"neel s Gurjar" ssnilu2001@rediffmail.com writes:
- Can you please suggest us which flavour of linux is suitable
for each department depending upon software used by them? We have tried Suse 9.0 and RedHat 9.0 & Federo Core 3.
Debian. It is stable, and its easier to manage in a networked installation.
- Also we are looking for Diskless Networking (dumb client and
HDD shared on server) for above 2 departments. Can you please suggest us which networking configuraton (hardware and software) is best suited. Kindly note that Department 2 is using Desktop P
If you want a completely dumb-terminal like setup, use LTSP (Linux Terminal Server Project). If you just want a file server., use AFS+Kerberos. It'll be a good replacement for a Netware like environment. NFS should be easier to setup, but there are security issues.
- As we are very much new to Linux environment, the linux
flavour which we will choose should also have good online support available where we can ask our questions and get the results quickly.
Though this approach is good, I'd suggest you hire somebody to help you in the long run.
- Also our users are very much familiar to windows environment,
so the softwares on linux which we will choose should be user friendly and GUI based.
The GUI is different from Windows. Though some distributions give a exacty Windowz like look-and-feel, they have their own problems. The new GNOME/KDE desktops have a good gui. It'll be a very small learning curve to get used to this GUI., but that curve wont be tedious. Just needs a 2 hour session.
- Also those softwares should be tried, tested and stable so as
we would not face any problem in future.
Debian is known for stability.
Software
MS Excel --> OpenOffice has a equivalent tool. Or you can use Gnumeric
Tally --> One member on this list has developed a tool called avsap., you can try that. Or I think you can customize GNUCash for the purpose. But I'm not sure how different each of them are from `tally`.
MS Access --> I heard the yet to be released Open Office has a similar tool. But on GNU/Linux MySQL is the preferred database. However, it depends on what you use Access for.
Developed Programs in Visual Basic --> You'll have to run these on Wine. But I'm not sure whether Wine will be able to. And, recently there is talk about some legal issues regarding running W32 apps on Wine.
Pagemaker 5.0 and 6.5 --> If you've been using this for publishing kinda work., you'll have to use LaTeX. However, LaTeX has a steep learning curve. There are some GUI based tools to act as front ends for LaTeX. But if you are using Pagemaker just for getting out PDF/PS documents, you can use OpenOffice's Wordprocessor. It has PDF output feature. LaTeX is a professional approach, but OpenOffice can get things done.
Devnagri Fonts Software --> You get the fonts for both LaTeX and for OpenOffice.
Photoshop --> Use the GIMP. Again, the user interface is slightly different., even terminology. But a experienced Photoshop user should easily figure out the equivalent nuances on the GIMP.
Above all, I recommend that you hire somebody to help you in the migration process and to give preliminary training.