Slashdot Mirror
Analysis of SuSE Linux Desktop
pdajames writes "ZDNet UK has a look at the new SuSE Linux Desktop, running Microsoft Office. They seem to think Linux is just about there when it comes to desktop users, although their words about StarOffice are not so kind. It seems like some of the reality of desktop Linux is starting to match the hype." Not being an Office power user myself, I felt that way a long time ago, but it's cool to see projects like Evolution get some more street cred.
When I see terms like "binary compatibility" in reference to a Linux distro, plus things like Lindows' application pay-service, it almost seems like we're being told that different Linux distros can't share the same programs.
If I'm slightly confused by this, imagine what the average user (who I imagine is the target market here) must think.
What, no screenshots? next story
StarOffice is intended as a Microsoft Office replacement, and can read and write Office file formats. For most uses, it should be fine, but it does have limits.
I find writing the occasional macro useful in Word and mandatory in Excel. I know that many businesses do implement significant modifications and applications using VBScript for the Windows Office Suite. And there's a significant third party application market of these things, including some very sophisticated data modeling tools.
I understand why Open Office doesn't want to try to implement a VBScript clone, but why isn't there a Python, Ruby, or other scripting language implemented for OO?
What are the obscure technical reasons the article alludes to?
This review sounds about right for the state of Linux on the desktop. Lots of polish, lots of nice icons and fonts and anti-alias, but when it comes to native core productivity apps, the polish starts to lack. While I haven't tried Ximian OpenOffice.org, it seems like a step in the right direction -- a bit nicer interface, tighter integration with the desktop, etc.. Seems like lots of smaller apps (and KDE apps) have this nice consistent look and I'll be very pleased as more and more apps achieve this consistent professionalism. In anycase, the review is just about right. With the continued interest of Linux desktop from major distros, governments and corporations, I would have to guess that a lot of these rough edges will ultimately be addressed and the future for Desktop Linux will be very bright.
The sco lawsuit is just the first salvo. As linux grows to be a credible competitor on the desktop, there will be alot of people that will be very upset about it.
You can expect patent claims to come out of microsoft. You can expect the long dead concept of the look and feel lawsuit to raise its head, and every other sleazy tactic that can be used will be used.
Remember during the senate hearings on microsoft, that they complained they always had competitors nipping at their heels ? Well I suspect we are about to find that they were perfectly happy with that as long as they weren't credible competitors.
It's interesting that you mentioned the automatic updates. I find it interesting that you are pleased that SuSE does nightly auto updates, and most people hate MS for it's automatic updates. That alone says a lot about consumer trust of Linux over MS.
Personally, I don't trust anyone with automatic updates. I like reviewing what each update does, whether I need it, and if anyone has experienced any problems with it.
YOU SUCK BALLS!
There are many absolute no-nos known by GUI designers. Try reporting a clear violation of one of those rules as a bug on an open source project and see what happens.
Let's open up OpenOffice Write and see what happens.
First, it takes about fifteen seconds to open the first time. Is there a good reason it should take that long? Could something occuring during startup be deferred until later? Could something be rearranged to cut down the number of I/O operations? Is there too much interpretive processing taking place. Yes, the program can be made resident in memory, but that's addressing the symptom, not the problem.
Now we have a window, showing most of a document, including the entire left margin, but probably not including the right edge of the text area. What's wrong with this picture? Try Word and see what it does.
Now type "a". A star-shaped thing pops up in the lower right of the screen. It's not clear what you're supposed to do with it. If you click on it, there's a 10-15 second delay, and a full screen window pops up, obscuring the document being worked on, announcing that "AutoCorrect has been activated. Start each sentence with a capital letter".
What we have here is a failure to communicate. An AI "helper" that doesn't have a clue about what you're doing has intervened before getting enough information to decide what to do, slammed you in the face with a full-screen stupid message, and suggested that you turn it off. That last is the one intelligent thing it's done.
The developers of OpenOffice seemed to be trying to emulate the Microsoft Paper Clip, which in itself isn't a popular feature. They totally blew it.
I could go on. But it's clear that nobody ever did proper usability testing on this thing. It comes across like a really cheezy Word clone.
In fact, OpenOffice isn't all that bad as a program. But as design, it sucks.
All this can be fixed. But because it's open source, it won't be.
I'd say that Office XP is what keeps a lot of would-be Linux using companies attached to their Windows desktops. I don't see why all the major Linux distros haven't focused on this one important thing earlier. I would think it would be their primary concern to steal some of Microsoft's desktop holdings.
796F75617265616E65726400
Actually, that is enough.
Frankly, I've had enough of the "if we eliminated competition on such and such a level, we could win the OS war" crap. What OS war? Personally I want a computer that does what I need it to do, does it well, and doesn't leave me at the mercy of a billion dollar company. Why is it that computer geeks can only think in terms of replacing one mind share monopoly with another? Replace Microsoft with Linux is the mantra, and frankly that doesn't make me any happier.
What I really want is to replace closed standards with open ones - I'm not evern talking about open versus closed source, I'm talking about Adobe becoming a highly successful company by (amongst other things) making PostScript and PDF open. KDE and GNOME have been fighting the limitations of X standards to the point where they have their own extensions to X. These extensions are open ones - I can solve most interoperability problems by running KDE or GNOME with a Window Manager that is compliant to both - specifically I use OpenBox.
Frankly, innovation comes from competition. After innovation comes consolidation - the GNOME and KDE projects (plus RoX and XFCE) have been extending X through various internal protocols, innovating in terms of X as a platform for building a desktop. Now the Freedesktop project consolidates the results from an open specification into an open standard. This means that the best results of all four projects get put together, increasing the ability of third party developers to create working applications for both, and allowing applications to be cross compatible. The next step is for the desktops to compete on other levels, allowing for innovation.
I wouldn't have it any other way. And frankly neither would you. Without the existance of not two, but four DE projects, the current state of the X desktop would be much poorer - where would we be if we had sunk everything into CDE? Would CDE have excited any developers into doing the work in the first place?
Why do you insist upon using a WYSIWYG document editor?
You're a smart, technical person.
Get Vim installed and spend two evenings reading through the included manual.
Get a TeX/LaTeX/BibTeX system set up.
Not only will you produce much higher quality portable documents, ready for professional publishing, faster, but you will save time not having to fiddle with layout issues and the guesswork that is inherent in an editor like Word.
Vim allows you to have multiple levels of "folds". This means that you can easily hide and unhide logical sections of your document with two keystrokes.
You can customize how the hidden text is indicated and even summarized.
As a scientist, you will be happy to know that LaTeX is as far superior to Word in typesetting mathematical formulae, as is Linux to DOS.
Funny, every Free UNIX system with package management has automatic nightly updates... but not necessarily by default.
Find a good ftp site for your system and write your own update script.
No, I'm not being elitist in telling you to do stuff yourself. I'm merely pointing out the major benefit of Free UNIX: you are in charge of your own system. Stop relying on Redhat, SuSE, Mandrake, etc., to administer your system for you. Be your own master.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Dude, what he said was, 'binary compatibility is often broken under Linux', and you replied, 'No it isn't, just recompile the applications.'
Do you understand what binary compatibility is? It's not FUD to say that Linux doesn't support it very well. The mantra of kernel development is that source compatibility will always be maintained, but ABIs will always change. Everyone makes an effort to minimize the problem, but the rapid advance of Linux is partly due to developers being able to break ABIs.
As long as the feature is optional it's fine, of course, at least for me. I kind of like having my updates automatically downloaded, but requiring my confirmation before they get installed.
And it's not as if M$ would be suicidal to make automatic updating compulsory. Think of the outcry in corporate environments when the sysadmins realise they could not control their desktops anymore.
Michel
Fedora Project Contribut
What you are requesting is avaible here, by the way.
What is not possible, though, is freely downloading any of the Enterprise" variants, be is SLES or SLED or any of the derived products. But then, nobody offers that. Nobody actually can offer that because that would jeopardize the entire business model of offering and supporting a stable distro over 3-5 years. TANSTAAFL, folks.
So don't spread false or misleading statements, OK?
open (SIG, "</dev/zero"); $sig = <SIG>; close SIG;