Network Computingwww.networkcomputing.com

As for vendors' various pricing models, they're provided to help us avoid sticker shock--a state that too many buyers enter when they see real prices and haven't done the necessary ROI calculations.

Let me also address the issue of open source being free. I would suggest doing a life-cycle cost analysis before buying into the "free" theory. The old adage, "There's no such thing as a free lunch," still stands; nothing is free.

Alexander J. Polack
Sr. Engr. Specialist; The Aerospace Corp.
Alexander.J.Polack@Aero.org

Duke Walls
CTO; Ellipsis...
dukew@pacbell.net

I have tried various distros and couldn't get any of them to see our Windows NT and 2000 shares and servers. Editing all those darned config text files was way too confusing for an old fossil like me!

I am hoping that Xandros and maybe one or two other Linux distros might give me something I could demo on some older PCs and hopefully start weaning my company off the Micro$oft tyranny. Any recommendations?

Barry Jones
Senior analyst; Gametime
BarryJ@gametime.com

Lori MacVittie replies: Mandrake does an excellent job of dealing with a W2K/NT network. Point and click, just like Xandros. The problem is that you have to force it to not install the developer kernel (with all the debug stuff in it) or it will periodically hang for a few seconds. Other than that, it handles things like fonts (you can install Windows fonts directly from the Mandrake control center) and has "network neighborhood" type functionality out of the box.

There's also Lindows. I haven't tried it, but it appears to have the same basic functionality Xandros offers when interoperating with W2K.

Lycoris, another option, has been reviewed by many and is said to be a "desktop dream." SuSE also is often hailed as an excellent choice, but community support for SuSE is declining so I don't think I'd go that route.