Originally Posted by ReaperX7

I don't think it would be wise to switch existing in-usage hardware over to GNU/Linux from Windows XP. Newer hardware is going to be inexpensive, whereas getting replacement parts for older systems could become hit or miss as drivers for XP are technically drying up.

Originally Posted by baldy3105

To be fair IT has very little expertise in Windows desktop either. I've lost count of the number of times I've taken a computer away from IT who were about to "re-image" it and fixed it myself because they've got no diagnostic abilities whatsoever.

Originally Posted by onebuck

Once the corporate user has selected a solid Gnu/Linux that will migrate without major fall over, will OpenOffice/LibreOffice be enough for a suite move for corporate?

Originally Posted by johnsfine

I've never seen a medium to large tech corporation whose IT policies even approach sanity. As an employee, you can't make sane IT decisions for yourself, you need to live within the boundaries defined by corporate IT. Where I work some of the relevant rules are:
1) Each employee officially has ONE desktop system. For most software engineers here the work requires Windows 7.
2) Any Windows system needs to run a set of anti virus and anti malware software so intrusive and vicious that it cuts the best computers to a small fraction of their expected performance and slower computers are cut to zero usability. It also indirectly, but totally, eliminates your ability to multi-task with prioritization. Any background job running (no matter how low priority) triggers high priority anti-malware activities, making interactive use of the computer impossible.
3) Almost every software engineer has an officially non existent second computer. Purchases of or for such non existent computers are strictly forbidden. Whatever is there can be used as long as local IT can cannibalize parts from retired systems to keep it running and no one officially informs corporate IT of the physical location of that off warranty system. There are plenty of retired systems similar enough that the occasional repair turns out to be easy. Such computers are useless for the build and test activities of a software engineer, but critical for interactive computer use while the real computer is doing build or test.

Sure, in a sane world, IT would understand that software engineers cost enough that when they need a second computer to work effectively, the cost of buying them a current supported second computer is trivial compared to the productivity loss of not doing so. In a sane world, IT would look at the COSTS of mandating excessive anti-malware measures and cut back to a level of anti-malware that does less harm than the mal-ware would have done. Then the second computers might not even be necessary. Meanwhile, in the real world, I'm trying to make the best of it. That includes figuring out how to use obsolete hardware for all my interactive tasks.

That is further complicated by my own disability of zero visual memory and zero "gibberish" memory. I am great at remembering concepts, but I cannot remember names or images or arbitrary strings of letters, even for a second or two. From years of experience programming, I have learned that to be effective, I need each part of what I'm doing visible on screen at once. I can't look at something, then switch windows covering up what I just looked at, then use the information I just covered in the window I opened on top of it. So I'm always pushing the limits of total screen size (4x1920x1440 on my old interactive system plus 4x1200x1920 on my newer build and test system). Local IT has been very helpful within the limits permitted by corporate IT.



In many environments those concerns would be valid. But in many others, including here, a large part of the infrastructure runs on headless Linux servers. Even though almost every workstation is Windows, the IT staff need quite a lot of Linux expertise. I don't know if any of them have formal Linux certifications. Our local IT guy certainly doesn't. He is a smart and motivated long-time Windows IT person who came up to speed on Linux very quickly when he landed in our mixed environment and found corporate IT gave him zero support nor training for Linux. Today, IT (local or corporate) has near zero expertise in setting up Linux workstations. Those few employees with Linux workstations mostly fend for themselves. But IT knows how to handle NIS and SAMBA and auto mounts and lots of other stuff (that I don't know myself).

We have a quite strange dichotomy in IT policies. Every office has both Windows and Linux. For Windows workstations and the few Windows servers, corporate IT takes total control of almost every software detail, leaving local IT in charge of only the hardware, not software. Any software problem is dealt with (eventually) remotely by a specialist in that topic. For Linux systems, every local IT person fends for himself, constrained by only a few policies applying to only a few special servers. Even though the same Linux software issues must be solved again in each office, corporate IT provides no guidance (and fortunately very little interference).

Originally Posted by 273

How does Libre Office handle formulae in Excel-formatted spreadsheets though and is there and VBA support in Libre Office (not that I've any idea how these things are in the post-2010 MS product either)?
I recall writing VBScript(/VBA) to clean data from Excel spreadsheets for input into a Linux system and I know things like that still go on.