I'm back to my country now , and one of the things that i tried to find out was government's concern about Linux and it's knowledge on the subject . Well, most of the software used here is pirated and even sysadmin people run like hell from the subject , they find linux hard , altough they agree that Linux is far better than windows... apart from being free .
I was told that the government did a complete administrative reform months ago , old computers were changed for brand new ones but they installed windows again and they spent a huge amount of money training people on Oracle and so on . I met with some friends of mine that have now computer businesses and none of them work with Linux , but i realised , for instance, that they use MYSQL , Macromedia and other tools .
1- I would like to ask ( as i never worked with any of them ) how difficult is it for a person to work with these programs on linux , assuming that they are confortable enough with them under windows ?
2- Can anyone indicate links related to these matters , or a list of programs that already have been ported to Linux , or substitutes ?
3- Lastly, i would like to ask how difficult can it be for people that really want to change from windows to Linux , to accomplish this task , without loosing productivity or previous Know-How . I think that this is a worldwide problem and that the Linux community is aware of it , and is commited to bring an answer to most of them .

BTW I already installed slack 8.1 on two machines and people loved it , i tried to show the basics (window managers, adding users, editing texts and getting online but infortunatly i really don't understand that much to help more . thanks for any reply

MySQL is the same database server whether it is run on Win or Linux. (more stable on linux of course) The macromedia question....umm...well now there's a trick. What macromedia products are they using (dreamweaver?)? Some people have reported success with running Dreamweaver MX under wine in Linux, me no luck so far, but haven't really tried too much.

I think with the new versions of some of the more mainstream releases of Linux the average computer user can install and use it. RedHat 8.0 for example is very simple to install, configure and use.

There are perhaps three points which need consideration:

1. According European experience of implementing it, Linux is best "discovered" by end users - when it's forced from above rather than from the ground up, it's compared unfavourably with Windows.

2. And Linux still has some sharp ends to it's user interface.

3. There's no Macromedia programs for Linux. Feel our pain.

Bert

Macromedia! A big pain for me!!!!!
The only solution is wine (free but alpha) or VMware ($$).

you can try looking at the steps you should take on this website for getting flash and dreamweaver working in linux under wine.
flash and dreamweaver