…whole life

There is an interesting thread on SlashDot about moving from Microsoft to Linux Migrating Your Office from Windows to Linux? I would love to see our school go all Linux, but the transition must be so painful. It could be that a school with few funds, and little technology could easily make the change. We are at a place where we can start really adopting technology, but it almost seems like a point of no return into M$ territory. Can we make a shift now, before people get too used to Windows and MS Office? What about all our Access databases for student management? We are using GIMP for windows as the site wide image editing tool, and are planning to move to non-M$ browsers (Opera) and email clients (Eudora?) for security reasons. Can we start moving to Open Office too? Part of my plan is to integrate all of our different databases into one MySQL or some other open source SQL database. When that happens, maybe we can shed the MS Access shackles that hold us to Windows. Problem: just shelled out $$$ for 70 licenses for Windows 2000 Pro and 5 Servers.