Ximian to Bundle StarOffice 6.0

rainmanjag writes "A Ximian press release is reporting that Ximian will be bundling StarOffice 6.0 for Linux with the packaged version of Ximian Desktop Professional, Red Carpet Express, and Red Carpet CorporateConnect." This means that both Ximian and Mandrakesoft are offering comprehensive software bundles which happen to include StarOffice 6.0, a package which would otherwise cost more by itself than either of the bundles.

Comments

i know its been said before...

[packeteer]

... but open office works just fine... personally i use mandrake 8.2 with open office and it works great

Re:i know its been said before...

[Surak]

StarOffice includes templates, fonts and clipart that OOo doesn't.

....sooo....you just take the template fonts and clipart from your StarOffice 6.0 beta (which was free for all takers) and put them into your OpenOffice 1.0 setup. :)

Seriously, someone ought to put together an Open Sourced set of templates, fonts, clipart, etc. And no I did NOT just volunteer! Stop looking at me like that! :P

Re:i know its been said before...

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot the database component of StarOffice. Somebody please mod down that post, it's misleading.

Re:i know its been said before...

[aquarian]

Indeed, templates and clipart are really what most people are looking for. There are a jillion office suites on the market, but the ones that sell best are the ones with the most comprehensive collections of templates. Countless times I've heard that people prefer Microsoft Works to Office, because of the templates. Publisher has always been a big seller too. People don't want design flexibility. They want the computer to design their documents for them.

Re:i know its been said before...

[Surak]

How is it misleading? What I stated is exactly correct, and states precisely why I, and most other people, might choose to purchase StarOffice rather than downloading OOo. Yes, OOo doesn't include a database component. And? Not everybody needs a database component. I know I don't. I'll bet the majority of users don't either.

Besides, the StarOffice Adabase component is weak at best, IMHO.

Re:i know its been said before...

[spectral]

I think you replied to the wrong post. I know I'm no grammar master, but spelling I'm usually pretty good at, and there were no mistakes that I could catch in his entire post, let alone 5. Just to be sure, I ran a spell check on it, and it did not find any problems either. (Even with jillion, which kind of surprised me, but, whatever :))

Re:i know its been said before...

[Anonymous Coward]

oh sorry, i thought you were speaking french. never mind.

Re:i know its been said before...

[Anonymous Coward]

Comparing to LyX, M$word is very-very-very bad by templates. Most of people I know complain that M$word pushs them to edit fonts in the text rather than in templates, while in LyX it's vice versa - it's easier to work with templates.

Re:i know its been said before...

[Anonymous Coward]

The title has an error - its possesive instead of it's it has.

Comma, faults too.

Re:i know its been said before...

[Anonymous Coward]

If this hasn't been said before it needs saying (and I am volunteering to say it):

if you want OpenOffice 1.5 to be around for people who truly need gratis software, then you should seriously consider paying for StarOffice6.0, if you can afford it.

Given the low price to start with and sweet bundling deals like the one in this story, it's hard to imagine how you could be posting here and not be able to afford StarOffice, unless you are posting from your parents' house.

OpenOffice doesn't just write itself. It is largely the effort of the same SUN programmers who produced SO6.

I know you don't believe me, but if you want people to work on OpenOffice in a meaningful way, support for StarOffice will have to be there to foot the bill.
Unless you want to watch it wither on the vine like hundreds of other promising Linux software products and projects for the desktop.

Red Carpet?

[CmdrTaco (editor)]

Red Carpet Express, and Red Carpet CorporateConnect

How about Red Carpet Muncher? Sorry, just had to say that, people keep calling me "Carpet muncher" in GTA3, and you know what? I am! :-)

Re:Red Carpet?

[Anonymous Coward]

How to be a carpet muncher

Yeah, I'd say your friends were right on that one...

nice

[ozzimark]

Yeah, but how many of us actually buy those software bundles? Maybe about 1/10, maybe 1/25th of everyone who buys linux... But then how many people buy linux compared to download it? 1/1000? You get the idea...

is so 6.0 out yet

[Anonymous Coward]

has it been released for the public yet? if so, what is the license?

Diffrence

[drgnvale]

Is Star Office that much better than open office.org? Or is it just the name/image thing?

Re:Diffrence

[Anonymous Coward]

Differences are listed here

Re:Diffrence

[Tony-A]

Is Star Office that much better than open office.org? Or is it just the name/image thing?
Better, maybe. But that's not the fundamental difference. If there's a problem with Star Office, it's Sun's problem. If there's a problem with Open Office, it's the user's problem. This doesn't mean that Sun can or will fix any problems faster than Open Office. It's just where the ultimate responsibility lies. If I'm a PHB, I will buy Star Office. If I'm a crafty PHB, I will buy Star Office, download Open Office, and use whatever seems to work best.

Re:Diffrence

[SteelX]

Ah, the eternal question about StarOffice/OpenOffice.org differences. According to OpenOffice.org's FAQ, the differences are as follows:

The source code available at OpenOffice.org does not consist of all of the StarOffice code. Usually, the reason for this is that Sun pays to license third party code to include in StarOffice that which it does not have permission to make available in OpenOffice.org. Those things which are or will be present in StarOffice but are not available on OpenOffice.org include:

• Certain fonts (including, especially, Asian language fonts)
• The database component (Adabas D)
• Some templates
• Extensive Clip Art Gallery
• Some sorting functionality (Asian versions)
• Certain file filters

In addition, Sun also has a FAQ that says:

StarOffice 6.0 softwre is a commercial product aimed at organizations and consumers while OpenOffice.org 1.0 is aimed at users of free software, independent developers and the open source community. StarOffice includes licensed-in, third-party technology such as:

• Spellchecker and thesaurus
  
• Database component (Software AG Adabas D).
  
• Select fonts including Windows metrically equivalent fonts and Asian language fonts
  
• Select filters, including WordPerfect filters and Asian word processor filters
  
• Integration of additional templates and extensive clipart gallery
  

In addition to product differences, StarOffice offers:

• Updates/upgrades on CD
• Sun installation and user documentation
• 24x7 Web based support for enterprises and consumers
• Help desk support
  
• Warranties and indemnification guarantee
• Training
• Professional services for migration and deployment

Hope it helps!

What's Ximian?

[Anonymous Coward]

rpm -q -a | grep ximian

on a default Red Hat installation returns nothing. So whatever Ximian is, it looks like some knowledgeable people think it's useless.

Re:What's Ximian?

[Alan Cox]

Poor little troll.

Red Hat ship a whole ton of Ximian code. Some of it like Evolution in 7.3 is really rather good too.

Re:What's Ximian?

[Penguinoflight]

Well, if you haven't heard about Ximian, you can't be much of a judge. Redhat doesn't do everything right, but Ximian isn't much good. Redhat should package their own gnome, and Ximian is more of a cutting edge, easy to use system. Redhat wants stable, slow and old (no offence).

Re:What's Ximian?

[CptNoSkill]

Sorry Alan, but he is right, I know Evolution is in 7.3 (OT: I use it and think it is great), but his example does produce no results.

Re:What's Ximian?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't pretend to understand all the ins and outs of the subject, but the increasing commercialization of linux scares me. "Scares" isn't really the right word. I guess it makes me wonder what the point of Linux will be if a handful of companies control it and can charge for it.

I know a guy who used to sell redhat cd's with a yahoo store -- redhat shut him down. You can dl the images, so I don't understand the problem. And the other day there's a story about how redhat is getting software patents.

It almost seems that the kernel and the surrounding software has gotten so complex that it requires heavy patching by all the distributions, and that distros like debian can't really keep up. I use debian, and I do keep up, but it's work -- significant work. If I don't want to do it, I can go redhat.

But if I'm going to pay redhat, why not just pay microsoft? Why not run the stuff that works with everything? Why worry about whether or not I can open up some word doc?

It sort of feels as if all of this rhetoric was flying around when it was convenient, and now that the big linux players are locking everyone in, the celebrities are saying "grow up, this is the real world, people need to eat." That may be true, but if I'm going to grow up, I might as well run microsoft, or at least os x.

Re:What's Ximian?

[lurking]

Alan said CODE! NOT RPMs! read it again! sheesh!

Re:What's Ximian?

[j0nkatz]

Yes! I just tried out Evolution in Linux 7.3!

It's good!

Re:What's Ximian?

[kerfax]

dude!!!?

What planet are u from go check oput the list of ximiam coderes 1/2 of them work at Red Hat and the gnome that come with Red hat is just a tweaked version of Ximian wich is just pre packeged and marketed GNOME. Its free software remember, All these guys have to have jobs somewhere a.k.a... Red hat Ximian, Sun , etc etc. They all contribute to GNOME.org. Then theay aklll tweak it how they want.

You really got to take a closer look at how this shit works Buddy.

Re:What's Ximian?

[blah_ect]

Ok this is actually off topic but... who the hell mods ALAN COX as anything but +5 ??? I mean.... oh nevermind.

Re:What's Ximian?

[snarfer]

I don't pretend to understand all the ins and outs of the subject, but the increasing commercialization of linux scares me.

Well it means to me that we're finally going to see some good apps showing up, like Ximian and Gobe, and that Linux is going to be able to be used by regular people, which means that everyone is going to have CHOICES again.

Re:What's Ximian?

[Penguinoflight]

We're talking about distributions of GNOME, buddy, not who works where, or what code goes where. My point is the goal of redhat, and the goal of Ximian are different, so Redhat doesn't use Ximian.

On a related note...

[Platinum Dragon]

OpenOffice 1.0 is available through Red Carpet.

Clearly Marked Packages

[lostchicken]

I think it would be a good idea that this version of Ximian contains non-free software, much like Debian letting you force no non-free stuff.

Many Linux newbies get into the "sport" for various political reasons, and through buying Ximian, they are no longer using a "pure" open-source desktop.

Buyer beware.

List of differences between OO and SO

[mgkimsal2]

This seems to happen everytime there's a story about openoffice.org or staroffice. Here's a list of the major points:

1. StarOffice 6 is released and costs $75.95/seat.
2. StarOffice 6 and OpenOffice.org are built from the same codebase
3. StarOffice 6 includes niceties and extras that OpenOffice.org doesn't include (many templates, nice clipart, a manual, and a database component)

If you need to do basic stuff, OpenOffice.org will be just fine. If you want to a database tool to go along with your office suite, you'd need StarOffice 6.

Slightly offtopic - missing piece on linux desktop

[Ars-Fartsica]

I think Ximian and the OpenOffice folks have done a great job in bridging the gap between linux and Windows (along with Mozilla.org of course), but for me the missing piece is integration with popular music devices.

Does anyone know of ongoing projects to unify communications between linux and the popular devices?

Buyer beware

[mgkimsal2]

Beware that if you want to be productive in an 'office suite' sense (exchanging documents with others, etc), not in a 'I write C code all day' sense, you might need to offend some GPL/FSF zealot's idea of how you should operate your computer.

Re:Buyer beware

[lostchicken]

Yeah, I'm not saying that it's right for everyone...
Heck, I'm typing this message on OS X.

Re:Buyer beware

[mgkimsal2]

I wasn't suggesting that you were in particular, but I've known a couple debian people who've gone off on that 'only free stuff' mindset. One debian guy (wasn't *quite* that stringent) works in my office. It took awhile in the 'real world' of computer use (something more than C development) for him to realize that you simply can't survive like that. He's using an XP laptop now. :)

I realized after I sent the last one that it may have looked like I accused you of saying something you weren't saying. Sorry.

Re:Buyer beware

[_Sprocket_]

...you might need to offend some GPL/FSF zealot's idea of how you should operate your computer.

Its a good point. In today's environment, one often has to make trade offs with what technology works the best. However, the concern for Freedom shouldn't be only the concern of zealots.

The IT industry is full of examples; proprietary, closed technology best bennifits the producers of that technology. And sometimes that bennifit comes at the expense of their customers - those who are using / implementing that technology. Which... oddly enough... affects the cost of that infrastructure.

Freedom is not simply about cost. It is about end users and businesses being able to choose solutions that best fit their needs. And the ability to change and shift that infrastructure as needed. This task is only complicated when a vendor's business-plan-driven incompatability has to be accounted for.

It is still pretty common to find that one's infrastructure will consist of Free and proprietary solutions. But it is still a very good idea to be aware of which are which and what limitations are involved with each.

Re:Buyer beware

[Anonymous Coward]

It took a while in the 'real world' of computer use (something more than C development) for him to realize that you simply can't survive like that. He's using an XP laptop now. :)

Linux can do a lot more than many people who work in Windoze-hostile office environments think it can do. The problem is that a lot of internal departments use proprietary software and only get the Windoze version, even when a Linux version exists and would cost the company no more to get.

I wonder exactly he as doing to necesitate using something as nasty (in terms of the licensing) as Windoze XP.

- Sam (yes I have an account with capped Karma. No, I am not logging in for this)

Re:Buyer beware

[mgkimsal2]

There is no usable contact management software under Linux, for starters. Photo editing as well is a bit poor - GIMP is the best available that I'm aware of, and it doesn't support kerning.

If there *is* something decent contact management-wise out there *now*, there wasn't a year ago, when it was needed. We can't sit around for months waiting for something to get done (or started in some cases).

Perhaps you could post what you do under Linux what Windows people think it can't do, or more to the point, regular day to day business stuff people use Windows for that you have equivalents for under Linux.

Part of this is a 'free' issue - there's no good Quickbooks equivalent, for example. I think there's something called 'myapp', but it's a pay for product. Nothing against them, and we may get it at some point, but there was already a windows copy of quickbooks in use. Why throw it away at this point? That's not the *only* thing holding us back from 100% Lunix, so it makes no sense to get rid of that yet.

There are some other issues as well, but they're specific to debian. Primarily, there was a habit of doing 'apt-get upgrade' all the time against 'unstable' which occasionally made the system, well, unstable. But that's nothing specific to do with available software.

Re:Buyer beware

[Anonymous Coward]

"proprietary, closed technology best bennifits the producers of that technology. "

What is wrong with that ?
Seriously, what is wrong with a company benefiting from a product they have created and are trying to sell ?

"And sometimes that bennifit comes at the expense of their customers"

This is what's called a free market.
People can make their own calls and select software that will benefit them - free or not.

Re:Buyer beware

[_Sprocket_]

"proprietary, closed technology best bennifits the producers of that technology. "

What is wrong with that ?

Seriously, what is wrong with a company benefiting from a product they have created and are trying to sell ?

There is nothing wrong with a company profiting from its work. A company should be well rewarded when it produces a great product and/or useful service. The problem is when a product/service benefits the vendor at the expense of the customer. Which leads us to our next point...

"And sometimes that bennifit comes at the expense of their customers"

This is what's called a free market.

People can make their own calls and select software that will benefit them - free or not.

The only "industry" where it can be expected that profit comes at the expense of the customer is that of thieves and con-men. Laws aside, it is also a "free market" when it comes to falling for a scam. The best way to avoid this is information; being educated in the issues enough to realize when something is truly of benefit to oneself and ones employer. Buyer beware.

For a free market to work, choice must exist. And part of that choice is an informed consumer. The IT consumer should know the real performance of products and issues around the infrastructure (from software to protocols to data formats) they are considering. Fortunately for the consumer, there has been an impressive push toward open architecture; a push that benefits the consumer with more choice and competition. Unfortunately, these issues are often mared by non-arguments over zealotry and profit.

In the end, consumers will make their own choices. We can only hope that these choices will reward businesses that provide truly valuable technology and not simply a method to corral customers in to an inexcapable cycle of guaranteed future earnings.

Re:What's a "Parrent"?

[exphoria]

I'm sure he meant Parent, not Parrent. This refers to Parent post.

looks like..

[Anonymous Coward]

the added commercialization of Ximian is continuing (started with Evolution connector). Why did they not include the Free Software OpenOffice instead of the closed StarOffice (yes, I know Star is based on open, but it's a matter of principle for one of the communties' most important free software companies, which Ximian definatly is)

Re:looks like..

[_Sprocket_]

I would hazard a guess because it is the "Desktop Professional". This package is targeted at the business. After all, how many home users do you know that need Evolution connector so they can interact with an Exchange server?

StarOffice's new pricing structure is plainly aimed at the corporate environment. Charging something for the package sets off less alarms within business culture (where "free" spooks horses). The features (functionality and various collections of data) available in StarOffice but not OpenOffice also have more value to businesses than your average techie/home user (although I'm sure the OO folk would welcome some Free clipart).

While OpenOffice is darn good, and also available via Ximian, StarOffice is a better fit for the Desktop Professional market.

How good is it?

[YahoKa]

How good is star office 6? I used 5.* on both linux and windows and it's ok... but i hate the interface. Has it changed a lot in 6?

Re:How good is it?

[mgkimsal2]

Night and day difference. *Definitely* worth the download for openoffice - especially if you actually thought 5.2 was OK. I hated it - slow and ugly interface. The OO (and SO6 beta I used) were quite nice. Not perfect, but *quite* usable for most situations.

Re:Slightly offtopic - missing piece on linux desk

[Anonymous Coward]

try here, or here.

Copy n' paste btwn SO and desktop

[ejaw5]

I don't know if any of you guys have the same problem, but I can't seem to copy and paste text (or any objects for that matter) between everything else on the Gnome/KDE desktop and SO/OO. This becomes a pain when trying to C/P URLS and other information to list documentation sources. Hopefully this union between Ximian and SO will clear that up.

Re:Copy n' paste btwn SO and desktop

[SteelX]

Yeah I used to get this in SO 6.0 beta, but mine seems to work now with OOo 1.0. Not sure why though. I use KDE. If I find the reason I'll let you know.

Re:Copy n' paste btwn SO and desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm usinf wmcliphist to manage copy/paste adn it works fine. I dunno if K/GOME force you into their clipboard tools. If not, ditch klipper adn loom at wmcliphist.

Um, who cares?

[march]

Star Office and OOo are bloatware. So is M$ Office for that matter.

Why do I need everything all combined into one massive tool?

Why do people complain when I email them a doc I type in emacs text mode?

I understand the need to create professional documents, but I would fathom a guess that 99% of what word-like apps are used for are the wrong things. An email "memo" doesn't need to be an attached word doc.

That being said, when SO or OOo can read Word docs consistently, then there will be something to report. But that won't happen because M$ keeps changing their formats.

This whole office "suite" thing is one massive mistake on everyones part.

Make small, fast apps that do just what they are supposed to do. Sheesh...

</rant>

Re:Um, who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do people complain when I email them a doc I type in emacs text mode?

Probably because you sent them a doc that you typed in emacs text mode, moron.

Re:Um, who cares?

[Surak]

That being said, when SO or OOo can read Word docs consistently, then there will be something to report. But that won't happen because M$ keeps changing their formats.

SO and OOo *can* read Word documents from Office 97, 2000 and XP fiarly consistently and reliably.

I routinely pull in Word documents that have tables and other 'advanced' formatting features.

Yes, there are few glitches now and then with certain 'advanced' formatting features. But most of the Word documents I get at the office don't use these features.

99% of the people who complain about SO/OOo and Word documents are complaining because they have the wrong fonts installed! It might seem like the Times font you used in OOo on your Linux desktop is the same as the Times New Roman font in Windows 9x/NT/2000/XP. Let me assure you, as someone who has done professional graphic design work, it is not. Subtle differences in the sizes, shapes, and kerning tables of the fonts cause things to wrap weird and text to fall into the wrong places, especially when you have columns, tables, or text wrapped around a picture.

With the right fonts installed, 99.5% of all Word documents will look just fine in OOo. It's that .5% that you need to fix now and then that cause frustration though... :)

Re:Um, who cares?

[CptNoSkill]

TESTIFY! I have the same problem when I try to send people email written in binary. God, what do people need with all these fancy charachters. 0 and 1 are where it all begin the other 99% of letters are just bloated versions of these....

Honesty I see your point, but emacs isn't exactly the smallest program in the world either.

Re:Um, who cares?

[inflex]

I understand the need to create professional documents, but I would fathom a guess that 99% of what word-like apps are used for are the wrong things. An email "memo" doesn't need to be an attached word doc.

As far as professionalism goes, "Office" apps are terrible. For truly crisp results, I can recomment non other than the [supposedly] archaic vi + LaTeX + dvipdf. PDF is so widely supported and accepted that everyone [unless you've been living under a rock] knows how to read them. In addition, the use of LaTeX ensures that your formatting is of high-readability, as apposed to 'fasionable'.

I for one will not be moving to such Office packages.

Re:Um, who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do people complain when I email them a doc I type in emacs text mode?

It might be because its not in DOS format, if you open a unix text document in window's notepad it'll show squares intead of properly line breaking.

Re:Um, who cares?

[RevAaron]

I don't plan on it either. I use LaTeX and I dig it. But that doesn't solve the same problem as these Office suites do. Sure, everyone can read and print a PDF, but what about edit it, and send a revised version back to you? LaTeX savy people can work from your source document, yes, but most normal Office-users wouldn't have the slightest clue what to do with a LaTeX file.

I have Office v.X installed, because there are times when I need to do just this. You'd be surprised, even among CS profs, how few people know LaTeX enough to feel comfy editing your drafts written in it.

Also, there's no way to do something like a spreadsheet with LaTeX. However, in lambdaTeX or Scribe (in Scheme) something like this could be done, and for that reason, I plan on moving to Scribe eventually (over LaTeX). It can generate PDF, HTML and PS just like LaTeX, but has a more familiar (s-exp) syntax, and has a much more powerful language behind it, for doing calculations within your document. That said, I'd also welcome a LaTeX preprocessor that could do something similar... For instance:

\begin{worksheet}{c|c|c|c}
\hline
Name & Beer Drunk & Milk Drunk & Total Liquids \\
Me & 10 L & 12 L & \add{\cell{B2},
\cell{C2}} \\
You & 14 L & 2 L & \add{\cell{B3},
\cell{C3}} \\
\end{worksheet}

and so on... ugly as hell in LaTeX, but in something Lisplike, it could be a lot nicer-

(worksheet "c|c|c|c"
(hline)
Name & Beer Drunk & Milk Drunk & Total Liquids \\
Me & 10 L & 12 L & (+ B2 C2) \\
You & 14 L & 2 L & (+ B3 C3) \\
)

Man, that'd rule.

Re:Um, who cares?

[inflex]

and so on... ugly as hell in LaTeX, but in something Lisplike, it could be a lot nicer-

Looks like you found yourself a new project ;)

I agree with what you mentioned in your reply. I should have qualified my area of intention down to things like "Report/Letter/manual production for the purpose of being read-only" (as apposed to ssheets, db's etc).

It's an unfortunate thing though that people have "forgotten" about the high-quality output tools which already exist within their distributions. Even worse still that in general people are losing the skills to use them. Speaking of which, I believe that LyX 1.2.x is now out, so there's a good compromise.

Now, if only they'd make a thought-to-file converter :P

Re:Um, who cares?

[jazman_777]

This whole office "suite" thing is one massive mistake on everyones part.

Dude, you are forgetting the totally awesome synergy you get when you work in a suite. When you're creating text files, you want to bust loose spreadsheeting and creating presentations, and maybe create a database of your activities! Only a suite lets you fulfil such a momentous destiny.

Re:Um, who cares?

[jazman_777]

I for one will not be moving to such Office packages.

You must not be a manager. Only a manager would find the Incredible Productivity Improvements! you get from buying a suite. Embed a spreadsheet in your presentation! Put a presentation in your spreadsheet! Or stuff a flight simulator in there somewhere....

Re:Um, who cares?

[Planesdragon]

99% of the people who complain about SO/OOo and Word documents are complaining because they have the wrong fonts installed!

I must be in that 1%, then.

I complain about SO/OO, Abiword, and every other OSS word processor because, quite simply, the spell checking sucks. I rely on it to catch a whole bunch of common spelling errors--and when writing very long documents, they come up.

I tried one of them recently (I think it was Open Office) and it opened the file just fine. But when I turned on "spell check on the fly", the darn thing drew a squiggly line under every ellipss (sp--it's late) and em-dash that I had. Show me a way to fix those (without coding) in a Win32 OOS word processor, and I'll switch and encourage everyone around me to switch.

Re:Um, who cares?

[RevAaron]

> Looks like you found yourself a new project ;)

Actually, it's something I've wanted to work on for a while. I was going to write it in and for Squeak- one of the last tools I need before I can dump primitive systems like Mac OS X and Unix/X11. Like I said, Scribe can do this, to an extent. I don't know if there's a way to refer to cells within a table though, but it could definitely be added without pulling teeth.

Yeah, read-only, no prob. But there are times when I'll just use Word because I have to pass it around. Sucks, but what can you do?

Never used LyX. TeXShop or Emacs was always good enough for me, for what I do, which is pretty simple, mostly tables, \em \bf- very little math.

I'll wish for a thought-to-MIDI converter while we're at it! :P

Re:Um, who cares?

[march]

Then create a common API so *different* apps can communicate.

Suites suck. They are too big. Small apps is the way to go.

Re:Um, who cares?

[march]

Hey moron, give me more credit than that. Then again, since you posted as A.C., maybe you have an excuse.

"Text mode" (whether or not it's DOS mode or UNIX mode) means just pure text, no fancy formatting crap that makes a normal "memo" 10 times it's needed size.

That's all you need for most of the "documents" I receive and send.

Re:Um, who cares?

[DrXym]

Claiming OpenOffice is bloated while EMACS is not is the ultimate irony.

If you want a decent, compact editor you should try something like Jed - an EMACS clone but about 1/10th the size.

Re:Um, who cares?

[march]

Not really.

I've got emacs running on my Zaurus with 32mb of memory. I'd like to see SO do that.

The point is that while emacs is configurable (take what you want), these "suites" are basically not.

Re:Um, who cares?

[DrXym]

I presume that someone with the inclination and the source code could build a smaller version if they wanted. It is just no one has bothered. Perhaps it could be you who tries?

As for EMACS, I've used it in the past, but to me it is the epitome of over-engineered bloat. If you just want to edit stuff you're better off going for something like Jed or MicroEMACS that do the same in a fraction of the space.

Re:Um, who cares?

[Bert64]

You don`t need everything combined into one huge bloated program.. nor does anyone, everyone will have their own subset of required features... i doubt anyone regularly uses every feature present in an office suite.
What about an office suite that was configured like the linux kernel, the ability to build in the core features, with everything else either being discarded or available as a module and autoloaded when you need to use it.
This would heavily cut down on the bloat, especially for technically minded people who could recompile it themselves.. and still provide all the features people may sometimes use.

Re:Um, who cares?

[mobiGeek]

99% of the people who complain about SO/OOo and Word documents are complaining because they have the wrong fonts installed!

Though the fonts may differ, that typically isn't the root of the problem. The real problem is that people don't know how to use word processors!.

WYSIWYG does not mean that you can ignore the tools that you are using. A document should never have more than 2 adjacent spaces; people should learn the difference between hard- and soft-returns (paragraph breaks vs. line breaks); etc.

This is the same problem as we see on the Web. HTML "developers" are fighting the system trying to force a particular look to their pages.

Let the viewer/browser/client do the layout!

So what if a document repaginates differently in one word processor over another? The document will look good given any font (though radically different sizes may look awkward). If the document is formatted properly, it will Just Work.

If you care about exact layout, then a word processor is the wrong tool . That's what page layout programs are for.

Tasteless

[Anonymous Coward]

"Red Carpet" is an obvious allusion to menstruation. I won't buy a product with such a vulgar name, and neither will my Fortune 500 company. I hope they remedy this.

Re:Tasteless

[kerfax]

You Sir are a moron,

Countless folk tales a fairy tale have a "RED Carpet" in them Usually yhe happy princess and prince are walking down them to marrige. Or When we today roll out a "Red Carpet" fro foreign dignitaries and our own President.
So this being said if you are in a postion of power at your"fortune 500 co." Its a wonder our economy is in such a crappy state.

Friggin moron

Ximian is a quality business

[Anonymous Coward]

- They get a lot of test and development for "free" by leveraging Gnome.

- They produce quality products like Evolution and Red-Carpet.

- Their support is great, I filed a bug on their Bugzilla, not only did they build me a special patch, but they called me up and made sure everything was okay (I'm a paying customer).

What's the database stuff like?

[wirefarm]

Anyone have any experience with the database components?

(This is the first I've heard of the database part...)

That part, if it's done well, would be worth the money to me - my office has people using Access databases that I would love to convert over to to StarOffice (connected to MySQL or Postgres) if I could.

Also, if I 'upgrade' people to StarOffice, how tough/legal is it to sell off the MS Office licenses? Assuming we have a bunch of individually-purchased copies...)

Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo

Re:What's the database stuff like?

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, if I 'upgrade' people to StarOffice, how tough/legal is it to sell off the MS Office licenses? Assuming we have a bunch of individually-purchased copies...)


MY 31337 H4X0R3D 3U1A, S3Z U C4N7 CU5 I 0WN J00!!!

-- Bi11 "31337 H4XOR" G4T3Z!!!!!

Re:What's the database stuff like?

[RevAaron]

Go read your license. A lot of commercial software has a clause in the license that says it's illegal to resell the software+license to someone else without written consent. I wouldn't be surprised if Office was that way. The license itself should say.

Re:What's the database stuff like?

[jazman_777]

Go read your license. A lot of commercial software has a clause in the license that says it's illegal to resell the software+license to someone else without written consent. I wouldn't be surprised if Office was that way. The license itself should say.

I think it's safe to say that Microsoft is very friendly and liberal on their licensing and distribution policies; they have a long history like that. NOT!

Re:What's the database stuff like?

[Daimaou]

Well, if you're in Tokyo, you just take the software you want to sell and put it in a big man purse (assuming they still use those there). Then you walk along the street or down a shoten and jump in front of businessmen and say, "katte kure! This is a pen!", and they will buy your software. Just keep doing this until you've unloaded it all.

Re:What's the database stuff like?

[RevAaron]

Exactly my point. :)

Re:What's the database stuff like?

[mgkimsal2]

My understanding is that it's a completely separate database system included - and the name escapes me. It was/is a licensed product, which is part of the reason why it's not 'open' like the rest of the suite. I'm not sure how easy it would be to connect it to use an external database instead of the internal one. I suspect not easy at all, otherwise that may have been an OpenOffice.org project as well.

Re:What's the database stuff like?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Database is Adabase, yes I believe it can be linked to MySQL

StarOffice also has a commercial spell-checker, which works better than OO's (which is nice, but still a bit glitchy; at least it get's english contractions now...)

StarOffice is not $75.00 per seat. It is $75.00 for 5 seats; and educational institutions can install it anywhere (including student's computers at home). That's a VERY fair license for a commercial app.

I'm not sure I'm getting star Office, mind you; open office works GREAT for me. I may get it for the manuals and the spell-checker; so I can show it to people who are leary of anything that is free. I just not sold on it; and besides, it's just so nice having the openoffice logo in my quick-launch toolbar; it looks nicer than the butterfly!

Koffice

[DeadBugs]

Am I the only one who likes KOffice?
Try it if you don't want to shell out money for Staroffice or want a great alternative to Openoffice. I have been using it for about a year and although still limited compared to MS Office I like it alot. Here's what it comes with:

KWord - A frame-based word processor

KSpread - spreadsheet application.

KPresenter - full-featured presentation program.

Kivio - Visio®-style flowcharting application.

Kontour - vector drawing application.

Krita - raster-based image manipulation program

Kugar - tool for generating business quality reports.

Kchart - ntegrated graph and chart drawing tool. Sorry I am also one of those who thinks "screw diversity". Linux should rally behind a few key projects, instead of several projects trying to re-invent the wheel

Re:Koffice

[redcliffe]

No you aren't the only one. I like it too. Still lacking some features, but getting there quickly. I'd like to see the inclusion of a safe perl based scripting language which would be able to script all functions of the koffice sweet, but use crypto signing, and other security features to make sure that virii and the like are impossible. Like it wouldn't be able to access files that aren't koffice docs, and would prompt you before doing certain things.

I think the team need some more programmers to help them, so if please help them.

Re:Koffice

[bcrowell]

Well, the good news is that KOffice includes some stuff, like Kontour, that isn't available in open-source form anywhere else. The bad news is that the KOffice developers are spread way too thin. For instance, their link to the Kontour documentation is broken, and an e-mail asking where it had gotten to resulted in no response. I'm not trying to put them down, but they just don't seem to have enough people to keep everything going. Another example: at the address where they used to have KSpell, I recently found a porn site instead. This time I happened to know the developer, and how to get in touch with him. Again, it's not an issue of blame -- he's a great guy -- but it just shows that they might have bitten off more than they can chew. And then there's the issue of the Qt licensing. I hate to dig out this hoary old chestnut, but it really is a problem. I'm not trying to be ideologically purer than anyone else, but it's just not free software.

Re:Koffice

[SwellJoe]

Yep, I love KOffice. I don't even use KDE on my desktop, but KWord is simply the bee's knees. I am wholly addicted to the frame-based word processor concept, and now feel lost without it. Whenever I use AbiWord (which is also very nice these days) I feel kind of disoriented without frames and the overall 'feel' of KWord. I have never used a frame-based WP in the past, and so it certainly isn't just "what I'm used to"...I really think it is a better model than the Word/WordPerfect/StarOffice/everybody else except Adobe word processor.

Anyway, I agree. KOffice is highly underappreciated, and very competent in quite a few areas. It is still flaky in a lot more places than I like, but I do all of my labels, invoices, PDF brochures, and a lot of other stuff in KWord, and it really produces lovely output.

StarOffice is neat too, but I'm done with the Microsoft Office style of doing things...I just feel sluggish and confused when using those apps, and the popup light-bulb doesn't improve things.

Re:Koffice

[1010011010]

Not available anywhere else?

How about SodiPodi?

Re:Koffice

[SwellJoe]

And then there's the issue of the Qt licensing. I hate to dig out this hoary old chestnut, but it really is a problem. I'm not trying to be ideologically purer than anyone else, but it's just not free software.

Put that hairy old chestnut back in your pocket, and read this:


http://www.trolltech.com/developer/download/qt-x 11 . tml

Re:Koffice

[1010011010]

So, this is a simple question:

Why do the menus in KDE/QT apps work so much more quickly than menus in Gnome/GTK apps? Is it a virtual function vs event queue thing? Or what?

Re:Koffice

[Micah]

Looks good, if a bit dated. The last release was in September???

Re:Koffice

[Micah]

Last time I tried KOffice (1.1.1 under KDE 2.2.2) it left some stability to be desired -- I found several ways to crash it.

However, I hear 1.2 (2.0?) will be MUCH better, so I'm looking forward to trying it w/KDE 3.

Does KOffice scripting work now? Like, can you write a perl or python script to access spreadsheets, etc? I hear that was the goal but don't know the status. Thanks!

Re:Koffice

[bcrowell]

Right, but isn't it only the Linux version that's GPL'd? As far as I understand, the Mac and Windows versions are still $1000 licenses.

Re:Koffice

[kerfax]

Wow
I find it the opposite. Gnome/gtk is much faster on all my systems then KDS/QT my slowest system is AMD 166 w/128 meg ram. KDE is so slow that its not even worth installing on that box. GNOME how ever is no slower that when I have Winblows 95 on it. My fastest Box is an AMD 550 with 294 Megs and the same as KDE works Fine on it GNOME is still faster.

Weird

Re:Koffice

[Cardhore]

It has never worked for me. Tables don't format right and they jump all over the page. It also crashed a few times. Printing only printed about 3 words on the page max and got the margins and fonts wrong. And yes I had the printer configured right. I tried to just print to a postscript file and I got the same results.

Re:Koffice

[Anonymous Coward]

yup, koffice 1.2 is fully scriptable with dcop... which you acn use from the command line (shell scripts), perl, python, ruby, or anything else that has dcopbindings (very, very, very easy to create, a few lines).

Re:Koffice

[ignorant_newbie]

heh :) "Safe" "Perl" that's almost as good as "microsoft" "works"

Re:Koffice

[Anonymous Coward]

My box (Athlon XP 2000, 1gb of ram), windows xp, kde 3, and gnome 2.0 seem to be equal speed. However, kde seems to be the fastest in drawing widgets over the network to my lan (remote X, and PCMagic for XP)

My only complaint with KDE is that apps load slightly slower when run outside KDE (like in wmaker, which I usually use). This complaint also can be applied to GNOME, but to a lesser degree (pure qt/gtk apps load faster.. check out sylpheed vs. evolution vs. kmail, or opera vs. galeon vs. mozilla/konq)..

Re:Koffice

[Anonymous Coward]

Repeat after me, Qt/X11 != Linux, Qt/X11 != Windows. Qt/X11=X11.

Actually, Qt/X11 is more Free Software than gtk+ will ever be. This is because Qt is GPL, and gtk+ is LGPL. I suggest you check out what rms thinks about the GPL vs. LGPL.

Do not taint your boxen with things that are not purer than alternatives. Use Qt/X11 over gtk+ if you support Free Software.

Re:Koffice

[infiniti99]

Last I remember, gtk and motif don't even really run on Windows, so these alternative platforms aren't even part of the discussion. If we're going to do a fair comparison, Qt/X11 and gtk are both Free software. Just because Trolltech has a neato proprietary Windows port does not affect the "Free"-ness of Qt/X11.

Anyhow, all of this is moot anyway since KOffice is for unix/X11, not Windows or Mac.

Re:Koffice

[Brad Moore]

/me switches from gimp-for-windows to respond. Yes, gtk+ runs on Windows. That's one of the great things about having a portability library (glib) underneath.

Peace.

Re:Koffice

[Anonymous Coward]

And have you ever tried to actually develop something with GTK for Windows?

Let me tell you this - GTK (and no matter what variant of it - GTK++, GTK-) SUCKS on windows in terms of development - it hard to write, documentation is weak at best, and I don't see anyone who maintain it..

As for Windows and QT - there is a free version of QT for Windows, but for non commercial purposes. Yes - a Windows/Mac version of QT costs a lot of money - but you really get something who looks, feels, and documented very professionally...

Re:Koffice

[Bytenik]

My first experience with KOffice hasn't been great. I tried opening a fairly simple Powerpoint presentation in KPresenter.

The program just disappeared. Poof you're done!

A similar crash happened bringing in a Word document to KWord.

I like the look and feel of the KOffice apps, but I hope that they can improve the MS Office compatability.

Re:Koffice

[Anonymous Coward]

Excuse me, KOffice zealots... I realise that every ingle GNOME-related story has by law to have posts mentioning KDE software... but KOffice is the barely functional. All the applications you mention are little more than pretty interfaces (even KWord which has had the most work) with no substance or real functionality required by any office suites.

If you don't believe me, try it and see!

Re:Koffice

[Anonymous Coward]

"screw diversity"

Don't worry. History has shown that diversity always be stopped by meteroid(s). :)

Re:Koffice

[Anonymous Coward]

Of kourse most people know Kontour used to be kalled Killustrator, but some kompany (of akrobats) legally objected to that name for obvious reasons. After that, maybe wisely, they did not khoose to rename the program to Koreldraw.

Maybe www.kde.org should really have been www.mikrosoft.com too?

Re:Koffice

[Anonymous Coward]

I have always been impressed by table handling of Abiword - isn`t this part of what the Gnomes call Gnome Office? This non-integrated bundle of applications?

Re:Koffice

[mr.e]

Please don't tell me you're impressed by the table handling of kword (or have you never tried pressing tab in a table?) When abiword implements tables (which they are now working on) they will implement them correctly, even the realease notes for 1.0 say they're not currently available.

Re:Koffice

[oever]

So?
Since the Linux version is GPL, you can make your own port to Windows and Mac.

Personaly I think it's great that Qt can make money from the Windows and Mac version. The revenue from that, and the commercial licence for linux, enables them to make the GPL version in the first place.

Re:Koffice

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean non-integrated GNOME apps (which is bullshit, BTW, Bonobo embedding works well) which do something as opposed to integrated KDE ones which do fuck all. Hmmm... let's see... which to choose?

Re:Koffice

[*coughs loudly*]

And then there's the issue of the Qt licensing. I hate to dig out this hoary old chestnut, but it really is a problem. I'm not trying to be ideologically purer than anyone else, but it's just not free software.

Yeah. I'm not a huge fan of that "GPL" myself. "Free software"? Jeez, you can't keep the source if you distribute binaries. How sucky is that?

Re:Koffice

[Anonymous Coward]

" qt just isn't freesoftware"

And Ximian is ?

Everywhere you turn there is a restriction, a fee,
or a proprietary fearture.

and that is just now.

Wait a year and it will be worse .

Re:Koffice

[psocccer]

I think it's also worth mentioning sketch. It's not gnome or kde specific, but I've found it superior to both sodipodi and kontour. It does gradients correctly unlike sodipodi and allows creating individual line segments instead of "auto-lines" where they create a bunch of segments for you. Plus it runs with fairly low requirements, under python and pygtk.

Re:Koffice

[Domini]

The problem is not the availibity of compareable packages, the problem is the quality with which it interfaces with MS Office environments.

My entire company uses MS Office, and I have severe trouble with KOffice, SOffice and OOffice, and have tried without success to use them in this environment. On their own they function well (barring the hourly crash) but open a word doc with an excel spreadsheet imbedded, and boom. Also try and have KMail interface with a Exchange server? Not possible. Ximian have got this working, and SOffice is better than OOffice. Thus this could mean a better winning combination... until then I'll have to stick with Microsoft Office - which in my opinion is worth the money I paid for it. (This same sentiment does not nessesarily apply to the MS OS, of course...)

If it was up to me, and I was the Dread Pirate Robberts, I would use KOffice and screw the rest!

;)

Me.

One item

[The Cat]

As long as they don't make it dependent on Gecko, so it becomes part of the Gnome/Gecko/Galeon/Mozilla/Evolution/Nautilus vortex of doom. (Anyone who has tried to "upgrade" any of these programs likely understands).

I'm actually quite impressed with OpenOffice, given that it is probably at least twice as complex as Evolution, and it installs almost flawlessly. My guess is that StarOffice is at least as reliable as OpenOffice, or at least it should be.

The dependency tree for Evolution, OTOH is enough to make a brave man weep.

OAF BONOBO HOPELESSLY COMPLICATED EMBEDDED COMPONENT REFLECTION OBJECT INSTANTIATION REFERENCING BINARY FUNCTION ERROR!!! E-MAIL AND ADDRESS BOOK DISABLED! FIVE HOURS OF TEETH-GNASHING AND GARMENT-RENDING UPGRADING AWAITS!! PRODUCTIVITY FORFEITED FOR THE DAY AND MOST OF TOMORROW!!!

Would you like to add a new appointment?

Ever notice that if a slight breeze ruffles Evolution, the first to go is e-mail and the address book?

sigh...

:end rant:

Re:One item

[Anonymous Coward]

Nautilus (2.x version) no longer has a mozilla view. The only problem I've ever had from your list is the Galeon/Mozilla dependency.

As for Evolution crashes - bollocks. Your machine is fucked. I've been using it since its early versions (when it crashed a lot), and in the last 18 months it's only crashed *once* (ironically, it was last night).

Re:One item

[mr.e]

Evolution is stable, i haven't had a crash in months. WIsh i could say the same for kde apps like noatun (which crashes more times than it works) and koffice.

already downloaded it

[trelaneopn]

There's already a subscription available for Star Office, and functional packages, it integrates nicely, and I downloaded it today when I went to work. Adds an icon and everything. I'm almost afraid linux will become easy... but then galeon stopped working so no worries, apparently teh mozilla-libs update thrashed everything :) so off I go to fix that

OpenOffice already provided by Ximian

[mughi]

Why did they not include the Free Software OpenOffice instead of the closed StarOffice

Because they already have OpenOffice in it's own channel. Subscribe if you want, it's all nice and free. Quite handy, that (I installed it that way myself just this week) .

Idea for computer game

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's an idea for a computer game: something like Alpha Centauri except that the factions are all OS zealots. Bill Gates leads the Microsoft faction. Linus leads another. Stallman might be a third faction. Etc. The technologies in the game would focus on computer tech, of course.

Anyone think this would be a cool game?

Re:Koffice. FILE FORMAT IS THE ISSUE

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, KOffice may be cool, but what happens when I run Gnome 5.0 and I do not want to install k* applications or qt progs? I have a file format issue! Therefore, the OO choise is reasonable. The file format is going to be more widespread and easily accessible for multiple platforms.

Actually It's available on the side too...

[Anonymous Coward]

alt.binaries.warez.linux

right now no less. However, it doesn't have the db so it still appears i'll be purchasing it. lol....

damn hackers...

Open Office

[jpaz]

As long as Open Office is fairly well maintained, I think that Star Office doesn't stand much of a chance. I rather doubt that Star Office will get any *must have* features that would set it apart from other office suites.

Re:Open Office

[joeykiller]

As long as Open Office is fairly well maintained, I think that Star Office doesn't stand much of a chance. I rather doubt that Star Office will get any *must have* features that would set it apart from other office suites.

I agree with you in that StarOffice 6.0 won't have any "must have" features over OpenOffice. But I don't think OpenOffice will "win" just because of this. Actually, I don't think features will be a deciding factor at all. Brand name recognition, however, will be. Because many people - including me - likes products that comes from vendors they know.

One example: I've been following the Mozilla project for a long time, and has downloaded and used both nigtly and milestone builds. I've even reported bugs, and done all a non-programming user can do. But for reason I don't quite understand myself, I never made Mozilla my main browser.

But last week Netscape repackaged Mozilla 1.0 RC 1 and released it with some extras as Netscape 7.0 PR 1. Something strange happened: Because of the name (Netscape) and the feeling that Mozilla finally had gotten the "approved" stamp, I downloaded and use Netscape 7.0 PR 1 daily - and as my main browser.

My father never trusted Mozilla at all - he doesn't relly understand what it is. But Netscape he knows, and he like Netscape products. So now he has also made the switch to Netscape 7.0 (from Netscape 4.7!).

Maybe the same'll apply to OpenOffice as well: Not many people knows OpenOffice.org or what it is. But more people have heard about Sun and will trust a product from them.

Re:Open Office

[Anonymous Coward]

> As long as Open Office is fairly well maintained, I think that Star Office doesn't stand much of a chance. I rather doubt that Star Office will get any *must have* features that would set it apart from other office suites.

So far as corporations are concerned, Star Office has a "must have" that Open Office will never have.

A large corporate sponsor (Sun).

Think how most large companies buy software, and what kind of support/CYA comfort levels their buyers require, then rethink your idea of "doesn't stand much of a chance". OO is the one that doesn't stand as much of a chance in a company.

Thanks for reminding me

[foonf]

I just deleted the StarOffice 6 beta from my system. It doesn't work now anyway, and it was taking up lots of space. I don't get the feeling either OpenOffice or another version of StarOffice will be replacing it, either.

Bloatware

[Lucky_Pierre]

Use Gobe Productive 3 for Linux. It's not bloatware and it kicks SO's fat ass!

http://www.gobe.com/downloads/gobe_linux_x86_ins ta ll.tgz

Dump all "Office" software packages

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about the rest of you guys, but somewhere around 1992 I made an incredible leap of faith and decided HTML would be my default file format.

I would abandoned Microsoft Word, which had been my defacto favorite wordprocessor for ages, as well as PLAIN TEXT FORMAT. I converted all my text files to HTML.

This was an incredible foresight, and has served me very well. Every wordprocessing document I create I use Netscape Composer, which has continued to evolve all the way up to 4.79... and I can rest easy knowning, no matter what, HTML will be a standard forever, and every document I create is already WEB READY.

That the rest of you guys are still f***ing around with such crappy Office Suites... is mindboggling....

The number of web documents and websites I personally have now is 50 to 100 times larger than anyone else I know.... my thoughts go instantly to the web about as fast as any blogger...

(Note that I said Netscape Composer, and not Mozilla... which I personal feel is a piece of bloated slow s**t... open source or not... try running it on a P200 and you'll see what I mean, its unusable)

Dump propreitary formats, standardize on something even bigger and widespread. Just recently I had to convert MacPaint files to JPEGs. Back in the day, I thought MacPaint would be around forever. Guess what. Its not. Not even supported in the GIMP. Neighter is PICT. So what do you think are the chances of being able to read a .WORD file 20 years from now????

Re:Dump all "Office" software packages

[fons]

(Note that I said Netscape Composer, and not Mozilla... which I personal feel is a piece of bloated slow s**t... open source or not... try running it on a P200 and you'll see what I mean, its unusable)

ANY full-featured modern browser is slow on a P200.

Just don't run software on your P200 that wasn't intended for it. I bet WinXP will run slow on your P200, but that doesn't mean it's bad software. Oh wait, bad example :-)

If you're going windows on a P200 i would recommend win98lite (with all the desktop enhancements turned off) and netscape 4.7x or IE 5.

Re:Dump all "Office" software packages

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you do when you apply to the jobs that say "Send your resume in WORD format"?

Ironically, even Linux/Unix jobs often ask for a resume in Word format! *sigh*

Re:Dump all "Office" software packages

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux companies that ask for your resume' in WORD are definitely clueless and bleeding money anyways. They'll be going extinct very soon!

Re:Dump all "Office" software packages

[Anonymous Coward]

NT4 and IE 6 run like a dream on my P200. Mozilla, and NS 4 *crawl*.

Re:Dump all "Office" software packages

[Isle]

Get a job somewhere else?

Btw. I have never seen a job that required that, but I have once requested to have my contract send in a different format. Damn difficult to sign a contract you can't print..

Re:Dump all "Office" software packages

[__past__]

Dump propreitary formats, standardize on something even bigger and widespread.

What should that standard be that NN4-created "HTML" documents adhere to? I hope you don't talk about HTML, try feeding one of your documents to a HTML validator.

Re:Dump all "Office" software packages

[Anonymous Coward]

Your reasons for standardizing on HTML are the same reaons I've standardized on LaTeX as my "document" type.

Been around a lot longer than HTML, and will be around even after HTML is replaced by *ML or whatever.

Re:Dump all "Office" software packages

[snarfer]

Get a job somewhere else?

This has to have been written by a person who hasn't been to Silicon Valley lately!

Re:http://www.shopping-nice.com/video/Daniel_Pearl

[Anonymous Coward]

GOD IS GREAT!

DEATH TO ISRAEL!

J'RAXIS = THE WIPO TROLL = SERIAL TROLLER

[Anonymous Coward]

That's right! Your recent attempts to burn karma have an inordinate amount of bold words interspersed thoroughout your posts. Serial Troller has a tendency to make posts with a high amount of bold html tags. Couple this with Serial Troller's odd obsession with The WIPO Troll and his recent admission of being said troll, J'raxis - or should i say The WIPO Troll? - sure seems to have a three-way split personality.

Re:J'RAXIS = THE WIPO TROLL = SERIAL TROLLER

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe his using BOLD WORDS is a ploy. Everyone knows this is SERIAL TROLLER'S style. J'raxis is trying to scam you. J'raxis is brilliant. All hail J'raxis.

Re:J'RAXIS = THE WIPO TROLL = SERIAL TROLLER

[Anonymous Coward]

STFU, J'raxis

Ximian software is just too unstable

[stuNNed]

I've noticed a significant amount of instability in Ximian's GNOME packages, after using them for over a year or so.
Ximian's Abiword I could never get barely to work and since it's a lightweight wordprocessor replacement to soffice, it's a shame. So what did I do? I used Red Carpet, like Ximian says, to uninstall ximian packages to remove the Ximian desktop and what happened? It rendered my box useless, had to reinstall. I was a subscriber to Red Carpet Express as well. Until Ximian opts for a little more stability, I'll stick with Red Hat's GNOME packages. It seems GNOME that comes with Red Hat 7.3 is pretty up to date and nicely done.

For anyone who wants to uninstall ximian packages and not do what I did, you can try:

rpm -ve --nodeps `rpm -vqa | grep ximian`

and then use apt or something to reinstall the regular GNOME packages.

Re:Ximian software is just too unstable

[fejjie]

uh, anytime someone says to do --nodeps or --force - you know that they haven't a clue as to what they are talking about.

you think red-carpet messed up your system? I guarentee that

rpm -e --nodeps `rpm -qa | grep ximian`

will leave your system in an even less usable state than anything red-carpet could do.

Re:Ximian software is just too unstable

[stuNNed]

um, if you see what packages are being removed....

JUST the ximian packages, the system may be missing a few things but with the reinstall of GNOME, it should work.

Re:Ximian software is just too unstable

[stuNNed]

mind you, if this is done in text mode and not gui ...

Re:Ximian software is just too unstable

[Khalid]

Forget Ximian, apt-get see apt.freshrpms.net will let you upgrade your distro and all your rpms in seamless way. I have installled it 2 months ago and my Linux experience has completly changed.

Re:http://www.shopping-nice.com/video/Daniel_Pearl

[Anonymous Coward]

that's nice and all but where's the uncesored one? there's 30 seconds missing from that.

Re:INSULTING SPANISH PHRASE

[Anonymous Coward]

It's 'puta madre' you stupid wannabe uneducated fuck.

Re:H Y P O C R I S Y !!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah you're right. Guess that's why we all got modded down.

Sometimes offtopic is justified.

[Futurepower(R)]

Offtopic, I know, but sometimes being offtopic is justified.

Responding to the sig in the above post: "begin happy.exe See Microsoft KB Article Q265230 for more info." (Note that two spaces are required after the word "begin".)

Once I sent someone at Microsoft an email message that had a period as the first character in the body. This has a special meaning to some email servers, apparently, because Microsoft sent me hundreds of identical email messages in response. I had to call my ISP to get it stopped.

On Topic: In a way, this is on topic, because my experience is that Open Source software is less quirky and weird than Microsoft software. So that is another reason to use Star Office and Red Hat or Mandrake.

Another on-topic comment: It looks like Rekall with PostgreSQL would solve any word processing database needs.

Isn't bundling what you all hate M$ for?

[forgoil]

I like bundling, I like integration, I like a package that is tested and I hope that there will be more high quality bundling in the software world (not throwing in two worthless games with a GFX card, but useful software from the start).

Re:Isn't bundling what you all hate M$ for?

[ztwilight]

Who necessarily hates M$? People just like to use a good operating system which doesn't (enter your own personal reasons here). Bundling good free software makes it that much faster and easier to get your new operating system install up to speed and ready to get some work done. Some OSS purists aren't using Mandrake anyways, they're using Debian, Slackware, and other pure free-software distros.

Price?!

[Chicane-UK]

Ok.. I use Linux for most servers that I setup at work, and I occasionally use it on the desktop. Now dont get me wrong, I have always loved that Linux was free - and I was always ready to cough up money when they decided that the current business model wasn't working too well...

But I feel that the costs for this latest product are a bad decision.. "Red Carpet CorporateConnect, which includes a license for StarOffice 6.0 included with each paid seat, priced at $150 per year per seat."

Ouch! Maybe for smaller businesses this might work, but for larger companies & businesses that might go for a Microsoft volume license (I work for a college, and we use the MS Campus Agreement.. it does work out very cheap), I cannot see this kind of deal being any better than the Microsoft one? Even if this did offer savings, it wouldn't be by an awful lot - I always liked Linux because it took the cost of licenses and laughed about it - they were just no longer anything to worry about.

I guess that kind of business model just doesn't work?

Re:Price?!

[Anonymous Coward]

You aren't really buying a Licence with Red Carpet CorporateConnect but a service. Now with StarOffice 6.0 and certain other components like that MS Outlook plugin for Evolution (if they ship it with the product) might have some special licenses, but the rest of the product is free software (well, obviously they also have licenses but...)

You're just buying the few apps (+ loads of free software in nice packages) and support for all that. And I doubt anyway that Red Carpet CorporateConnect is ment for Campuses, sheez.

Re:Diffrence from LyX

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the difference from LyX? Where does SO/OO work better than TeXmacs?

Taco's love life lately?

[Anonymous Coward]

So what have you and your fiancee been doing lately, hmmm??? :)

Re:http://www.shopping-nice.com/video/Daniel_Pearl

[Anonymous Coward]

Israel died over 5,000 years ago after his children moved to Egypt, you silly Muslim!

"Cheap Linux users"

[Anonymous Coward]

Now this is strange: Because Sun is charging $76 bucks for StarOffice 6.0, Linux folks are now talking about "alternatives" to the dominant Office Suite on Windows?! Windows users would still buy StarOffice as an alternative to MS Office. It's a better deal than Microsoft Office which costs around $400 dollars. Also, StarOffice is supported, which beats "going it alone" with OpenOffice.

MODERATORS ON CRACK(PARENT)

[Anonymous Coward]

is the parent post modded "off topic" because of the nick ? it seems quite on topic to me

Sounds like bollocks to me...

[Chuck Chunder]

Evolution is very stable for me and doesn't depend on Gecko in any case.

It's certainly true that getting Mozilla, Galeon and Nautilus' web view to all work at the same time hasn't always been the easiest thing if your compiling it yourself, that's one of the reasons that using Ximian is so pleasurable. Everything just works because someone who knows what they are doing has done the hard bits for you.

Good

[theolein]

This is called adding value. It's what MS did to gain it's market dominance (with one or two other tactics which I won't mention here) and it's about time. Good on Ximian, Sun, OpenOffice.org and Mandrake. Good on them all.

It's not stable

[mr.e]

I've tried koffice every now and again (most recently the version that comes with kde3) and while it looks like it has potential but it just isn't stable. I have never been able to create a document of any reasonable size with kword/kspread/kpresenter because it crashes... every time. The import/export filters are also poor compared to openoffice, and surely i'm not the only one who expects tab to take you to the next column in a table (rather than to a one of the tab stops in the middle of the current table cell).

I really wanted to like koffice, but without stability it's useless. If i i want light and fast i now use abiword and gnumeric, if i need something abiword can't yet do i use openoffice.

Re:It's not stable

[Anonymous Coward]

With time it will mature, just look at the progress between too early released 1.0 and 1.1! Of course OpenOffice plays in another league, just see how many paid developers they have and since how many years it is developed. But it has issues like a monolothic binary, windows which cannot be moved out of main window and you have to install it for every user! KOffice 1.2 will be really nice (WYSIWYG, foot-/endnotes, spellchecking, Thesaurus, word completion, full Bi-Di, Mail Merge, ...).

Re:It's not stable

[mr.e]

I think you missed the point slightly. I want stability. Yes those features are very useful, but they wuickly become pointless if it crashes every five minutes. I want koffice to do well, so i hope they take the time to make sure all the features they add are stable, and sort out the bugs that currently plague them.

remember it's alpha

[mr.e]

Yes it is fast and quite impressive, but it's currently an alpha version so don't be surprised if it crashes almost as much as koffice.

Full Proprietary -> Half Proprietary = GOOD

[hcstudt]

Full Proprietary -> Half Free Source = also GOOD
Full Proprietary -> Full Free Source = BETTER

So if this will help anybody shifting from e.g. MS Office that is good as I see it.

It should make taking the next step easier :

Half Proprietary -> Full Free Source
or
Half Free Source -> Full Free Source

Adabase is included in Star Office

[Lewis Mettler, Esq.]

I believe Adabase is the data base included in Star Office.

bundling versus packaging

[Lewis Mettler, Esq.]

You have to distinguish between illegal bundling of products and products being sometimes packaged.

There is nothing wrong with combining products from time to time or for some products.

The problem comes in when a lessor product is always bundled with a monopoly product.

Otherwise, that process does not always work. Redhat decided against including StarOffice simply because it would slightly increase the retail price for RedHat or cut into their margins. And, when you have to compete, raising your minimum price does not help you. That cuts into your sales.

That is also why you see Mandrake including StarOffice with some products but not with others.

It is not an absolute concept. And, it really is only harmful when combined with monopoly products that preclude competition.

copy/paste/print/fonts

[nehril]

this is the achilles heel of the whole "linux on the desktop" idea. The most basic operations just don't always work. Cut and paste between apps doesn't always work, printing doesn't always work, fonts don't always work, or totally suck if they do, etc. I can't switch my girlfriend over to a linux desktop because she would hit all of these obstacles within the first 30 seconds of use.

Sure, if you susbscribe to only one Ideology (kde/gnome) you can get past some of this, but then you can't use the best app for the job. What if you want to use Mozilla and Evolution and Koffice?

Choice is great, freedom is great, Linux is great, but I'd rather pay for commercialware and get those "little things."

I couldn't find this anywhere...

[Daimaou]

...so I'm going to ask. If I were to purchase Ximian Desktop Professional for $59.00 do I get the regular StarOffice, or a custom, only-runs-when-Ximian-is-present version?

I would be willing to buy Ximian, not install it, and get StarOffice for a $20.00 discount. If it is just a regular version of StarOffice. But if Ximian has pulled a Dell, I'm not interested.

No - not 5 seats

[mgkimsal2]

No, I don't think it's $75/5 seats. It's $75 which you can install in up to 5 locations, as long as only one is being used at any one time. It's meant so that I can pay $75 and install it at home and at work at the same time.

Perhaps my definition of seats is wrong. If I have 10 employees in an office and I want them all to be using StarWriter 6 during the work day, I need to buy 10 licenses, not 2.

Ximian business model broken

[Quietti]

The same per-seat license problem affects their Connector plug-in for the Evolution mailer. When my previous employer contacted Ximian to try to bring them to offering site licenses or other more suitable options than their current per-10 or per-25 packs, they were completely inflexible. From what I could get of our mail exchanges, while the Ximian coding team comes from a Linux background and understands the issues, Ximian's sales and marketting drones really don't have a clue at grasping the culture that goes with the free software world. [flame]Then again, am I the only one who has a problem with Miguel's teenage dream being to become a Microsoft software developer, only to end up Redmondizing Linux by porting C# and by developing .NET for Linux?[/flame]

commercial?

[dalinian]

the added commercialization of Ximian is continuing (started with Evolution connector)

Hmm, aren't companies supposed to be commercial? What you're saying is that Ximian is shipping yet another proprietary product, and I agree, it's not a good choice. Even if it seems they've also shipping Open Office.

With Connector, there was the excuse that if you have to use it, you're already using proprietary software (Microsoft Exchange), so using the connector doesn't make a big difference.

StarOffice 6.0 Rocks

[Falshrmjgr]

Well, my friendly neighborhood radio station was kind enough to send me a free copy of Star Office 6.0 (insert CNET Radio plug here). Frankly, I love it. Other than the anoying warnings about losing formating when saving in MS format, its been great so far. And the KDE integration is much better than before. I should have Solaris 9 up in a few days, and will test it all. Cheers