Running a business using free software

Introduction

• What my business does
• Some of these tools are for personal use as well, e.g. calendar sync

Why?

• Control over core business tools
• Have seen proprietary business tools disappear suddenly
• Rapid development
• Ability to fix bugs directly in some cases
• Self hosting
• Data protection, security and backups

Limitations

• Only discussing software used in my business, not clients
• Can't control what others use

Requirements

Most businesses need:

• Core operating system - Xubuntu
• Invoicing and credit control
• Customer and supplier database (CRM)
• Website - WordPress
• Word processing - LibreOffice
• Spreadsheets - LibreOffice
• Calendar/diary - Nextcloud + DAVx

Email

• Thunderbird - does most things, renders HTML emails without problems, Teams invites etc.
• (Neo)Mutt
• Evolution might be necessary if you have to work with Outlook calendars
• Dovecot for IMAP
• Postfix or Exim for SMTP
• SpamAssassin to manage junk mail - ideally reject at time of connection
• Used to run my own Postfix / Dovecot / SA setup
• Mythic Beasts now does most of the work for me - Sympl

Outstanding issues

• Still need Microsoft Office to open some documents - usually Word documents that have been perfectly laid out to fit on X pages, or spreadsheets with macros
• Scanner - Linux driver but not open source
• Label printer - Linux driver but not open source