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Desktop Apps Ripe Turf for Open Source
Amy Kucharik writes "Two new reports on open source validate office suite application alternatives like OpenOffice.org and StarOffice and their push into the mainstream against market giant Microsoft Office. "
As much as I know we all hate MS funded "research" I just can't trust the number of times that an application is downloaded as market-share. Sorry, that just does not compute...
Hell, I have downloaded Firefox on countless occasions (usually to test a new version). It never lasts more than an hour on my machine. Does that count as a piece of market-share in the browser war when I don't actually use it?
I have downloaded OpenOffice multiple times as well (on multiple computers) to test and to tour the features newer version have to offer. Again, the install may last a few hours while I test the features that I require. So my 25+ downloads counted towards the 16+ million?
I am glad to see that somewhat viable alternatives are coming into their own and getting media attention but I don't know if we really need to be associated with false numbers just to get the word out. It doesn't exactly give us a leg to stand on when MSFT fires back about the artificially inflated numbers.
Its true, a local newspaper by me just got all new
Sun x86 based systems and they all came with OpenOffice. (I was a bit baffled why they didn't have StarOffice but such are the mysteries of life.)
am quite nervous about OpenOffice. I don't understand Sun's latest deals with Microsoft but I don't trust them.
Keep working on koffice guys. We really shouldn't be putting all our eggs in one basket.
In a report from El Segundo, Calif.-based consulting firm Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC), Microsoft dominates the office suite market, with 95% of the overall share and more than 300 million users worldwide.
However, the report notes that OpenOffice.org, an open source alternative to Microsoft Office, has secured 14% of the large enterprise office systems market, with over 16 million downloads and countless CD installations. Even with Microsoft retaining 95% overall marketshare, the fact that OpenOffice now holds almost 15% of enterprise workstations, means it's only a matter of time before John Cubicle brings OO.org home.
Disclaimer: I use OO.
so far. The article seems to think cost is the reason to get excited. I agree, that is pretty damn cool, however, the real reason to get all a titter is because of the open formats used in open office.
The format being as open as it is ( you can read, in the code, the format if all else fails ), you can do a great many things that just aren't possible with ms office.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
If all we ever do is try to emulate the M$ Office and other popular desktop apps, We'll will never be able to offer a superior product. It's time to add non bloating features that outshine the commercial software.
This is only somewhat true.
While I have been reading all Word documents with OpenOffice (OO) for the past 2 years or so, I often run into Word features not supported by OO. For instance, I recently received a password-protected Word document that I could not open with OO. I had to use AbiWord (how come the report doesn't mention that!?).
Another missing feature seems to be the ability to view Word document changes when the original document has 'track changes' turned on.
I guess reports like this one help larger, less up-to-speed corporate users by opening their eyes and mind.
Simpy
It's only a matter of time before Microsoft files a patent suit against you for using OpenOffice.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
More than just application quality, price, ease of use, etc. will be needed to get OSS into big corporations. Many of them have spent significant $$$ on add-ins and custom development in Word, Excel and Access. If OpenOffice supported VBA, it could be a slam-dunk, but integration with applications such as accounting systems, scientific data acquisition, or just automation of Word and Excel for productivity would need to be rewritten from scratch.
Those apps are a big part of my business -- I'd happily migrate them, but nobody's the least bit interested in the Pharmaceutical industry in moving away from MS Word and Excel.
Design for Use, not Construction!
There is an interesting writeup about opensource music apps over at News Forge today. Just installed wxMusic and it looks excellent for large music collections.
Help fight continental drift.
To think I would live to see that line. What an age we live in. And to think that there are now people posting on /. who will argue about it. Where's my time machine when I need it?
;)
This tagline brought to you by 1500 monkeys in just under 17 years.
I agree, but I'd go even further and say that cost is irrelevant when anyone can simply download MS Office (i.e., cost is zero).
I wish governments would mandate that any software they purchase must have open, documented data file formats. That would force companies to compete more to retain customers instead of locking them in via the data file format. I think this is a better and more likely solution (compared to open source) to breaking MS's dominance.
Why is it that whenever a story about Linux desktop application suites comes up, they always bring up OpenOffice and StarOffice? Are there not other good examples they can use?
I don't mean to bait flame here, but aside from OpenOffice and StarOffice (which essentially do the same thing), what other good, solid business apps are available for Linux? All I ever hear about are the same two.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
- a tool to go through specified directories and copy and convert all files to OO format.
- some sort of central server type connector that allows multiple users to work on the same document at the same time and the result mirrored to all users.
1 is required , 2 would be a selling point
*Forget* about Desktop, its a straw man! Nobody gives a shit about desktop computing any more; the days of cubicle-bound misery-computing are numbered!
.. and you can do a hell of a lot of computing/real-work with such devices.
..}
The real realm for application prosperity, *especially since Linux has a lead above and beyond WIN32*, is Embedded.
Yes, thats right folks, give up the Desktop War of Straw. Computers getting smaller, and smaller, and smaller
{If you've got the temerity for bold app design, I might posit, oh and some cheap host-hardware to throw in that $400 software/hardware combo you're selling to your customer
In short: Desktop is Dead. The New In is Embedded.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
especially in education, where $$$ are often tight, and users rarely need all the features of MSOffice. That's also a good way to get the word out to parents as well.
Case in point - our local high school has a class that requires a PowerPoint presentation as part of the class. The teacher insisted on PP and was a bit taken back when I suggested to one parent that OO has a perfectly good presentation package and doesn't require shelling out the $$$ for MSOffice; and you can test for compatibility with MS's free PP viewer as well.
Despite living an affluent district, many parent's can't afford the $125 or so for a student edition MS Office and may not even have a PC that can run it, so OO is a very viable alternative.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Here is something interesting. The LDS Church is now distributing Open Office for use on machines at local meetinghouses. This is very interesting because they are very very careful at which software they use.
The interesting this about these numbers is that no one can put a spin on this. For instance, if these numbers were about 'number of PCs sold with Linux pre-loaded', you would have claims that this was only being done to circumvent the MS tax, and most people subsequently loaded the PC with pirated Windows OS.
You just cannot make those claims in this case.
All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be
While the OOo/SO twins get the 'starchild' treatment, IMO it will be of couple other desktop apps that will bring up open source (and that includes Linux OS) apps. These would be Firefox/Tbird and GIMP. I have switched 2 neighbors over to these (1 does pro photog) and they like them. The photog guy is now open to getting Linux installed on his oldest PC (cannot go to XP, dying on 98).
Since all of these work on Windows, these people can learn on their existing WinOS, and switch to Linux when the 'upgrade to XP or else' is forced on them.
Is there any Linux OS that is less than 10 Mb ,and can be run from CD without installing?
,i dont want knoppix.It may be good, but I simply cant download 700 MB image file on dialup.
No
So any options?
Oh yeah iam a windows user.wanting to try linux.or perhaps a new OS.
I have met many professionals that are biased on the desktop programs they use because they are the "industry standard" and want to feel like a professional. I good example is photoshop, I have had several graphics designer friends say they wont use anyother graphics package regardless of features because "its not photoshop..." How can opensource apps with their underdog persona get around this?
The above observation is a good point since frequency of download does not equate to frequency of use.
The greatest lack of credibility for Linux going mainstream is the lack of an AOL client in Linux. If Linux really had a huge following or interest in the consumer market, then AOL would have already launched an AOL client for Linux so that millions of tech-ignorant consumers could dial into AOL from their Linux desktop.
The success of Linux continues to be restricted to the business market and the engineering market. Soccer moms driving around in environment-destroying SUVs still will not touch Linux with a 10-foot poll.
Most newspapers don't use an office suite for actual wordprocessing. The stuff they need from a word processor is so specific, that office doesn't really help them.
On the other hand, they get office documents ALL THE TIME in the mail. At the paper where my wife works, they actually have to share Office installs, because there is no budget for a mostly useless office suite for every computer.
When the Phbs in management there realize that there is a free alternative that, since they DON'T ACTUALLY NEED TO PRODUCE CONTENT ON IT, is FAR superior to MS Office, you're going to see an OO.o boom in an important market sector.
I've actually pitched it a few times, but the buerocracy is so monolithic. Everythign has to go to corporate.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
No, I'm not a Linux geek by any means. I am certainly not a MSFT lover, but I'm a best tool for the job, and most of my job requires MSFT today. On that same thought, I've recently been getting into some open source things, and have even installed Linux pretty recently (just instaleld a MythTV box at my house!).
I've made the switch to Firefox completely - both at work and at my home. Why? It looks really nice, functions well, and was easy to get my wife switched over to as it functions pretty similar to tools she already knows. Hell, I've even switched some of my less technical friends over, and they love it. I didn't do this with Mozilla though - it just seemed "too much".
Now, on the other side, I finally broke down and installed OpenOffice to give it a shot. I thought, will this be the Office breaker I've heard about? No way. I can't stand it - it's clearly designed by technical people and doesn't have the slightest bit of usability in mind. Bash MSFT all you want, but they spend a fair amount of cash on usability, and unfortunately flattery is the best form of competition right now (think about how early versions of Word had the ability to emulate certain WordPerfect functions).
Right when I installed OO I went to open the word processor. It's actually called a Text Editor. WHAT? Notepad and nano are text editors, this is supposed to a Word Processing suite! Further, the interface looks like Office 95 - honestly, people are visual and the interface makes me feel like I should be sitting in a tiny bricked wall office with no windows and a flickering flourescent light overhead. Sure, some may like that, but it's not most people. Finally, the product seems slow on WinXP - yes, it may be my setup, and your mileage my vary, but Word is snappy on my box so it doesn't matter.
The short short is that products like Firefox and MythTV can make me a convert. They're well designed, look nice, have a lot of functionality, but also keep the end user in mind. OO.org has a long way to go thought before I'd recommend it to one single person as a Microsoft alternative.
...is a good project management application. I just scanned SourceForge.net but didn't find one. IMHO this is sorely lacking in the Open Source world. So much so that I've thought about writing my own (I wrote one that was curses(3)-based back in the early '80s :-). Does anyone have any pointers to a decent[1] project management app? Or should I start coding? ;-)
[1] decent == Can track resources, tasks, costs; can perform some sort of resource auto-leveling; can report resource conflicts; supports GANTT charts; has a relatively easy-to-use UI.
Don't underestimate the power of The Source
I don't know how StarOffice is these days, but OOo is bloatware and it shows. Since when do I need more than 128 MB RAM and a coffee break to start a word processor?
I really prefer the approach taken by AbiWord. They made a good word processor, without the bloat. It continues to be light and snappy now that they have added support for various features and formats.
Now, AbiWord is only a word processor, but with other projects providing spreadsheets, databases, etc. you can still get all the pieces of a complete office suite. Add some coordination and cooperation and you can get everything nicely integrated and uniform, too. Or use KOffice; a bit lacking in features last I sampled it, but well integrated and relatively light.
It's not that I don't recognize the hard work that went into OOo, it's just that I think the development approach is fundamentally flawed. Same goes for Mozilla, BTW. First they made a huge effort to build the Mozilla application suite, now Firefox and Thunderbird are working hard to strip off the bloat. KISS.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
That's right, many of you hate to use the G-word, but the fact is there are no (viable) grammar checker in open source world. Although there are several attempts to make one, they look more like APIs for users to build grammar checkers instead of the actual proofing tools, and the lack of inclusion by open source office suite deal a major blow for the adoption of the alternative office suites.
There are always the macho outbursts of 'we don't need stinking grammar checkers!' But the truth is, when spell checkers first came out, this was exactly the kind of attitude people had, and such attitude doesn't help for many of you who need a resume to secure jobs. Having a robotic proofing tool means errors won't be overlooked, which people tend to do from time to time. There may be other obstacles to overcome before wide spread adoption of open source office suites, but when it comes to important features, lacking grammar checker is one of the biggest issues.
Trust me, I know (ex-cult member). Mormons will squeeze 6 cents out of a nickel, because of their constant "we're persecuted, we have to live sparsely" mentality, which is really just used to keep the membership docile and accepting of anything the leaders spew.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
If there were Outlook replacements and Exchange replacements, then corporations could swap out one or the other rather than having to jump immediately into the water.
Especially more so in the fact that if you swap out Exchange and keep Outlook 2000, then your IT department will have saved a bucket-load of cash end whilst the end-users will never know the difference and never need retraining.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
I didn't use openoffice for about 1.5 years and always had in mind that it had problems with many MS Office files.
Now I used it again some weeks ago and I am really impressed. It worked with every file I tried and it is much faster and much more stable. Even complex powerpoint files and word documents with recorded changes work without any problems.
This enables me to only use linux at work where many office files are used.
As a teenager I gave countless copied CDs with Office or Windows on it and it only helped MS. Now I do the opposite. I have Slackware installed (might try some gentoo or Unbuntu soon though) and use solely OpenOffice and when people come to me for help or for software I point them to FOSS alternatives. Open Office works great with it's own format. It just has problems with closed formats. I think being polite and asking people to send me thing in RTF is a good way to save 300$+ on my OS/Office suite.
From my experience more people turn onto OpenOffice.org for its one-click PDF generation than anything else. People who publish newsletters, invitations, or just some documents they want on the Web site. Adobe Acrobat is $170 on Pricegrabber, but it's generally $250 retail in stores, so I've seen people wow'ed by OpenOffice single click Word->PDF conversion.
They are not switchers, they continue to use Office (MS Office 97 in some cases), but keep OpenOffice for this feature when they need another PDF.
I have to agree. It looks like the only reason why those 'we don't need xxx' outbursts exist is mostly because those losers just can't stand the fact that there are proprietary products that can do better jobs than anything open source developers are capable of doing. To make it short, it is just a result of whining fanactics having a penis issue.
...but when you read the article and realize that the author doesn't have much of a clue it's kinda like taking a white-house press conference as , "The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." (any administration, or even any press-conference for that matter).
The author of the "report" doesn't even understand the basic difference between OOo and Star Office. SO is not free (as in beer or speach). It is a proprietary extension of OOo's code-base. I have no problem with this, and SO is a viable alternative to M$ Office for many people and has some features that OO.o doesn't have. That's great, it's just not "free."
OOo, on the other hand, is free in every sense of the word.
If you'd read what I said, you'd know that all they need to do is read office documents.
To be able to do that, and for free, makes it far superior. Slow startup doesn't apply because it's a seldomly used application---total time spent would be negligible on a weekly basis.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I have to agree. It seems the only reason the outbursts exist is because those FOSS zealots can't stand the fact that proprietary tools can actually work better than anything open source developer put together. In short, these fanatics are having a penis issue.
..in Business 101 when they said that cost leadership wasn't a valid strategy. Not that offering better features for less cost isn't an even better one.
The trend is right IMO, large enterprises have the push to make it a standard. Then it will dribble down to smaller companies and finally to end users (think: employees).
I think you will find that 99% of the users are completely satisfied with the feature set of either MS Office or OpenOffice. The key issues are mindshare (Office. Oh, you mean there's some other Office?) and compatibility.
Having large enterprises on your side is a great strength in that respect. If [Fortune 500] can't read your (obscure enough that OpenOffice chokes) Word documents, you have a problem. If you can't read [Fortune 500]s OpenOffice documents, you have a problem. See?
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
(no, this is not flamebait...) I'm a big fan of OSS, but I don't have the thirty minutes it takes for OO.org to load on my 1ghz machine. Microsoft's products simply work. They load in a decent amount of time and have very few bugs that infringe on the way that I choose to use them. Sorry, but if the OSS group wants to get into my suite of office applications, they've got to work much better than they do now.
Same song and dance.. and who gives a fuck? Mostly just a bunch of open source zealots and that's about it. This will be a story when Joe Blow starts USING this stuff. Lots of Joe Blows. Until then, it's the same old shit. Download numbers are stupid.
and someone bit and gave it a +1, Insightful.
Any Slashdot reader who compares download speeds with GHz is clearly either an idiot or a troll.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
It takes almost 10 seconds on my *nix machine for OO.o to load. And about 2 seconds plus is the splash screen. And yes, I know the splash can be disabled.
;-)
As a side note, office loads when windows boots up, which increases your boot time and mem usage, even if you dont use it. But then again, windows users are use to seeing the boot screen alot.
Try this perfomance experiment. Open up a doc with alot of images in it, both in word and oo.o . After the document loads scrool up and down and see which Office suite has the images available and which one does not.
Correct answer OO.o.
PIII 800 nuff said.
and guess what .. its getting cheaper, and cheaper, to make those devices. won't be long before you won't buy a 'system' to run 'software' on, you'll just buy 'application object' to do whatever specific task it is you need, extremely well, extremely reliably ..
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
However, I use MS Office V.x for Mac over OpenOffice. Why? I find that it works better than on windows and I actually like using it over other applications. But mainly PowerPoint. Keynotes is nice and I could survive with Apple Works for my word processing and spreadsheet needs, but still I find PowerPoint for Mac extremely hard to beat. Same with Word for Mac. It just seems cleaner than Word XP or 2000. Excel I don't use often enough really to go one way or the other.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
...Maybe /. should conduct a poll of MS Word features. I rarely use either of the features you mention and neither would be showstoppers in the daily use of my word processor, so in *my* experience I'd say Abiword is far from a non-starter (I like outline view in MS Word, but I find I use it more because of the often-annoying behaviour of Word when I format my documents).
Really, Free/Open Source software is about choice, and as such it is really a shame that it is overlooked in articles about MS Office alternatives. This isn't really like the window manager wars or back in the mid 80's when the home computer market was so fragmented becasue AbiWord supports the same file formats. I think that so long as the segments of a market can interoperate reasonably smoothly, then a certain amount of fragmentation is important. Maybe Abiword isn't as featureful but it is really snappy and quite serviceable.
The same goes with other MSOffice alternatives. I think Gnumeric is a superior alternative to the offering in OO.o in terms of features and such. And if you like the KDE environment, what about KOffice? I find it discouraging that alternatives are dismissed as "non-starters" for lack of some of "pet-features".
I'm glad you are open to examine alternatives, and I encourage you to keep doing it. But please, if you find reason to discard it, PLEASE at least provide feedback to the developers--and if you fancy yourself a hacker, get involved in the projects yourself.
Just abandoning an option because it doesn't exactly suit your needs or to jump on the bandwagon of the leading alternative. I don't think it's much better to replace one monopoly with another, even if it is open source. It still provides a single point of manipulation of a whole segment of the software industry.
I appreicate what OpenOffice is doing, but when it comes to integrated Gome-ified apps, I don't think the OpenOffice tools are as high-quality as AbiWord and Gnumeric. The Abi folks in particular have an amazing site with impressive bug tracking, regression testing graphs etc.
Do you guys EVER post anything politically incorrect on open source? I gotta tell you right away that my home/business computer runs on RH Linux with OpenOffice.org and Mozilla. The office suite cannot open all M$ Word files, unfortunatelly the de facto standard (most business related documents really are in MS Word format and I can't change the world; the remaining text documents are in WordPerfect and there is no import filter for that in OOo). I used to have Firefox installed but it kept quitting unexpectedly so I dumped it for Mozilla. Yes, the FF folks don't seem to care so much about us, Linux users, as they care about Windows users, probably a side-effect of their crusade against IE. And how about both FF and Moz needing, every once in a while, a reboot in order to launch, as opposed to segfault? Wouldn't it be great if open source developers just came up with better software instead of wasting their effort on marketing? Wouldn't it be better if they focused on fixing the bugs instead of adding new bells and whisles? I forgot, it's free so I cannot ask for anything; moreover, istead of "whining" why don't I contribute a patch, right?
Let's just remember (let me ephasize these words) most ex-members who persecute the church tend to be those who have themselves violated the covenants they agreed to live by in the church and were cast out for not repenting and obeying the covenants they agreed to live by (others may call thse people hypocrite), I just see these people as angry and ashamed of themselves, so they blame someone else for their problems.
/. "relationship" will see we've marked each other as foes, so we obviously don't see eye to eye on much.)
... until the civil war forced the US government to recall the troups for more pressing issues) managed to get free of Mormonism and raise their kids in a secular manner. They remained quite positive toward the church's social stances (a mistake IMHO, but they came from a conservative generation), while quite dismissive of its theocracy (well founded, as it turned, out, particularly now that genetic science has disproven the fundamental premis of the Book of Mormon, a bit of scientific reality check Mormon professors at BYU dismiss as "unscientific" and "irrelevant" without any cause beyond their desire not to accept the facts on the ground, and to obfuscate their own inability to rebut the factual data).
.. of having been suckered so completely, and been made an ass of for so many years. They are angry not because they don't "measure up" to some cult's silly notion of what people should be (don't drink that coffee sinner!), but because a religious cult has robbed them of so much of their life, and so much of the joy life has to offer, and left them struggling to overcome the painfule emotional aftermath that any abusive relationship leaves behind ... and don't kid yourself, there is no other kind of relationship between a human mind and a cult such as the LDS church, and it is a rare mind indeed that can free itself from the clutches of such organized indoctrination. I am very grateful my grandparents succeeded, and my defia
I suspect this is the only post I will have made to slashdot that will be in agreement with the grandfather post (anyone examining our
Your characterization of ex-Mormons may be true of a few particularly dysfunctional refugees from that particular cult, but it is hardly representative of the majority of people who manage to free themselves from the LDS church's clutches.
My grandparents (descendents of Aaron Johnson, the man who designed many of the roads and bridges in Utah, who had extensive dealings and correspondence with Brigham Young, and who was a polygamist with 12 wives and hid in the hills during the 1850s as the US calvary was hunting said polygamists
Unfortunately, my mother and my sister converted back to that cult, and the results have been absolutely detrimental to their lives. Aside from the 10% income loss that they can ill afford, my sister's talents go unused as she struggles to raise the 7 children she and her Mormon husband had, despite the fact that they had no income to raise them with and are now subsisting in poverty in a small town with no economic options, and no funds to get out. Other examples in their lives abound, such as the toxic relationships they have had with abusive Mormon men (granted, not a statistical universe, but a decent sized anectdotal sample with thus far 100% failure rate). Whereas I, and all of my cousins whose parents were fortunately not coaxed back into the snare have had very successful lives and excelled beyond anyone's expectations, my sister (who started out with the same resources, more talent, and similar intelligence, but lacked the critical defiance necessary to assert one's autonomy in the face of institutional repression) has boxed herself into a deplorable situation through the beliefs and familial "duties" foisted upon her by her religion.
People who get out of Mormonism aren't ashamed of getting out. They're ashamed of having been in
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Oh my god! It's a new plague and it's . . . it's . . . it's upgrading peoples computers to advance its political agenda !!!
Firstly, may I point out open source isn't (supposed to be) political. Secondly, why on earth would someone install software on other computers without asking permission first?
One would hope this would be the case.
As far as an Outlook replacement, I think Evolution does the job nicely. Granted, I haven't stress-tested it in a corporate setting, but it seems to play nice with Exchange and also has a very similar feature set to Outlook. So right there, you could save a bucketload of cash by not having to upgrade from Outlook 2000.
Transistors and Beer!!
What about the lovely Antiword app?
:-D
I hate to open OpenOffice/Abiword just for read a shity text writen for a moron in Microsoft Word, Antiword cut the bloat and show me just plain text
Try it and be happy
Saludos amigos \o/
- Slayer_X
http://www.slayerx.org/
Lima
Quote:
----
"Savings of up to 25% are possible with alternatives to Microsoft Office," the report stated. "Significant savings potentials for the license and operating costs make open source programs, like OpenOffice or StarOffice, an alternative to Microsoft to be reckoned with."
StarOffice is a free productivity application suite from Sun Microsystems that includes a word processor, spreadsheet, database, presentation maker and e-mail component compatible with Microsoft Office.
----
1. 25% less? One is free (openoffice) and the other costs hundreds - where did 25% come from????
2. Staroffice costs money - OO is free. Who writes these news articles - the monkeys in the San Diego zoo?
You made a very important distinction in your question and you didn't even realize it. This was an article about Open Source Software, not Linux. They are not the same thing. There are plenty of great Linux-only apps worth mentioning, but this isn't about Linux vs Windows. It is about apps. It is about comparing OSS apps to Windows only apps.
That being said, there are some other apps worth mentioning. The Gimp is fantastic. Although experienced Photoshop users say it isn't a valid replacement, it does a lot more than most users need. It is available on Linux and Windows. There are office-type applications, as you have mentioned, and Open/Star Office usually take the lead. There are open messaging clients, but do those really bear mentioning? What other types of apps would you like to see mentioned? Browsers? Mozilla will always be more prevalent than Konqueror because Konq is Linux-only, and Moz is available on multiple platforms.
There are more solid apps that are Windows-only, that is just the facts. But how many of those do you use? If you want to know if there is an OSS alternative, I would suggest going to freshmeat and looking around, and poking around on sourceforge. One of the big problems with OSS is that until someone decides to create software X, it won't get created. Unless of course some company wants to create it, but then it probably won't be Open Source. There are some closed-source, windows-only, freely available apps out there that are fantastic. Irfanview comes to mind. I can only guess it is because the authors want to keep control of it. I would LOVE it if Irfanview would be available on Linux. But I can live without it on Linux by using other apps.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Actually, DamnSmallLinux is not commandline, it has a GUI with web-browser, a few games, etc etc. It even has a movie player and media player (XMMS, not sure what plays movies).
I'm not sure how they managed to pack all that in there, but I've just been playing with it recently and it actually has quite a bit in there for a 50MB distro.
Check it out on freshmeat to see a screenshot.
Take a look at Open Workbench
They downloaded it, decided it didn't suit their needs, and deleted it. There's always room for spin!
It's not suppose to be (if you are gennerally on the Left), but for some strange reason it seems that this is an ugly secret, as in, in fact realistically, it's very political.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I agree. Downloads does not equal marketshare. It is, however, a good indication of interest. But what will it take to make OO mainstream? Trying to convert our little group to OO at work has been problematic at best. Why? After the install (which was pretty easy, I admit), we found that MS office users couldn't read our docs. So we copied over the windows fonts and then tried again. Now most times we are OK, but there are a lot of documents created in one that are formatted incorrectly by the other. My opinsion: The world isn't going to convert to OO at once; therefore OO must successfully coexist with MS Ofice. At least for now, that is a statement that cannot be made.
And some bright spark has even sported a q&d script to help use them with OO.o docs.
Open source alternate applications are a good thing from a point of raising competition and choice for users. But. What will happen when the owners of the file formats claim features in their products which (they claim) are copy protection measures. At this point the DMCA will be able to be used to stop open source products from being able to open or use these file formats!
In fact the equivalent legislation here in the UK would prohibit the offending software from being sold or even possessed by a person.
It is, I know, a stupid situation but it will be tried. Look only at the lexmark, don't copy our copy protected ink cartridges, mess if you think it could not happen.
You keep using this word "validate". I don't think it means, what you think it means.
If some organization was actually validating these products it would be great. I tried OpenOffice on one of my real-world MS Word documents awhile back and it crashed (no I don't remember which version). I imagine it works fine for simple documents, but then again, so does WordPad.
I still think that the goal of MS Office file compatibility is a losing one. They should try to produce a better product instead. Anyone who believes MS Office file compatibility is critical, isn't going to risk getting fired to save a few dollars.
On the other hand, many users don't need to edit old documents or share them, and those are the users to target with a superior product IMHO.
OSS needs an image shakeup; I use firefox, gaim, openoffice.org on my windows xp machine not because they are low cost, but because they are BETTER!!!
If your science teaches you anything let it be that todays science facts will always be overturned tomorrows science; don't build of your science a religion as brittle and baseless as that you think you are attacking.
"particularly now that genetic science has disproven the fundamental premis of the Book of Mormon" http://www.godandscience.org/cults/dna.html
or possibly not, as google shows (start at the top and work down)
My experience shows people often study enough to justify their own notions and then therefore don't need to read any contrary views as they are so obviously wrong.
A superficial and brief understanding of DNA and mormon scripture may result in almost any opinion, but I'm certain of this, that most conclusions drawn by most humans are on the basis of faulty, insufficient and badly understood evidence; and this covers buying VCR's, taking out home loans, choosing schools and wallpaper as well as what to watch on TV, how best to re-install windows and what sort of God is most likely.
Top tip is not to let it get you down but concentrate on being the best sort of person you can be. Mormonism makes some people better. Perhaps not being mormon makes you better.
As a framework for life, I like it and it does me good, and I just had an uplifting weekend that you can share in english or dozens of languages (text and individual media items to appear soon). See if you can agree with any of it, see if any of it is designed to keep people in subjection, or see if it is designed to lift people up.
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
Be advised that Gnome desktop is 50%-100% slower than Windows while KDE is about twice as slow as Gnome. However, you might not notice either slowdown with a CPU > 1.5GHz and 512MB or more of RAM.
I have been using Linux ever since RH 4.2, that's more than 10 years now, and wouldn't use anything but Linux as a server. As a desktop though, rather than pay ~350 USD to Redhat for their enterprise Desktop, I'd opt for Windows XP Pro. What you'll be missing on Linux is software and functionality that you're taking for granted under Windows. On the other hand, if all you need is to browse the Web (w/o catchy plug-ins), use email, and type text documents, than any major Linux distro will suffice (e.g., SuSE Linux).
If your science teaches you anything let it be that todays science facts will always be overturned tomorrows science; don't build of your science a religion as brittle and baseless as that you think you are attacking.
You are engaging in numerous logical fallacies that make your argument completely irrelevant to this, the real world.
1. It isn't "my" science. This terminology is intended to dismiss and diminish the evidence I passed along from very reputable, scientific sources in the form of a URL link by implicity implying it is "my hypothesis," or that I adhere to science in a manner analogous to how you adhere to religion (hint: faith != reason).
2. You imply science teaches something it does not: that "today's facts will always be overturned" (emphesis mine). This is not true. Facts are never "overturned." Emperical data is emperical data: it doesn't go away even when new data are discovered. Theories and interpretation may change, new data may shed new light on how best to interpret the older data, or a flaw in the collection of the older data may be discovered (this is comapratively rare, however), but "facts" as such do not change.
The implication is that all scientific theories are discarded. This is not a falsifiable statement (we have plenty of theories which have not been discarded and appear to have proven themselves over time, with the occasional refinement in precision, but without violating causality we cannot know if any theories will stand up over the next million or billion years of scientific inquiry, nor can we know if we will develope a new theory, in a new discipline, that stands up to indefinite scrutiny and is never discarded). As the hypothesis you've made (and fallaciously ascribed to "my science") is nonfalsifiable it is by definition not addressed by the scientific method (which requires hypotheses to be falsifiable). Therefor, science says no such thing. QED.
3. Any scientific theory is subject to revision or rejection if new evidence shows it to be erroneous. As noted before, these are not new facts (emperical data), but new interpretations of existing and/or additional facts. However, you argue that because a theory may be later disproven or discarded, that all theories (including the five or so that appear with overwhelming evidence to disprove the fundamental precepts of the Book of Mormon) will be discarded at some later date. Again, this is a logical fallacy: the one does not necessarily follow from the other.
4. You further imply that, because there is a vanishingly small possibility that one of the numerous genetic analyses which disprove the notion that Native Americans are descended from Israelis might be flawed, or the theory interpreting the data might later be refined or discarded, that it and the several corroberating, unrelated data (and independent theories which are used to interpret those unrelated data) are as likely to be discarded as not, and the arguments therefor "fragile." This ignores the rather obvious fact that the likelihood of even one of the several methods by which the premis of the Book of Mormon has been disproven is vanishingly small, particularly given to corraboration with other, unrelated fields of study that have reached the same conclusion indepently of one another, and that the liklihood of all of the various studies being likewise incorrect is so small as to be laughable. And that assumes a randomness to the results (this isn't a roll of the dice, after all, this is meticulous, careful study), which simply isn't the case.
5. Finally, you state:
A superficial and brief understanding of DNA and mormon scripture may result in almost any opinion
which has nothing whatsoever to do with the scientific evidence presented, in which studies performed by experts in the field, independent of one another, have all reached the same conclusion through different paths, applying different areas of genetic science applied to
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Rekall is looking good, but until we have something that can read & write MSDE files......
(1)You are engaging in numerous logical fallacies that make your argument completely irrelevant to this, the real world.
or, possibly not. By "your science" I didn't mean the link you referred to but what you pesonally might term "your science" (whatever that might be.) Further most of your statements "you imply" are falatious.
(2)You imply science teaches something it does not: that "today's facts will always be overturned
I do not imply this and your emphasis was wrong. The whole debate is of what constitutes a "fact"? Being able to tell later that something wasn't a fact becuase it has been overturned is small comfort, science or no. Relativity has overturned the facts of newtonian motion. We now know newtonian motion was not as factual as it was /often/ taught. Plainly we see that the indiscernable "facts" of science as we receive them are as much a matter of faith as stock market investment or religion. There is no shame in this.
The implication is that all scientific theories are discarded.
(2,3) No, the implication is that you aren't able to tell which scientific theories will be discarded, and so until that point much of science is a matter of faith, and then subseqent certainty (nor is it certain?) of having been wrong all along is of no consolation. The rest of your paragraph does not follow. I don't know if you are staw-man-ing me on purpose or out of habit, of if it's just co-incidence. There is no truly emperical data, either, or if there is, its hard to agree on what it is. It would be nice if it were otheriwse but it isn't.
(4)I don't imply this but the counter-arguments available from google indicate that the premise "if the book of mormon is true AND various un-claimed suppositions on the book of mormon colonisers AND other unknown inhabitants of america are true THEN it contradicts some interpretations of DNA expectations." The cited counter-arguments make this case better than I do, but the summary is mine, that:
1)the opinion you cited based on DNA "evidence" and "theory" are based on what is now out-dated DNA theory, including the mixing and mutation rates, and the case that the very DNA evidence to support the book of mormon may have been rejected from the studies because it was too similar to european DNA, and that studies fail to take into account the large-scale deaths of many native americans such that those left are likely to have some DNA advantage that preserves them from european disease
2)As far as we know only ONE book of mormon ancestor can be said to be Jewish in anyway; I'd saying that the DNA expectations put forward as a straw man have do not have the grounding in mormon scripture that is made.
But the argument has been made, and has the right conclusion and so those who make it don't feel the need to address it any further.
unrelated fields of study that have reached the same conclusion indepently of one another, and that the liklihood of all of the various studies being likewise incorrect is so small as to be laughable
What is laughable is that there are no such studies as you vaguely refer to (I've come across plenty and they are all laughable in their integrity), but that in maintaining it's conclusion the DNA argument has to rule out many social, cultural, religious and archeological evidences linking south american cutlures to middle-eastern cultures and practices; and the DNA leaves the argument "if not by DNA and migration, then how?"
A superficial and brief understanding of DNA and mormon scripture may result in almost any opinion
which has nothing whatsoever to do with the scientific evidence presented
nor should it. But it is based on my claim that neither your, nor I, nor those you cited properly understand the issues they argue over. You and they do not understand to what small degree the book of mormon can support the premise of their agument
blog.sam.liddicott.com