Since my public school district is still running on XP when MS is about to pull the plug on it next month, meaning that they need to get rid of the archaic OS somehow, and fast, what would the positives and negatives of migrating to CentOS or Debian Stable for free enterprise Linux options or migrating to RHEL or Ubuntu LTS + a paid support subscription from Canonical for paid enterprise Linux solutions be vs. just sticking to Windows and upgrading to Win7 or Win8.1 ultimately be?

I know the main positives of migrating to a Linux distro are that they wouldn't have to pay for any of the associated software, OS included, as with RHEL, the OS itself is free, you're just paying for the support, and in Ubuntu's case, the paid support subscription is completely optional but highly recommended for large-scale deployments, and as for CentOS or Debian Stable, you pay for neither the software nor the support, and they would also be able to reuse their old hardware in addition to getting new hardware, and the switch would also result in a new job opening.

The main negatives meanwhile are it would require a bit of effort to retrain the staff in Debian-based or Redhat-based operating systems, and to set up a whole new software infrastructure, and they may have to pay more upfront although it would cost them less in the long run to switch. As for hardware infrastructure, they need new wiring bad as their current wiring isn't sufficient enough for modern web access speeds, so they would need to rewire everything whether they switch to Linux or stick to Windows, and upgrading the servers would help too.

However the positives outweigh the negatives by a pretty big margin in the long run, in my opinion, but what's you guys' opinions on migrating from XP to CentOS, Debian Stable, RHEL, or Ubuntu LTS with the paid support option vs. keeping Windows and upgrading to Win7 or Win8.1, from an administrator POV?

the negatives would be people complaining about the desktop icons being different (even with upgrading to win-8).

also that their favorite piece of software isnt 100% the same on linux.
another big issue mite be if there are educational software that only run on windows (are there appropriate or better substitutions that run on linux)

if there are things like excel-macros they wont translate easily (or at all) to open-office.

without paid support you are sol with outages (although your department mite be knowledgeable enough to handle your own issues).



i think some of the staff would be able to adapt but many mite be daunted by the change (especially if they memorized clicking on these 2 bookmarks to check their email).

if windows is familiar territory then they mite approach gnu/linux with disdain (no matter how user-friendly it is.

i think this day-and-age the os doesnt matter much regardless of fone/tablet/pc as long as web pages render the same on them.

So if they were to pull the migration off, it would most likely be to RHEL or Ubuntu LTS with paid support, outta the four distros, however the most likely option would probably be upgrading to Win7 or Win8.1, not to say it isn't worth looking into other alternatives to XP, because it is, but still. As for browsers and e-Mail, it would be pretty sweet to see Firefox ESR and Thunderbird in use instead of IE and Outlook, even in Windows.

edit: ^ read too quickly. i thought you asked if it were me what would i do; therefore, snarky comment:

do you have a roster of software that the staff and students use on desktops (like time reporting/attendance/cad) and services that are used in the backend (like exchange/iis/peoplesoft payroll/bbm) ?

do you have linux experts on your it/is staff or are they all msce's ?

Well, they've used Windows for years, so most likely all MSCE.

then i think your prior point is rite on: most likely windows but mite still be worth checking into rhel/ubuntu lts paid support.

Coolios then.