Re: Microsoft Windows Support

[James Rich <james@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 1 Jul 2003, Booth Martin wrote:

> What do you mean, James?  Is Linux ready?  What about the tn5250 client?

3 questions get 3 answers - in reverse order:

The tn5250 client is fantastic.  But of course I would say that because I
made teeny contributions and want to feel important. ;^)  Seriously
though, I have been using it exclusively for several years and am quite
happy.  tn5250 has a number of advantages and features that make it an
excellent 5250 emulator/application, such as SSL
encryption/authentication, extensive printing capabilities, very small
memory footprint, and reliability.  It also has some shortcomings, the
most glaring of which is (imo) cursor progression and continuous fields.

"Ready" can mean a great many things.  For me, GNU/Linux has been "ready"
for a long time - I've been using it exclusively for several years now.
If you mean, "Can GNU/Linux be used as an effective replacement for
Microsoft desktop software, meaning email, web, and office software?" then
the answer is yes, it is.  I read this article today:

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6970&mode=thread&order=0

which contains several references to organizations (particularly
educational) that use linux exclusively to accomplish all they did
previously with Microsoft products and more.  The article's main purpose
is to propose an organization for helping governments with linux, but the
info and links are still very useful.

Finally, I mean that we should not automatically assume that the next step
is inevitably a Microsoft one.  I also need to point out that this is
neither a linux nor a Microsoft list, so I am currently scolding myself in
a most severe manner.  I am probably the most guilty of treating this like
a linux list, so I apologize.  This is probably not the place to make
Microsoft annoucements, but neither is it the place to tell you all how
much Slackware rocks and that you should all be using it.  So once again,
I apologize.  I'll try to do better.

James Rich