Linux Mint

[gpg]

Has anyone convinced a optometrist business or dental office or chiropractic office to switch their Windows systems to Linux Mint? Much of the systems these smaller health providers use are web based systems so why use Windows? There is some special equipment that still needs Windows, because of drivers but very few in each office. Just checking if anyone has had success with convincing a small health providers to make the switch.

Thanks,
GPG

 

[frase]

I have heard of an app for linux called WinBoat, kinda like a VM where one can run windows apps within a Linux OS environment.
Though unsure if this would be applicable in the environment your client is in.

 

[britechguy]

so why use Windows?

Easy, because "everyone" knows it and how to use it.

Changing from one OS to another is absolutely, positively a non-trivial undertaking. And those who've done it, or helped anyone through doing it, knows that to the core of their being.

People have no idea how much knowledge of Windows (or MacOS, or whatever OS they may have been using for years/decades) which makes doing so many things "almost like breathing" and where you don't think about "the how" at all. Pulling that knowledge base out from under an office is always disruptive, very disruptive.

 

[trevm999]

Easy, because "everyone" knows it and how to use it.

Changing from one OS to another is absolutely, positively a non-trivial undertaking. And those who've done it, or helped anyone through doing it, knows that to the core of their being.

People have no idea how much knowledge of Windows (or MacOS, or whatever OS they may have been using for years/decades) which makes doing so many things "almost like breathing" and where you don't think about "the how" at all. Pulling that knowledge base out from under an office is always disruptive, very disruptive.

I'd say that it's less like "everyone" knows Windows now. With Chromebooks in school, and phones having replaced phones with those entering the workforce, many people don't even have a clue how to use a filesystem. However, that can actually make the problem worse. With "the old guard" being the ones with the most clue how to use the computer, swapping out the OS will likely eliminate any comfort with the computer they have, and now the whole organization is helpless.

Yes, if all they use it the brower then there's not much difference. But it's unlikely that's truely the only thing. The person who invested 20 years into Windows and has learned how to open task manager is now not the force killing whiz in the office. There is an extra cost with this kind of change, and for a small office it probably isn't worth it. It's when you need the actual $ cost of scaling up your workforce to be less per employee when you might explore that kind of thing. (And likely very early in a company's life)

 

[britechguy]

I'd say that it's less like "everyone" knows Windows now. With Chromebooks in school, and phones having replaced phones with those entering the workforce, many people don't even have a clue how to use a filesystem. However, that can actually make the problem worse. With "the old guard" being the ones with the most clue how to use the computer,

I'd say you're right, and I have been living with the problem this poses with some of my school-aged blind clients who I'm now having to train on JAWS, because it's the granddaddy of all screen readers and is a Windows only application.

Many of them have only used ChromeOS and ChromeVox, which is a major, major, major impediment to being employable out there in the real world as it exists, today, and is likely to remain for decades to come.

Those who have predicted the inevitable rise of the Linux desktop have been dead wrong. It hasn't happened, and it's not gonna happen. The same is true of those who devoutly wish for the decline and fall of Windows.

The embedded knowledge base for Windows is astronomically huge where it counts: business settings and college settings. It's self-perpetuating, and will remain so for a very long time. I'll be long in the grave before Windows disappears, if it ever does.

 

[Sky-Knight]

It's not about the OS, it's about the applications and the support ecosystem for them.

If you roll with Linux Mint, and the hardware vendor for those machines won't support it, what do you do when the hardware misbehaves? How does the business find a new support vendor when they're upset with you, or you got hit by a bus?

These decisions are not made because tech is good, they are made because of the ecosystem that surrounds the use case. In this circumstance you wouldn't be comparing Windows to Linux, you'd be comparing it to OSX, because that's the only other OS on the market that has a support ecosystem you can rely on to operate a business.