Remote desktop vs. remote display

Remote desktop vs. remote display

How about QuickBooks or TurboTax or something like it?

My friend's (external) accountant takes care of that.

Or maybe a couple of games?

We're talking »office PC«, remember? Here in Germany, you get to deduct the cost of your office PC from the taxes you pay for your company, but if you do so the tax office doesn't like you to play games on such a computer. Hence, no games. (My friend is not a computer-game person, anyway.)

A lot of software is simply not available on Linux, a lot of hardware STILL doesn't work completely.

A lot of that software is software you may not really need (as dskoll has aptly demonstrated) if you're willing to think outside the box.

And for most categories of hardware there are specimens that are well-supported by Linux. Hence the problem reduces to one of getting the right hardware to begin with. Of course if you buy the el-cheapo-stuff-of-the-week and then expect it to work perfectly with Linux you may be in for a surprise every so often. And on the other hand, it isn't as if every piece of hardware worked perfectly with Windows all of the time, either.

Seriously, start a company and try to offer migration services.

It's funny, but the guys in the office next to ours (our sister company) are doing exactly that, among other things. AFAIK they're doing fine and I don't hear them complaining more than one would expect. I guess it helps if you're competent …