Being the only one within a sea of cubicles who
runs Linux can be a lonely affair. But if that sounds like you, don't
despair. There are a lot of ways you can connect your Linux system into
the corporate Microsoft-centric world.
For managing e-mail,
schedules, and contacts, most large corporations settled on Microsoft
Exchange long ago, leading them to standardize on antivirus software as
well. On Linux, you can run Evolution, a mail, calendar, and
contact-list application that acts similarly to Microsoft Outlook.
Evolution includes the ability to work with Exchange servers, as well as
Novell Groupwise servers.
As an added benefit, the first feature
listed on the Evolution home page is that is has no worms or
viruses. Evolution comes with most Linux distributions such as Suse or
Fedora.
For Web access, the popular Firefox
browser comes standard on Linux. This same browser runs on Windows
and Mac OS X. Unfortunately, though, many companies have standardized on
using Microsoft Internet Explorer, and some even take active measures to
violate Web standards to make pages render only in Internet
Explorer.
With the User Agent Switcher extension to Firefox, you
can configure Firefox to report that is really Internet Explorer 6
running on Windows XP. (This is called the user agent, or client.) This
fools sites into believing you are indeed running Windows and Internet
Explorer.
I have successfully used this extension to allow me to connect
to a number of corporate internal Web sites, sites written to only
support Internet Explorer. The user agent support in Firefox isn't
perfect. You cannot run ActiveX controls, for example. In addition,
corporate sites that were designed to only display on Internet Explorer
can sometimes render incorrectly under Firefox. The technical name for
such sites is braindead.
The Opera Web browser also
runs on Linux.
For messaging, you can run any of a number of
messaging clients, some devoted to only one messaging protocol, such as
MSN. The most popular Linux messaging client, Gaim, supports
most available protocols within a single application. In fact, some
Windows messaging clients, such as Miranda , use the
Gaim libraries to support various messaging protocols such as AOL,
Yahoo!, MSN, and so on.
For working with documents, the excellent
OpenOffice.org suite runs on Linux, and comes with most Linux
distributions. This suite will handle pretty much any PowerPoint, Excel,
or Word document that comes your way. You can also create PDF files from
within OpenOffice.org.
As a catch-all for everything else, you can
run the Windows environment itself under Linux. This allows you to run
quite a few Windows applications natively under Linux. The base
software, called WINE, runs many Windows
applications on Linux on systems with x86 processors such as Intel or
AMD chips.
There's a database GNOME of
Windows applications and their status running under WINE.
In an
office environment, you may want to look at
CrossOver Office . Built on top of WINE, this commercial product
includes enhanced support for Microsoft Office, Lotus Notes, and
Quicken, among other business applications.
As an added feature,
you can run many Windows-only Web plugins under Linux using this
software.For the gamers, Cedega provides
enhanced Windows application support with a focus on gaming. Many users
stick to Windows just for the wide number of available games. With
Cedega, you may be able to run your Windows game under Linux. --Eric
Foster-Johnson
