I have been working with and maintaining computers a lot of years. In 1980 I purchased an Apple II+ and was hooked on computers.. In 1982 I picked up a new Macintosh. While working for an Aerospace company I took some unix classes and worked with minis. A few years later I used GIS applications on PCs running Windows NT and a couple of Sun workstations. Those Sun boxes were sweet....

The first Windows box I purchased was the Micron laptop I wrote about in another post. The only reason I purchased it was because I got a job writing code and needed a box that would run Coldfusion and SQL server.

A couple of years ago we started our own business and I was determined to get away from Windows. It hasn't been a totally realistic goal. Our main machines run Kubuntu. I started out with Ubuntu and decided I liked the KDE desktop a little better. Bella has been such a trooper putting up with my experiments and she had no problems switching from Windows to Ubuntu and then to Kubuntu. We have found open source software to meet every need we have had for our business. The only thing is, not everyone feels the same about Windows. There are websites and web applications that requires Internet Explorer to function. I can't say that I blame them. It is all about money after all, and coders need to make a living writing code for computers that will give them the highest return. There is also the point that it is expensive to maintain multiple platforms. I am just so thankful for those coders that support open source applications.

So what am I writing about here? How about our experience over the last two + years using Kubuntu for the primary machines in our company. Like I said, there are some web applications that either will not work or will throw errors when using Firefox on a Linux box. For example, when I log into Fedex.com to generate a shipping label I get a warning that my browser is not supported. It says it supports Firefox, but is probably confused by AMD64 installation of Firefox. Even though it pops up the anoying alert, it seems to function correctly. For the few applications that totally require a Windows application, I have installed Virtual Box on my machine and run a virtual XP desktop on it. I am really amazed at how well this works... except for the USB ports. I still haven't figured out how to get the USB ports to function.

So far I found an open source application for everything I have needed to do. Not all of the Linux versions of an application have worked the best. For example, I am using Wink to develop training modules for users of the 3Com phone system. Wink is open source and can be installed on Linux or Windows machines. I tried using the Linux version and it seems like the audio wasn't coming out quite right so I installed the Windows version on my virtual XP machine and it worked like a charm. The other thing I haven't got worked out is the syncing of our Palm TX brains. So currently I am syncing both to a XP box.

I know opinions vary concerning Windows. Personally, I have no use for Vista and the only reason I am running XP is because of the applications that require IE or Windows to run. Given a choice, I would rather use Linux and open source applications. I am not a super geek and I don't have a lot of time to spend configuring applications. For me Kubuntu just works.

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