Q. The new licensing policy of Microsoft is so expensive that I could afford a full time System administrator for the same price. I would like to switch all my PC and desktop application to Linux. Is it possible ? Is it reasonable ?
A. Yes it is possible and resaonable. Also licenses are not required for each workstation.
Q. Can I read Word document with Linux ? ......
A. Yes, there are several applications that can read Word Documents. Two such free programs are Abiword (lightweight) and OpenOffice. OpenOffice also contains a spreadsheet, word processor, impress (compatible with power point), and a few others. Of course other solutions available on Linux workstations is to run Microsoft Office in "wine" (a free windows emulator), or by using crossoffice, or by using VMWare (which provides a virtual machine that you install and run MS Windows in).
Basically you have several choices:
Using an equivalent application native to Linux if available.
Using the real application under an emulator (dos emulator, windows emulator)
Using the real application under the crossover office emulator (mostly for MS Office support)
Using the real application on it's native OS and access through VNC (works just like Norton PC Anywhere - set up a dedicated machine to run that application for the network, of course one person at a time can access and control it).
Using the real application on it's native OS and access through NT's Terminal Server (set up an NT terminal server on the network and share that program through terminal server - Linux clients can access using rdesktop (Linux terminal server client)).
Using the real application on it's native OS and access through VMWare (VMWare provides a "virtual machine" that you install Windows to (on the Linux client) VMWare shows up as a window on your desktop and can be made full-screen. -- this method means you need a license for Windows and the application).
Also keep in mind that any Unix/Linux application is, by nature, accessible remotely. By this, I mean that you do not need any special "desktop sharing" program so you can access your "desktop". Basically you can have a certain server set up to be the "accounting server". All the data is stored on that system, and all the backups happen there. Then the accounting staff would run the accounting application from the server which displays on their local workstation desktop. All the work they do in the accounting software is stored on that server. Also no need to "install" the accounting software on each workstation due to the fact that they are really running it on the "accounting server" and only displaying it locally. The same holds true for both graphical and non-graphical applications.
Q. "Can I use Linux for my day to day tasks ?"
A. Yes, you have many programs available ranging from email, to word processing, spreadsheets, internet browsers (mozilla, netscape, konquerer, lynx, ...), schedulars that run tasks at specified times.
You can achieve other timesaving benefits by changing some of your work methods and begin using some of the available tools in Linux. Unix/Linux is great at working with text data and text streams. With this you can automate web page updates, download web pages and reformat or pull out specific information, etc, etc. You can send automated emails to yourself or others. Tools such as grep, sort, head, tail, sed, awk, strings, file, and more can do lots of tasks.
Also to note is the availability of various servers in Linux that you don't need licenses for, such as (usually several to choose from in each category): web servers, ftp, SQL, windows share servers (smb/samba/netbios), nfs, tftp, print servers, email servers, and more.
Also you have a lot of programming languages available to you: C, C++, perl, php, sql, python, fortran, pascal, cobol, shell script, expect, and more
Q. How about security under Linux, viruses, patches ? Is it better or worse than Microsoft?
A. Due to the nature of Unix/Linux, viruses don't have much affect at all. Patches or Errata become available at various times depending on which Linux distribution you are using. In my opinion it is safer from viruses than Windows.
Q. If I buy a Linux system who will be responsible for the support ?
A. Certain Linux distributions will sell support contracts for Linux systems. Notable Red Hat will support Linux systems under a support contract.
Tasks to investigate:
running a complete Linux backend (OpenLDAP + Samba) and demonstrating
how customers can migrate off their existing NT4 infrastructure onto
Linux while still maintaining Windows desktops
demonstrating a Linux-based alternative to a generic office worker
desktop environment, and how it can fit into either an existing NT4/W2K
domain environment, or into the environment in the previous step
demonstrating Linux+FreeS/WAN as an affordable alternative to
commercial VPN-over-WLAN solutions, pptp, vpn
demonstrating deployment and administration ease using Kickstart,
centralized user management through OpenLDAP, distributed system
maintenance using eg. OpenView, patch management using AutoRPM
Also keep in mind that several people can log into one Linux workstation at one time (graphical or text) and switch between each of their sessions, screen saver passwords can be used.