Hi all,

I'm a newbie systems administrator, so any advice would be great. I would like to setup ubuntu 8.04 lts in a small office of consulting in management (around 50 workstations) instead of Windows XP. I would install MS Office 2007 via WINE (*). It would be a fresh installation, so the migration would be less of a pain.

The new setup would also include a small server as document repository and a backup server by now. Later, I would install another goodies like a IM server, a document management solution, and whatnot collaborative tool.

What do you advice in this scenario? Do you think is viable? Should I try to convince my managers this is a good idea? I consider myself as a fair experienced user in both systems, and I'm the only guy in charge of everything. I need to cut costs down, and I think that antivirus and antimalware software are a waste of money and time. Is this good idea?, or should I resign and try to lock down the Windows systems and install AV software? Is there anything else in this setup I'm not foreseeing?

(*) The only catch in my test machine until now had been that Office SmartArt doesn't work properly, the rest of Office 2007 may seem ok.