OK, I was not aware that firstly there were two parties that I could be, a Windows user or a Linux user (for those that seem to be so eager to place me into a box I am a BSD user although my first installation of Linux was in 1994, installing Slackware onto a 486SX-33 with a 40Mb HDD that had Windows for my parents on the first 35Mb).
Now my comments were purely a comment that Evolution is not a straight drop in for Outlook. From my experience, you could not replace Outlook (and the majority of the Office package) with Evolution/OpenOffice in a large corporate environment such as I was refering to in my original post. I make these statements with the authority that my job is to handle communications of figures and data analysis for 227 telco retail outlets and their store managers, area managers and senior management. Challenges in this even include the use of voting buttons. The current offering from the OSS doesnt integrate enough for the masses, the Excel equivilent doesnt have nearly enough powerful tools (eg. vlookup) and when I want to paste a spreadsheet of data into an email, purely for the end user to view (eg. a Top 10 list) it simply doesnt do the job. I make that assumption based on if I can find it in 5 minutes, basic skilled users will never find it (ie. as I am fluent in using different interfaces between operating environments)
I am interesting in some conclusions made about the nature of my post. I would like to know what indicated that I am firstly a "Windows User" by nature. I must use windows at work as firstly as the company I work for has chosen Microsoft as their technology partner. I also have to use Excel as certain database interfaces I am required to use only have interfaces as Excel add-ins. However I add that if I was able to decide the procurement of software I would still choose Microsoft TODAY as for people whose role is not in IT, but rather people management, retailing and administration, in my opinion, the alternative is too difficult to use.
I am sorry to say that. I really wish that this wasnt the case. Gnome/KDE is suitable to replace Windows, right now. And if the same situation as above, and you could run Outlook and Office on Gnome, that would be my suggestion to any organisation. But the productivity suites available on the *IX platform today are not of a suitable standard.
If I had the time or skill I would do my best to fix them, lets be honest, Microsoft have the resources and have had the headstart on the OSS community. Word has been around since the early 90's, compare that to the time that OpenOffice has been around.
I also find interesting how I am not contributing in the correct forum. Do you know which other forums I post on?
So to set the record straight, my home desktop is currently an Ubuntu installation (well, it changes as I install whatever new release I usually get on coverdisks or read about, I typically install something new every 2 weeks to play with it, usually on a Saturday AND Sunday
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I also have a FreeBSD box that I use as a mail server, http server and asterisk box (which I compiled from source).
So just because I dont choose to put every distro in my signature, or any at all you may be wise to assume nothing unless you have at least done the courtesy of enquiring first. As for sitting on my butt and eating pizza, whilst it is a favorite hobby of mine, I usually work a 10 hour day, a couple of which is so I can work on projects incremental to what I am paid to do, mostly revolving around moving a large portion of our reporting to a web based system (running apache and mysql) so we dont have to rely on Microsoft based products. That is MY inititive, not mandated by the company. What are you doing to inflict change in the real world?
