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Migrating Your Office from Windows to Linux?
Posted by
Cliff
on Fri May 17, 2002 01:17 PM
from the thanks-for-the-new-licensing-scheme-Bill dept.
from the thanks-for-the-new-licensing-scheme-Bill dept.
bastiji asks: "I work at a mid-sized company, around 50 people and 90% M$ shop (10% being the Sun server doing our backups). Most of my users are using Office 85% of the time with some specialized apps thrown in for good measure. With the upcoming licensing changes from M$ my finance guys are worried about increased spending on even the software that we already own. I've been to told to look for alternatives and I'm asking for your help. How does one begin to do migration from a totally dependent M$ shop to the least expensive options. Are there any examples for mid-sized firms taking this route and any public examples of cost-savings?"
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Good Luck (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Good Luck (Score:5, Insightful)
Entice even *one* person to try a new, alternative Office suite (start with an MS-Windows install of TOS Office). Ask for their feedback. Observe their learnning experience and learn from it, yourself. Then take it to the next level.
Teach a half-dozen people -- in your spare time. Grow your "install base". Always return to the original group(s) and make sure they're not feeling abandoned, etc.
Next, introduce *one* new person to a "pretty" desktop (Grome/KDE). Show them all the ease-of-use options first. Then help them understand the details as they walk through the learning curve. Every newbie will be diferent. But every newbie needs encouragement; A reason to stay the course.
By all means, show them the same app. they used on MS-Windows (e.g. TOS Office) running on the new desktop! Help them make "familiarity connections".
Be methodical, plodding, patient and open-minded. You'll succeed far sooner than you ever dreamed! The initial newbies, if you employ them, will help newer newbies. And the love will spread...
Do I sound like I've done this before?
Parent
Re:Good Luck (Score:3, Insightful)
Only proceed to the next step when the current one is fully completed.
P.S.:
You can also run MS Office with CodeWeaver's CrossOver (also based on Wine), but since you want to cut costs, you probably don't want to run MS Office.
Do only a partial change... (Score:3, Interesting)
Plus, changing business guys over to linux is no easy task.
Re:Do only a partial change... (Score:3, Insightful)
"...Linux simply cannot read some of the MS formats (Access DB, oddities in Excel/Word files), you still need to keep some MS products around"
I really meant:
"...Linux apps capable of reading all of the MS formats (Access DB, oddities in Excel/Word files), do not exist yet, you still need to keep some MS products around."
Re:Heck, changing non-business people is no easy t (Score:3, Informative)
Screensavers? Have you SEEN the latest full Gnome install? I could spend an hour browsing through the stock screen savers! As for wallpaper, that's cross platform. A jpeg is a jpeg is a jpeg. P2P apps would be a problem if it wasn't for wine [codeweavers.com] and people like Frank [franksworld.net], who've figured it out for you. Closed formats are really the only thing that Microsoft apps can read that Linux apps can't. Even that barrier is crumbling.
Simple (Score:5, Interesting)
Not so simple (you forgot the BSA) (Score:5, Insightful)
My suggestion is that if you choose not to go the Microsoft route make a point of either:
1) purging every vestige of microsoft's sofware from your office
2) making sure everything is in pristine order for when the BSA comes along
Parent
Re:Not so simple (you forgot the BSA) (Score:3, Interesting)
From the article
Re:Not so simple (you forgot the BSA) (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, none of this applies if you have bootleg software all over the place, but if you are legit company who is slightly out of compliance, fight back. And don't forget to call your attorney too.
Re:Not so simple (you forgot the BSA) (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah, and isn't MSFT that guy with the liquid theme?
GD
No they can't just audit you but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, that's the "NICE" approach. The less than nice approach is that they file suit against you in court. During discovery they get to audit you and can find that lone piece of software that was infringing. Now you have to pay for that license, penalties, court costs, audit costs, damages. Now if it turns out that you are the one organization on earth that has all of your software licensed legitmately, then you can probably recover the costs for your legal defense, but even then you just wasted a lot of time and resources.
Before you switch... (Score:5, Insightful)
Also make a list (you can't plan something like this too much) of all the apps they're using, and what features they're using, and make sure you can provide all of those features before you switch.
And put lots of pictures of Tux around the place. His cute smile will calm everyone's fears.
Re:Before you switch... (Score:5, Insightful)
Also check the how well specialized applications under wine. Don't just read the ranking in the codewearvers database: actually use it.
Parent
Cost of retraining? (Score:5, Insightful)
Something to consider. This is probably the biggest reason that OSS has had such a hard time infiltrating the office.
Re:Cost of retraining? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cost of retraining? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you ignore the issue of retraining because "Linux Windows Managers are an easy transition" you're quite simply dimwitted.
Parent
Re:Cost of retraining? (Score:3, Insightful)
You could tell the average windows user they have to save everything on the D drive and you'd encounter at least as much panic as you would switching them to a different OS.
Re:Cost of retraining? (Score:3, Insightful)
painful transition for the average secretary, but the tech staff didn't care much.
In my opinion, the people who claim to "know" ms office products actually have an arcane set of incantations and bad practices that get the job done. the retraining you speak of should be rephrased as "learning a whole new set of bad heuristics". I haven't really used any ms product since 1997, but when i glace over my shoulder at my wife's work on word, i want to retch at her one-at-a-time modification of paragraph styles, intendation, and so on. And she is considered a small miracle worker amongst her co-workers.
That aside, my migration path away from windows is to get away from the whole what you see is what you get trap. what you see is all you get. Instead,
make everybody use LaTeX, cold turkey, and hire a LaTeX hack to devise a set of document formats for your company---reports, memos, letters, etc. That's how I switched. First MikTeX, then Emacs to use MikTeX, then ghostview to see the
I've been installing MikTeX around the office here on various windows boxes, and the latest setup is pretty nice, and there are some excellent setup instructions linked from that page. Although Emacs has a learning curve, AucTeX is pretty great, and with Flyspell running in the background, Word users can even get their spelling checked as they type.
Move away from Windows or just Office? (Score:5, Interesting)
You're in for a real treat if you're going to try and get an alternative OS going in an environment that's not filled with techies....most of these people took years just to "learn" Windows, Linux (or whatever) is going to be a nightmare for them.
Maybe you should just look into a different office suite.
As a side note, it really bites my ass that M$ is trying to leverage companies into paying more money because of the fear of having to switch to new apps that possibly might be incompatible with other companies' documents. Yet another reason proprietary technology sucks. There needs to be an industry-wide switch to open document formats....RTF and whatever the spreadsheet and presentation software equivalents might be.
Not sure if this works but... (Score:5, Insightful)
With KDE 3 it's really not that hard to learn the OS, how many Windows users use a CMD shell, the same will be true for the average run of the mill Linux user if the GUI is setup right. I have been using KDE3 for a while now and it is at least as easy if not easier than Windows to do just about anything.
If you allow fairly unrestricted Internet access I would make sure that all of the multimedia apps are working correctly, and that flash is working as well. These are big things for the weenies, they want the bells and whistles that Windows provides, and with a good distro they're all there, but they may need some tweaking to get them running flawlessly.
Just my $0.02, but that is what I would do.
Slow transition (Score:5, Interesting)
If you're lucky, your custom apps will run with Wine or can even be compiled with winelib to be native on Linux, even if they are a pain to port to real Linux apps.
If you find you can't effectively transition your apps, you can stick with Windows, but drop Office in favor of Star/Open Office. Even if you get stuck paying more for OS licensing, you'll save a huge bundle on the other licenses. If you do that, just be sure you're very careful with not letting unlicensed copies of MS Office onto your systems, or you'll be in big trouble if a BSA audit comes along.
Why not make it a Sun shop? (Score:5, Interesting)
HTH (Score:5, Informative)
In my experience, it's best to replace your servers with Linux, particularly because end-users tend to be more resistant to change concerning their day-to-day activities. If you're using Windows NT for file and print sharing, then you can easily replace those with Linux and Samba. The user's won't care what the server OS is so long as they have access to their files and printers. Most of your cash outflow can be stopped here. Of course, if you have specialized apps that require MS software (ASP scripts), then you'll need to maintain those, but for pure file and print sharing, you can easily go the Linux/Samba route.
For internet services, you're set. Linux can do everything Windows can and more. For SQL services, you can migrate data from MS SQL to any myriad of free SQL servers available from Linux. Just make sure that your SQL statements are ANSI compliant.
You'll just have to handle these on a case-by-case basis.
For the end users, consider OpenOffice as a replacement for MS Office. There are plenty of good browsers for Linux (Mozilla and Opera) that can replace IE. Eventually, you can get users used to using Linux with KDE/GNOME and still give them the functionality they need.
One caveat: in my experience, leave the accountants alone. They tend to be moody, set in their ways, and can become quite a strain on your happiness if you try to mess with their routines.
The only thing I can offer you advice on are your custom apps. For those you can either just live with the fact that you need MS for them, try to find Open Source alternatives, or if written in-house, consider porting.
I hope this helps you a tiny bit. Best of luck!
One way ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Whatever you chose professional training and a support deal with the distro manufacturer.
low cost office (Score:5, Funny)
How about (IBM/LOTUS) SmartSuite? (Score:3, Interesting)
Good way to show reduction of costs... (Score:5, Funny)
unfortunately .. you dont (Score:3, Informative)
As an experiment some of our more computer literate employees switched to Linux - but in the end had to switch back due to a plethora of small but annoying problems.
These included opening files sent via email
A mid-sized company with around 50 people?!?! (Score:4, Informative)
First, evaluate the alternatives. What applications can be replaced with Linux equivalents and which can't. For the ones that can't, would it be cost-effective to consider limited licensing for those apps and running them from a Windows terminal service with Citrix Metaframe installed? Or would it be cheaper to by VMWare licenses for those users who absolutely have to run some esoteric Windows app.
When the alternatives have been considered, propose a pilot targetting a limited group of users to see whether the can continue their normal work routine on the new platform.
These are all starting points. The tough one is what to do about apps that only exist on Windows and are critical to the job the person is doing.
-David
Simplify the task bar, menus, desktop (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a small change to the way KDE and Gnome look, but I think it's an important change: the typical Gnome taskbar along the bottom is three times as big as Windows users are used to, and is cluttered with a bunch of useless toys. Get rid of everything except the buttons that indicate which programs are running, and of course the button that users think of as the "start" button.
The default menus in most distros are also way too extensive. They tend to have the same thing several times in several places. Pick the dozon or so programs your users generally need and put them in the main "start" menu. Hide the rest in a single "advanced" menu, or even get rid of the menu items altogether.
Put icons for the most important programs right on the desktop: Spreadsheet, Word Processor (not "Text Document" like Open Office says), etc.
By default, don't allow multiple desktops. Users who are advanced enough to understand the concept will know to ask you for it.
Finally, sit and watch users play with the system. Note any place that they frown and get confused. Don't believe self-deprecatory excuses that they just don't know what they're doing and they're sure the system is fine: if they don't know how to do something it's the systems' fault for not being easy enough.
Minesweeper and Freecell (Score:5, Funny)
Windows=Linux (Score:3, Informative)
I'm slowly migrating to Linux at my company. So far it's going pretty well. We had to add an extra box to everyone's desk in the call center due to [Non-Disclosure Agreement], so I spent $1000 for some old P233MMX w/64MB RAM, slapped Linux on them, and the users went to town.
After a couple of months with Linux in production I have to say that it's going well. Help desk calls are waaaaay down and users are happy. I've said this before, but here goes: users don't remember the last time they rebooted the Linux box, but sure remember the last time they rebooted Windows.
We're replacing Windows boxes right now by attrition, but plan to replace them all by the end of the year - OS, not hardware.
Since Office runs on Linux now it's at least theoretically possible to standardize on Open Office or something internally and have a single box with a single MS Office license converting both incoming and outgoing attachments to and from MS office format. When an open-source conversion utility comes out, you'll probably be able to abandon MS Office altogether but keep compatability with others.
Be aware that Citrix ain't really that cheap a solution. You'll pay through the nose for licenses (application licenses for each connectd user, terminal server client access licenses for each connection, citrix licenses for each user, and connection licenses for each computer). You have to get licenses for client machines (unless they're Windows 2k or XP which have their own) that connect to a Citrix server, which defeats the financial purpose of replacing Windows with Linux.
a link: win2k and linux for office environments (Score:3, Informative)
Here is a quote:
Still, in my opinion, the great majority of end-users is still too dumb and this will cause you greater troubles, at least with all the time you will waste trying to explain'em that No, You Can'T Have A Dancing Lady On Your Desktop, And Even If You Were In A Windows Environment You Just Cannot Install It And Later Complain Because You Got a Virus!
However, have fun.Our Company has Done it. (Score:3, Interesting)
Disclosure: we are an engineering company, so we have been doing some things on UNIX for a long time.
Having said that, our current mix is around 85% non-MS and 15% MS. For our engineering tasks, we use software that never did come from MS (although it was supported on the Windows platform, even though we never used it on Windows). For most of our "office" tasks, we use StarOffice 5.2 and will be moving to 6.0. All of this is now running on Linux based PCs.
The 15% MS portion is mainly for certain cases where we must use the same tool as our customer, and the customer want's to use MS tools (mostly spec. and project management related).
All-in-all, it works pretty well, and it definitely shaves $$ off your overhead costs, not to mention reduced audit worries.
Start using standard file formats (Score:4, Insightful)
A lot of it just comes down to file formats. If you can't switch now, then at least you can make it easier to switch later: have your users start saving their stuff to standardized formats instead of closed proprietary lock-in formats. Yes, OpenOffice can read MS Word files, but just about everything can read RTF, and RTF has all the functionality needed, 99% (subjective) of the time.
Once you get out of needing dead-end tools, you'll be in a better position to be able to use whatever you want to.
Start doing it now, even if you don't ever intend to break free of MS. Standard files might even be more compatable with future MS products than today's lock-in formats will be.
Here is some advice from someone actively doing it (Score:3, Informative)
Ask what doesn't work (Score:3, Interesting)
I would install as many alternatives as you can, and make them the default. Open a doc in staroffice, and things should work. You can get at word, but not without going through a wrapper that requires you to email what staroffice cannot do that you need. Users will try to use staroffice where they can, where it fails they will tell you what doesn't work.
Or to save even more money, just start migrating people to linux/kde/koffice, after verifying that their applications will work.
Remember, you are a company, you have work to get done. Find out what tasks you really need to do, and then find a linux program to do it. For those who only use a few features of Word this is easy, koffice is there already. For those who need something complex, you might need wine, or devolpe your own solution.
Do not forget to do some practice runs. Take your backups, restore them to a equivelent systems, and convert that system to linux with the old data, and run some fake transactions. (be careful not to get this data into the real world). And don't convert anyone before a major deadline. Accounting gets converted right after payday, and nowhere near april 15th!
You don't have a hurry now, if the BSA does come knocking, or Microsoft does start demanding unreasonable fees, you have a plan in place to convert quickly, otherwise just convert as an open source alteranative is just as good as the windows equivelent. (Note, I said just as good for your pruposes, and Not as good. If you never use some feature, then there is no reason to wait for it)
two cents (Score:3, Informative)
For word processing I like AbiWord. The 1.0.1 version has just been released and it works quite well. It doesn't have *every* feature of word, no sane program would, but it does have all the features needed for general word processing.
I don't have much use for spreadsheets, but Gnumeric and kspread have worked fine for me. People have also mentioned that OpenOffice/StarOffice has a good spreadsheet.
For reading email there's Evolution, Netscape or Mozilla Messenger, and various others.
For database, use MySQL or PostgreSQL as the backend instead of access. Use HTML as a frontend so you can access it from any system, even Windows.
For webmail, take a look at squirrelmail. There are many other imap/pop/mtas that you can choose from to create your mail server. Of course, you'll replace IIS with Apache
For viruses you'll need to use the Unix honor system. su to root, choose a file at random then delete it, then email everyone in your address book with similar instructions. To mimic the crashes you can try turning off the power when you're in the middle of something very important.
I'm not migrating. (Score:3, Funny)
Migrating from Windows to Linux (Score:3, Informative)
Well, you must have realistic goals like: Reduce software costs, provide a stable environment, reduce support costs etc...
If you want to use Linux as the OS, you may get some opposition from the Windows fans. So, migrate using a gradual approach.
After you do all these things... the stability and usability of the user and server software should be evident and the switch to Linux as the OS should be fairly painless as there are Linux equivalents to the programs they've been running on the old Windows installations. You may find you have made some Linux fans in the office too!
The change is easy if you have the right catalyst (Score:4, Interesting)
he then asked me if there was another solution, and I wipped out my Redhat 7.3 laptop with open office..
Guess what... we're gonna switch to NON-MS.. all thanks to the BSA.
so basically... Use Microsoft's and the BSA's tactics to your advantage... push the fear,loathing and threats they are pushing... keep mentioning the 100,000 dollar fine PER incident. that the companies sensitive data will be accessable by strangers during the BSA visit, and the business disruption and public notification by the BSA that XYZ company STEALS.
works great..... Thanks Microsoft and the BSA for the BEST tools a Linux Advocate could ever want.
12-step program for a Microsoft-free shop (Score:5, Informative)
It's a very thorough overview of all the major steps (technical, mental, emotional, you name it) that an office must pass through in order to successfully dump Microsoft. It'll be very helpful to your cause.
Not as bad as it sounds (Score:5, Informative)
- Bring the users into the decision, not only what software to use but why.
- 3rd party training for software other than MS Office is available, even if not listed in their course lists. Ask. Our local Productivity Point has personnel qualified to teach the Lotus software and has complete course materials, they just don't list it in their offerings because there's so little demand. They were delighted to teach the courses for our users, at very reasonable cost.
- Having a backup process leads to user comfort. We'll still have four people with MS Office on their PCs, mostly administrative assistants and a lead customer service person. Their primary purpose is to provide access to documents which don't get converted by the time we remove Office from everyone else's PCs and to convert documents from outside the company which for one reason or another won't convert to Lotus cleanly using the Lotus software. This is a real benefit to our users and we wouldn't have gotten their buy-in without being able to assure them that we weren't abandoning their old documents.
- Don't rush the process. We started out by giving our users 60 days to convert their old documents to Lotus. We'll end up giving them an additional 30 days on a case-by-case basis. We installed Lotus on user's PCs in addition to MS Office so they could get used to the new software gradually. Once a user has been to training we made it clear that all new documents were expected to be in Lotus format. They have both the incentive and the training to make the change and it is working out very well. On the other hand, there has to be a due date or nothing will get done!
Our users initially resisted changing and why not? Learning new software, even as simple a change as from MS Word to Lotus Word Pro, is intimidating to someone who views computers as a tool rather than a way of life. We overcame their resistance by putting the facts before them: the lifecycle cost of MS Office over the next three years vs. the lifecycle costs (including training!) of switching to Lotus, Corel, etc. The savings were really very dramatic, particularly for a company like us which tends to keep using old software for much longer than the vendor would really like. Since we're a pretty open company anyway and take pains to not only present financial information to everyone but teach them how to interpret it as well, this had an impact. When you put it like, "we can spend the money on MS Office software and upgrade desktop PCs every five years, or switch to an alternative and keep to our three-year cycle", everyone had the same answer. They *like* getting new PCs every three years. The admin assistants *like* using shiny new Thinkpads which they can take to meetings and access information or take minutes with wireless connections to the LAN, etc. All of the productivity and convenience improvements we've made over the past five years took capital to implement, capital which in no small part would have gone into simply maintaining the software they already had. They didn't want to do that.
Once the decision was made we immediately chose a dozen key users and sent them off to a special Lotus SmartSuite class we had developed with our local Productivity Point franchise. A combination of the Introductory and Intermediate classes, it assumed that everyone knew how to use a mouse, access pop-up menus, etc. and concentrated on the differences between MS Word and Lotus WordPro, Excel vs. 1-2-3, and Powerpoint vs. Harvard Graphics. The class lasted three days and we had a very enthusiastic (and very relieved!) team when they got back, confident that they knew what they were doing and how to do it. They've been evangelists to the rest of the organization to the point where people were competing to get into the next class! A month into the process, people were competing to see who could be more 'MS Office free' and new documents were all being generated using the Lotus software. That was a month before the deadline! Now when someone from outside the company sends us a Word document (non of which, by the way, we've had the least trouble converting to Lotus,) people grumble about how 'backward' other companies are. Those who have regular contact with MS Office users outside the company are now evangelizing them and rumor has it that at least a couple of our business partners, faced with the same costs we were facing, are considering the same move away from MS Office.
The key is not that the Lotus software is so good but rather that it is good enough and *much* less expensive (and a key to that is that we buy IBM notebooks and desktop PCs, mostly because of their terrific technical support, and SmartSuite comes free with them. A real savings, that!)
Difficulties in our project:
- Some MS Office documents do not convert very well to Lotus. Most Word and Excel documents do (in the case of Excel, usually needing at least some clean-up by hand,) and Powerpoint presentations don't convert nicely at all. Don't even think about converting MS Access to Approach (but then, think about it: do you really trust anything more complex than a grocery list to Access? If its really important, shouldn't it have a real database behind it?)
- Some people just don't like change. We've got a couple. Peer pressure works most of the time but we have one granite boulder who not only isn't going to change, is senior enough that it would take tippy-top management ordering him to before he would, and then he'd just sabotage it ("See? Told you so!") Not a real problem, though: he doesn't really use the computer for anything other than e-mail, anyway (and half the time he dictates replies to e-mail to his admin assistant.) His assistant is very happy with Lotus and buffers between him and the rest of the company, so it works out.
Good luck!
Why do anything? (Score:4, Informative)
What about the option no one seems to consider? Stick with what you have right now. It works today...it will still work tomorrow. Get out of the "gotta have the latest" mindset.
For most of what business users do, using software that is a year or two or five old is just fine.
Re:Those Specialized apps will bite ya.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:New MAC Server (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The other way around (Score:3, Interesting)
Before you go all crazy, at least try a Mac running OS X, first. If you like it enough, you'll have the best of both worlds: Soft chewy desktop supported by a name-brand computer maker, with a crunchy Unix backbone.
You may never have considered a Mac before, but you might like it now--it's worth at least a look.
Re:The other way around (Score:5, Interesting)
For over a year or so I'm thinking of moving from Linux to windows. Why? Because of the stability and usability. Windows 2000 and XP appear to be very stable and no one can deny that they are lightyears ahead of anything on linux when it comes to desktop comfort.
For the last couple of months I've noticed an increasing amount of posts on Slashdot from people subtly promoting Microsoft and putting down Linux. They say just the right things to make sure their posts don't get modded down, but essentially try to persuade people to think the types of things Microsoft wants them to think.
Here's a very interesting article [guardian.co.uk] from the UK Guardian about corporations using fake people on newsgroups and email forums to rubbish their opponents. They use companies who promise to be very discrete and do it in such a way that it is very difficult to link the individuals back to the company concerned. The article cites the case of this type of tactics being used by Monsanto. Is it really so difficult to believe that Microsoft might pay one of these companies to post anti-Linux comments on sites like Slashdot? Read the article.
Parent
Re:The other way around (Score:3, Insightful)
Because of the stability and usability. Windows 2000 and XP appear to be very stable and no one can deny that they are lightyears ahead of anything on linux when it comes to desktop comfort.
This is only your personal preference. I use both KDE and windows daily, and I prefer having the multiple desktops and clean GUI of KDE. Because I know how to use Linux (translate: know what I want to do), I find the KDE interface easier to use. I also find it more aesthetically pleasing - how many Windows boxes have active backgrounds?
I just hate it when I encounter yet another website that doesn't load using Konqueror, mozilla, opera... you fill in the blanks. I just hate it that I can't play movies on my linux machine without five days of intensive configuration battles.The main problem I've found with Linux is that it is a chore to configure, but once you've got it configured correctly, nothing breaks. Contrast this with Windows, where botched application installation can break pieces throughout the entire system. Correcting a bad install in Linux may involve little more than editing a text file; in Windows, you may have to reinstall the OS, reregister with Microsoft, and reinstall every application that you use. I've spent countless hours doing this, and even though I hate vi and editing text files, I have to admit that I prefer the Linux/UNIX method of editing a few lines to the 8+ hour complete system reinstalls I have to do with Windows.
Someone once said there's no such thing as a free lunch. With Linux, it's reliable, and it's free, but if you want to play movies, you may have to spend a substantial amount of time downloading and configuring the application, and then reading the documentation, fixing bugs, and recompiling. With Windows, you pay for a system which basically takes all of these things out of your way, but at great risk; if the software is buggy, or the install fails, it could break the entire system. There is simply no recourse for a botched install - if you're lucky, you might get away with reinstalling only the application(s) affected. If not, you could end up reinstalling the entire OS.
And I haven't even begun to talk about virus/security issues. If you value your data, Linux might be your only option (either that or a constant backup plan...)
When one thinks about the system as a whole, Windows is only suitable for people who want to use the PC as an entertainment device - people who rely on the integrity of their data and the security of their computer systems should not run Windows. Use Windows for games - use Linux for serious computing.