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Man, the ApplixWare I used (vintage 1998 or so) made Office 97 look stable. I liked it otherwise, though.

The original company, Applix, has gone through some interesting transformations. After ApplixWare, it focused on CRM for awhile, but has since returned to focusing exclusively on TM1, its OLAP database. Once upon a time, you could buy TM1 for Linux for $100; now, licensing a TM1 server cost 5 figures and the primary platform is Windows (I think there is still some development for HP-UX and maybe one other Unixy platform). It's pricey and somewhat buggy, but has some OLAP capabilities (speed, flexibility, Excel integration) that make it unique.

There's an open-source project PALO with similar features that looks promising. It went 1.0 about a month ago.

Um, no, Vistasource is continueing to support Applixware, they've just decided to integrate it with their line of server-based office apps (anyware).

here's one story on it (see the response at the bottom and a the direct link story. Note that the major change is the the name - from Applixware to Anyware Office Client. I don't know, but this may be because the original company, Applix, still exists, but doesn't do the office suite, they spun that off to VistaSource.

Most of the major help desk application vendors tout the fact that their helpdesk system is web-based as being its biggest feature. Check out the offerings from Network Associates, Remedy, Applix, Peregrine Systems, and many others.

Plus, bugfixes come quite quickly (usually on the order of once a month or so), instead of in two service packs a year.

It seems like the author feels that most of the people flame him because they're in some kind of Total World Domination frame of mind. Are there other Linux fans out there who are happy just to have a product they enjoy using? People who don't care about world domination don't have to talk about what Windows apps will run on WINE and such and such. We're happy with the apps we have, and in my experience, people are willing to learn new apps as long as they're intuitive (like the MacOS products). From my experience I've seen new computer users do quite well on pre-installed Linux machines or Computer Lab UNIX machines as long as the applications make themselves fast and intuitive. My friend in Santa Cruz bought a pre-installed system from Penguin and she installed Applix by herself and figured out how to use it (I believe on the Gnome desktop). She had a copy of Windows on-hand just in case Linux was too intimidating but never had to put it in the CD-ROM. Maybe if Linux is intuitive in this way and becomes even more intuitive and easy (pre-installs, and easy to learn applications/desktops) nobody needs to sell Linux or bash Microsoft and Linux can stand on its own.

Justin

However, for applications that are either closed-source (and thus binary only), or those which are open source, but have complex library and other environmental issues (such as something like KDE or Gnat -- the GNU Ada compiler), I hope that the makers of such software will take the time to put out a BSD version. I just don't see any reason that they shouldn't.

Because, for the commercial software, it's Another Platform To Support, and they have to build it for the platform, test it on the platform, take support calls for the platform, etc.?

Some vendors do have FreeBSD ports - Applix and Perforce, for example. Linux binaries of commercial products may run on FreeBSD, as well - I seem to remember Jordan Hubbard suggesting to vendors that they port to Linux first.

As for the open-source applications, well, check out the BSD ports collection - my desktop is KDE 1.1.2, from the FreeBSD ports collection....

well, somehow i don't think this is very likely. corel has way too many "other" interests that would turn off red hat.

a) windows software
b) macintosh software
c) old support contracts

that said, there are some interesting aspects of a corel buy (namely the hardware connections, the expertise, and the two distribution questions). more important, though, is that corel doesn't even make as much sense as other companies for a possible office suite for linux. a company with more focus seems to be a much better option. what about abisource? what about applix? seems that if red hat bought applix, gpl'd it, gtk'd it, and gnome-ified it that would make much more sense.

as for red hat buying everyone and everything rumors, red hat is starting to have enough money to screw up. it was fine when they could only afford blunders. it seems now, though, that they can afford disasters as well. tread lightly mr. young (and don't even think about cray)!

FreeBSD is most definately not for beginners. If you are a win98 user go get yourself a copy of caldera 2.3. Pop the CD into your drive and less then a half hour later you will have a nice, slick linux system that you can play around with. Keep your win98 partition for running your current apps and try the apps in Linux. After using both of them for a while you may prefer linux. If you don't prefer it just wipe it out and all you are out is $30.00. I would recommend against getting a cheap bytes version unless you also buy some application CDs too. The commercial Caldera box comes with both Star office and Applixware and you can try them out to see if you like them.Most people use a computer mainly for word processing, spreadsheets, email and web browsing. You will find Linux very good at these functions.
If you have a fairly fast internet connection you can also download some images and do an over the internet install of RH6.1. Then go visit Anywhere office from applix and you can use their java based office suite for free. I think you will find it more then adequate for most of your needs.
Whereever you are there is probably a Linux users group, go to one of the meetings and you will find lots of friendly knowledgable people who are just dying to help you out. Good luck and welcome to the adventure.

More info about Applix's TM/1 can be found at
http://www.applix.com/applix ware/linux/prodovertm1.cfm

The scary thing is that this is one of the more useful applications of Java I've seen...

Man, that one stung! Really.

I don't know how much exposure there has been to Java applications that are actually useful, but damn!

I'm currently working in a small group, in a large company, that is developing (the group) a DB (Oracle 8) centered, distributed (web) application for designing industrial and utility-scale boilers for electricity production. We're talking 1.21 GigaWatts here, Marty! It's my first project with this new group, and it's slick as snot.

Some other notable Java apps: NetBeans and FreeBuilder (granted, they're devtools themselves, but they're java and they nifty), Lotus domino is available as a Java app.

And then there's always Applixware Office Anywhere that is written purely in Java.

Really, I'm surprised at the off-the-cuff derission against Java, Rob (old bean). :)

What does this deal mean for other thin-client productivity software, such as Applixware? This office suite was completely written in Java (afaik), and Applix has opened the source code. I tried the demo a few months ago, and I thought it worked pretty well, even through a 28.8 pipe.

I've never come across any mention of Applix in the news. Anyone familiar with Applix's level of success, or with other competitors?

Applix has a Linux offix suite.

Is it that hard to imagine a word processor that runs in a browser? (yea, formatting would be a bitch, but.....)

Well take for instance Applix Anyware, which is an fully working java-based office suite. It includes a spreadsheet application, wordprocessor, presentation software, and in effect runs from any java enabled webbrowser.
And with Sun Microsystems pushing their java stations which are like the classical X-terminals in the sense that they do not require any harddisk, and have only their o.s. on rom , but are also intended to run locally java based programs in their browser, which are downloaded from a server. More and more applications are likely to appear written in java.
With more programs being written in java, indeed the underlying os of your workstation can become irrelevant.
Although personally I find the performance of java based programs still very much inferior to binaries compiled for my systems architecture, that may change.

for about a month now. try
this link for further info. (i scre*ed first one with html, excuse me:)

Intel, Alpha and PPC now.