Slashdot Mirror
A Year of Linux Desktop At Westcliff High School
jrepin writes "Around a year ago, a school in the southeast of England, Westcliff High School for Girls Academy (WHSG), began switching its student-facing computers to Linux, with KDE providing the desktop software. The school's Network Manager, Malcolm Moore, contacted us at the time. Now, a year on, he got in touch again to let us know how he and the students find life in a world without Windows."
And they didn't even meet much resistance: "Younger students accept it as normal. Older students can be a little less flexible. There are still a few that are of the view that I can get rid of Microsoft Word when I can pry it from them. Staff are the same (although it is surprisingly not age-related). Some are OK and some hate it. Having said that, an equal number hate Windows 7 and nobody liked Windows 8. I think the basic problem is that Windows XP is a victim of its own success. It works fairly well from a user point of view, it's been around practically forever, and people don't like change, even some students, oddly."
Nobody said this was a focus group.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
I'd really like to see a desktop suite of alternatives which do away w/ the shackles of backwards compatibility and instead try to do things right:
- LyX for documents
- Flexisheet for spreadsheets
Wish there was something other than Asymptote or METAPOST to suggest for vector graphics (I'd like to see a successor to Altsys Virtuoso and Aldus IntelliDraw and FutureWave SmartSketch).
Other alternatives which aren't ``just'' clones?
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
I just can't tear my way past it to Win 7, and just the screen shots of Win 8 annoy me. I have played with Linux and shortly, when MS drops the Win XP support I will load some flavor of Linux on the machine. It is just so difficult to abandon something I feel so comfortable with.
Is there any reason to think this user base would be any more or less likely to adapt to Linux than a "normal user base"?
News at 11!
When do not want to leave XP or IE 8 and even when I show them the benefits after the upgrade most start coming around to acceptance that is was time to change rather than be happy. Some were of course.
For grown ups I would be furious if I had to use LibreOffce too over MS office. Outside of slashdot it most certainly is not equal unless you are doing simple things. I tried to print something on another computer with it and all the margins were messed up. I could not change title's and preview changes before selecting them. Everything was hidden in a menu and after 4 minutes I wanted to pull my hair out before just downloading Word viewer instead.
LibraOffice has years to play catchup unfortunately just like the Gimp is no Adobe PS. But again fine for kids typing a paper in middle school or highschool.
http://saveie6.com/
> [Windows XP] works fairly well from a user point of view, it's
> been around practically forever, and people don't like change.
Yes, yes, and yes. Too bad MS didn't realize that -- they could have just spent the last few years refining XP and keeping people happy.
Apple actually has a pretty good thing going on with OS X -- like them or not, "small changes every year or two" beats "monumental fuckups twice a decade."
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Nice to see them using KDE. It's a nice DE, version 4.10 has come a long way...
One of the reasons we see so much Windows in education is that its cheaper than Linux. Microsoft gives out free software and hardware deals to schools as "donations". At my University, our CSE department had clearly been supplied with a lot of Windows stuff (I got 3 free Windows licences, and lots of other stuff as a student, I suspect the Labs got similar offers). The ratio of Windows to Linux machines was higher than most of the students wanted (It was often hard to find open Linux machines).
My High-school got all its computers replaced through some deal with Microsoft while I was there, and they were all Windows.
Microsoft makes large investments in getting its products into education so people get used to them. The people who resist change will then be stuck with them and but it in the future.
I assume this kind of thing is not the case everywhere, but their efforts seems to be keeping Windows as the standard OS in education. I'm really happy to see people working (and succeeding) at escaping this.
I have to wonder about the Microsoft corporate strategy to keep changing the interfaces to their OS with each release.
Imagine if all changes were on the back end (security, improved networking, etc) and only a handful of changes were made with the front end. Windows would have millions of content and loyal users. And nobody would ever want to change.
As long as it's for girls that is all that matters in the new crazy USA.
The author mentioned that some parents protested because they felt learning Microsoft Office is crucial to their children's success. However we now live in an era where Microsoft is beginning to lose that stronghold. With Open/Libre Office always improving and solutions such as Google Apps gaining traction, I fail to see how this is really a factor anymore. By 2024 MS may not even be the major player anymore in the office space. This is like the prior generation telling us we must be proficient at using a typewriter or hand writing in cursive to land a job.
Windows would have millions of content and loyal users. And nobody would ever want to change. Microsofts corporate strategy is dependent on people buying new versions of their software. If something doesn't 'look' like it changed, then nothing 'was' changed to most people. If you are still on xp at this point, microsoft doesn't really care a whole lot about you, unless it can get you to buy a newer version of its os.
"Desktop Linux Year" jokes at 3,2,1....
To be fair, the difference between XP and Vista/7 wasn't that drastic. Sure the colors changed but if anything, it was still XP underneath with an updated look (and some cool new tools). Windows 8 is where they went off on a tangent and put a little too much tablet UI in a desktop OS.
Windows would have millions of content and loyal users.
As opposed to the hundreds of millions they have now?
Supposedly, the only "normal" users are big, fat, somewhat conservative nerds sitting in their parents' basement. Everyone else is supposedly a "hipster" and doesn't matter.
They said the same about DOS and Wordperfect when i was in highschool, where are they now?
School should teach users generally applicable concepts, ie that there are multiple applications to accomplish a given task. If you only teach specific software then users will be stuck if they encounter different software, and by the time they leave school the software will be different. Even newer versions of the same applications are often wildly different. If taught properly, people will be able to grasp any new application that's designed for performing the same general functions.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Open office has some compatibility with office files but in the most part people need to use office as that is what is being used in most work places.
Westcliff High School for Girls Academy (WHSG)
Maybe I'm just having a bad week, but here goes. Insta -1 troll, karma to burn, etc.
But I thought that Linux was utterly sexist! I thought Linux discriminated against girls! I thought it was too technical!
Gah, I swear if I hear something along the lines of "math is hard" from another one of the real, flesh-and-blood women I know, I'm going to lose it.
Either that, or guess the fuck what. The body part between your legs does not determine your competency behind the keyboard. Women not using linux != some nebulous "discrimination" on the part of "all men."
Except I suppose this is desktop users we're talking about. Next we're going to hear how these poor girls have been discriminated against since they learned LibreOffice or KOffice and can't get hired. It's a male conspiracy!
Join the Slashcott! Stay away entirely Feb 10 thru Feb 17! Close all tabs to prevent autorefresh!
3-4 year old systems can run windows as well as for cost cutting holding on to systems for 5-6+ years just seems like pushing it out also the old P4 systems can be big power hogs as well.
If Ballmer is able and willing to pull the plug on both win XP AND windows 7, in favour of windows 8, it will be easy to predict a booming interest in Linux on the desktop.
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
Exactly! Because we all know that school is first and foremost a job training program designed to replicate drone workers efficiently. You wouldn't want to expose those impressionable youngsters to alternative tech, or heaven forbid, non-PC thought.
I used a typewriter in high school.
on the side, a teacher and some of us students formed a computer club and bought a TRS-80 so we could do Z80 assembly.
Since then I've used various document creating softwares on CDC Cyber, Vax, Unix, OS/2, Novell, Windows, Linux,
so the answer to your question is "hell no, what's the point"
I see it from a perspective of once I learn the tool so that I can do my job I do not want to learn the tool again.
I see no reason (from my perspective) to ever change a GUI, sure update features and security but leave the part I have to interact with alone, which is why I despise Unity and WIn8.
It reminds me of picking up my guitar only to find the strings are in reverse order.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Did you really need that much of a time to adjust from Windows 95/98 to XP?
If you must run MS and win32 software give Windows 7 a try?
MS will let you run it for 3 days before an activation. Some hated the fisher price colors of XP back in 2001, but could disable them (myself included.) after 48 hours I was set for the next stagnant decade.
Windows 7 aero is gorgeous and it is so nice to have jump lists and aero previews. You can move Windows side by side so much easier by draging them when you want to have 2 documents opened. Wifi, printers, and everything is easier to setup and drivers are automatically downloaded. It is much more secure, the wizards in the troubleshooter actually fix things rather than take screen shots, etc.
I could go on and on. It really is not that radically different from XP and it has no Windows rot which is a god send! Of course there is always linux and if your cpu supports virtualization you can use virtualbox to run a copy of XP if you wish if you want to go that route too.
http://saveie6.com/
Getting used to Win 7 is a little tough at first, but after you make the transition, it is amazing how much nicer it is to work with than XP. The single most obvious user facing thing is drivers. You plug something in, it works. No user interaction required at all.
to be fair, we'd also have to consider DOS -> Windows 3.11 -> windows 95/98 -> (junk no one bought) -> Windows 2000 -> XP which were pretty drastic
Um, I think he was talking about "loyal" users... not simply users or defaults.
There is a Universal Life Value Check it
Yeah but outside of that tablet UI that no one seems to be able to get their head around there is much more happening at the core of Windows 8 that makes it much better, at least by a Windows based metric. I'd say 8 has a ton going for it and letting yourself get hung up on a small work around to get past the tablet interface is a discredit both as a user and a supposed geek. 8 is worth the pains if you're going to use Windows.
Open office has some compatibility with office files but in the most part people need to use office as that is what is being used in most work places.
No, what people need is a standard file format that allows you to edit a document using whatever you want. There's no reason to force someone to use Office just because you use it; the same goes for OpenOffice (LibreOffice, etc).
Despite what many Office users think, Office is not a "standard." If it were, it would ship for free (No, MS's document viewer doesn't count).
It's OK to upgrade it with drivers for newer hardware, and plug up more security holes. But give us the same user interface (as a choice).
Really. We CAN go back and run most older window systems/managers on a new Linux kernel and maybe new X server. We can get the old user interface. We can even get something that emulates Windows 95 (seen it). Why can't the core Microsoft Windows system do that? Just provide an app that chooses which user interface to use.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Nobody said this was a focus group.
Exactly. Purely anecdotal which, when corroborated with other anecdotal evidence, still says Windows 8 sucks, Windows 7 is "meh" and XP is what everyone is still wanting to run.
You can pay for as many "Independent 3rd party studies" as you want. I'll take random anecdotal samples over that anyday.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
I have to wonder about the Microsoft corporate strategy to keep changing the interfaces to their OS with each release.
That's one of my biggest gripes about MS products (other vendors are just as bad... Adobe, for example. The version on my new computer is completely different than the old one). Another gripe is when they replace something that works well, like XP's file manager, with a defective, buggy piece of shit like W7's file manager. When I upgrade my home tower (kde) there's little visible change, just new features and the computer works better and faster. A Windows "upgrade" usually requires a whole new computer.
That, and Windows' lack of features that Apple and Linux have had for years.
Easy to say discard compatibility; except that means EVERYTHING has to become compatible with this NEW system. All you're doing is trading one compatibility for another. Plus people already have older PCs with an installed ecosystem of programs.
None of my workplaces have used Windows for anything important. The shift to everything-as-a-web-app certainly helps.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
All one needs is a reasonable set of import / export tools.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
My last workplace used Linux almost exclusively. Its not a Windows World out there.
Personally, I think learning only one OS cripples someone's understanding of is a design decision in an OS, what is a fact about current computers, and what is basic reality. Its much like learning only one programming language, or only one spoken language: you can't understand something very well from passive use of a single just one type. This is why you pretty much have to take some foreign language to get into college, and the same thing applies to OSs.
There is a reason I've played with Windows, Mac (os 1-9 and X), Linux (Ubuntu, Fedora, Sugar...), BSD, Plan9 etc. and read up on others like DOS, Genode, Unix, Multix etc. I don't expect everyone to go that far, but using at least a few will greatly help you understand what an OS is, and what they can do.
I've see single OS users (my mom with Mac for example) attempt to explain how to do something on a different OS (say windows) to someone by referring to specific specific abstraction's details (where menus are for example) which are missing or very different on the OS they are talking about. Not understanding the difference between "launching a web browser", and "clicking on safari in the right end of the dock" is horrible! People won't make it past this naive understanding unless you either make them use a couple OSs, or give them a serious lesson in OS design (I recommend the first approach).
Windows or Linux fanboi, both agree Win8 set us up the bomb.
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Windows would have millions of content and loyal users. And nobody would ever want to change. Microsofts corporate strategy is dependent on people buying new versions of their software. If something doesn't 'look' like it changed, then nothing 'was' changed to most people. If you are still on xp at this point, microsoft doesn't really care a whole lot about you, unless it can get you to buy a newer version of its os.
Microsoft's Windows strategy is not just selling their OS on new computers from OEMs, but to convince all users that they are really missing out on something great if they don't ditch the old version and upgrade to the new version.
The core problem is the way Microsoft does things within the OS, the constrain the user on how and where they store things. Savvy users can figure ways to put stuff where they like, but are often still stuck when it comes to inflexible software installs.
From the get-go I was a massive fan of *nix systems because I did my own configuration and installs and put stuff on logical drives where I wanted things. The OS was left on its own logical drive (usually a separate physical drive) in the event it died or was upgraded/rebuilt. Changes on the OS drive had minimal impact on software installed or where it was installed. Try that with Windows, from version to version.
Microsoft's "all the eggs in one basket" strategy may be fine if you don't buy a lot of software or run for 10 years on the same boot drive. But when you've got a considerable investment in software and the way you have things organized, the last thing you want is a load of change forced upon you. You can only upgrade so much with Windows (which often results in some sort of Frankenstein system, not quite as nice as a clean install.)
If the old mainframe manufactures, programmers and support had a wealth of experience in system configuration, security and deployment, Microsoft completely ignored as much as possible and their users all suffer in the end. Microsoft really have got very successful and rich off a succession of terrible strategies. They've counted so much on the "Microsoft Tax" as a revenue stream they had little incentive to make migration and consistency of the user experience a focal point. Now with Windows 8 it's the most obvious it has ever been. Steve Ballmer has been piloting his Titanic into the iceberg for so long he can't see the open seas around him and just keeps focusing on heading for that showdown in the North Atlantic.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
When I upgrade my home tower (kde) there's little visible change, just new features and the computer works better and faster.
You seem to be comparing major Windows releases to only minor releases of KDE. Major KDE releases have all had rather noticeable UI changes. Same with Gnone 2 to 3 and Canonical introducing Unity.
With the ongoing high rate of change in what we call "computing" these days, it makes good sense to help students, staff and faculty understand that they need to be ready to adapt to change in their platforms, apps and interfaces. If they are stuck on "Word" for the foreseeable future, are they really going to wind up any different from the old geezer who still thinks all you need is FORTRAN?
We've gone from punch cards to PCs to client/server to Internet to tablets/phones/etc as the primary means for large numbers of people to use computing resources (well, maybe not punch cards...) and the pace of change is not slowing down, IMHO. To teach people to use, exploit, change, manage and understand computing is a much more valuable achievement than just teaching them to use a single system in a limited way.
Because such tools pop out of thin air? How would writing those tools be any less work than what is required now to support those formats in existing tools?
Really? I plugged a headphone into the headphone jack yesterday and some dialog box popped up asking me if I wanted to use headphones. That never happened before Windows 7.
Something we can all agree on, at least!
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
It's a good question, why didn't they use Alpha software for the transition? I can't figure it out myself.
So - they moved Westcliff to the USA while no one was watching? A lot of people in England are going to miss it! Or, maybe you read a different summary than I did, and your post was mysteriously moved to THIS discussion.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Good point! I remember when WordPerfect dominated word processing everywhere. When the school moved to upgrade to Windows they just got some DOS based version of WordPerfect that was slightly newer yet the same except for a mouse pointer in a DOS window.
Microsoft Word finally caught up feature wise and was able to reliably open WordPerfect documents without messing up the formatting. If only OpenOffice/LibreOffice/Google Docs/etc. could actually open up Office documents without such unreliable conversion it would gain a lot of traction.
Really schools should focus on general concepts or even require students to learn two different types of software.
docx has open standards published.
Word beat WordPerfect not because Microsoft cried like a baby about formats but because they made it work with the existing WordPerfect formats. If OpenOffice or any of the alternatives want to compete instead of crying like babies then they need to make it work with the large trove of already existing documents out there.
You can't tell users who have had a working product for years before OpenOffice (and others) that they have to convert all those prior documents. The new alternative software should work 100% at reading the existing documents or it is useless.
A study one year on is useful, but what would be even more interesting would be a longer term study focusing on the experiences of students as they grow up and leave school.
It would be interesting to see whether using Linux and a non-MS office suite affected them academically, and as they start to look for work - particularly with many jobs coming with a requirement to be proficient in Microsoft Office (try getting Libre Office past those HR drones). Perhaps a higher proportion of students than is normal at a girls' school will end up working in the tech industry, having had more experience at school using a Linux system.
Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic
I really don't see Vista -> 7 as a color change at all. Note, I think 7 taskbar is the best taskbar designed.
it has no Windows rot
Eh?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Agreed. Schools should teach students how to learn to use software in general, not train them on specific applications.
WTF paid you to say that? And, WTF is a "Windows based metric"? If 8 has a lot going for it, then we're all hoping that it keeps on going, for a very long walk off of a short pier. Windows users seem to agree that IF you ARE a Windows user, it's best to stay with Win7, and hope to hell that Win9 is a usable system.
Frigging shills . . .
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
"and people don't like change, even some students, oddly."
If only developers for some open source projects as well as Microsoft would have realized this and built on their successes. Instead they tried chasing after Apple and some of them really did a poor job of it and worst of all want you to pay an arm and leg compared to the others for it.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Win7 really ain't bad - after you turn the Aero crap OFF!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I'd really like to see a desktop suite of alternatives which do away w/ the shackles of backwards compatibility and instead try to do things right:
- LyX for documents
- Flexisheet for spreadsheets
Wish there was something other than Asymptote or METAPOST to suggest for vector graphics (I'd like to see a successor to Altsys Virtuoso and Aldus IntelliDraw and FutureWave SmartSketch).
Other alternatives which aren't ``just'' clones?
For vector graphics there is Ipe.
Click and draw shapes, no need to learn Asymptote or Metapost to draw.
The last time I stopped by my Mom's house, I was surprised to see that she had an old laptop running Ubuntu and XBMC hooked up to her TV. Apparently my uncle had the laptop laying around and decided she could use it as a home theater PC. I thought my Mom would be lost in an environment outside of Windows, but she seemed to learn the interface pretty quickly and rarely complains about it. I think with the proliferation of smartphones, tablets, and other devices with different interfaces is making users less technophobic than they used to be and they are slightly more willing to learn new interfaces. What I'm trying to say is that 2013 will be the year of Linux on the desktop.
I'm guessing on a laptop? That's usually some software package your laptop vendor installs. Or potentially part of your audio driver suite. I don't think I've ever had that happen with Vanilla 7.
Well, i have had it like that for many years now without running any MS product...
The DOT for my state REQUIRES files in excel and word documents (usually a form or template to start is downloaded from them) If it doesn't pass automated upload scripts, they send it back for non-conformance. The same with cad files, it must be in microstation format with a defined level structure. Try sending in something else. They've spent 15+ years requiring this. Get things like this to change or a large segment will need to continue to use these things.
The ability to learn new tricks is not really age related.
Old dogs that can't learn new tricks couldn't learn them when young either.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201001/old-dogs-and-people-and-monkeys-can-learn-new-tricks
It seems all TFA does is measure resistance to change and who all likes coke vs pepsi.
Back in the day I liked DOS word perfect... reveal codes and all just fine. What does that prove?
It would have been refreshing had there been any discussion of metrics or outcomes for users.. After all computers are just tools... Its not what you "like" its what the tool assists you to achieve.
Marketing would never let that happen.
Win7 really ain't bad - after you turn the Aero crap OFF!
I like Aero and I am open to change. GPU acceleration actually speeds things up and you can use aero preview and side to side etc.
I have to wonder about the Microsoft corporate strategy to keep changing the interfaces to their OS with each release. Imagine if all changes were on the back end (security, improved networking, etc) and only a handful of changes were made with the front end. Windows would have millions of content and loyal users. And nobody would ever want to change.
Personally, I think it's for keeping training costs up. With every new version, they can move a few options around, and all of a sudden your admin guys need a new certification to be current. And the old certification is retired, so if you don't recertify you will soon have no valid certification. The same applies for Office, development tools, etc. I'm not saying every change is for this, but from what I've seen, far too many are.
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
The funny thing, if MS just left the fundamental UI alone, or at least allowed someone to have the option of going back to the same UI they had in Windows 2000, they likely would be doing better, especially if the underlying new features and security items were touted.
OS X does this. Apple doesn't force a new UI down people's throats, but when it comes OS update time, people almost always update their Macs to the recent version.
Microsoft needs to go that route. State the cool features, such as better security with BitLocker, better networking, a new filesystem and LVM-type layer that is pretty close to ZFS in versatility, and in the next rev, sporting autotiering. Leave the UI alone so Jane Secretary can run her MS Word with as little disruption as possible.
With the exception of WIndows 95 not really from the users point of view. I remember usenet users begging how to turn off the start menu and get program manager and file manager of Windows 3.11 back! But they were in the minority.
XP looks identical except for colors from 98 for the clueless user who has no idea what happened under the hood with the upgrade. Windows 7 has an orb instead of a button that says start and is blueish and clear with aero. But works the same way. Just the same room with a different application of paint from the users point of view.
Not hard to change really unless you do not have time nor budget or some 10 year old scanner or something. It is not resistance to change at this point but a budget of priorities after the worst economy in 70 years and corporations slashing all their staff for temps since 2008 created low wage jobs and uncertainty.
http://saveie6.com/
"There are still a few that are of the view that I can get rid of Microsoft Word when I can pry it from them."
I've been using linux on my primary computer for 5 years now and I'm still the same way - LibreOffice, OpenOffice and StarOffice can't hold a candle to MS Word, especially when you need to share your documents with collaborators. Same goes for the open "equivalents" of Powerpoint - if you make (or even modify) a slideshow in Libre, Open or Star, you have about zero percent chance of your presentation looking the same on any other computer.
I think a lot of people, including myself, will resist giving up MS Office until either a)EVERYONE uses the open equivalents or b)the open equivalents flawlessly port files to and from MS Office without formatting or display issues. I also think neither of these is likely to happen any time soon.
I haven't heard the typical result for Windows 7 being "meh"
In terms of ordinary end users, Windows 7 has surpassed Windows XP for quite a while now. The business world is another story.
or more inside-this-world:
XHTML+CSS for documents. (Much easier than TeX, and probably already taught anyway. And encourages cleanliness, as opposed to HTML tag soup idiocy.)
Any scripting language (like Python for example) for calculations. There really is no point in forcing functional programming (which is what spreadsheet making is) into a grid of cells. Arrays (of arrays or not), simple expressions and data records are much nicer.
(Just so you get by on actually using a computer. As opposed to playing with colorful clickables of fixed-function appliances that happen to be implemented on a computer, or as weird ways to present a programming environment as spreadsheet programs.)
And let's just make presentations (like Powerpoint) flat-out illegal. ;)
Flexisheet is apparently "just a clone" of something, it just so happens that it's something other than MS Office, Quantrix. GIMP tries its best not to be a photoshop clone, in the face of thousands demanding that it be one, Inkscape is increasingly an illustrator clone but sodipodi, its base, wasn't quite.
Just FYI, LyX sucks at WYSIWYG document creation and editing. TeX is hard and LyX makes it easier, but it's still nowhere near ready for the masses.
See, Microsoft had this brilliant idea to change their default document view from "Normal" to "Print Layout" that shows how the document would (should) look like when printed out. It's a small change; both views were present already. I don't even know if Microsoft came up with the idea first. But the difference is significant. One view makes Word true WYSIWYG while the other meant was just a glorified text editor. In case you haven't noticed, the Normal view is no more.
LyX is still lacking, in that, and many other ways.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Please explain the features of Flexisheet that would put it in anyone shopping list. I could only find a domain for sale, a Sourceforge project with no released files and a CVS repository and also it seems only runs in Mac OSX.
About LyX, I guess most people wouldn't want it a little rough, wouldn't them? From the site:
It does look a bit rough, but don't worry, because the output will be fine
I think most people would want to edit text, not mathematical formulas for LaTeX and science papers which seems to be the main focus of this editor. It may be very good for that for all I know.
"I think this line is mostly filler"
no, things such as "control panel" also changed
Microsoft didn't come up with the idea of a WYSIWYG text editor. I don't know who was first, but I know Apple's MacWrite in 1984 only had one view of the document, and it was like what Word calls "Print Layout".
End of Line.
But how many people would like to sit behind the wheel to drive to work, and suddenly find their entire dashboard reorganized and the wheel moved to a different angle six inches to the left?
As only one example, it always amazes me when supposed computer professionals are surprised when users were just fine with things exactly how they were. I still don't like the stupid ribbon interface of MS Word, and I have yet to find a single office person who actually prefers it.
The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
If something doesn't 'look' like it changed, then nothing 'was' changed to most people.
If an OS upgrade meant less hassle and more speed and more features like Linux, they wouldn't have that problem.
Offtopic, but HEY EDITORS: Why was the poll archived before anybody had a chance to comment?
School does not exist as a vocational training facility for industry. It should train people to be productive citizens. Over the long term that means fundamental skills. By "fundamental" I don't mean "introductory", I mean skills upon which *other* skills can be built: to analyze, to imagine, to communicate and *to learn*.
In terms of computer skills, students should be used to adjusting to doing things different ways, because changes in the software on the market will force them to do that. They should be able to create a problem-solving strategy and execute it with the tools at hand, rather than let the tools at hand dictate their capabilities.
After all, which Windows should they train to use? Windows XP? Windows 8? By the time they hit the market Windows 10 might be the current MS standard, and people may well be using operating systems targeted to non-desktop form factors as much or more than Windows.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
DOS was still around up until Vista. It also is a decent albeit crude intro to Posix CLIs. And Word actually copied a lot of Wordperfect's interface and functionality. Where it didn't, there are options.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
I think Ami Pro was the first in 1990 or so to get it "exact". I remember that it would actually look at the printer driver to improve the quality of the layout. WYSIWYG in the 1980s involved getting an extra page in your printout because one line rendered onto the 3rd page in real life, when your document was 2 pages on the screen.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
How many actually need or want WYSIWYG then? Wouldn't most people who use Office be better of with WYGIMBTWYCD (What You Get Is Much Better Than What You Could Design)?
Actually, it was the most drastic in the kernel. The 7 kernel is radically rewritten from the XP kernel. That's why it supports multiple processors so much better and is dramatically faster (considering how much more it's doing).
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Microsoft Word finally caught up feature wise...
When did this happen?
That's funny as Libreoffice writer is a superior program. (And both are in the same text-related-toys category: not quite a text editor, not quite a publishing software...)
What?
In terms of how I use the computer in day-to-day use, the Vista/7 transition had far more of an effect than Windows 8 has had. I don't really use any metro apps, but with that disclaimer I almost don't notice that metro is present. Windows Vista, however, completely changed (for the better) how I launched programs, and Windows 7 made significant changes with how I deal with managing existing windows.
Actually in terms of typical use, Windows 7 -> 8 may have had the least impact of any Windows version change I've done since 95->98.
LyX is a project that I'm very fond of. It doesn't follow the WYSIWYG model at all. Instead, it leverages TeX's different way of thinking about document creation entirely; separate the data from the presentation and manage the creation of both separately. The whole idea is to concentrate on the task of writing without getting distracted by constant re-formatting challenges. It works quite well once you learn to relax and not obsess over every paragraph and image placement while you're writing.
Frankly, I think LyX creates some of the most beautiful printed documentation I've ever seen. Sadly, it doesn't do so well at e-publishing yet. I have hopes that will change, though. I would love to use it to handle all of my document creation needs.
As it is, I end up writing in LyX, exporting to .xhtml, then using Sigil and other tools to get a clean, good looking .epub output.
Word did this in the late 90's (at least) too, changing your default printer would cause things to render slightly differently, sometimes causing text to reflow.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Aero actually offloads a lot of desktop operations onto the GPU freeing up your processor to do other things. Why would you want to turn off something that not only looks pretty but also makes your computer faster?
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
WordPerfect was so good.
Captcha: Rewrites
Switch to Apple and lose weight. Not because it makes you a "hipster", you just can't afford any food after buying the whole Apple line.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Really? I plugged a headphone into the headphone jack yesterday and some dialog box popped up asking me if I wanted to use headphones. That never happened before Windows 7.
Yeah XP users astound me. The troubleshooters are amazing too and fix things instead of show screenshots like they do in XP.
I really do not understand why someone who financial means would prefer XP? I can see being poor and having an older system that already works but many will put up with the pain trying to get XP drivers in their new icore7 extremes and I just shake my head.
I love just plugging in a printer too and even on the network Windows 7 just takes care of things with no input. Just click on homegroup and 30 seconds later the driver is automatically installed.
http://saveie6.com/
This is one of the clear benefits of using Linux in an educational space. It's trivial to have multiple desktops such as KDE, Gnome, Cinnamon, XFCE, etc. They all have their own ways of doing things while all doing the same thing. KDE feels a bit more like Windows, XFCE a bit more like OS X, but when you alternate between the two on the same OS it becomes much more clear that they're just an abstract layer that acts as a liaison between the user and the OS. Then the user thinks in terms of actual functionality rather than in terms of desktop metaphors (of course, tinkering with the terminal really cuts through that layer).
In business, where it's all about efficiency, it's irrelevant whether the workers know what they're doing as long as their ignorance doesn't hinder their productivity. In this setting it makes sense to have streamlined metaphors that disguise what's actually going on. In an educational environment it should be about learning. When I was in school computers were just to write papers on, take typing class, etc. They were glorified typewriters. What's the point of that?
When the original PC shipped with BASIC, it retarded a whole generation or two of programmers. Imagine the progress computers would have made with LISP or FORTH as the default language.
Now, Office is retarding a whole new generation. Imagine the progress if students learned LaTeX. I mean, we want every child to be a "programmer" but no one will even teach LaTeX, which is not any harder to learn than HTML. Imagine kids going off to college using LaTeX for papers - no more "Word deleted my paper" or any of that.
What "content and loyal users"? I don't know a single person with a Windows computer that doesn't bitch about it. Apple and Linux users are pretty loyal and content, Windows users use it because it's what came on their computer, or they like computer gaming.
Sorry to burst your bubble but I was using MacWrite on the original 128K Mac in 1986.
Measuring lengths as a number of dead ducks would be a good example!
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
I understand Microsoft's motivation to change things, because they're selling stuff, and by nature they're almost required to change things in order to make a profit. If they don't update the interface, people become too productive, and never buy another copy--they just use the one they have. With upgrades and security patches being free and automatic, Microsoft really HAS to change change things in order to continue to make a profit.
But why does Linux do it? Why not create an XP equivalent of an OS/GUI and then just administer patches for the rest of all eternity? I have yet to see a defacto GUI/Desktop that isn't going through some massive remod, which renders all the development you do on the older technology null and void.
It's too bad, too, because i think that constant flux causes some devs to avoid it. Or do something more desperate, like code in Java. :)
http://www.beanleafpress.com
All one needs is a reasonable set of import / export tools.
Can't be done.
Two years ago I had to convert some important WordPerfect documents to Word, and then to Excel. They had a lot of tables, outlines and columns. It didn't come out right, and I had to manually correct every page. The margins, columns and tabs were changed. One page in WordPerfect ran over one page in Word. Text didn't fit into tables. Some of the fonts were missing. There were workarounds that didn't work any more.
In searching the subject on the web, I found a message from someone who claimed to have worked for Microsoft during the original rollout of Word, on the compatibility with WordPerfect. He said that it was very important to MS to have compatibility with WordPerfect, since that was the installed base. Potential customers had their own historical documents in WordPerfect, and they had to exchange documents with clients who still used WordPerfect. MS put a lot of work into it, but they couldn't get them to convert exactly. The two programs approached document formatting in different ways.
Consider a typical Microsoft potential customer. A law firm may have 100 lawyers, each of whom writes 10 documents a day. The lawyer's life is tied up in his documents. The documents are the firm memory. When a new case comes up, it's important for them to be able to search their documents to find out whether and how they've dealt with this matter before. They want to go back for decades. Lawyers have lots of stories about how an old partner says, "I remember we did something like this back in 1960," and they find an old memo that wins a million-dollar case. Usually it's important to get the documents back in exactly the same format, because, for example, the page citations have to line up.
Another problem was that they had staff, like secretaries and paralegals, who were expert in the sometimes-esoteric language and style of law, with its footnotes and citations, who already knew WordPerfect. These are not stupid people, and some of them were experts in the details of WordPerfect, but most of them were not. They could learn a new word processing program, but it would take time, and even more important, during the learning process they could make mistakes. Microsoft had an elaborate learning mode in the earlier versions of Word for people who were switching from WordPerfect in which it would automatically give you your "error" when you tried to use a WordPerfect command. Some of the WordPerfect commands had no equivalent in Word. You had to use an elaborate workaround. And it wasn't just converting documents. You could easily search all the files in a WordPerfect directory for a text string. You couldn't do that any more in Word.
For a law firm like that, it's an enormous job to switch from one word processing program to another. They did it, mostly during the transition from DOS to Windows, but they wouldn't do it again without a good reason.
Yeah, that part of the summary didn't gel right with me. Everyone hates Windows 7? My experience has been the opposite - everyone I know who's switched to Windows 7 loves it, and are physically ill when they see an XP desktop (ok, not literally). Conclusions like this sound a lot like confirmation bias.
"The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
Though moving an icon around on the panel (you have to awkwardly add spacers and can never quite put things where you want them) and changing the panel background color (still haven't bothered to figure that out) are still unnecessarily more difficult today than they were in KDE ten years ago. I still use KDE but I'm disappointed by the little things like that.
This space intentionally left blank
at least in Germany.
Geez, they must really be stupid to use an unusable nerd system instead of the great and fantastic post-pc devices. Probably dont even believe that Adam and Eve rode on dinosaurs through paradise either.
I've used Crossover to run MS Word/MS Office and other Windows apps,so I don't see the problem since it allows you to run that stuff on a Linux box if you insist on it.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
I have to wonder about the Microsoft corporate strategy to keep changing the interfaces to their OS with each release. Imagine if all changes were on the back end (security, improved networking, etc) and only a handful of changes were made with the front end. Windows would have millions of content and loyal users. And nobody would ever want to change.
Should Microsoft only change everything in Windows, but the shell, every consumer out there would look at a copy of the new OS and go "Why would I buy this, nothing has changed?" They have to change the shell, if for any other reason, the average computer user can acknowledge it's atleast different.
After all, which Windows should they train to use? Windows XP? Windows 8? By the time they hit the market Windows 10 might be the current MS standard, and people may well be using operating systems targeted to non-desktop form factors as much or more than Windows.
This can't be said enough. Like the guy up there that said he used a typewriter in HS.
Technology changes. Teaching specific technology and not the principles behind such is setting up people for failure. My skills in manual drafting are not lost in CAD.
--
BMO
There was one point I liked about that article. If people don't like Windows 8, it has nothing to do with change. The fact is the gui for Windows 8 just plain sucks. It's counter-intuitive and makes navigation worse. Change for the sake of change does not make something better. It's interesting to hear that at that school, young and old, WinXP, Win7 and Linux all fared better than Win8. Are you listening Microsoft?
May the force be with you...
MPAA bot #143492342342356334543645653423214554 here
Your comments have been noted, you will be tracked, jailed and water boarded until you confess.
Land of the free...
Put Ubuntu on my wife's net book that was brought to its knees by windows 7. Perhaps it's just Unity, but she hates it. What's funny is she will click on Firefox until the window opens and she ends up with 20 of them! I made the analogy for her: click it once and windows thinks about opening it, but Linux WILL run it however many times you click it.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
I work with desktop support.
I'd say it is about 60/40 with 40% loving XP and not wanting to change. It is familiar, it was a good os, it was the first OS that never crashed on them like ME and 98SE, and after looking similiar to Vista can you blame them for being afraid of change and assuming it is inferior?
IE 8 works. Word 2003 works. XP works fine and so does their desktop that takes 5 minutes to boot up with 512 megs of ram. Why take the risk?
After upgrading 90% are glad they did ... after a month. The whining comments here on slashdot news for conservatives are from those who switched to Linux 10 years ago and run XP in VMs or still run XP at home and do not want to change because of above. I tried to sell the benefits.
It drives me crazy to see such weird comments as I remember slashdot bashing Windows XP as A POS OMG WHO WANTS TO RUN IT!! To best non Linux OS EVER in 10 years.
But if you had a time machine and cut and paste such comments slashdotters would be on the floor laughing in disbelieve. It is 12 years old and it is time to move on Good God.
http://saveie6.com/
Simple, just use a viewer for wordperfect and integrate it in your open source DMS, oh, you're not using an open source DMS, well...
Read the summary again, it says as many of the staff hate Win7 as hate the KDE/Linux desktop they are using, it doesn't say they all hate Win7, its Win8 that everyone hates apparently.
The funny thing, if MS just left the fundamental UI alone, or at least allowed someone to have the option of going back to the same UI they had in Windows 2000, they likely would be doing better, especially if the underlying new features and security items were touted.
OS X does this. Apple doesn't force a new UI down people's throats, but when it comes OS update time, people almost always update their Macs to the recent version.
Microsoft needs to go that route. State the cool features, such as better security with BitLocker, better networking, a new filesystem and LVM-type layer that is pretty close to ZFS in versatility, and in the next rev, sporting autotiering. Leave the UI alone so Jane Secretary can run her MS Word with as little disruption as possible.
Microsoft's approach is like the old one of the US automakers of years gone by, radically change the exterior of a car from year to year, requiring retooling, new sheet metal fab, light fixtures, mirrors, trim, etc., while what made the car a car changed very little. The car makers don't change design radically as much as they once did to keep costs down, some exterior parts are good for several years as opposed to one.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
From TFA:
Why the hell don't we have a mob of /. volunteers lined-up to go help them?
High school girls + Linux
How is it possible that has this comment thread has not devolved into a morass of sexism and obscene jokes?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I think measuring lengths using shards of glass would be better...
It's like learning a 2nd natural language, it makes you more versatile and even reshapes your neural connections according to some studies. Ideally students should be made to use one office suite for half the courses, and some other suite for the other half.
"Microsoft had this brilliant idea to change their default document view from "Normal" to "Print Layout" that shows how the document would (should) look like when printed out. It's a small change"
Except when you send it to someone with a different make of printer, all the margins are off a bit.
AccountKiller
When I was introducing Windows 7 a couple of years ago (thank god I don't do IT anymore) at an all-girls school, the students took to it very well. They liked the animations, the new appearance, the speed and responsiveness, and ultimately took to it very well. Also did an upgrade to Office 2010 from 2007 and there were no problems at all. I cannot for the life of me think why we'd convert them to Linux/LibreOffice. Even my wife uses things like OneNote, which she just started using yesterday because it was suggested by her Uni as a good notetaking program and it is, with nothing comparable in the open-source scene.
I have yet to see anyone provide evidence that LibreOffice is significantly better than MS Office in any way other being able to run Linux (which doesn't matter because most people use Windows/OS X) and that it's free (which is beneficial, but as far as schools are concerned most of them have Microsoft agreements so it's a sunk cost).
I've been burnt believing for years that Linux would ever make headway on the desktop, so apologies if I seem too negative. It's just that there's no real push to do so because the supporting software just isn't there yet, and probably never will be. Moving purely for ideological reasons screams of an IT admin with little to challenge him otherwise.
First experience with Win7 was on older hardware - and things just didn't work well.
The "pretty", I can live without.
The advantages of using GPU instead of CPU? Yeah, I guess. Newer hardware seems to be more adequate to the task of computing.
To put it plainly, I just don't like Aero. All of my desktop environments are as basic as I can make them. KDE's Plasma doesn't do much for me, Ubuntu's Unity bites as bad as Microsoft's Metro - I just can't stand them. I want a plain jane desktop, that I can navigate easily. With Win7, I go back to the "classic" desktop, to get rid of all that shiny pretty nonsense.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
the panel background color seems to be tied into the current application theme, basic ui buttons and such.
Especially for specs written along the lines of "process this data like Word 4.1 with that crazy bug did".
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
My middle school had a linux lab at least 10 years ago, everyone used them fine. I don't see what the issue would be. It was not like we were trying to install software or do anything besides surf the web.
Were I to need to run Windows, or could afford the license, I'd definitely run 7. I make it the proper successor to XP, and it fixes things that simply could not be done with another service pack, as best I can figure.
One thing that'd hold me back is the annoyance of having to spend the time to set it up. I ran 7 on a decent laptop at the time, in '09, and installed the usual stuff (some of it less needful than on XP, to be sure): unlocker, teracopy, erunt, ccleaner, vlc, Firefox, Opera, Foxit or similar, Irfanview, Spybot Search&Destroy (I've got a soft spot for it, it saved my systems several times, and still has some utility), an AV or two to second-guess Windows Defender or whatever it's called now, perhaps a third-party software firewall (really maybe not needed inside my own LAN behind a router...), and then another half-dozen or so favorite utilities and applications that I prefer to what comes with a default Win install.
Anyway, sorry for the ramble; long story short, if folks need Windows, they might should run 7 - unless there's some program that absolutely won't run on it somehow.
Left out, of course, is all the de-crapification that needs done if the machine is bought from one of the normal OEMs; if one install it oneself, then no problem.
Finally there's the configuration stuff - sprucing up the services, for instance, and the monitoring and logging stuff.
I've been running Linux for five years now as main OS, with XP in a vm for a few things. I end up spending about the same amount of time setting up a Linux install as for Windows, so it's mostly a trade-off. (As a wise old fellow once remarked years back, "All operating systems suck, each in their own way." I've been looking for the exact quote and its author but haven't found it; the sentiment seems correct, tho. I think it goes back to a fellow on usenet in the 80's, perhaps quoting one of his profs. I first came across it around '91.) I think one of my main beefs with Windows is the amount of Digital Restriction Management that's baked in, as a trade-off for the included codecs, best I can figure.
64K wasn't enough obviously.
Flexisheet is a clone of Lotus Improv --- another clone of it which is still distributed is Quantrix Financial Modeler.
Basically, Lotus Improv was the spreadsheet re-created w/o the limitations of the Apple ][ and done right. It's done so right, that Quantrix Financial Modeler is $1,495 per seat.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
I've subscribed to the IPE mailing list, and have installed and tried it a few times --- the interface leaves a lot to be desired.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
I don't want to deal with your login contortions so I am a coward. Anyway, this coward vividly remembers typists who were actively opposed to using any typewriter that was not an IBM Selectric, even though typewriters from Hermes (jewel-like) and Adler-Royal were far more capable in actual testing. That said, I am a bit surprised that American Idiots have a problem with Win 7. Personally I loathe Microsoft but find Windows 8 a pleasure on my Lenovo Lynx, the best tablet I have ever owned (after iPad 1, HTC, Acer, Nexus 7).
And LaTeX does online text now.
The real reason why LaTeX is now hopelessly outdated is that it's even more of a paper simulator then the "WordPerfect" clones ie it's centered around creating a beautiful readable output nobody will ever see in a modern document workflow, where things never really gets printed or published to readers but circulated in it's "write enabled form". LaTeX is based around a dying way of thinking about document.
With LyX you get a system that solves a problem that only existed with an now obsolete way of using computers to create documents.
What is flexisheet and are you even able to solve the problems with it people solve with excel/calc remember again that the way people use spreadsheets today might have very little to do with how academia thought spreadsheets were supposed to be used back in the early days of pc usage.
So at Westcliff high school, 2013 IS the year of Linux on the desktop! Maybe it will spread to the rest of the occident?
It's best to read the article before posting. I have provided the crucial paragraph below:
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
They just don't understand. On linux, I can read this post, go "ooo, what's that?', click to my open terminal, 'sudo apt-get install lyx', click back to the browser to compose my response, /without any input to the terminal/, and by the time I am ready to preview and post, LyX is waiting for me to try, fully installed and ready to go.
They still don't understand.