thu, 2005-10-20 at 18:01 +0000, Molle Bestefich wrote:
> > Hello Dan,
> > 
> > Dan Kegel wrote:
> > > http://kegel.com/wine/qa/#app is a list of "must-have"
> > > Windows applications for various vertical markets
> > > (at the moment, just k12 schools and churches).
> > 
> > That's an odd choice of market segments?
> > 
> > > If you have any suggestions for the list, please let me know.
> > 
> > I do, but it's not for K12 or churches.
> > Do you want them anyway?
> > 
> 
> In my experience, churches can, for the most part, use the same business
> software as anyone else, scaled to the size of the church's budget.  A
> church with a $5 million per year budget could function quite well on
> the software aimed at businesses with $5 million per year (plus) gross
> budget.  Good taxation management is critical for churches.
> 
> Governments, outside of USA, are making the move to linux.  Even in USA,
> there are moves to break Micro$oft's monopoly on the government desktop.
> 
> For my family, the make it or break it app was Quicken.  The pure linux
> software we tested just didn't stack up to Quicken for home book
> keeping.  Gnucash was too complex and clunky to run, and the others were
> going for the Quickbooks (small business) market.  The platform
> independent (java based) accounting package just looked and felt clunky.
> When I got Quicken working under wine, we switched to Windows except for
> my daughter's machine.
> 
> The K12 is pretty important to me.  Unfortunately, educational software
> tends to be quirky and unreliable.  Since I started my career in that
> sector of the industry, I understand why and how this came to be.
> Nevertheless, there are occasional gems that are worthwhile to make
> functional.  Right now I am trying to get Jumpstart Phonics running
> under wine and having mixed results.  Once we can run some decent
> educational software under linux, my daughter's system will go pure
> linux also.
> 
> My own applications are going SWT/Java for desktop, and J2EE for server
> and web apps.  This way I don't care what the OS under the application
> is.
> 
> Hope this helps.