Google Docs Replaces OpenOffice In Ubuntu Netbook Edition

uneuser writes "Digitizor reports that the Ubuntu developers have dropped OpenOffice from the default installation of Ubuntu Netbook Edition (UNE) 10.04 and replaced it with Google Docs. Documents in Ubuntu Netbook Edition will now be opened in Google Docs by default."

Comments

A little heavy for a netbook

[HangingChad]

I use OpenOffice at home but it would be a tad heavy for a netbook. I think that was a good choice and if you needed a lighter weight word processor, you could always opt for Abiword.

Re:A little heavy for a netbook

[Anonymous Coward]

I use OpenOffice at home but it would be a tad heavy for a netbook. I think that was a good choice and if you needed a lighter weight word processor, you could always opt for Abiword.

I use openoffice on my netbook, and it works fine.

Re:A little heavy for a netbook

[PCM2]

Even with an SSD the lauch time is unacceptable.

Well, that "even with an SSD" is a little misleading, since the SSDs that ship in Eee PCs are really slow. On my Eee PC 901, the secondary drive is so slow that its write speed is actually a bottleneck when downloading over a fast Internet connection. The boot drive is faster, but not impressively so.

Re:A little heavy for a netbook

[pieterh]

It is quite easy to upgrade the secondary (and primary) drives in the Eee 901 or Eee 1000 with fast SSDs. I've done this on two machines including my main travel machine, the Eee 1000.

Without that upgrade, running anything at all from the secondary (larger) SSD is horrible. E.g. FireFox, which continually writes to disk, just blocks for seconds at a time, over and over.

With the upgrade, it all works beautifully.

OpenOffice is, by the way, more than fast enough for working on large 200-page documents. The main known problem with OOo is in editing large spreadsheets. But for documents, and presentations, it's been fast on Linux boxes since 1999.

The main advantage of Google Docs is easy collaboration between different people, and automatic backup. Losing data on random portable devices is a serious problem that hurts more people than performance or feature changes.

So Google Docs is probably a good choice for beginners, and since most buyers of netbooks in my recent experience (after the geeks all bought theirs) are women with little previous experience... it makes perfect sense.

Anyhow, it's Ubuntu! One click and you install OpenOffice.org.

Google Docs Offline

[tepples]

Or, more accurately: what do I do if I DON'T have internet access?

That's what Gears and HTML5 offline support are for. And it's supposed to be seamless.

Answer: Google docs has offline access

[Potor]

Hey AC, you know that Google Docs added offline access, right, about two years ago?

Re:no internet? no google account?

[RalphSleigh]

I would guess Tomboy is being pulled because it requires mono. I recall there was a big argument when it was first included in the default Gnome desktop because of all the extra space required by the mono runtime just for some virtual post-it notes. So this move probably saves lots of space behind the scenes.

Re:how odd

[John Hasler]

> Besides, I'm pretty sure you could replace Openoffice with smaller
> alternatives and either gut Gnome or use Xfce and save 350 mb.

So do so. This is the _default_ configuration. You can easily remove and install whatever you wish.

Re:Remember folks, it's a NETbook.

[nocturnus]

Except that it has been possible to use Google Docs offline for almost 2 years now.

Wow, complete Slashdot article based on blueprint

[Pecisk]

For those who want to know: Launchpad blueprints are ideas converted in subprojects. For example, there have been thousand blueprints which while have been completed, have never been implemented.

So first - no official announcement in mailing list, no blog post, but a *blueprint* is a basis of the whole fact in this blog (which is full of ads and snags). Impressive.

https://blueprints.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/mobile-lucid-arm-webservice-for-office

Wow, first of all, it's for ARM UNE (small subvariant of Ubuntu Netbook Edition), implementation is not started yet and motivation is more clear than ad-riddened blog wrote - OO.o is simply slow on ARM. Yes, you can try to use Abiword, but I think it is not tweaked to run ARM too.

Re:Remember folks, it's a NETbook.

[blind biker]

I agree with you and go one step further...if all they cared about was the space why not go with Abiword [abiword.com]?

I'll make a guess: they didn't select Abiword, because it's probably still instable and bug-ridden. I try Abiword from time to time, and it usually crashes when trying to open even the simplest Word document, or while I try to edit a formula, or while I try to do something even slightly exotic (read: anything that isn't just plain text without formatting). In my view, anyone who praises Abiword, hasn't used it very much.

Re:Remember folks, it's a NETbook.

[blind biker]

Google docs doesn't exactly offer more features

I am a big OpenOffice fan AND user. I think it's great and I will continue to use it for my scientific documents, presentations and drawings. It's a nearly unbeatable package for many reasons. That said, Google Docs does have ONE feature that none other office suite has, at least not quite as well implemented: groupwork. Google Docs allows concurrent editing in a way and scale that I have not seen anywhere else, and the only reason people are not crazy about it, is (I guess) because it's a paradigm shift in way of working. If/when people realize the potential of groupwork offered by Google Docs, this office suite could become one of the most popular, without actually replacing the others. It could also increase the popularity of OpenOffice and the other office suites that save in ODF formats. I can imagine doing part of the work with Google Docs for parallele editing with a co-author, and then finalize it with OpenOffice. For example.

Re:Remember folks, it's a NETbook.

[priegog]

And to be perfectly honest (anal) about it, you CAN turn on "offline mode" in google docs so that you can access your files offline and create new ones. So, on the contrary to most people here, I don't quite disagree with the "online" side of it, but rather, with the "Google" side of it. Sure, probably everyone on /. has a Google account, but most normal people don't. My granny certainly doesn't (she has hotmail like most of the "vanilla" computer users out there), and she just bought her second netbook. Why should she be forced to create an account with some company to be able to use the office suite? I do agree with the people here who were suggesting abiword, if hdd space and cpu power REALLY were the reason Oo got shafted. This will just hurt Ubuntu

Re:Remember folks, it's a NETbook.

[icebraining]

I can think of two benefits: Google Docs is generally quicker than OpenOffice and it takes up less space. If you're talking about a relatively underpowered computer with a small hard drive, then I can imagine preferring a lightweight, quick office suite rather than a fully-featured one.

Doesn't that hold true for Abiword, though? It's faster and definitively smaller (30MB with deps) than OO.o, and supports .doc and .docx.

I was considering switching to the new suse anyway

[Uzik2]

The version of Ubuntu I tried gets high marks for a great install, but low marks for usability. The cd burner doesn't work at all, the archive manager and file system explorer both have horrible bugs and very poor usability design. That they're choosing to put my documents at risk further emphasizes their poor judgment at the leadership level.