[airspirit]

DAMN YOU I LIKE MY BARK AND STICKS!!!

Er, um ...

There are legal secure IM networks available for inhouse use, though these all have a licensing cost for the server. Nothing wrong there.

As for a predictable upgrade path, that is almost a non-issue in the major projects anymore since they all feed off one another. Upgrading on the right distro is a very simple process, only necessitating a reboot in the case of a kernel version change (which is a rare occurance in the workplace). This is one of the reasons I use Gentoo in-house, since I create the binaries on my box (customized to the meta-distro I've developed off of Gentoo in-house) and then feed from the server down to the workstations seamlessly and transparently. Once done, if there is a change in something like the GUI (only reason for user intervention at all), all you have to do is relog (as opposed to reboot) and you're done. Tech support is also greatly enhanced since I can slip into any machine on my network and make the needed change from my desk rather than hoofing it and inconveniencing the user. This is a particularly beautiful thing, since many of the managers here don't want to be interrupted even if their machine is spouting flames from the floppy drive.

As for security, this can be done very easily if you plan it from the beginning and is more than adequate unless you have a loser setting it up. I really don't understand your reasons there, and since I deal with a smaller and more simplistic network I'm probably not too qualified to argue the point. With that said, I have seen extremely hardened networks that run Linux servers and they are breach-free (like the example I gave above).

What I really wish, however, is perfect emulation of the Windows API and DirectX ... once these things happen, I suspect Windows in all flavors and forms will steadily go the way of the dodo. Unfortunately, I'm not too optimistic it ever will. Since those APIs are closed source, it will be damn near impossible to do a perfect or near-perfect emulation (though look at Samba ... I can always hope). I would love to be able to fire up all of my Windows games in Linux ... I'd never use Windows for anything ever again.