I'm sure my experience with platform-dependent apps as an impediment to moving entirely to Linux is not unique. I have spent plenty of time playing with Linux at home, but have always had to deal with platform-specific needs of employers, etc., so I have never been able to completely immerse myself in Linux. I'd still like to use Linux as my primary platform, but I have to deal with having to run quite specific apps in different environments. So, I'm looking to begin a discussion about how to set-up a home environment that is as much Linux-based as is possible while providing for the realities of platform-specific requirements. Of course, this is as much a discussion of applications as it is about platforms. I have 3 systems and 1 laptop at home, all of which are Pentium IIIs, one as fast as 800MHz (imagine that!), that are available for use in my home network. I must be able to run Internet Explorer 6.x (required for several web-enabled apps I must use on a regular basis), Word, and PowerPoint. My wife has a Pentium III laptop that must run XP because of her work, but it would be nice to have her access a linux file server for backup and such. (She also likes Linux games!) Also, I have a couple of laser printers and an ink jet that I would rather hang off of one print server. With an eye toward a home network that must include Microsoft and access to Macs at work, here are some questions to start this discussion off: Q1 - OpenOffice versus MS Office: I will need to be reading/editing/creating Word and Powerpoint files (as most of the world do). I will be getting files to edit, and be creating others from scratch. I teach, so the results are intended for display on an ActiveBoard with the expectation of touching the board (or clicking from the console) to follow a link embedded in a powerpoint slide yielding a movie clip, or web page, or whatever. I'm told I have control over the department's files, but not to the extent of choosing something other than MS, so I'd like to use OpenOffice as my primary environment and then generate MS files for use at the school. I assume OpenOffice can do what PowerPoint can do (within reason), but I can't afford the time to "fix" generated MS Office files to work in a Mac or XP environment. Are the any OpenOffice users out there that can comment on this? Q2 - Heterogeneous access: I want to be able to access any file created in any of the three environments. I'd like to move files between the Macs at work and one or more of my machines at home without using Email (I want to avoid any constraints like size limitations on attachments). I want to be able to pull and push those files to whatever platform is needed for whatever needs to be done with them. I assume VNC is available on the Mac, and that I would probably need to run SAMBA, but what are the options these days? I suppose I could set up a FTP server... I'd also like to drop the static IP because of cost, and have already moved the web site to a commercial provider... Q3 - Email: Of primary concern is moving existing email from the MS environment (laptop) to Linux. I am trying to find a way to export all of my email from Mozilla 1.6 to a file or files that can then be moved to a Linux box and imported/read by a mail reader there, but I can't seem to find a way to do this... There is no export function in Mozilla 1.6 and the mail files are not consistently ASCII (at least from what I've seen). I have even tried to use other mailers' ability to import from their competitors, in the hopes that one of them can do the export, but I have had no luck with any of them knowing about Mozilla. Does anyone know of a way to get email out of Mozilla into an ASCII file-based structure (or something equally vanilla) that can be read by a standard Linux reader? Beyond that specific issue, what would be the best way to handle email? Right now I limit myself to using one platform and POP only from it. This is because I can travel with the laptop and not all the servers I access allow IMAP. I retrieve mail from 7 different accounts and forwarding is not allowed (nor do I want to have to keep track of that). I don't mind having to do this, but I'm wondering about other options... Thanks for your sage advice! Steve