As I am the defacto IT guy where I work, I am often saddled with the unholy task of admin-ing about a dozen WinXP boxes. I get through most issues okay, but there are some problems that are beyond my Windows knowledge. My experience is with Mac OSX, Linux, and BSD.

Wanting to rid myself from the torture of WinXP, I set about to recreate a desktop solution for the sales, customer service, and administrative staff. There are just a few things these people need:

1) Filemaker Pro
2) Email
3) Web browser
4) Open and print MS Office docs
5) Open and print PDFs

What I did:

On a modestly spec'd spare desktop machine (768MB/RAM, 60GB HDD), I installed Slackware 14.1 (32-bit) using Xfce, WINE, Filemaker Pro, LibreOffice, and Adobe Reader.

Connected to the Filemaker Pro server without a problem, brought up customer database, opened Word and Excel files with LibreOffice, set up both Firefox for browsing and Thunderbird for email, opened PDFs with Reader. Now, I just need to connect with the networked HP printers, and it's a done deal. Brought the general manager in to check out my solution. He sat down, did a test, and said "Let's do this. Get the sales people (two machines) set up first, and we'll get the others next."

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Nice. I notice that your PC has 768 MB RAM. Claws-mail is another alternative for e-mail as it has a lot of functionality with a lower memory footprint. T-Bird may grind that box to a halt. Just a suggestion.

^ This is just my test box. Most of the WinXP rigs I will set up have 2GB/RAM, and they already use Thunderbird for their email, so the transition is nil.

Sure. Just a suggestion. My Slackware boxes also have 2 GB of RAM and I find T Bird A bit heavy. It does make sense to me to have a smooth transition in a business.

Nice work, JWJones. Regarding the Claws Mail/Thunderbird choice, I definitely recommend Thunderbird. It's running nice on low-spec machines with 512 MB RAM. It may be slower than Claws Mail, but the decisive argument is that it exists for all platforms, which means you can train folks to use it and encourage them to use it at home on their Windows or Mac OS X systems. TB's advanced filtering options are really nice if you are a heavy mail user.

^ Yes, it's what they are used to already, so it's a smooth transition. And faster on Slackware than WinXP, on the same hardware, so they think they've had a speed boost! As I had mentioned in another thread, I was thinking of deploying MLED for this solution (and still may do so), but this was just a very quick "proof of concept" setup, and it worked great!

using wine for business seems messy (at least it is with games) i would find a native alternative for filemaker.

Yes. Good points kikinovak. And it does make complete sense to deploy TB in a business environment. Great job, JWJones.
Claws-mail would be a PITA for some of your workers to set-up at home.

also i think you would need to install hplip for the hp network printers (and/or fool around with cups).

@JWJones,

Nicely done!

Actually, the WINE/Filemaker Pro combo works really well. Very smooth, no "gotchas" so far.

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Scrot, or it didn't happen...

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Don't hesitate to ask for help if you need it. The MLED documentation is a bit laconic for now.

On a side note, I'm currently fiddling with MATE in two virtual machines. Some time ago I had to abandon the KDE- and MATE-based alternatives because of the sheer quantity of work to maintain three desktops. On the other hand, I have the latest MATE 1.8 running in a VM, and I must say I like it a lot. Since most of my build processes are now automated with scripts and everything, there's a chance a MATE-based MLWS will see the day sometimes soon. Of course I won't reinvent the wheel, the idea is similar to MLED. Provide an add-on to Willy's and Chess' MATE to have a fully functional pro desktop.

Another alternative would be to install one single Windows 7 Professional machine in the network, and then connect to it using Remmina. Works very nice.

Yeah, this will be what makes it or breaks it. I never seem to be able to get networked printers to work with any Linux. Fortunately, they are all HP printers, so hplip should make this easier. This will be tomorrow's task.