For a large shop:

- count on a migration period of about five years.

Train the admins, make them your friends.

- Transition back-office stuff first, so that admins cut their teeth

away from users prying eyes.

- For the desktops, try an easy one first, like firefox.

Let simmer for a year or two.

- wean people slowly off of desktop apps, with more and more web

applications, making sure they work with firefox.

- Then try a bigger one: open office. This is the really big one. take

it slow, careful, and thoroughly researched (like how to transition Joe's macro's etc...)

- After that, users will barely notice when windows is swapped out and

replaced. They'll already be used to firefox & openoffice. the linux thing won't be a big deal, especially if it's on KDE.

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