It is a fact that this company will need to run Windows on the workstations to support SolidWorks, QuickBooks, and probably some other applications, and I believe at least one server will need to be Windows to be the QuickBooks server, but I'm not sure on that.
With that in mind, is the cost savings in licenses worth it to introduce Linux servers, workstations, and router/firewalls (routers/firewalls will probably be linux either way really) into the environment? I'll be the person managing it all, and I do have a pretty good understanding of Linux, but I'm far from an expert, especially when it comes to a real world network in a business environment.
To start off with a few servers could be Linux probably, but the number will grow rapidly (and if it doesn't then this question doesn't really matter).
What are your thoughts?