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Re: [TCLUG:361] Re: Fwd: [TCLUG:352] Promoting Linux to businesses



Anthony Beltran wrote:
> 
> One thing to consider when trying to convert IS shops and
> companies to Linux is their concern for retraining people.
> Whenever I read anything about the decision making process
> of even upgrading to another version of Windows, the discussion
> always comes around to the cost of retraining people to use
> the new environment.  Apparently, this seems to be a big
> expense.

It seems like a big expense because the results are not immediately
visible.  It also takes some skill and a lot of patience to be a good
trainer.  Maybe this is why I hardly ever hear of companies where the
employees believe they were well-trained in computers.

On the other hand, proposing a Linux solution to companies with a Unix
background shouldn't have to be a hard sell.  I was trained as a SCO
Unix administrator three years ago, and because of my experience I was
able to learn Linux extremely quickly.  It has great advantages as a
development environment, two of which are the enormous collection of
free development tools and the intelligent console.

> We also always come down to what applications run in the
> Linux environment.
<snip good points about music tools and professional-quality software>

Yep, we had to bring in a new Windows NT server because
professional-level Unix/Linux scanning solutions were simply not
available.  I hate that.

Shops that run their own custom software won't worry as much about the
pre-packaged stuff, since they're already using in-house support.  For
example, all of my company's money-making apps (trucking, maintenance &
repair, depot) are written in a language called Recital, an xBase-type
multi-user 4GL and database which supports nearly all versions of Unix
including Linux.  If SCO were to fold tomorrow, we could switch our main
SCO Unix server over to Linux overnight and nobody would notice the
difference.  I like having that kind of control over a system, and Linux
encourages it.

With Corel embracing the Linux platform, hopefully we'll start seeing
more business- and consumer-level applications soon.

-- 
Carl Patten
Systems Administrator
Trimodal Inc.
(going in for Windows NT training tomorrow, God save my soul...)