Its not only company after company, its country after country. China Korea and Japan are in the process of putting together their own distribution of Linux for their governments. Other countries as well as states in the US (Massachusetts was the latest to discus open source) are also on the open source bandwagon. Needless to say, Microsoft has ruffled feathers.
Star Office 7 is much faster than Star Office 6 by the way. You can download a Star Office demo that will last the year, but Education prices were $25 for unlimited educational use - that's $25 for all your computers. You get the Linux and Windows versions As for the Novell purchasing SuSE, this is a way they survive since Novell networks have been decreasing dramatically. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Steven Scarbrough Sent: Friday, November 07, 2003 1:25 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [info-tech] Linux - SuSE and Novell I was at a seminar recently that Novell and IBM sponsored. With Novell's purchase of SuSE (Soo-SAY) linux this week, there was a discernable buzz in the room. Novell listed company after company that has, or is converting to 100% desktop linux. They said that the entire Novell workforce will be - has been already -converting to linux desktop. The entire seminar was demo'd using Star Office's PPT, etc on SuSE. Their take was that it makes business sense to save $$ by getting a free OS and a free office suite. Then IBM talked of their big iron running linux. Maybe it's not what most schools run (mondo servers and mainframes), but they again told of company after company that's going 100% linux. Wow. It is no longer a groundswell, it seems. Then VMWare (very cool product, BTW) said the same. It began to appear that their message wasn't to buy Novell or IBM, but that Linux is no longer fringe stuff, it is becoming mainstream. ----- So I was left thinking about the big picture, particulary after hearing the same thing in a converse way at the MSOffice System release seminar: Whether Mac, Microsoft, or Linux, it is easier to manage a 100% homogenous network. But the reality is that most of us have heterogeneous nets. "But," I'm asked, "is Linux appropriate for Education?" The more that apps move to the web, the more appropriate, I'd say. The education market is not there yet, where all our apps and work is via the web, but in cases where a user needs just email and office, we could get set them up for a whole lot cheaper on SuSE than Microsoft... or Apple. Consider the price of a cheap Celeron whitebox - roughly $300.00 including monitor, OS and Office free. And as apps move to the web (I'm reminded here of how often the elementary labs are using the Scholastic web site to do drill and practice), the more appropriate yet. So, following the recent thread of downloads, here's the SuSE link to download the i386 iso and burn to a CD. It comes with Star Office. http://www.suse.com/us/private/download/ftp/int_mirrors.html Meantime, for those who follow the industry in general, here's Novell's take on the SuSE acquisition... http://www.novell.com/connectionmagazine/2003/12/bottom_line.html Steve Scarbrough, Technology Coordinator Storm Lake Community School District 419 Lake Avenue Storm Lake, IA 50588 712.732.8100 fax:8101 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.storm-lake.k12.ia.us/~sscarbrough/ --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus on the server aea8.k12.ia.us] --------------------------------------------------------- Archived messages from this list can be found at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ --------------------------------------------------------- --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus on the server aea8.k12.ia.us] --------------------------------------------------------- Archived messages from this list can be found at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ ---------------------------------------------------------
