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The post you replied to made no mention of the average user customizing that stuff. He said large businesses. Most large businesses put their own images on computers with specific combinations of software and modify/skin commercial software when applicable frequently write their own tools to do things like migrate users to a new computer without losing personal data or deploy images and software. A build of open office or any other OSS app compiled with their preferred flags to configure or their preferred skin/theme on an app is well within the realm of reality at these places.

For example, years ago when I worked for Best Buy, the techs used a fairly standard trouble ticket and inventory app (I'll be damned if I can remember the name), but it was rebranded as "STAR" by best buy and integrated with the POS software to a certain extent. I later worked at Capital One where they used the exact same application by it's normal name, but highly modified the interface to their needs (which Best Buy also almost surely did). We had a scripted tool built around some user migration tools MS provides to move user data from one computer to another. At the place I work now we use a modified Bugzilla and we're far from a large company. And as already mentioned, pretty much every large company has their own custom images for computers with software packages and versions that have been tested and verified to work together.

That's only true of your propriety software does what the open source software could potentially do.

The whole kernel hacking grandma is a misnomer when it comes to company's, even small ones, mainly because they either have access to technical experience, or they aren't getting even close to the most out of their IT systems (FOSS or Proprietary).

You have small organisations that tend to use stuff "out of the box", which basically means they don't. nor have the expertise to, use the more useful features within the software they already own. Things like Windows Update Server, Remote Installation Services, Active Directory, Print Servers, IIS, it all gets ignored, at best you might have a file server and a load of desktops. So in that instance they would benefit from some IT expertise regardless of whether they are using FOSS or not *and* if they need to grab someone with IT experience anyway then they could replace windows with an open OS and see many benefits, without modifying a single piece of code.

These small organisations wouldn't even consider looking at bespoke proprietary software, and the normal COTS products wont be perfect for them, so its not like they lose anything moving to OSS, and they can gain rather a huge amount, not to mention the fact that many small (as in cheap enough for SME's) software packages from less well known vendors are not exactly very good to begin with, all those crappy PHP CMS's et al you see in the OSS world also exist in proprietary land, except there you need to pay for them, and you cant fix them yourself.

So how do you get the benefits of a working complete, comprehensive secure and stable system, whilst still having a large amount of choice *and* the ability to get modifications made if you wish (and at a more reasonable price than having something custom made/faster than having a vendor provide a patch)? Easy use OSS software. It gives choice, doesn't stop you using proprietary software where it is best, doesn't lock you in and best of all doesn't inhibit growth due to licensing costs, and scalability issues.

If you do switch, don't do it everywhere at once if you don't want to (don't do some bits at all if you prefer), a gradual transition is possible, and probably easier. That leaves you with a choice. Oh and get someone to do it for you or with you, (that goes for an OSS or a MS based system, IT systems can make such a huge difference to a company that it is worthwhile contacting your local IT people, or even better a local college and trying to get someone to help you out. Any small business that goes down the 100% MS route will find itself without any *viable* options at all a short way down the road.

Having said all the above I should point out that I would find it extremely difficult to put myself into a non IT literate company owners shoes and figure out what I would see as best, I would guess choice stability, reliability, scalability, security etc.. would be good, but sometimes you just want to be able to point out you spent X thousands on a new IT system over lunch, and make your friends jealous.

Why don't you just grow a backbone and ask them to install the ODF plugin for office and send you an ODF.