One day I hope to use a Solaris workstation for my work and that would mean I'd probably be using OpenOffice for my word documents. The documents from work that I've opened in the past looked almost right but some things would end up on the next page because the fonts weren't the same. Today I learned how to copy true type fonts from Windows (such as Arial and Times New Roman) to Linux. After installing the fonts I opened my document and it was nearly perfect! The only problems were missing Windings font (for some special characters I used), and I noticed some missing lines around "note boxes" I created. Someone told me that it is illegal to copy Windows fonts onto Linux. I found out that StarOffice, the commercial version of OpenOffice ($35 or $69?), comes with a bunch of standard Windows fonts, plus some extra features. Solaris comes with StarOffice so that's perfect. Their website says they are currently working on supporting Word 2007 documents. That's good because we just upgraded to it at work recently.

Another neat program I was reading about is Cross Over Server. This is a commercial version of Wine, the program that simulates Windows and lets you run programs like MS Office 2003 on Linux, Solaris and Mac. The server edition supports thin clients such as Sun Ray. It would be so neat to have a network of Sun Ray clients logging into a Solaris server running Star Office, Firefox, Thunderbird, and some Windows apps through Cross Over. Cross Over is quite affordable ($69 per user for the professional edition).

The other day I found an absolutely perfect terminal program for calling telnet BBS's (SyncTERM), which also runs on Solaris. A bunch of my other favorite programs run on both Linux and Solaris such as NetBeans IDE, Sun JDK 6, Sun Application Server 9, PostgreSQL, tsclient/rdesktop, OpenOffice/Star Office, Wine/Cross Over, etc... Even the BBS software I run has been ported to Linux, though it does not support running DOS door games under dosemu. However, I am considering switching to Synchronet and tweaking it to look and feel just like my Maximus board. I think the time is here, I am fully capable of switching to a Linux or Solaris environment for work and home, workstation and servers.

I'm nearing completion of my Solaris 10 book. It will soon be time to put it all into practice. My revised plan for my two servers:

Server #1 - BIND, Sun Directory Server, Collab.Net Enterprise Edition, NFS server, print server, Bacula server, Sun Ray server and Cross Over server.

Server #2 - Scalix, Centric CRM, JRoller, Synchronet BBS software & door games (switching from Maximus so it can run in a Linux container with support for DOS doors).

My present desktop computer might become a BBS computer if I decide not to switch to Synchronet. Otherwise I'm not sure what I'll do with it since I don't have a use for multiple workstations.

My laptop has two hard drives. I will upgrade Ubuntu on the first drive to the latest version (7.04) and install my copy of Windows Vista on the second drive. Hopefully I will be able to find Vista drivers for everything. The laptop will be my "desktop replacement", as it has been for the last year or so.

Later in the year I will buy a real Sun workstation with Solaris 10. I plan to live in Toronto this time next year and I want this to be my workstation for work. I'll keep my IBM laptop from work with Windows XP on it just in case I ever need Windows for something (like MS Office, IE or VB), and when I travel for work.