[arch-general] Arch Linux Law Office? (Was: Re: go-openoffice not opening templates - anybody else?)

[David C. Rankin]

Vincent Van Houtte wrote:
> 2009/12/13 Logan Rathbone <poprocks at gmail.com>
> 
>> David, are you running (Arch) Linux in your law office?  If so, could
>> you describe your experiences?  What do you use for time and billing<lrathbon at uwo.ca>
>>
> 
> I'm also running an entire law office on linux. We chose Debian Linux,
> because the person who is responsible for our server and network is an
> official debian-developer.
> 
> I'm myself responsible for making a PHP-interface to all the different
> services we are running. It is my goal to have all of these working together
> in my PHP-driven intranet-site:
> - NFS for storing all our documents, templates etc. (*)
> - dovecot for our IMAP-mail (***)
> - asterisk for our telephones (*)
> - LDAP for our addressbooks (* - Read only)
> - davical for our calendars (* - Read only)
> - templating over PHP for our standardized documents (**)
> - billing and time management (***)
> 
> * = done
> ** = not completely working
> *** = planned feature
> 
> Any of the features that is not working in my PHP-driven frontend, can be
> done with standalone applications (file manager, openoffice, evolution) or
> webbased applications (contagged, roundcube webmail etc.). That's the whole
> purpose of my system: tailored to fit our needs and if it should fail, we're
> not tied to this app, because it is built around open standards.
> 
> It is a lot of work, but since a month or two it is really getting usable
> and saving us time.
> 
> We have an accountant that does all the billing for us, so I don't have any
> recommendations on that. Bambooinvoice looks good. Maybe I could give it a
> try...
> 
> HTH
> 

Thank you Vincent.

	I'd be willing to wager that less than 1% of the law office environments run on Linux (desktop). I'm sure there are many Linux servers out there humming away in support of the profession, but most attorneys wouldn't know what the backend is anyway. Believe it or not, our Federal Government has done a good job with a Linux backend for a good part of the CM/ECF electronic filing system for the Federal District Court system. It will be very interesting to watch the market share Linux can garner over the next 10 years as not only the server infrastructure, but on the desktop as well.

	One Achilles' heel has always been hardware support. Take for example the total FU AMD did to its Linux customers last March. I'm glad there wasn't a big push on for Linux acceptance at that time, because one instance like that during a corporate transition and it could set the effort back 5 years. Thanks for your info and I will be very interested to see what comes in this new decade... 

-- 
David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.
Rankin Law Firm, PLLC
510 Ochiltree Street
Nacogdoches, Texas 75961
Telephone: (936) 715-9333
Facsimile: (936) 715-9339
www.rankinlawfirm.com