[Fsfe-uk] Replacing/Displacing Microsoft

[J.R. Seago]

I sat for 16 years on the Council of a National Voluntary membership 
organisation. They, I have discovered use Microsoft, this is so bad that it 
is a dismissable offense, due to collective paranoia to merely insert a CD 
into ones work station, due to the risk of virus's/viri, (?).
 
I tried giving one of the national directors, a CD of Knoppix to try out, he 
was so worried by the Draconian rules on introducing spyware/CD's into the 
system that he tried it out at home on his own computer, but the status quo 
is such that he will get no where suggesting a trial. So I will write a 
paper and send it to the Council/Directors. But I need some information, 
I've been a convinced user since 1999, or was it Slackware 7, whichever. 
but I am not as skilled as the rest of you and still can't get MySql to 
install properly in order to learn to use it, or Slackware 11 to play my 
music CD's. So the information I need is what does it cost, roughly, to use 
XP to run a members database for 150,000 members, plus usual organisation 
accounting, administration, correspondence, preparation of reports, 
research department needs, etc., etc. per seat licenses for a staff of 
around 200? Input from the UK would help here as that's where its used. I 
also assume that such an organisation would only need the one DVD, (to be 
on the safe side, per office, thats around 10), of Slackware, total cost of 
around £300, (or whatever other distribution, its just that I'm used to 
Slackware), the limitation on numbers of users of work stations being the 
hardware, not any limitation of Slackware/GNU-Linux? I can then make a 
start on a paper on the benefits of changing over, and comeback 
occasionally when I need help on particular matters

I believe there may be a new Free Linux virtual machine to run XP in while 
they try it out/change over would that be correct? 
http://www.virtualbox.org/
-- 
J.R. Seago
GNU/Linux Registered User No. #219566   http://counter.li.org/
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