Final Thoughts

Applications are king. That is, users won't want to work on a platform like Windows or Linux unless the applications they use are available on that platform. As you saw, there are lots of ways to bring those non-native applications over to Windows or Linux and use them.

Office suite compatibility is an ongoing issue that should not be dealt with lightly. The Linux office suites have some catching up to do for full compatibility. Until this is 100 percent rectified, MS Office will still be the big man on campus.

Finally, calendaring is coming of age. MS Exchange is currently the most robust way to achieve company-wide shared calendaring. You can connect to MS Exchange from Linux today via Outlook Web Access or the Evolution connector. Additionally, if you're interested in alternative collaboration solutions, Linux collaboration solutions are on the way.