Slashdot Mirror
Opening the Potential of OpenOffice.org
[vmlinuz] writes "O'Reillynet is running an article about 'Opening the potential of OpenOffice.org' which explores how anyone can contribute to argubly one of the most important Open Source projects. The article also discusses the importance of a shorter release cycle."
If something's in beta, people won't want to use it because it just doesn't sound reliable. If it sounds like a stable, final release, people will be more willing to use it, thereby finding the bugs, thereby resulting in bugfixers, which leads to more reliable software.
But most of the time i dont have the time or dont know how i can start helping...
Strange, the submitter and the article writer share names.
--
Superb hosting 4800MB Storage, 120GB bandwidth, $7,95.
Kunowalls!!! Random sexy wallpapers (NSFW!).
Hosting 20G hd, 1Tb bw! ssh $7.95
Remember how OO.org was absent from the MS/Sun settlement?
Personally I prefer LaTeX and send pdf files. That works ok till I am working alone. But if we have to work and interact, keeping track of changes is not the easiest thing to do in LaTeX.
...now that Office 12 has been demoed. That means the specs for OpenOffice.org 4.0 are almost complete!!
I didn't realize that the OpenOffice project had only 100 developers. Many more will be needed to establish the kind of release schedule mentioned in the article. Interesting stuff. Is this a potential weekness of open source - an inability to attract more developers who will donate their time?
"Me fail English? That's unpossible." - Ralph
A last note: As in with all Open Source projects, the people need to help the process to be successful, and these means that we should all help where we can.
+1 funny, -2 overrated. Life isn't fair.
Has anyone else had problems with Calc in the latest 2.0 beta producing files which later on couldn't be opened. I've had that happen a few times with password protected files saved from Calc, but it's possible that the problem happened while I was copying the files from my hard drive to a removable USB disk. I'm just surprised that it happened to so many files in such a short period of time since they weren't all copied to the same disk, or at the same time.
Just thought I'd make sure it's not a common issue.
As far as user end applications go, yes, it's a rather useful suite. This development makes me giddy. People like to get their hands dirty, and expanding the development community beyond programmers will certainly help open-source prevalence.
And yet you found the need to bold AND italicize the first word of your comment :P
Before you die, you see DoubleRing...
Why even have split development? Most ppl who don't use the current OO aren't not using it b/c of some small bugs, but b/c it lacks major abilites like being able to competantly convert MS formats. Also, when using OO, it needs to be able to produce MS files that are the same in MS office as in OO (usually it does a pretty good job in this aspect, but not always).
I would agree with more frequent release cycles up to a point; they would have to ensure, however, that they don't begin to mimic M$ by releasing new builds simply for the sake of releasing them just to keep the name fresh in people's minds. Release schedules should only be to either implement beneficial features or to resolve any outstanding issues that benefit the user base as a whole.
This sig is six words long.
YES!
The office suite is the one application that keeps people on Windows! My brother is a lawyer and would love to move his entire staff over to an open source suite (just for financial reasons) but he has to be 100% compatible.
When the office suite becomes a commodity, you'll see more defections.
Agile Artisans
That is really one of the major blocks for most companies to use open source / linux software - lack of a good office suite.
For most companies the majority of computer use is editing documents. Composing proposals, making presentations, writing memos. All you need to do these things is a good word processor. If Linux had a better one companies would ditch MS and use it for the cost savings alone
"Maybe this world is another planet's hell"
Aldous Huxley
Argubly, one of the reasons might be the spell checker :)
You will find variants of Office on almost every Windows PC used in the business and academic worlds, so it's pretty important.
For me, one of the best features of OpenOffice is its ability to export documents as PDFs. Lovely, lovely feature for creating interoperable documents. Yeah, yeah, I know not everyone likes PDFs, but there are PDF readers for most platforms...
EricJoin my mailing list and win a free book
Eh, your average end-user will never want to put the kind of time and effort needed in learning vi, and this is the curve that linux and its open-source apps have to beat in order to become more popular. Vi is simple enough, but the point-and-clickability of Office programs trumps it.
Can you please explain to this nutjob how I can give my boardroom presentation in vi to maximize visual impact? I really need to get my message through.
Yes, it is. It's one of the main reasons Microsoft has got its monopoly. All those documents used by businesses, out there in the real world, which cannot be trivially moved onto another platform.
Whatever your choice of OS, be in Windows, Linux, BSD, Solaris, BeOS, whatever... if you can't read/write the documents you need to because your work requires it; your bank requires it; job applications require it; etc., then you are stuffed and have no choice but to run Office. Then you have no choice of OS either.
OpenOffice is good, but it's still not good enough to allow a significant number of people to move away from Microsoft to open source alternatives. This is probably the single biggest thing that's stopping a lot more people from doing so.
So yes, I'd say it's pretty important.
"explores how anyone can contribute to argubly one of the most important Open Source projects."
Not the most important project, but one of them..
I think openoffice is just as important as linux anyway. (This is helped because i dont think of linux as *that* important anyway, being a big bsd fan - but thats a discussion for another time). I think if you want people to switch to an open source operating system you need to take it in steps, making programs like firefox and openoffice (which will run on windows inplace of IE and MS Office) a vital part of the plan. Once you have changed all their apps over to open source versions, you can switch the os and all they will notice is a new look.
Paul
This is a timely and helpful article. As a non-coder I have often wondered how I could help, but except for turning people on to Linux locally, and helping them over the learning hump, I admit I have been lazy and haven't done much.
This article paints a good roadmap for more. Thanks.
C'mon now. One of the most important open source projects in the world? I suppose that assumes that MS Office is one of the most important programs (suite...whatever) in the world? For real?
YES!
The office suite is the one application that keeps people on Windows!
The others were authored by *cough* Google *cough*...
(Weird that, huh?)
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
Opening the potential of OpenOffice.org takes like 10 minutes on my computer. It's not going to win any awards for speed.
If Linux had a better one...
I found it interesting in TFA when OpenOffice was compared to Firefox. Its not Firefox, it Mozilla. What OpenOffice needs to succeed is a decrufting just as Mozilla needed a few visionary programmers to come along and throw it all out.
IMHO, as it stands OO is a slow, crufty, bloated nightmare. For gods sakes, will someone drive a stake into the heart of this ten headed monster and kill it. Maybe a phoenix will rise from the ashes.
OO needs to take a long hard look at the success of Firefox. You don't win by being free, you win by being better. Firefox is better than IE. OO isn't anywhere close to better than Microsoft Office.
I hate the evil empire as much as the next geek, but don't let hate blind you to relative quality.
and? Are we supposed to see your brother as the most important person in the world or something? My brother won't switch to Linux because he doesn't know how to work a command line and we still don't have a decent control panel applet on any Linux distribution worth mentioning. So why isn't that the most important application? When you don't need to operate a shell to configure your computer, then we'll see more defections, not before.
How we know is more important than what we know.
odd, your UID has the same numbers my bank account number.
I agree that the OOo guys need to draw a line in the sand soon with 2.0, go gold, if for no othere reason than the current 1.1 is so insainly lacking compared to MS office or OOo2 beta. But just because the number is higher doesnt make it better, want proof, look at Adobe Reader, what can 7 do that 5 can not?
My brother is typical of the people I know... he's not as important as ~your~ brother, naturally! ;)
Agile Artisans
I use Ubuntu, and put up with the various annoying things. Like installing a new app via synaptic and then having no way to launch it except by running it from the command line. That's a new kind of insanity.. the first time it happened to me I actually went and grabbed the source package, extracted it and looked at the diff created by the Ubuntu team to see if I hadn't missed where they put the menu item. Nope, nothing there. So we have this dead simple package installation program but no way for an ordinary user to actually run the programs they've installed. Genius!
How we know is more important than what we know.
That ain't somethin' you want to advertise...
The most obvious reason that comes to mind why OO is more important than control panel applets is that OO is a tool, while control panel applets are meta-tools. People use computers so that they can use office. People use control panels so that they can more efficiently use computers so that they can use office.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
I think it can be argued that, for wide-scale adoption of Linux, the first step will be the wide-scale adoption of OpenOffice over the MS office suite.
After that, switching out the underlying OS becomes transparent (Ok, more transparent for more people).
I guess I subscribe to the idea that a key foothold MS has (at least in the corporate world) is that all of our data is stored in their propietary file formats. Or, in other words, the problem in switching people over isn't that they have to run a MS os, they have to run the MS apps, in particular their office suite. Excel and Word are defacto standards to run a business -- and by extension the MS OS.
It's in that sense that I do think OpenOffice is incredibly important to the OSS world at large. The threat of being a credible (or higher quality, more useful) replacement is higher than with what's happened (and happening) with Firefox vs IE, since IE is also free. MS Office is far from free -- and I think it'll be easier to justify abandoning it because of the cash saved.
If I were MS, I do think OpenOffice is the one OSS project I'd be most nervous about, as it's one of the major threats to the monopoly, and an attack on one of the biggest reasons companies are forced to pay for the MS OS.
BTW, the web browser is probably the other "very important app" for the same reasons, and it's cool that Mozilla Firefox has grown so much. At work it doesn't matter that I choose to run Linux, since I'm running the same web browser as many people who are running Windows (my company is already formally supporting, and recommending, Firefox for internal use). Again though, imagine that IE was an extra app that companies had to pay money for -- I wonder what the Firefox adoption rate would be.
One last thing, it's no surprise that MS has from the beginning to "subvert" the web and web standards. It's all about the formats. I guess they simply arrived way too late to the Web to completely take it over. But I'm sure they know that if they had managed to switch everyone over to ms-propietary-html to surf the web, we'd be paying through the nose for IE and their OS and Office monopoly would be further protected.
Can you please explain to this nutjob how I can give my boardroom presentation in vi to maximize visual impact? I really need to get my message through.
Sure, but I'll explain it to you.
1. Draft your document in vi, add some preamble and the requisite \begin{slide} and \end{slide}, etc. where necessary.
2. Compile.
3. Display on screen during the board meeting.
You can make things as simple or as complex as you'd like.
I have fond memories of seeing a few thousand of secretaries using a similar approach. Granted, it was Wordperfect with template macros, and not vi, but they had little problem generating long documents with complex structures and tables after learning some basic markup.
He didn't say in the right order, though.
People use computers so that they can use office.
Yeah, people like his brother. Unlike my brother. Can we make any more pointless sweeping statements? Open Office is also available for Windows. So why would you wanna switch to Linux? Because Linux is better for some reason right? What's gunna stop you switching? Because Linux is different/difficult in some regards. Therefore, which is more important for Linux? Developing Open Office or developing "meta-tools", as you put it, to make the platform dead easy to switch to?
How we know is more important than what we know.
OO needs competition, just like Firefox. Firefox wouldn't really exist if weren't for Apple's adoption of KHTML for Safari.
I remember the day Apple announced Safari and said that they used KHTML, everybody was shocked that they didn't go with Gecko.
When Apple explained that they didn't consider Gecko because it was a bloated mess, the Gecko developers got their act together and Firefox was born.
I bet if Apple adopts KOffice to create its own office suite, then the OO people would have to rise to the challenge; or one would hope they would.
I agree that Open Office is one of the most important open source projects. This is because it won't be a Linux derivitive that makes its way onto the desktops of the masses first. It will be open, free applications that can reliably provide the benifit of expensive commercial applications on the *Windows* desktop. A company I work for is interested in an open source "Save to PDF" tool because, well, have you priced Adobe's Acrobat lately? Not cheap. So, they are willing to consider this open source replacement to distribute to the general population. It provides most of the functionality that most of their user base needs and saves them money. The users don't even need to learn anything new. But ask them to swap out their enterprise desktop? Forget about it. If Open Office can get there (and it will *long* before Linux deriviti do), the Corporate World(TM) will open its loving arms.
Bang Logic - Serious Small Business Services
Let's take these FUD-esque statements one at a time. I've just booted my laptop to Kubuntu so I can walk through this.
Changing the screen resolution.
Right click on the background, select "Configure Desktop", click "Display", select your screen resolution from the drop-down.
Configuring display/mouse/keyboard drivers.
Configuring the display drivers we may have just covered. If you're thinking about editing your xconfig files, I've never had to Kubuntu. It's not like The Old Days anymore.
My keyboard and mouse worked out of the box. I can plugin in a USB mouse at any time and the system picks it up uses it. However, if you want to tweak the keyboard or mouse, click your "System" icon in the task bar, select the "Settings" entry. Select "Peripherals". You'll see both "keyboard" and "mouse" in the dialog. Tweak away.
Configuring a network
From the System/Settings dialog we were just in... clck "Internet and Networking". You can add network interfaces, configure the proxy, set up your wireless networks, configure Samba, etc and so forth.
Installing a printer
Back to the "Peripherals" screen. Click the "Printers" button.
I think you're comment about the menu items is related to the people who wrote the package you've installed, not the people who wrote the operating system.
Kubuntu is drop dead easy to use. You can still open a shell and go crazy (if you know how), but you don't have to anymore.
btw, they just released a new preview of their next version. They claim to have improved the Control Panel (kcontrol). I'm downloading it now to see what they've done.
Agile Artisans
> My brother is a lawyer and would love to move his entire staff over to an open source suite (just for financial reasons) but he has to be 100% compatible.
Then he shouldn't be using Microsoft Office. Different versions of Microsoft Office often render the same file differently. For compatibility, use PDF or OpenDocument. *Everyone* can view and edit his OpenDocument files since *everyone* has a license to install and use the same version of OpenOffice.org while there are far fewer people with a license to install and use the same version of Microsoft Office.
And besides, I, my parents, and my aunt and uncle use OpenOffice.org 2.0 betas. They would probably *never* switch to Microsoft Office, even if you gave them the chance.
Adoption of OpenOffice will be sped by two things - adoption of Linux/*BSD on the server and workstation, and awareness and availability of the cheaper but mostly equivalent option for home users. The reason people at home don't use OpenOffice is because they already have Microsoft Office. The old argument that people expect to have Microsoft Office when they buy the computer is not true, since most computers are sold with Works (completely incompatible with any recent version of Office). All people need is a half decent office suite - the first highstreet retailer to realise that people would prefer OpenOffice to Works will make some money then everyone else will follow suit.
My suggestion is just to follow the mozilla phoenix/firebird/firefox approach and break the suite up and develop the components separately.
Break off the wordprocessor and strip it back to essential functionality as was done with phoenix 0.1. Go for a rapid release cycle again as happened with phoenix with new updates at least every month. This will reinject vitality into the project. The full office suite will still be available as Mozilla is to this day.
The essential thing that Mozilla had was the gecko rendering engine and XUL. None of this was lost in moving to single app development. The essential thing that OpenOffice has is its well-developed ability to read/write MS office file formats and its own OpenDoc format. This also would not be lost by splitting off the wordprocessor.
The Office suite as a monolithic application was really a marketing innovation, not something that was user driven. Let's free ourselves of the unwieldy bloat it has given us.
Disclaimer: I'm no MS fanboi. In fact, I dislike a lot of what they do. I'm no OO fanboi. In fact, I'm quite disgusted with what they've done with the product.
7 20
and you'll see that OO is 5-6 yrs behind MSO. I've done my best to use OO and even to try and help. I am so disgusted by the developers and their responses to my pleas for improvement in key areas that I've stopped promoting OO to people that need a cheap office suite. If they need a free one then I still show it off. If they have some $$ then I show them where to get MSO dirt cheap. The new MSO 12 looks to blow the socks off of anything out there. If it all works like it is supposed to (huge IF) it will be a remarkable product.
The delta between Excel and Calc is too large to ignore.
The delta between Powerpoint and Impress is small at the moment and can be tolerated.
The delta between Word and Writer is negligible for _most_ users. For a basic word processor Writer is better but _a lot_ of people I know love the collaboration features of Word. I hate how Word keeps "thinking" for me and screwing with my documents.
The delta between MSO and OO in terms of speed is just a tad smaller than the distance from one end to the other of the Grand Canyon.
Now considering all that, OO is trailing, hugely. Now look at... http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=114
In that case, I thank the OO development team for putting pressure on MS. Like everyone, competition causes one to raise their performance and I think MSO 12 will be a killer app. I just wish OO could have moved quicker.
Way to miss my point entirely. "People" doesn't necessarily mean "all people", by the way.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
You sound mighty sure of yourself for someone who writes XP software. ;)
/etc/X11/xorg.conf and pray.
Sigh. I also write a lot of Free Software.
Let's take these FUD-esque statements one at a time.
That's offensive. Just because I'm pointing out some obvious deficiencies does not mean I have some evil agenda.
Configuring the display drivers we may have just covered. If you're thinking about editing your xconfig files, I've never had to Kubuntu. It's not like The Old Days anymore.
I'm talking about changing your X display driver from "nv" to "nvidia" so you can play some games. I believe the current procedure is: edit
Back to the "Peripherals" screen. Click the "Printers" button.
Note that lack of support for your printer. Note that complete lack of any information that tells you how to install a third party driver. Ask on the forums and get a long procedure that involves the command line and running vim/emacs a lot.
I think you're comment about the menu items is related to the people who wrote the package you've installed, not the people who wrote the operating system.
Uhhhh, no. It's about the Ubuntu team not adding a menu item to the diff they apply to the Debian package to create the Ubuntu package. It's entirely about the people who made the distro. Not that I'm complaining. If they don't want to add a menu item, fine, but don't be surprised when your average user wonders how the hell they can run the program they just installed.
btw, they just released a new preview of their next version. They claim to have improved the Control Panel (kcontrol). I'm downloading it now to see what they've done.
Yeah, sounds like Kubuntu is pulling ahead of Ubuntu!
How we know is more important than what we know.
From the point of view of business, there are two fundamental applications:
1) Email
2) Wordprocessing/Self publication.
These are the drivers.
Personally, I see three killer apps from Microsoft (or currently owned by Microsoft) that yet to have equivalents in the open-source world:
- Excel:
The power of the Excel in power-user mode is phenominal. The scalability, programability and calculation abilities of this program are amazing. Open Office does not, as yet, scrape the surface. That OO calc is enough for 90% of all users means that it won't get into businesses where the other 10% need to share data.
- Project
- Visio
I'll bundle these two, as neither are particularly complicated, but the file formats have become defacto standard. Once open source tools can import and export these formats, we'll be able to start displacing them on the desktop.
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
You are correct to an extent. Office is a very valuable product for Windows users, but its also a very solid / useful product. OO will probably never overtake Office, at least not in the near future (5 years) for the simple fact that Office integrates nicely with many products (not just MS products) + Excel rocks!
Its probably not the most important reason to move from Windows in a corp enviroment though. I would think that Linuxs slow adoption of new technologies would be more of a reason... Comon Wireless has been mainstream for years now and its still 'difficult' to configure
Do you really think that all the people who use Windows decided not to switch to Linux because they thought the control panel applet was not "decent"? The majority of people don't care about the OS. They use applications not an OS. Mainly, they use an office suite.
For the next few years, Linux has no chance of becomming mainstream. It could get the same kind of marketshare than OSX, but not more. OTOH, because of the price of MS Office, OpenOffice could easily become more popular than Firefox. All it need is a good import/export filter.
If anyone's trying to write open source software that uses MS Word, here's a web service that uses OpenOffice.org to convert to Oasis OpenDocument 1.0 format, and then optionally runs the XML through an XSLT pipeline to make any XML/HTML.
I had about 100 test documents and I tried using Abiword, WVWare, but OpenOffice.org had the best reverse engineering of msword. Is there any other open source conversion software I should have used?
-Docvert converts MSWord to OpenDocument, clean HTML
I tried to contribute to the OOo project on the marketing team. It was incredibly difficult to be taken seriously when your "product" moniker could not be distinguished from a web site.
I tried to contribute to the OOo project by submitting valid and repeatable bug reports but I was told that getting label and envelope printing working CORRECTLY was a feature request, not a bug, and would not be addressed in the upcoming release.
I tried to contribute to the OOo project but could not because the software build system REQUIRES PAM so I could not build the current tree (Slackware user). I WAS going to work on a stand alone viewer for Impress.
I would love to contribute to OOo, but the OOo team seems to want to make things as difficult as possible for outsiders to come in. Why on Earth would an Office Suite need PAM???
Ron Gage - Westland, MI
While I agree with you that MSOffice does keep a lot of business people on Windows, the arguement that _BLANK_ software package is what keeps people on Windows can be applied to a lot of different software. Using this arguement, I think 3D games would be the most important group of open source projects. 3D games are the only reason I still keep an XP partition.
As for Open Office and MSOffice compatibility... I was asked to evaluate Open Office a few years ago (I stress, a few years ago). I couldn't recommend it as a replacement for MSOffice for lack of two features that were used a lot in the department. At the time, two people couldn't make changes to the same spreadsheet at the same time. I'm not sure if this has changed. The other feature was a grammer checker. I know this is still missing. Say what you will about grammer checkers. They are indispensable when dealing with a large department of people that have better things to do than proof read what they want on site. All too often the attitude was "just get it up, we'll worry about errors latter."
Request a Linux Shockwave player here: http://www.macromedia.com/support/email/wishform/
Yes I do. 99% of the people I talk to who try switching to Linux don't give up because of the apps.. they give up because they can't use their printer/camera/sound card/second monitor. They give up because they can't find where to change the screen resolution. They don't even get to the apps because they can't access their windows partition or their file server or their email to get at their documents.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Why does he have to be 100%?
If all internal users change over, then only sharing with external clients is needed, and 100% wont be necessary.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Your original posting ~was~ offensive. Go back and re-read it. Your first post talks about changing screen resolutions requiring a shell (which it doesn't). But you respond in the second post with a comment on changing drivers. That's a completely different topic. (btw, NVidia drivers can be installed with apt-get.)
You said you needed to use a shell to install a printer, a statement you obviously knew to be incorrect. Not close to wrong, flat out wrong, and you knew it judging from your second post. You meant it's difficult to add additional print drivers and the process isn't documented. Good point. If you'd said that in the first post I wouldn't have responded.
You have valid critiques in your most recent post but you didn't phrased them politely (or accurately it seems) in your first post.
Offer solid critiques that actually say what you mean and someone might listen to you and fix the problems you've run into.
btw, I've burned the ISO. The latest Kubuntu (5.10) is very nice, but more of a refinement so far. But still, very nice, as I've come to expect from them. :)
Agile Artisans
I loaded the dang file into this (then) new-fangled thing called "OpenOffice" (pre 1.0, iirc) and it worked fine. I've never gone back.
...if I wanted to read garbage like that, I'd go to \.
3D games will be the last thing converted to run on linux. The first thing we need are business to change. The office suite is a big part of that conversion. Once people start using Linux at the office, they will become more comfortable with it and think why not use the same stuff at home.
/. but gamers are a small fraction of computer users. Corporate users are the ones with the big money and should be the first that can/will convert from MS.
There are a lot of gamers on
I didn't say it was nice, I just said it was powerful :)
I agree with you. Excel is not easy to use, and to become a power-user really involves a lot of time with the product... more time that most people will ever need to use excel at an appropriate level.
If Openoffice can combine an "it just works" style with the power in Excel, they'll be on to a winner.
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
Maybe someone can create a new GUI for OOo that doesn't like that of Office 97. Sad but true, much open source software clings to GUIs of old closed source designs (Nautilus : MacOS 9, Epiphany : Netscape 4, AbiWord : Word 97 etc.). I wonder when open source developers will make GUIs that are innovatively good, rather than creatively bad (Blender, Grip anyone?).
In reality, MS Windows is still difficult in all these areas. I setup a wireless card on XP and I could not use the downloaded update, I had to use the CD. I just helped a collegue install a USB printer on XP, and it took like three installs/unintalls to work. My reletively new XP machines at home will not work relibly with my USB keyboard, at least without the old fashioned keyboard. OTOH, my macs has none of these issues.
What we have to remember is that MS Windows had and still has many of these problems, and people still flocked to the OS. Only ten years ago one had to go to the command line to install an external mass storage device, and one to know all these magical numbers to get an internal drive to work. There were machines that did not require you to do so much work. Changing anything required 10 reboots.
But we bought the emerging Wintel machines not becuase they were perfect, but because they were the cheap solution. and we lived without, or paid huge amounts, for things that were not included, like basic networking. We were told that MS would have these things, and they were cheapest, so we waited.
Now MS Windows is not the all out cheapest OS, and there are options that can use the current hardware. There will be issues, but there were issues with MS, and we bought because it was cheap. The problem that MS has is that they choose not play the quality game, but continue to play the cheap game, claiming lower TCO. Which is kind of sad for the mature market leader.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
(sound of dial-up modem chirping)
This is the stupidest argument I've ever heard. Allow me to summarise: Linux isn't broken because Windows is broken. How freakin' braindead is that? Face reality, people use Windows. If you want people to use Linux you have to be better than Windows. You can't say "Windows is broken too" like a child, you have to fix the god damn problem.
How we know is more important than what we know.
He claims that the Desktop environment was bloated. The fact of the matter is that the 5.2 state of StarOffice, where everything was integrated, ran like a hare compared to the tortoise that is now OO. Five yrs later and there isn't much that inspires me.. Take a look at, http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~nino/Openoffice/images. html
On the other hand, Gnumeric kicks Excel's ass. I appreciate the Gnumeric/LaTeX connection, too.
Jon Udell has an interesting idea of reinventing the office suite for a networked world. He says it should include "service orientation, peer-to-peer capability, workflow, federated identity, and new ways to query and visualize data." With the source code, someone could develop a system that could improve inter-company communication and collaboration using Open Office. We need to think 21st century.
I understand Abiword and Gnumeric can't replace the entire MS suite, but surely word processing and spreadsheet are the most common office suite applications (except maybe email, which OO doesn't have either.) I certainly don't understand why an integrated bloated "Office Suite" like OO is needed to replace MS Office, when Abiword and Gnumeric seem to me to be doing a much better job right now than OO.
We don't necessarily need a single office suite like OO to replace MS Office. Right now I would support Gnumeric and Abiword.
Penny - plain text accounting
I'm glad, Sun's license is restrictive, or else they would've bundled their own Java too.
Such bundling is wasteful of not only the memory/storage/bandwidth resources, but also the development efforts of people, who maintain all of those "3rd-party" software packages.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Gnumeric is nice, but I still haven't figured how to get it to import tab-delimited text from a file that doesn't have a .CSV extension!
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
What about Business Solutions/Dynamics?
What are you talking about? Who modded this person up?
Stupid comment on all fronts. It's NOT the money important to most people, it is always, and often of legal concern, document FIDELITY (look it up).
I have just finished a M.S. degree, wrote and formatted my thesis, ALL homework, presentations, and writing, used OpenOffice to import ALL MS Word docs, presentations, slides, bibliography for over *20* classes and *never* had to open Word or Office, except to verify my presentations looked OK before the podium and a couple of old Mac Word docs with math symbols (I think PC Word had problems with them). NEVER a lost document, NEVER any major compatibility issue importing or exporting.
Impossible? Obviously not, but your previous posts show you are an Office fanboy, but one that really doesn't know the real reasons why Business use word processors to begin with (hint: not $$$)
Parent: I didn't say it was nice
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
Load on my AMD 3000+ in under 20 minutes, for starters. There's also font antialiasing. Adobe 5 looks like butt compared to 7. I'm no Adobe fan, but that's still kind of a bad example.
Working in a DevOps shop is like playing in a band made up entirely of keytarists.
Yes, more powerful than Gnumeric.
Not more powerful than Matlab. How does Matlab licensing work?
Different from Kalediagraph.
The others I haven't dealt with.
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
For the love of God, fix the UI.
Love,
A Concerned User
Writer vs. Word isn't much of a comparison unless you want the collaboration.
Excel vs. Calc I tend to think isn't as big as a lot of people make it out to be. I think there is plenty of room to improve on the OOo side and take the lead. Allowing the use of sometihng like python for macros to produce new functions which can be put in to cells and allow the python to travel with the document would make it easy to produce plug-ins to fix and calculation short comings. As far as supporting MS's file formats and such, I think it's as good as it should really get unless there are a bunch of volunteers that want to work on it. It's a losing battle trying to stay compatible with MS. I'm not a super hard core spreadsheet hacker and I see a lot of people using them just as tables or for column based editing rather than performing a lot of cool calculations.. but that's just my opinion. I mention python becuase you can securely load it if you choose to.
The other apps are pretty close also. The big missing pieces are visio and project.
Now what I think OOo should do is start forking off in a different direction. I'd like to see openpgp integrated so I can sign documents or encrypt them to my colleagues, seemlessly. Upon that kind of framework then start to build collaborative editing. It needs to be made for the 21st century, using web technologies and such. Integrate seemlessly with subversion... MS Office is stagnating, they do big upgrades but lately it has been more UI related than serious function. Look at some of the stuff Lotus has done with Notes, I know it's laughed at by many but that's because they don't understand it, you can do some really really cool stuff with it too.
Performance needs to seriously looked at. I know they hear it a ton and I know they've worked on it a lot. I think it's quite usable once it starts up, there has to be some other things that can be addressed though.
Something else that I know has been hacked around on and talked about and I've seen demos of is further integration to the desktop. In particular, kparts, xpcom and bonobo type objects with some intelligence. As blogs and shit like that continue to grow and there are more and more web based interfaces (it's probably gone beyond "fad" guys..
Grammar, God dammit! Grammar! I see this error so often I sometimes start believing that there is some alternate spelling...
As Much as I hate to admit it, Access should be on that list as well. Knowledgeable managers use Excell to connect to databases, and pull the data they want out for reports. Many, many other managers use Access, connect to the "real" backend database, and use QBE (Query By Example) to generate their reports. Also, many small businesses seem to think it is a real database.
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
On the file browser, select "All files" instead of spreadhseets. File type of "Automatically detected" works, but you can use "Text import (configurable)" if you like.
- Excel:
The power of the Excel in power-user mode is phenominal.
I agree. I just don't think that more than a few percent are actually using them. I've met many people that were in positions and with educations where you'd *think* they knew how to use Excel. Yet I get questions about doing rather trivial things.
That OO calc is enough for 90% of all users means that it won't get into businesses where the other 10% need to share data.
I'm not so sure. Of the advanced Excel use I've seen, most have been limited to themselves or a small group. For example you can run a lot of fancy models to decide on a budget, but you don't need to communicate much more than the final numbers to accounting.
- Project
- Visio
I'll bundle these two, as neither are particularly complicated, but the file formats have become defacto standard.
I wouldn't put those very high up on my hotlist. The single biggest killer app in the office is Outlook & Exchange. Many people do quite fine without Project/Visio, I agree that for those who use it, it would be a big thing.
However, for most of the people I know, there are three apps they mostly run. IE, Word and Outlook. I'm confident replacing IE with FireFox and Word with OO Write (or at least 2.0 when it's out). But not Outlook with Thunderbird or the like.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Of the advanced Excel use I've seen, most have been limited to themselves or a small group. For example you can run a lot of fancy models to decide on a budget, but you don't need to communicate much more than the final numbers to accounting.
I wonder what a study on Excel uses would produce. From my experience, you would find a lot more people using it as a form generator or limited database than for accounting.
Request a Linux Shockwave player here: http://www.macromedia.com/support/email/wishform/
Gnumeric was the only spreadsheet in the list, so is the only direct competitor. HOW is Excel more powerful than Gnumeric? I know from personal experience that Gnumeric has more built-in functions & the functions are CORRECT. Excel does have some mistakes, which have persisted for many versions.
The others all allow you to manipulate and chart data, so they aren't ALL that different. They each intend to address specific (and different) limitations of standard spreadsheet software.
R/S/SPSS are for when you need more thorough statistics.
Octave is a decent Matlab clone. Matlab is more costly than Excel, but Octave is GPLed. They are both better general purpose/scientific numerical programming languages (I'd also group python+Numeric+scipy+matplotlib in this group).
Grace/Kaleidagraph/Origin are for better graphing.
Since Kubuntu has already answered, and you say "better than Ubuntu..." I'll try to address these.
;)
# Changing the screen resolution.
* System > Preferences > Screen Resolution
# Configuring display/mouse/keyboard drivers.
Since you are interested in nvidia, the package installation now "s/nv/nvidia/g"s for you. You still need to restart the X server, though.
* System > Preferences > Mouse
If you have a tablet or something, the xorg.conf may have to be edited. I've never installed one, but all common types of pointing devices are included and automatically identified by X.org
* System > Preferences > Keyboard
Choose your keyboard prefs, type of keyboard, alternate language groups, and group swithing keys. I haven't edited an xorg.conf file at all to use Thai and English on a keyboard I bought in Korea.
The Ubuntu due next month also has a nice Language manager which will automatically install language packs and keyboard switchers even for difficult languages like Korean's Hangul/Hanja
# Setting up a sound card.
Handled during the boot-up process. This has changed from when I started using Linux about eight years ago, but it isn't really a user configurable item anymore. Discover and Hotplug handle it. If your sound card is supported in a module, it'll be loaded. If it isn't, then you are pretty much just as screwed as you would've been all those years ago with an unsupported card.
# Configuring a network.
* System > Admin > Networking
Configure unconfigured devices, whatever...
Additionally, for the first time ever, I was able to set up all my firewall rules without a single command on the line
* Applications > System Tools > Firestarter
You can set up your nat, dhcp server, and open or close ports here. Allow or disallow traffic based on interface or host. Set your default policy from here, as well. I'm not sure how well it shapes traffic, but I don't have need for that.
# Installing a printer.
* System > Admin > Printing
Like sound cards, you can set up anything that has a Cups driver or is on the network. SMB, CUPS, LPD, and JetDirect printers are supported.
I appreciate your anger at adding a program under Ubuntu, only to have it not appear on the menu. I think that this is a Gnome issue more than Ubuntu, but that doesn't change your position.
Ubuntu is set up with a limited number of apps in the main repositiory, which you can add through a special "Add Applications" manager (an alternate to Synaptic). If it's listed in there, your menu item shouldn't be a problem. If it's from one of the unsupported reposotories, then that's why the package doesn't show up. It's not well maintained.
I have had some problems with Ubuntu, so I'm not defending them 100%. I do feel that the criticisms you've chosen to level aren't justified, though.
My major problem with the "new" direction of the Linux desktop is that everything is self-configuring. I end up having the same problems that I used to have on Windows 95 or 98. (More recently, too, when I tried to set up a HP5L printer on XP for my brother-in-law). Things start or stop working for no apparent reason. If hotplug burps, your USB device won't be identified or will hang the machine.
Put identity in the browser.
I can't speak to the legacy version of Gnumeric, but I can say that Gnumeric lets you set the number of rows and columns at compile-time. I have used spreadsheets with more cells than are possible in Excel with no problem.
Thank you for pointing out the obvious, I've been waiting for someone in the Slashdot community to notice this fact: The next MS Office is at LEAST half a decade more advanced than OpenOffice.
I'm not a Microsoft fanboy by any stretch of the word, and I REALLY cringe when some PR bozo starts spouting words like "innovation" to describe their company's products. Having said that, MS Office 12 is the DEFINITION of innovation. Yes, I just cringed at myself, but it's true. If you watch that video, you simply cannot deny the truth in this.
Linux may be one of the more advanced operating systems in the world, and a bunch of open source software may be the best in their field by leaps and bounds. However, OpenOffice is really going to be in trouble, saved only by the fact that it's "free".
In fact, looking at the differences between Office 12 and OO brings up a very obvious point about open source software: VERY few OSS developers are willing to innovate (with notable exceptions, of course). Look at KDE copying Windows, for example, with a start button and all that crap. You find this in most popular OSS projects, they copy the look, feel, and functionality of commercial products without really doing any innovation (yes, that silly term again). This is the biggest weakness of OSS, by far. They look like clones of existing commercial software (with usually just a handful of improvements). This is a weakness because when a commercial company like Microsoft releases a completely redesigned product like Office 12, the OSS competition is immediately cut off at the knees.
Having said all this, I wish the OO.org development community a lot of luck. They've been busily trying to clone what is essentially the 1997 version of MS Office, and perhaps this will be their wake-up call. I'm sure that one of the next releases, perhaps two or three years from now, will be similar to Office 12. But perhaps, given this sudden jolt of REAL competition from Microsoft, they'll design something even BETTER. And if that happens, we will all benefit.
UNIX: A computer user is defined as a programmer. WINDOWS: A computer user is defined as a consumer.
I wish OpenOffice would increase their row limit. I can't use Excel because it can do only 65535 rows and OpenOffice has the same limitation. Geez, my home brew spreadsheet app could do far more than that. FWIW, yes, there are applications that legitimately require more than 65535 rows.
The article was more about how to make a good open source application better quicker and to how to make its user base grow. A shorter release cycle lets people use new features, and test new features faster. It also lets people feel that there is actual progress. Features are no use to me if they're stuck in the CVS tree somewhere. I'm sure not going to download and compile OOo for CVS just to get feature x, y, or z. It's not really about boosting the version number, that's arbitrary anyways.
I can remember thinking that OOo was "almost good" enough for years now. The multi-user install is/was (?) weird in 1.x for Windows users, and it loaded sooo slow. Two years later, and I have no idea if these two things have been fixed/improved.
Microsoft Works (haha what were they thinking) at least in the UK comes with Word 2002. It doesn't say whether it's Pro, Home, Idiot Version or whatever but it works the same as the Word 2002 I use at work as far as I can tell.
Does a Christian soccer team even need a goalkeeper?
I totally agree. To me, Access is like the swiss army knife of data processing.
.mdb file and you are done.
Have a list to mangle? Shove it in a table or two and run some queries on them.
Want to query to totally unrelated databases that use totally different database servers? Link the tables via ODBC and run queries.
Create a really basic data entry tool? Build a form that feeds a table in literally minutes.
Want to easily move that little form to another computer for someone else to fill in? Just copy that ONE
Plus, if you want to move into something with a real database, well, Access makes a great front end to your full featured database.
I'm not a huge MS fan, but they do have some excellent products. Access, and Exchange/Outlook and SQL Server come to mind.
If your sound card doesn't "just work" then what? You're expected to lookup your card, find the right module and then do modprobe from the command line until it works. I've done this before and gotten it to work, but there's no way your average user will be able to do it.
/etc/X11/xorg.conf
As for changing the screen resolution (my absolute personal pet peeve) what if you go to the GNOME applet and see that there is only one resolution listed because the autodetection for X decided you only needed one? Yep, edit
How we know is more important than what we know.
I think it can be argued that, for wide-scale adoption of Linux, the first step will be the wide-scale adoption of OpenOffice over the MS office suite.
It's a tough call, but I don't think OpenOffice.org is what will ultimately ween businesses away from MS Office dependency. While a valient effort, the gap in functionality and polish is simply too large at this point. I see OpenOffice.org as more of a transition tool towards open platforms. Traditional desktop software is not the future of computing. The very concepts of word processing documents, spreadsheets, and self-contained databases (Access/Base) are terribly dated in today's web-connected world. While I hope that OpenOffice.org gets the resources it desperately needs, I believe that it is even more important to begin developing the next generation of web-based document production systems that will someday obsolete both MS Office and OpenOffice.org. Think of the lessons we have learned from web content management systems and then apply these to the future software that will replace "office suites" as rich-web applications. Imagine: forget trying to integrate clunky office suites with your enterprise software. Web-based document production systems can become an integrated whole with enterprise software!
One last thing, it's no surprise that MS has from the beginning to "subvert" the web and web standards. It's all about the formats. I guess they simply arrived way too late to the Web to completely take it over. But I'm sure they know that if they had managed to switch everyone over to ms-propietary-html to surf the web, we'd be paying through the nose for IE and their OS and Office monopoly would be further protected.
They're trying all over again -- this time with XAML, a proprietary XML user interface markup language with striking similarity to Mozilla XUL and (moreso) W3C SVG. MS would like the developer community to write rich-web apps using XAML in order to put Windows and IE back into the "client requirements" column of web applications. It is absolutely imperative that the Open Source community, especially all commercial parties with a vested interest in Linux and Java, contribute to the development of:
1.) Mature SVG support in Firefox.
2.) Developer tools to make SVG rich-web apps as aesthetic and easy to develop as standard GUI applications.
3.) (For Linux companies) X.org / FreeDesktop.org development as it applies to the vector graphics/3D acceleration architecture. This is necessary to ensure that SVG is as performant as XAML on Avalon.
4.) Extensions to SVG that will be necessary to compete with XAML (3D, effects, video, etc.) These have already been discussed in theory, but not formalized as 2D SVG has already been.
(list in roughly this order of importance..)
- Lack of Microsoft Office
- Typically, people don't want to go to the command-line and 'apt-get' or 'make install' or 'emerge' et. al. their software. Most people want to be able to go to website XYZ and download something that shows an icon on their desktop. That icon when 2x clicked will launch an installer and do everything for them in a little user interaction way such as:
- Launch Installer
- Click "Next"
- Click "I agree to the soul sucking license agreement"
- Click "Next" a few more times
- Click "Finished"
- The installer for the Operating System must be as easy as Windows or MacOS X
- Linux/*BSD need to have the following:
- Pre-Configured Systems at retail outlets such as:
- Wal*Mart
- Costco
- BestBuy
- Circuit City
- Fry's
- Sears
- Support from Major software vendors such as:
- Microsoft
- Apple (Quicktime/iTunes)
- Macromedia
- Adobe (Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat)
- Alias/Wavefront (Maya)
- Quark
- Other Major vendors
- A Call Center
- The user should have a standard command-line available, but should not ever really need to touch it if they don't want to
Between Linux and *BSD, I believe that the very nature of the GPL hinders Linux in becoming a serious desktop OS. By the very nature of the BSD License, BSD is more ideally suited to be supported by major software vendors than is Linux. (This thought is incomplete as I have to leave) I will explain why I believe this on my own website and post the URL here for anyone interested.Sorry all you OpenOffice guys, you have to face facts though, Microsoft Office is THE BUSINESS STANDARD. Just about every major business under the sun uses the Microsoft Office suite, it is installed on all desktop workstations from the Janitor to the CEO.
Once OpenOffice provides all the same functionality as Microsoft Office in a consistant way, offers technical support (excluding forums, because mom & dad want to be able to call someone), and can be purchased, even at a nominal price in places like Costco, then it will become more popular and has a chance on the desktops of corporate America, provided of course that it is 100% compatible with whatever the current version of Microsoft Office is.
Oh and OOo or OpenOffice.org is a stupid name to call the suite, drop the .org and just call it OpenOffice.
and then have a nice little icon in their "Start" menu or on their desktop that they can lauch the application with.
Sorry, The GIMP doesn't cut it
Without a place where users can call and speak to a live person for support, Linux/*BSD will never gain significant marketshare outside of the server room.
The grammar checker in Word 2002 for the most part sucks. I've had perfectly good sentences underlined in green and when I check what I thinks it should be it would render the sentence nonsensical. My favourite one of many silly things is where it wanted to change the verb states to the noun States. I checked the reasoning but it didn't really make any sense in terms of removing the only verb in the sentence.
Does a Christian soccer team even need a goalkeeper?
Abiword will kick this thing to the moon. Open Office should fix the loading time already, for the Love of God!
I've been working with Linux since RH5, I guess, so I've done my fair share of config'ing everything manually. From your UID, I'd guess that you have, too. Like I said in my original post, with the discover/hotplug setup, your card will basically be config'd if it can be. Just like always, I guess, there may be corner cases where that's not true, but there are those cases on every system, aren't there? For nearly every card, though, if there is a module in the kernel, it'll be loaded. I understand, though, that you have experience with this, and that, for some reason, it doesn't work for you. I've installed Ubuntu on both old and new hardware, laptops and desktops, and the only thing I've had to work manually on was a WXGA screen. Most of your original points are, as I showed, without merit. You should accept that instead of backpedaling and redefining.
Put identity in the browser.
I'm always curious when someone makes a blanket statement like, "don't get it done." Can you give a specific example of a document you need MS Office for? Just wondering because I managed to make it through a Bachelor's degree, half a Master's degree, and 10 years of professional technical document creation (including a 107 page government document this last week) without ever needing MS Office. Not that I have never used MS Office, just that I haven't ever needed or wanted to use any feature that isn't available in an open source application. I'm not trying to be argumentative here; I honestly can't think of an example.
This space intentionally left blank.
Indeed, the SpreadOpenOffice.org site has been set up to provide a similar level of marketing push.
The activity on this site is very low and even the link to OpenOffice is outdated. No way this can compare to SpreadFirefox.com.
If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough. (Alan Kay)
You're just being picky. You simply can't get by without a shell being installed by default. We're not there yet. That was my original point and I stand by it.
How we know is more important than what we know.
They already have Linux products. We'd certainly benefit if they (and others) put out more. A lot can be run under Crossover.Phone support comes with most Linux PCs and most commercial distros.check
Single window Multi Search link: http://tinyurl.com/4txmk . Search engines, AOL, MAMMA, Google, Yahoo, plus BibleTools, BibleGateway, and 2 online calculators. In addition to that nice link, this link has a link to a Space Car uhm sort of: http://www.newpath4.com/ManmadehurricanesWarAborti onWaFutureJudgementTheDayAfterTomorrowLawEngineOut erSpaceDrivingSpacecar7777777.htm . Anyway, you know, the links are good plus it's a big SlashDot plug! SlashDot is on the Mega Search link too. SlashDot Rocks. Even tho the sun is burning whiter and less yellow, I'm not concerned because I know someone will post something that will make it all better, on SlashDot. Maybe someone will even make a few perpetual motion-like machines, engines, and we'll just build the spaceships like cars and drive plumb th' heck over to Mars. They have water there now you know. I know it because I read it on SlashDot just last week! SlashDot Rocks er Waters.
or atleast MS Office could become free, under pressure of OO.org. maybe they could sell support or something.
I'd love that, free MS Office (free as in beer)
"The majority is always sane, Louis." -- Nessus
http://slashdot.jp
I call bluff!
If you were actually using Ubuntu, you wouldn't be saying that "Linux" lacks all this stuff that Ubuntu doesn't.
Or, you have more advanced requirements than most. (In which case having the underlying config files available is a plus.)
I'm not being picky. I'm debating that your original point, which was "we still don't have a decent control panel applet on any Linux distribution worth mentioning," is wrong. Your examples of what control panels we don't have have been shown to be in error, point by point. My fiancee lives without a shell and doesn't have a clue how to use one. One's installed, because it's a dependancy, but hey...
Now, I don't happen to like that most of the new applets in Ubuntu are friggin' slow, because they're mostly written in Python, but the progress on this front is amazing right now.
We'll obviously have to disagree on this one, because you have your mind set on this issue. That's OK, but don't get persnickity and call people picky if they want to correct you when you are factually wrong.
Put identity in the browser.
Dude- tell your lawyer brother MS's own suite is not compatible with MS products.
I've had to use OO.org to open Powerpoint presentations- resaving them allowed the next version of Powerpoint to read it again. This whole compatibility thing is a canard, if not FUD.
OO.org won't be able to read all MS's formats perfectly 100% of the time- but then neither will MS's last version.
So what gives? Keep 1 copy of MS in the office, and switch the rest to OO.org.
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
1) Open Office needs to reach the good enough mark. I think it is getting very close to that for a lot of people.
The whole tech support thing is a bit of a non issue - I only know of one person who has called Microsoft for tech support - they weren't very impressed. What mums and dads like better than somebody to ring its somebody they can take the computer to and have them fix it. As more IT professionals become familiar with OpenOffice this sort of support will become available.
Although I can't see OpenOffice in costco in the immediate future - I am willing to bet that you will be able to pick up a copy in most newsagents.
partly true - Openoffice needs to be compatible with the features that are frequently used and is likely to be experienced by that user. The Office compatibility thing only really works if you have everybody using the same version of office in the same environment. It might work that way in other parts of the world but it does not work that way in my area. People very quickly learn what they can and can't send to other people. As long as OpenOffice is as good or better than using a different version of office I think that will be good enough.
Open Office was the prefered name. But it turns out that name is intellectual property of somebody else.
2) Have you actually seen a mum and dad user with a windows installer for the first time. They freeze they get through two maybe three of the questions and give up. It is very intimidating. Essentually what should happen is the user should click once agree to the license (if absolutely necessary) and install (two clicks tops) (maybe with an option for advanced users to tweek the settings before install). The best installer I have used on linux is Synaptic. It is excellent for expert users. If somebody could create a polished version of this that would show only the applications that a normal user would be interested in (by default) and let them install them with a single click I think we might be onto a winner, I agree with the comments about the start menu however
3) There are installers that surpass the ease of use of the windows XP installer. Mepis Linux is my favourite. You put the CD in boot from it - You end up with a fully working desktop... There is an Icon on the desktop that says "Install me" You answer a couple of questions (things like language settings and location) Then the whole lot gets copied to your hardrive. The extra complexity comes from the fact that Mepis allows you to install itself along side other operating systems - which is something people generally want to do... To aid in this task it runs a program very simular to partition Magic - A very nice touch
4) a - these will come as the market matures and demand increases - There are things that nead to be done in order to make these systems popular enough for these chain outlets to stock it.
b -
It seems OS projects that start from corporate roots, like Mozilla and OO (started as StarOffice), take a longer time to get competitive . Maybe their closed source roots require them to spend some time in software purgatory before they're admitted in open source heaven. Or something.
:-)
So, while OO may be fairly crappy for now, I have good hopes that in a few years time we'll see a firefox-like revival. Props to the developers and users who stick it out during this hard part of the development cycle. BTW, that's all the support you're likely to get from the likes of me. I'll maybe try updates once every year or so, then complain bitterly
I really like the idea behind LaTeX -- I've used it for about 5 years now (mostly academically), but I've always had problems when it's come to writing my own classes and packages.
I've found LaTeX is fine to a certain point, but I've also found that as soon as it comes to writing any sort of presentation code, the documentation becomes a lot harder to find and usefully comprehend. I've also had a lot of problems figuring out TeX and LaTeX as languages at all.
There seems to be so much potential for conflict between packages, and the whole thing feels quite flakey. Even in standardly-provided classes, I've lost count of the number of times where I've read things like "it's okay to do this, but make sure you don't do it at the same time as that, or you'll have problems". They're numerous things like not being able to use a table recursively, or having a page environment act like a page 90% of the time, but inexplicably break with the other 10%. Maybe it's something like being able to get the width of object A and being able to set the width of cell B, but not being able to insert the result of one into the parameter for the other.
The need to compile something two, three or four times just to make sure references are all up-to-date seems a little unnecesary and overly-complex in today's world. It might help for compiling large documents without much memory, but in today's world it seems a bit awkward when weighing it against the possibility of making a compilation mistake. (Okay, I use a Makefile for my compiles, but I still think it's something the compiler should really be doing itself.)
For anything beyond basic writing (which to be fair is often more than enough), the language is full of exceptions and inconsistencies. I've always found that to be quite frustrating. I'm sure that part or all of it might be because I've missed some fundamental points of the language, but I've not yet been able to identify what they actually are.
I do like the concept behind LaTeX. I realise it's a type-setting language, and that puts certain restrictions on it. It's just that when using it, I've often felt like I'm dealing with a language that was built on some dated 1970's programming concepts and restrictions, and has never seriously improved over all this time. Even though it's probably not as powerful, I find it much more convenient (and enjoyable) to just mark up things I write in some basic HTML, which I'm confident will work much more consistently if I try to do anything non-trivial.
Agreed regarding whatever version of Office they happen to be actually using, that compatibility though is a MUST. And I was unaware that OpenOffice was already trademarked :(
Does Amazon count? No, because if you check that out, you will see that it is from TigerDirect. Tiger Direct in turn gets it from Flexiety Software Flexiety. So I went to the Flexiety website and the only OpenOffice.org they have there is made for, you guessed it, Windows. Now since it is OSS, it probably comes with source code, but, in order to install it on another platform, it will involve compiling it. No Good, therefore Amazon does not count :)
I have not seen a Linux distro at my work with double-clickable packages. I would however like to see that :) That would be pretty neat to see. How do the graphical front-ends work though? IIRC the last one I used basically downloaded and installed an rpm or something...it has been a while. Still a far cry from a double-clickable package :)
I have seen some pretty decent installers, SuSE if I am not mistaken was very clean and nice :) but I have seen others that are nothing more than a curses-based install where manual partitioning had to be done, etc. which is unacceptable for mom/pop
I knew Wal*Mart carried Linux machines, I was not aware about BestBuy and Fry's though since I don't have one anywhere near me :)
Crossover office can indeed supply SOME people with functionality that they made need where some major software publisher doesn't create a Linux version, however, that leaves those that would use a *BSD out in the cold not to mention what will mom and pop say when they go to Costco to buy Crossover Office and they are running Linux on a Sun box or a Mac or anything that is non-x86?
Taking a look at Linux support from Novell, it is $325/incident!!! if you do not have an annual support contract ($5800/yr from what I could see, which would be ridiculous for a home user). I checked out RedHat and it appears that you call in leave a message and they will get back to you within 4 hours during their business hours. Not too good if you ask me...
OK, so I went to Linspire to check out the support there. This is what it said about phone support:
Talk to our Support Representatives
Ask Us. We strive for prompt turn around. Logged-in members can expect a 3-5 day response time during business hours (9am - 5:30pm PST, Monday-Friday).
3-5 DAYS? You have got to be kidding me! Lets check somewhere else...Linare!
Now Linare offers a full year of technical support, it didn't say if there was a per incident fee or not, so I will assume for the sake of argument that there is not. But look at the Machine 1.53GHz? Come on, that is like the stone age.... I am not trying to be a killjoy here, but there is a LOT to do before Linux/BSD are ready for the desktop. Some other things I can think of are (Brief List)
It has to is the answer, and it has to be a double-clickable installer. There are so many Linux distributions out there that they cannot possibly include them all unless they are going to include source and make it so you double-click and wait a year (OK that is an exaggeration) for it to compile with the proper patches/optimizations, etc for your particular Linux/*BSD. Alternately, they have to provide say 5 Linux Versions and at least 3 BSD versions in the same or seperate boxes, and if seperate boxes, no
I should have taken more time on the Maya site..My point was to grab some major apps/vendors that I knew of, and Maya hit the list. I should have researched that more before including it.. :)
1) fully compatible or better office suite (OOo2 looking damn good) 2) accounting oftwarefolks, thats so far behind its insane. no myob or quicken. forget business without those.
Nothing - well thats something.
So what applications are these, that you cannot do better with MySQL, PostgreSQL, or even MSDE? It isn't rocket science to ODBC a spreadsheet to a database.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
I'll have to side with rolfwind on this one. "Let's mis-label it a release, so people will beta-test it for us" is the kind of idea that really disgusts me.
Now I'm not opposed to smaller incremental releases, meaning less features added, and easier to thoroughly test before release. But nevertheless, I expect "stable" to be just that: stable.
You have to understand that while maybe for you "yay, I contributed a bug report to OOo" or "yay, I dug for a week through kernel sources and made my old ISA SCSI board work" may count as fun, for most people it doesn't. In the real world it's more like "fuck, why doesn't this POS print my document right?" Or I can tell you first hand that at work we're not like "yay, it's so cool that we contributed a bug report", but rather "fuck, I'm opening yet another PMR for this POS software. Someone remind me... why are we using this crap anyway?"
What's attractive about OSS to most people is the "because lots of other people have inspected the code and made it better for you" part. It's not the "because you too can spend weeks debugging our code and fixing our bugs, or just beta-testing our unstable stuff and waiting for months for a fix" part. Forcing people to be beta-testers against their will, isn't really going to make your software popular.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"Sounds like what a lot of people around here criticize Microsoft for."
Well, no. Actually MS does have a policy of not shipping with known deffects. (I.e., literally, they won't release until there's no bug report left.)
Now I won't argue whether their software is higher or lower quality than OOo (that's another flame for another time), but just saying that the "hey, let's mis-label betas as releases so unsuspecting people will beta-test them for us" idea is really sinking even lower than MS ever did. MS's QA and testing might be a lot less than perfect, but, you know, they at least _exist_.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Better names for noobs might be:
Spreadsheet
Excelsior
Excellence
1-2-3-4
etc.
Don't make it harder for us who are *trying* to implement it for our users! Give us some names that make sense! (Off topic, but ask new users to pronounce some of these open source names: ProgreSQL? Suse? Xiaman? Knoppix? Gnu? Debian (Day-bian? Dee-bian? Deb-ian?) Even Linux (Pronounced Lee-nux? Lii-nux? Lin-ux? yeah, I know, Linus has recorded how to pronounce it.) Maybe I need a quick pronounciation guide! I ain't stoopid, and i is havin' trouble!)
If it will take while to move to the 6 monly release cycle they could move to a minor release every 6 months (primarily bug fixes and incremental improvements) plus a less frequent major change release ever 12 months.
If we want people to use Linux, we need Linux to tolerable, and cheaper the MS Windows. This is how a manufacturer gains market share. MS Windows, Honda, and others did not become competitors by being better, they became competitors by being cheaper, then improving quality. Linux is a competitor because the quality is now "good enough" and it can often be much cheaper to use.
I agree. You should try out OpenOffice 2 beta as they've fixed this. That is, you can now get 65535 rows in a spreadsheet.
While you don't need 100% compatibility (that would mean even trivial feature differences would forever doom OO adoption,), you still need broad compatibility on two levels: (a) document format and (b) interface.
The OO community seems to have recognized the shortcomings of OO compatibility with the .doc format. Each release seems to read and convert .rtf, (and .html, and .xml) a little bit better, but we've got a ways to go.
My personal "gold test" is where clients could send me an RFQ in Word .doc format (yes, that is how most RFQs arrive at my desk), that I can edit in OO, convert to a proposal, and send back in .rtf format. My documents have outlines in tables and tables in outlines and embedded pictures and Visio logic diagrams everywhere. (Yes, I am grudgingly open to converting those Visio diagrams to .jpgs if necessary.) Indexes, chapter sections, and table-of-contents generation are pretty much everywhere. In practice, some of the idiosyncrasies of OO mean I will spend TOO MUCH TIME fighting with the system to get everything displayed the way I want, and so I fall back to using MS Word as deadlines approach.
User interface in terms of user support is an area that gets little discussion in the community. I have ~300 customer companies who use my software. (An average of 10 "power users" per customer.) My software enables data exchange between itself and Excel and Word. As a result, my staff becomes an informal MS Office support resource as our customers don't want finger pointing. ("What do you mean I'm calling a about a Word problem, I'm using YOUR data!") Until there is some kind of toggle to enable OO menus to display closer to Word's, the differences in interface are such that my tech staff will revolt before being required to also support OO.
Failure to help MS Word users to make the transition to OO will only result in eventual failure of OO! I remember in the early years that Word could be configured with WordPerfect menus. They weren't perfect, but they were GOOD ENOUGH. That made transitioning to Word less stressful for both users and support people.
Yup.................Still to poor for a sig.
Live Long and Prosper - Thanks Leonard. You are missed.
It seems like something like this could at least get a number of eyes looking at the differences between the SS and OpenOffice and maybe sort of "fertilize" the project's mindspace a bit, if you know what I mean. Something along the lines of "gee, the paid Lotus guys used technique X and over here in Open Office , they used bloated technique Y" type of thing.
What do you think?
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Sorry all you OpenOffice guys, you have to face facts though, Microsoft Office is THE BUSINESS STANDARD. Just about every major business under the sun uses the Microsoft Office suite, it is installed on all desktop workstations from the Janitor to the CEO.
MS Office is currently the de facto standard. This will hopefully change with the OASIS Open Document standard. As more and more governments adopt this standard (Massachusetts, various countries in Europe), hopefully businesses will too. While it's not in Microsoft's interest to have Open Document become the standard document format, it is in everyone else's interest.
Once that occurs, Open Office is just one player in the office suite market. It can fill a very specific niche -- a free office suite. You're not going to get call centers, etc for a free product. That doesn't mean that the product is useless. There clearly is a market for 3rd party support vendors.
Your requirements for Open Office to be successful:
- offers technical support (excluding forums, because mom & dad want to be able to call someone)
Open Office may not ever support such a thing. "Linux" doesn't offer such a thing, while companies like RedHat do. In a similar vein, support contracts are available for Star Office. I suspect if you search around a bit, you could find a company that would offer support for Open Office as well.- can be purchased, even at a nominal price in places like Costco
This isn't necessary for corporate adoption. What would be nice is if Dell, Gateway, etc would offer Open Office as an option when purchasing a system. Again, Microsoft's abuse of its monopoly position makes this impossible for practical purposes.then it will become more popular and has a chance on the desktops of corporate America, provided of course that it is 100% compatible with whatever the current version of Microsoft Office is.
I think the world is starting to wise up, and Microsoft Office document format will not be the commonly used standard for too much longer. There's a good chance that the OASIS Open Document will be submitted to ISO. If Open Document becomes an ISO standard, and Microsoft chooses not to play, they will be locked out of some markets they currently dominate.
get Crossover WITH their linux distro.MS and other companies are the same. For the small user, you should go through an authorized support provider, rather than directly through the company. You usually get a few free support calls for the first few months anyway.If you buy the Linux version. But why bother, when you can buy Linux prebundled with OO.o and other F/OSS apps? But this gripe is like asking why win32 off-the-shelf software doesn't work with Mac & vice versa. Packages are clearly marked.They can (and vendors do) either provide an RPM (since there are only a handfull of distros that are typically supported & most use RPM) or their own custom installer. Just provide a statically-linked x86 binary.Why? Plenty of vendors support multiple *nixes without resorting to this!Most people use KDE. Particularly the mom/pops. I do prefer Gnome. Most distros provide both & default to one. It isn't really a big deal.
I was especially disappointed since i though that linux would really excel in this sort of environment, and ubuntu would make it easy to do. Does kubuntu improve on this?
you should just buy the router, ofcourse you can do it, on any linux distro in an easy way. but, save yourself the trouble, you don't seem like the person who likes to explore new things.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
But I appreciate your advice, I can see it came from the heart.
The slashdot trend is to diss Sun, whilst there's about 50/50 support for OOo.
From TFA: "1 RedHat, 80 Sun, and 8 Novell hackers" - but the slashdot ethos still seems predomainanlty anti-Sun.
I don't work with Sun any more (I used to work alongside them), so I've no axe to grind, but it seems amazing that whenever OOo is mentioned, Sun barely gets a look-in, despite the number of users.
Oh well, it's slashdot,
Author, Shell Scripting : Expert Re
However, there are several Linux distros that do what you want out of the box. Have you looked at smoothwall (http://www.smoothwall.org/) or coyote (http://www.coyotelinux.com/)?
Agile Artisans
Yeah. Now his PIN is definitely something to advertise...*waits patiently*
"As the intrepid kobold companion continues his journey, he begins to wonder... if priests raises dead, why anybody die?
*sigh - preview preview preview...*
"As the intrepid kobold companion continues his journey, he begins to wonder... if priests raises dead, why anybody die?
http://www.codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit/
I use this all the time on my PowerBook... can't wait until they get their RTF version out the door!