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OS/2 was a great OS, but it has only a small fraction of the market share that MacOS has. Furthermore, OS/2 is dying while MacOS is growing its market share.

Given that, now that Sun has bought Star Division and StarOffice, why do they continue to develop the OS/2 version and make it available for free download, while at the same time kill their MacOS version?

I just don't understand Scooter (Scott McNealy :) sometimes.

Umm if you look at the Star Division homepage they've got that box in the bottom right hand corner that says StarOffice for Java.

Guess again.... You can get software free that is fully compatible with MSOffice (yep, even file extensions) that is even written in Java:

Go look @ StarOffice

Sure, it isn't fast (yet), but it works... and is completely compatible.

-- Mid

Looks like only the German site has the news, the U.S. site still has 5.0 only. From what I can make out using BabelFish (ugh! too many friggin' frames!), the English port is still not available yet.
#include "disclaim.h"

Have you ever heard about StarOffice? http://www.stardivision.com/

StarOffice, although not Free, is a decent, very full-featured, if somewhat bloated, office package, and includes presentation software.

Also, Corel has ported WordPerfect, and is porting the rest of their WordPerfect Office2000 suite, as far as I know.

Then, in the Free Software world, there is Siag Office and, of course, KOffice, which, while not finished, look promising.

So, we do have usable tools now, and great Free tools on the way.

--
Get your fresh, hot kernels right here!

One thing that is overestimated is the toolkit dependence of KDE. Sure, Qt is needed for the basic libs, but as they are free software, this will never be a problem.

But why does everybody think *every* KDE app does need to use Qt? For programmers, KDE is just a framework, and you can easily 'plug in' other toolkits.

Ktk for Tcl/TK A Tixwish extension, Ktk offers KDE look and feel for Tcl/Tk developers, without using Qt

StarOffice 5.0, offers some KDE integration like Drag&Drop, Mimetypes and KMenu support. Its widget set is not publicly available, but it shows this can easily be done.

FLTK supports theming in the next release, which does also include certain KDE support

There is no fundamental problem in writing a KDE support lib for GTK, making it easy to add a certain KDE compliance to GTK apps. Maybe it's not as comprehensive as with Qt apps, but common Drag&Drop, colours, Mimetypes, address book, help system still make it a lot easier for the user.

It could be a compile-time option (like Window Maker), or even a run-time check for the KDE system running.
So people won't end up having two desktop environment libs loaded into memory.

Once again:
KDE is a open framework for the developer, and an integrated environment for the user.
The user doesn't care about which widgets are used, as long as they feel the same. The developers don't have to use Qt to make their apps fit into this environment.

Just cuz the computer press denounces it(perhaps for fear of losing micro$oft ad money?) doesn't mean it's not a viable alternative to windows. After all, if it wasn't useable, you wouldn't see things like:

January 28, 1999 - SOUTHTRUST BANK Standardizes on OS/2 Warp 4
March 22, 1999 - IBM Managers Increase In Desktops As Financial-Services Company Expands

A quick look at the Large OS/2 Customers List shows a lot of banks. Banks can't afford for their systems to be down as customers tend to get rather irate if they cannot access their money.

As far as updates, IBM is still releasing free fixpacks for Warp 4.0 as well as 3.0(released in 94). If you'd rather not download the fixpacks, OS/2 Super Site offers them burned on a CD for about $15. Current device drivers can be found at IBM's online Device Driver Pack. In the past 30 days 2 new drivers have been added and 264 drivers have been updated.

For typical office needs, Staroffice can handle current MS office documents and is available for OS/2, Linux, and even Windows.

OS/2 even provides for a Y2K compliant Windows 3 environment.

What other everyday needs do you have? Perhaps people can send you suggested replacements. For a ready made list of comparable applications for OS/2, check The OS/2 Alternative site.

You're part of the problem if you just let micro$oft keep screwing you over.

To help those newbies:

www.linux.org

sunsite.unc.edu/mdw

www.stardivision.com

www.redhat.com

www.kde.org

www.gnome.org

www.cheapbytes.com

www.freshmeat.net

www.xnet.com/~blatura/linapps.shtml

OK So I'm somewhat biased... :)

"Linux sucks. But Linux sucks less." - JWZ