Jamie looks for ways to reduce costs and improve efficiency in his business. His staff uses Microsoft operating systems exclusively, but he is tempted to move them onto Linux platforms. In his environment he can save tens of thousands of dollars in licensing fees. Plus he believes his current hardware will support Linux, whereas the next MS upgrade will cost him memory and cpu upgrades to meet necessary response times. At the same time, he fears everything he saves in bottom-line dollars will be lost in productivity costs if Linux-based applications don’t perform as well as the staff’s current programs | Global Knowledge Expert Reference Series ofWhite Papers Best of Both Worlds Making Windows and Linux Play Together 1-800-COURSES Best of Both Worlds Making Windows and Linux Play Together Barbara J. Fox President MultiMedia Productions RHCE HP-UX CSA Introduction Jamie looks for ways to reduce costs and improve efficiency in his business. His staff uses Microsoft operating systems exclusively but he is tempted to move them onto Linux platforms. In his environment he can save tens of thousands of dollars in licensing fees. Plus he believes his current hardware will support Linux whereas the next MS upgrade will cost him memory and cpu upgrades to meet necessary response times. At the same time he fears everything he saves in bottom-line dollars will be lost in productivity costs if Linux-based applications don t perform as well as the staff s current programs. Patricia works in an environment where some users run on Microsoft Windows operating systems and others utilize UNIX and Linux operating systems. Her users need to be able to access and edit all the existing documents primarily word processing spreadsheets and e-mail from both environments. Daniel jumped on the Linux bandwagon years ago. But even so there are times when he needs to run applications that are only available under Windows. Microsoft and UNIX-like operating systems co-exist for a variety of reasons. And even though many users have only one computer at their desk they still want to have the facilities of both Windows and nix1 available at the same time. As many companies jump on the nix bandwagon there is almost always a need to maintain Windows capabilities as well. This paper will explore a number of options that exist in the market today that may allow users to have their cake and eat it too. It will describe options some free some costly that will permit users to choose the best of both worlds. The Issues There are three main issues that concern users as they move .
