Hi All,
I'm the editor of a monthly community magazine which I inherited in Microsoft Publisher. I'm also fairly new to Linux. I'm on a mission to ditch everyting that's Microsoft branded - ever since Windows 10 started hijacking my laptop to install updates. I'm on a not very fast rural broadband connection, so a major update can take up to 8 to 10 hours. For some reason the Microsoft Monster always makes its presence known just after my copy deadline, during editing or before my print deadline.

My Linux Mint installation, on the other hand, is very polite. It never interferes with my life.

Microsoft rant over. It's on it's way out of my life. For the first time in my life I feel free!

Now, the question of the magazine which I currently edit in MS Publisher 2010 in a Windows 7 virtual machine. It's a bit graunchy and slow - my 64 bit hardware won't run 64 bit virtual machines. WINE isn't a good solution as MS Publisher doesn't run very well under WINE. It's rated as unstable and unusable for production by WineHQ. When the time comes to hand it on I, strictly should hand it over to the next incumbent in Publisher. However, I can see that there may be advantages in migrating to Scribus. Mostly that Scribus is available for Mac, Windows and Linux at zero cost for the next editor if they would rather not have to buy MS Publisher.
I've started with the Scribus learning curve. I've created a passable copy of the front cover of last month's edition, and will carry on with some of the boilerplate pages (parish directories and advertising that are carried forward from month to month). For this I've installed 1.5.3 - the development version. Bearing in mind that I need reasonable stability, but don't mind hitting problems along the way,
would it be advisable to take a step back to the official stable release before I get too far down the road with 1.5.3, or is 1.5.3 stable enough to continue with?I also maintain the publication's sister web site - mainly an event calendar with some front-page news items - in WordPress. A long term goal is to be able to download the month's new web content in a format suitable for easy (enough) import into Scribus - accepting, of course, that some formatting will be necessary.
Given that I am far from experienced with Scribus does this sound, to those of you who are, like a sensible approach? Are there any major pitfalls and pratfalls I should be aware of? The first of these, I think I'm beginning to realise, is that the learning curve and documentation are likely to be very offputting for possible future editors - though I am trying to find suitable volunteers who might want to take up publishing as either a full- or part-time career and, so, might benefit from learning Scribus which they may find used by future employers/customers.

Derek