On Thursday 01 March 2007, Randall R Schulz wrote:
I know that not every application area is covered by FOSS software, but all the common, business-oriented "productivity" applications are there plus a formidable range of niche applications.
Not good enough for a large percentage of the market unfortunately. I don't know of a single business in my customer base that could survive on "common business-oriented productivity applications" included in SLED or opensuse. Maybe its just the customers I choose, but all of them have custom, industry specific software that has to run on windows or you get no warranty or support from the authors. Even if you can get it to run on wine or CrossOver office, support will hang up on you the first time that linux mentioned. I deal with Doctors, Engineers, Insurance, State Government, and Retail sales businesses. All of them are locked into windows by these custom applications. I have customers who run $5000 autocad software inside of vmware on a linux host, but he's a bit of a techno-nerd anyway. Most won't do that. -- _____________________________________ John Andersen