Linux testing with office stuffs

Another week of testing has completed.  I have found success rate of 95%.  It was a fun-loving work for me.  Installation of Linux was not a rocket science, but make my office application work well, is some what similar to rocket science.  Thanks to Google and Ubuntu communities; helped a lot to do many changes.  

One of the major problem I still faces, using the Linux email client with cache mode.  I don't want to waste my disk space using this.  But there is no other client supports non-cache mode with Exchange server; except Microsoft technology.  To over-come this, I had to install Office applications for Linux.  But the response of Microsoft Outlook from Linux is very very slow than from Windows.  I think, Microsoft still hate Linux like anything.  All applications are fast running on this 1GB memory Core Duo system; except Microsoft stuffs. 

All my client servers are connecting via SOCKS.  I was worrying how to do this and found the tsocks is very good application to utilize.  Only one issue, every time when I have to establish a connection, I should execute the command "tsocks ssh @".   This is quite annoying.  I tried to install Putty for Linux.  But this doesn't help at all and the biggest trouble with Putty in Linux is, mouse never work on it.  It can only use to select a word, but you cannot paste it anywhere.  I found the annoying "tsocks ssh " in terminal is much much easier than using putty.  Tested VPN connection last week with ActiveKey and worked well.

Now, I am testing some off-work items.  Yes, all the chat clients for Linux.  Empathy and Pidgin works well with gtalk, Yahoo and MSN; but still facing problem with voice chat and video chat.  Empathy I had configured to work with Office Communicator.  It's a superb stuff.  I can use number of chat sessions in one window.  This is the major disadvantage with Office Communicator.  Yahoo voice and video chat is still a stumbling block for me.  Tried to configure Gyachi, but loads of dependencies.  When tried to update Glib, it says GTK needed.  When tried to update GTK, it says ATK needed.  When update ATK, it says CAIRO and Pango needed.  I found CAIRO, but Pango is still hiding somewhere.  The dependencies for Gyachi is going like an endless stuff.  I think, I have to try Kopete; but some forums says it is a bad client.  I can now use voice chat with gtalk only but no video chat with any of the client.  Tried to use meebo video chat, but my HP built-in webcam is showing as disabled.  I don't know why.  I think, it can't pickup proper driver.  May be I have to install it separately only for Meebo.  I need to dig on it.

Overall in 2 weeks testing, I gone a long distance and could achieve most success on all stuffs.  Now the major testing in IM clients are going on, especially for video and voice chat.  

For my very few windows stuffs of my official application, installed VirtualBox and configured Windows XP Professional SP3.  A comparison boot of Linux and Windows shown Linux is 50times faster than Windows on booting.  Within seconds booted my Linux, but Windows took minutes to load.  My experiment is still going on and Linux is rocking.