Reading/Writing Chinese Using Linux?

Rimbo asks: "I'm building a computer for a friend, who has three major requirements from his system: He wants an Athlon with a 333MHz FSB, he wants absolutely no Microsoft software anywhere near it, and he needs the ability to read and edit Chinese. I imagine Red Flag Linux has great Chinese support, but is it as easy to use as a desktop OS as Mandrake or Red Hat? How easy is Chinese text editing and entry under the major distributions? What "office" software for Linux is good for editing Chinese? Thanks!"

Comments

Observations

[W2k]

A few things I mentally noted while reading this:

a) I find it interesting how the "friend" mentioned in the article only specifies the brand and FSB frequency of the CPU of the system he wants. Most people would be more interested in things like the CPU clock speed, hard drive size, amount of RAM, et cetera. Also, having a high-speed front side bus does in no way gurantee a fast system.

b) The link to the A7V333. Maybe I just had bad luck with my A7V, but I have woved never to buy an Asus product again after experiencing their horrible drivers, horrible support and in many cases badly designed products. My friends have had similar experiences, mostly with Asus 3D cards. I would not recommend Asus products to my worst enemy, and I would NOT put an Asus motherboard in a computer I built for a friend.

c) Windows has excellent multi-language input support. Refusing to use Microsoft software is not in the best interest of someone who wants his chinese input support as good as possible. Not that there can't be good Chinese support in a Linux distro (I wouldn't know, having never researched the subject) but there is always the ease-of-use problem, which the posting also mentions.

d) Finally, I'd say the OS Sucks-Rules-O-Meter is more of an indication of the amount of zealots for any given operating system than anything else. Also, it'd be interesting to see how much overlap there is between the "linux rules" and "windows sucks" result. I'm guessing quite a bit.

Speaking of the OSSROM, if it is to be believed, then apart from Windows, MacOS, OS/400, Solaris and Unix are all operating systems that suck.