On Jan 17, 2008, at 1:59 PM, Steve wrote: <snip>
Linux isn't uber anymore folks. My 10 year old niece runs it exclusively on her laptop. Her mother is the "sys-admin" for their home. Neither of these people are really "computer people". My 70 something year old mother runs her Neuros OSD and even upgraded her own firmware the other night, she called me and let me know... I'm so impressed :) My wife (who owns a Mac incidently), recommended to her girlfriend that she ditch windows and install Linux.
Let me say in advance that I am not trying to bash Linux here, merely point out some of the things that need to be considered when switching an organization (not an individual) to a new operating system. Linux is great, but to think that it doesn't still have some work to do (even with all the advances of the last few years) to make it an operating system for the masses would be naive.
Switching operating systems is something that is going to be of varying degrees of difficulty for everyone. I wouldn't bring up a 10 year old WITH HER OWN LAPTOP who runs Linux as an example of normalcy or the average person of that age group. I wouldn't bring up a 70 year old mother with a Neuros OSD as the norm either. My wife's 70 year old grandmother can't even figure out how to get to our blog when we send her an email with the link in it, so my wife has to call her and talk her through it every couple of weeks. (and no, I am not exaggerating) Technical competency and comfort level with technology varies SO widely it is hard to make any sort of accurate guess, but I will give you my thoughts based on my experiences as a software engineer in companies comprised mostly of non-technical people.
The biggest hurdles you are going to have to overcome are not necessarily technical, but social/mental. Re-training is one example. Most non-technical people I know only really care about getting their stuff done, and they learn how to use the applications they are given to accomplish that task. Switching an accountant who is a heavy Excel user (tons of macros and formulas) over to using OpenOffice would be a bit of a shock (last time I tried OpenOffice, there were still some differences in formulas and the available functions, and macros recorded in Excel wouldn't work at all, don't know if that has changed or not). Moving someone who uses a spreadsheet with embedded Visual Basic would be even harder. Have these people ever used OpenOffice? Would they be comfortable switching? How much time would be lost in getting them up to speed in their new environment. There are certainly technical challenges as well. Someone who uses an IE-only website for 75% of their work probably isn't a good candidate to move to Linux or some other non- Windows variant. If the same application they are used to isn't available on the target platform, then you are going to have to either run it in emulation or find an alternative and deal with re- training. What are they using for accounting software? Quickbooks or the like? What is the feasibility of migrating that data? How do they manage their customers (CRM software, spreadsheet, custom application)? Do they have a large investment in commercial software that they use all the time? Is one of their employees a graphic artist or some such? Do they produce any sort of marketing materials (flyers, posters, etc), and if so, what do they use to produce them? These questions and many, many more all need to be asked before you can really gauge the feasibility of what you are proposing. They can all be overcome, but it requires time or money or both, and it could be quite substantial in both areas.
Now, switching a single individual over to Linux (particularly at home) is different than moving an entire small/medium/large business to Linux. If you don't know how to do something at home, you may be out a couple of evenings while you tinker and become accustomed to your new OS. If that same thing happens to an entire office for several days or weeks, it's not just a few movies or story time with your kids that you will miss, but the business could potentially lose a lot of money.
Not sure if that helped, but I would be wary of thinking that because two unique people you know who are 10 and 70 are comfortable with Linux that an office of people who are probably non-technical will be as enthusiastic about having what is comfortable taken away and replaced with something quite foreign.
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