I'm a retired school teacher, and it's well known that many school sytems, particularly the Hawaii public schools are hooked into Apple computer systems. Years ago I saw a problem with this in that the schools were tied to a single source supplier. The schools destiny was directly tied to Apple. Whatever Apple offered, the schools had little choice other than to buy it; because they didn't seem willing to convert to M$ Windows, and rightfully so. Apple computers were very easy to use. Software and hardware could be counted on to work, and classroom teachers could have never dealt with the multitude of software and hardware installation problems associated with the alleged M$ solution.
Nevertheless the schools had to pay a huge premium for this "user friendliness." Apple was constantly changing their hardware. This made the machines somewhat hard to trouble shoot because because there were many different "system enablers" that were required to boot a stalled machine from floppy disk. We often didn't know which system enabler was required for which machine and had to go about it by trial and error. Moreover, Apple machines have always been over priced and when this was combined with a constantly changing hardware platform, it didn't really make good economic sense. Another issue was the fact that Apple never really made a good "educational model." What I mean by this is a standard form factor computer where parts could easily be swapped out from one to the other to provide a low cost common hardware platform that could be easily upgraded without constantly having to buy entire new machines which were often terribly incompatible with the previous machines. The best example of the this are the colored plastic iMacs that took off all the old ports such as the scusi port, and the ADB port (Apple Desktop Bus). Another hang up with the iMacs was the fact that they had no internal diskette drive, and no true on/off switch. Now Apple users are faced with a costly switch to OS-X. Now how does WP figure into this? It seems that certain people and professions have become as dependent on WP as the schools have become dependent on Apple. They are stuck because they are tied to a single source supplier. Their entire businesses are tied into the fate of the software supplier. But there are outside forces that are beyond our control. What can and end user do if Apple pulls the buses off their machines or Word Perfect has marketing problems or M$ makes a generally pathetic OS? I turned to Linux and Open Source. At least there is competition and multiple competing vendors. Additionally the Linux operating system is not limited to a single source hardware supplier. There are even multiple GUI desktop environments so there is a lot of freedom of choice in open source and Linux. Unfortunately Word Perfect has chosen to drop their Linux effort. There is nothing I as an individual can do about it. I used WordPerfect for many years and I believe that WordPerfect is significantly better than any other word processor out there. But I can't have my cake and eat it too. If I dislike M$ and Apple and choose to use Linux, I can't do much about the fact that WP is for the most part unavailable in a satisfactory form to run on Linux. I have to learn to live with an alternative such as Abiword, Star Office, Open Office, or Crossover Word (if it would actually run on my machine). It's all about choices. If you want Word Perfect, you must be willing at this point to use Windows. If you don't like abusive convicted monopoly software and choose to use Linux you must be willing to sacrifice Word Perfect. My inclination at the present time is to use Linux Native software and learn to live with it. I feel this will offer the best long term solution to freedom from single source suppliers who are often tyrannical in their business practices.
