I agree completely. The MM patches are unbelievable. I couldn't believe the difference in responsiveness after going from 2.6.0-test5 to 2.6.0-test5-mm4!
Especially for game performance and load times, incredible difference there.
My point was simply that an underscore takes the same number of keystrokes as a space. and it's actually easier to type a space in the command line than it is to type an underscore.
Space = \[space] underscore = [shift]-
"Because it's easier to type" isn't a valid reason... However... "Because it's easier to read from the command line" may be a valid one;)
Source of the email sent to Gamershell.com: == Delivered-To: news@gamershell.com Received: (qmail 10758 invoked by uid 1004); 24 Sep 2003 22:53:19 -0000 Received: from gaben@valvesoftware.com by ymer by uid 1001 with qmail-scanner-1.14 (avpdaemon: ???. Clear:. Processed in 0.030965 secs); 24 Sep 2003 22:53:19 -0000 Received: from mta01-svc.ntlworld.com (62.253.162.41) by 0 with SMTP; 24 Sep 2003 22:53:18 -0000 Received: from smtp.ntlworld.com ([81.96.191.237]) by mta01-svc.ntlworld.com (InterMail vM.4.01.03.37 201-229-121-137-20020806) with SMTP id <20030924225325.GGIY2260.mta01-svc.ntlworld.com@sm tp.ntlworld.com> for <news@gamershell.com>; Wed, 24 Sep 2003 23:53:25 +0100 To: "" <news@gamershell.com> Reply-To: "Gabe Newell" <gaben@valvesoftware.com> From: "Gabe Newell" <gaben@valvesoftware.com> Subject: Half Life 2 Gone Gold X-Mailer: Ghost Mail 5.1 http://ay.home.ml.org/ X-Priority: 3 (Normal) Message-Id: <20030924225325.GGIY2260.mta01-svc.ntlworld.com@sm tp.ntlworld.com> Date: Wed, 24 Sep 2003 23:53:25 +0100
Half Life 2 as gone Gold and in production now, the release will still remain on schedule for Sep 30th. People who have pre-orded it via Steam will still get it before the Sep 30th but we are currently ironing out a couple of bugs, people may have seen Half Life 2 yesterday for a minute on it while we were in our testing stages.
The announced delay is all rumors posted up on Shacknews and the SDK will be available for download tomorrow 2.00pm EST now you've heard it from the horses mouth so rest assured. More news to follow on Sep 26th so watch this space. ==
If you know how to read the headers even a little bit, you can see that it was sent using an anonymous mailer (Ghost Mail 5.1) and sent from a UK-based broadband provider (ntlworld.com). 1) Gabe Newell doesn't use an anonymoust mailer client for sending email. 2) Gabe Newell doesn't use a UK broadband provider for sending email.
The only applicable use it has is to make give people with a console fettish an easier time typing in filenames.
Actually I'd disagree with you on that one. I use the console quite a bit and find it much easier to type "\ " (backslash space) than it is to type "_" (shift-minus).
There's no excuse for underscores in a file name.:p
1) Most of whom have no idea what they are doing. Any problems that I've had with gentoo I've had to find the solution for myself by weeding through manuals/documents. You're not going to be able to get support for complex problems from the gentoo community. I wonder why people pay Red Hat for support...
2) This is a matter of opinion. Each way has it's advantages and disadvantages. And for that matter, either one can be customized to your preference.
3) This is another matter of opinion. I love using portage at home, but I'm not going to be using it on production machines. I'm going to be installing thoroughly-tested binary packages.
I love gentoo and the community is great and generally tries their best to be helpful, but the one thing that irks me is most of the gentoo community seems to think simply because you compiling it yourself the program is going to "be faster". Most people don't understand how optimizations work and what the trade-offs of using each optimization are. So they end up using -O3 -funroll-loops and all sorts of other optimizations that increase the size of the binary. The programs may execute 5% faster, but now they take 500% longer to load. In some situations this is a good idea, in others it's better to optimize for size. In general the people managing the packages for Red Hat probably have a better idea of how to optimize than the average gentoo user does.
Don't get me wrong, I really do like gentoo and the flexibility it gives you. It's actually what I'm running on my primary desktop at home and I'm very happy with it.
I'm just asking that people understand there's a place for each style and that one is not necessarily better than the other.
I suppose you could run into problems with a project like this because they don't have official binaries. I'm assuming your friends were using Windows, and if they're using Windows they're probably not compiling from source. Thus they have to rely on finding a good binary distribution of it. And if they aren't knowlegdeable to begin with, this could be a problem. So your issue isn't so much with Xvid as it is the people who do a piss-poor job of distributing it.
My point is, don't crap on Xvid just because your friends are idiots. The Xvid codec has worked great for me with any file I've encoded with it; or anything I've downloaded that uses it for that matter.
Liar. I don't believe for one second that you use NiMH for every single device in your home. Maybe the shorter lived stuff like a Gameboy. Coincidentally, laptops are very short-lived devices.
Why wouldn't he? I'm not saying he is, just asking, is it really that far-fetched an idea? If I had more battery-powered devices (without their own charger) than just a few remotes and my keyboard. I'd probably be doing that. Hell, I've considered it just for my keyboard and remotes.
It's not like the NiMH batteries are expensive, and you can have a set always charged and ready to go. Then you don't have to worry about your batteries dying in the middle of posting to slashdot and having to either A) rip a corded keyboard off another machine or B) go buy some batteries at 3 in the morning.:)
Try out OpenOffice 1.1 Startup time is much lower--it starts faster than MS Office on the Windows machines I've seen--and it has many new features. It's still in the RC stage, so you may want to wait until the official release; but it's much better than 1.0 so--depending on the number of users you're managing--you may consider moving to it now and upgrading to the final release when that's out.
Indeed recently, a small ten-person company in an economic black-spot in the UK granted a licence to a US multinational for its voice recognition software patents. Without European patent protection in this field, the small company could have found itself in the perverse situation whereby its R&D efforts and investment would simply have been taken by a large multinational company, who, with its team of patent lawyers, would have filed a patent on this invention. The EU company could have been faced subsequently with patent infringement proceedings.
Let me start out by admitting that I don't really understand the legal issues of software patents, am not familiar with standard legal practices in Europe, and I'd really appreciate a correction if I am wrong anywhere in this post.
That being said, how would this situation be any better with the acceptance of software patents in Europe?
First of all I thought software patents weren't recognized in Europe, so they are saying the UK company had a patent on the voice recognition technology in the US? And if so, they're saying it's good that a poorly-managed UK company was saved because they could sell a license to a successful multinational corporation? Forgive me if I am wrong, and maybe it's good that the people who work at that company aren't starving, but.. If the only way a company can stay in business is by using software patents to force larger companies to keep them afloat, doesn't that imply they aren't really providing any valuable service and maybe they really should go out of business? If their invention really was 'that good' couldn't they create their own product and sell that to make money? Or is the issue that they were too small to work with the great idea that they "created" and by selling this idea they had created a valid business model?
Second, how would they find themselves in a situation where a multinational would have filed a patent and sue them for infringement if software patents weren't allowed in Europe?
I totally agree, many people who want to use Linux just can't do it at this point. It's not their fault, Linux just isn't ready to be used in the home by the average user.
However, I do use Linux on my desktop every day, and I'm very happy with it. (However I tend to stick to BSDs for most servers) It's taken me about 5 years of using it off and on (started in 97 or 98) to get comfortable with it as a desktop system. And earlier year I finally removed Windows completely from all of my systems.
Linux can be used as a desktop system right now. It's just a question of "do you have the time to learn it?" For almost everyone right now the answer is no. There's so many things you don't realize you need to know to be able to manage a computer. Most of us take it for granted on Windows because we have been exposed to it for so long that we don't realize how much we had to learn to be able to manage it.
Right now, Linux will work as a desktop. The problem is maintenance. If they don't have to worry about maintenance (ie someone else is managing it for them), I have no doubts that someone could sit down and use the computer just as easy as they could in Windows. The problem is if they want to install new programs/hardware or otherwise change the system configuration. This is where it requires more than just a basic knowledge and where most people give up and say Windows is easier--because they already know how these changes would be done on Windows, but don't yet know how to do it in Linux. It's also much harder to learn how to do it in Linux because you can't usually just ask the local "computer guy" because most of the "computer guys" know just as much about Linux as you do. As more and more people start using Linux, it will become easier to learn, so more people will use Linux, and it will be easier to learn, ad infinitum.
If you care about the success of Linux, please, immediately stop associating yourself with with it. I don't care if you actually use it or not, just please don't tell anyone.:)
It's people like you that give Linux a bad reputation.
I assume when you say you used OOo for 18 months that you were using 1.0...
Try out OpenOffice.org 1.1 I hated 1.0 and was sad to see so much effort going into such a bad office suite.. but 1.1 is an amazing difference. Now I don't have any reservations recommending it to family/friends who ask me if I can "get them MS Office" (expecting a free--pirated copy).
And my girlfriend actually uses OOo1.1 more often than MS Office.
Honestly no offense, but it sounds like you and your friend should be sticking with desktop programs that are official binaries from your distro of choice, or maybe even using Windows or MacOS X instead.
The issue with "rm" seems to be more of a configuration gripe than an actual design problem with rm. And if your friend wasn't using root he won't have messed up his system. And if he was root... why wasn't he paying a lot more attention?
Like I said, I've never had any of the problems with rm that I hear such horror stories about. It sounds like the main problem is just not paying attention to what's going on. This is where Windows and MacOS shine, they assume their users really do have no idea what's going on. They double-check everything and make sure you know what issuing that command will do. I already know what 'rm -r *' is going to do.. so before I issue the command I make sure I'm in the right place for it. ESPECIALLY IF I AM ROOT. And if at all possible I avoid wildcards, I'll just type out 'rm -r/home/user/download/temp'
The main problem I think people have with these types of programs is that they have to be paying attention because if they're not where they think they are, or they make a typo and don't catch it, they can mess something up. These types of people need to be using GUIs where you can see exactly what you are doing.
If you've got problems like that, I'd recommend you use (precompiled) desktop apps as was suggested earlier.
I've never done anything remotely similar to those commands that I can recall. (which--if I messed up that bad--I'm sure I would) And I would be upset if anyone even thought about putting confirmation prompts on every command-line utility. I was sick of them in Windows and I don't care to go back to that.
"Are you SURE you want to send this file to the recycle bin where it will stay safe and sound until you give the command to delete it at which point we'll ask you again just to make sure?"
If you're that bad with a keyboard and reading skills, just use Konqueror or Nautilus, and File Roller. Leave my cli tools alone please, they work just fine.
As far as your arguements about source code.. They're giving YOU the code, and you bitch about it?
"Oh, you need a pencil? Here, you can have this one for free." "WTF! It doesn't work?!" "Well, you do have to sharpen it." "Sharpen it?? What a waste of time, thanks idiot."
Just download binaries (or buy pre-sharpened or mechanical pencils) if you don't want to deal with it, that's pretty simple isn't it?
Hmm, so if Linux will never truly become a 'desktop' system.. what am I running on my computer and doing everything I used to do in Windows? Playing Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, Neverwinter Nights and UT2k3. Watching DVDs and Divx movies. Browsing the web and writing email. Using AIM/ICQ/MSN to chat with friends.
None of which require WineX or VMWare to be installed. Yes, there are some games that only run in Windows, but developers are starting to see how easy it is to make a Linux port and pick up some free advertising and some more sales simply for the fact that there's a native linux client.
Another game coming soon that will ship with a linux version included in the windows box is Savage.
Saying that any of the MS office products are the pinnacle of productivity suites is just as idiotic.
I know several "normal" people who hate the MS office suite, and I personally haven't had it installed on my computer since Office 97. I think there have always been better alternatives. When I was taking composition in college, Corel Wordperfect was much more efficient and had much better grammer checking than Word 2000/XP. I'd say Excel is quite a bit better in it's category than Word, but there are programs I much prefer over Excel.
I'm not anti-Microsoft at all, I just don't care for MS Office. I don't really know of many casual users who really like Office. Most people hate the paperclip and the automatic formatting that Office tries to help you with. Most people also think that MS Office is their only option.
I recently started using OpenOffice 1.1 and am very impressed with it's capabilities. I didn't care for 1.0 at all, but 1.1 is great. A few people who have seen it on my computer and used it have asked me to install it on theirs.
My point is, many people don't care for the MS Office suite, and yes there are several other options that people actually prefer after using them (OpenOffice, Corel, Gobe, etc).
Wow, either you have a shitty gentoo setup or Windows 2000 SP4 totally rocks.
I have an Athlon T-bird 1.33GHz, 512MB, and a plain old 60GB ATA100 5400RPM hard drive. It doesn't take longer than 5 seconds to start *any* of the OOo programs (OOo 1.1rc1).
I agree that OOo could use some more work.. but wow! 50 seconds? That's funny.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree completely. The MM patches are unbelievable. I couldn't believe the difference in responsiveness after going from 2.6.0-test5 to 2.6.0-test5-mm4!
Especially for game performance and load times, incredible difference there.
My point was simply that an underscore takes the same number of keystrokes as a space. and it's actually easier to type a space in the command line than it is to type an underscore.
;)
Space = \[space]
underscore = [shift]-
"Because it's easier to type" isn't a valid reason...
However... "Because it's easier to read from the command line" may be a valid one
Source of the email sent to Gamershell.com:m tp.ntlworld.com>m tp.ntlworld.com>
==
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Received: (qmail 10758 invoked by uid 1004); 24 Sep 2003 22:53:19 -0000
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To: "" <news@gamershell.com>
Reply-To: "Gabe Newell" <gaben@valvesoftware.com>
From: "Gabe Newell" <gaben@valvesoftware.com>
Subject: Half Life 2 Gone Gold
X-Mailer: Ghost Mail 5.1 http://ay.home.ml.org/
X-Priority: 3 (Normal)
Message-Id: <20030924225325.GGIY2260.mta01-svc.ntlworld.com@s
Date: Wed, 24 Sep 2003 23:53:25 +0100
Half Life 2 as gone Gold and in production now, the release will still remain
on schedule for Sep 30th. People who have pre-orded it via Steam will
still get it before the Sep 30th but we are currently ironing out a couple
of bugs, people may have seen Half Life 2 yesterday for a minute on it
while we were in our testing stages.
The announced delay is all rumors posted up on Shacknews
and the SDK will be available for download tomorrow 2.00pm EST
now you've heard it from the horses mouth so rest assured.
More news to follow on Sep 26th so watch this space.
==
If you know how to read the headers even a little bit, you can see that it was sent using an anonymous mailer (Ghost Mail 5.1) and sent from a UK-based broadband provider (ntlworld.com).
1) Gabe Newell doesn't use an anonymoust mailer client for sending email.
2) Gabe Newell doesn't use a UK broadband provider for sending email.
The only applicable use it has is to make give people with a console fettish an easier time typing in filenames.
:p
Actually I'd disagree with you on that one. I use the console quite a bit and find it much easier to type "\ " (backslash space) than it is to type "_" (shift-minus).
There's no excuse for underscores in a file name.
1) Most of whom have no idea what they are doing. Any problems that I've had with gentoo I've had to find the solution for myself by weeding through manuals/documents. You're not going to be able to get support for complex problems from the gentoo community. I wonder why people pay Red Hat for support...
2) This is a matter of opinion. Each way has it's advantages and disadvantages. And for that matter, either one can be customized to your preference.
3) This is another matter of opinion. I love using portage at home, but I'm not going to be using it on production machines. I'm going to be installing thoroughly-tested binary packages.
I love gentoo and the community is great and generally tries their best to be helpful, but the one thing that irks me is most of the gentoo community seems to think simply because you compiling it yourself the program is going to "be faster". Most people don't understand how optimizations work and what the trade-offs of using each optimization are. So they end up using -O3 -funroll-loops and all sorts of other optimizations that increase the size of the binary. The programs may execute 5% faster, but now they take 500% longer to load. In some situations this is a good idea, in others it's better to optimize for size. In general the people managing the packages for Red Hat probably have a better idea of how to optimize than the average gentoo user does.
Don't get me wrong, I really do like gentoo and the flexibility it gives you. It's actually what I'm running on my primary desktop at home and I'm very happy with it.
I'm just asking that people understand there's a place for each style and that one is not necessarily better than the other.
I suppose you could run into problems with a project like this because they don't have official binaries. I'm assuming your friends were using Windows, and if they're using Windows they're probably not compiling from source. Thus they have to rely on finding a good binary distribution of it. And if they aren't knowlegdeable to begin with, this could be a problem. So your issue isn't so much with Xvid as it is the people who do a piss-poor job of distributing it.
My point is, don't crap on Xvid just because your friends are idiots. The Xvid codec has worked great for me with any file I've encoded with it; or anything I've downloaded that uses it for that matter.
While I agree with most of your comments... I have to ask what problem you have with a GPL'd video codec?
I use it for my own encodings and it works quite well.
Liar. I don't believe for one second that you use NiMH for every single device in your home. Maybe the shorter lived stuff like a Gameboy. Coincidentally, laptops are very short-lived devices.
:)
Why wouldn't he?
I'm not saying he is, just asking, is it really that far-fetched an idea? If I had more battery-powered devices (without their own charger) than just a few remotes and my keyboard. I'd probably be doing that. Hell, I've considered it just for my keyboard and remotes.
It's not like the NiMH batteries are expensive, and you can have a set always charged and ready to go. Then you don't have to worry about your batteries dying in the middle of posting to slashdot and having to either A) rip a corded keyboard off another machine or B) go buy some batteries at 3 in the morning.
Try out OpenOffice 1.1
Startup time is much lower--it starts faster than MS Office on the Windows machines I've seen--and it has many new features.
It's still in the RC stage, so you may want to wait until the official release; but it's much better than 1.0 so--depending on the number of users you're managing--you may consider moving to it now and upgrading to the final release when that's out.
Indeed recently, a small ten-person company in an economic black-spot in the UK granted a licence to a US multinational for its voice recognition software patents. Without European patent protection in this field, the small company could have found itself in the perverse situation whereby its R&D efforts and investment would simply have been taken by a large multinational company, who, with its team of patent lawyers, would have filed a patent on this invention. The EU company could have been faced subsequently with patent infringement proceedings.
Let me start out by admitting that I don't really understand the legal issues of software patents, am not familiar with standard legal practices in Europe, and I'd really appreciate a correction if I am wrong anywhere in this post.
That being said, how would this situation be any better with the acceptance of software patents in Europe?
First of all I thought software patents weren't recognized in Europe, so they are saying the UK company had a patent on the voice recognition technology in the US? And if so, they're saying it's good that a poorly-managed UK company was saved because they could sell a license to a successful multinational corporation? Forgive me if I am wrong, and maybe it's good that the people who work at that company aren't starving, but.. If the only way a company can stay in business is by using software patents to force larger companies to keep them afloat, doesn't that imply they aren't really providing any valuable service and maybe they really should go out of business? If their invention really was 'that good' couldn't they create their own product and sell that to make money? Or is the issue that they were too small to work with the great idea that they "created" and by selling this idea they had created a valid business model?
Second, how would they find themselves in a situation where a multinational would have filed a patent and sue them for infringement if software patents weren't allowed in Europe?
I totally agree, many people who want to use Linux just can't do it at this point. It's not their fault, Linux just isn't ready to be used in the home by the average user.
However, I do use Linux on my desktop every day, and I'm very happy with it. (However I tend to stick to BSDs for most servers) It's taken me about 5 years of using it off and on (started in 97 or 98) to get comfortable with it as a desktop system. And earlier year I finally removed Windows completely from all of my systems.
Linux can be used as a desktop system right now. It's just a question of "do you have the time to learn it?" For almost everyone right now the answer is no. There's so many things you don't realize you need to know to be able to manage a computer. Most of us take it for granted on Windows because we have been exposed to it for so long that we don't realize how much we had to learn to be able to manage it.
Right now, Linux will work as a desktop. The problem is maintenance. If they don't have to worry about maintenance (ie someone else is managing it for them), I have no doubts that someone could sit down and use the computer just as easy as they could in Windows. The problem is if they want to install new programs/hardware or otherwise change the system configuration. This is where it requires more than just a basic knowledge and where most people give up and say Windows is easier--because they already know how these changes would be done on Windows, but don't yet know how to do it in Linux. It's also much harder to learn how to do it in Linux because you can't usually just ask the local "computer guy" because most of the "computer guys" know just as much about Linux as you do. As more and more people start using Linux, it will become easier to learn, so more people will use Linux, and it will be easier to learn, ad infinitum.
Those are my thoughts on the subject anyway.
If you care about the success of Linux, please, immediately stop associating yourself with with it. :)
I don't care if you actually use it or not, just please don't tell anyone.
It's people like you that give Linux a bad reputation.
Yes, I used 'code' mode so the foot would be displayed properly.
_ /
OOO( )
O ---,
(
\ L/)
---
or maybe something a little simpler, like:
G
Some good info there.
I've heard of DOSEMU and used Bochs but those others are new to me.
I assume when you say you used OOo for 18 months that you were using 1.0...
Try out OpenOffice.org 1.1
I hated 1.0 and was sad to see so much effort going into such a bad office suite.. but 1.1 is an amazing difference. Now I don't have any reservations recommending it to family/friends who ask me if I can "get them MS Office" (expecting a free--pirated copy).
And my girlfriend actually uses OOo1.1 more often than MS Office.
Honestly no offense, but it sounds like you and your friend should be sticking with desktop programs that are official binaries from your distro of choice, or maybe even using Windows or MacOS X instead.
/home/user/download/temp'
The issue with "rm" seems to be more of a configuration gripe than an actual design problem with rm. And if your friend wasn't using root he won't have messed up his system. And if he was root... why wasn't he paying a lot more attention?
Like I said, I've never had any of the problems with rm that I hear such horror stories about. It sounds like the main problem is just not paying attention to what's going on.
This is where Windows and MacOS shine, they assume their users really do have no idea what's going on. They double-check everything and make sure you know what issuing that command will do. I already know what 'rm -r *' is going to do.. so before I issue the command I make sure I'm in the right place for it. ESPECIALLY IF I AM ROOT. And if at all possible I avoid wildcards, I'll just type out 'rm -r
The main problem I think people have with these types of programs is that they have to be paying attention because if they're not where they think they are, or they make a typo and don't catch it, they can mess something up. These types of people need to be using GUIs where you can see exactly what you are doing.
If you've got problems like that, I'd recommend you use (precompiled) desktop apps as was suggested earlier.
I've never done anything remotely similar to those commands that I can recall. (which--if I messed up that bad--I'm sure I would) And I would be upset if anyone even thought about putting confirmation prompts on every command-line utility. I was sick of them in Windows and I don't care to go back to that.
"Are you SURE you want to send this file to the recycle bin where it will stay safe and sound until you give the command to delete it at which point we'll ask you again just to make sure?"
If you're that bad with a keyboard and reading skills, just use Konqueror or Nautilus, and File Roller. Leave my cli tools alone please, they work just fine.
As far as your arguements about source code.. They're giving YOU the code, and you bitch about it?
"Oh, you need a pencil? Here, you can have this one for free."
"WTF! It doesn't work?!"
"Well, you do have to sharpen it."
"Sharpen it?? What a waste of time, thanks idiot."
Just download binaries (or buy pre-sharpened or mechanical pencils) if you don't want to deal with it, that's pretty simple isn't it?
Hmm, so if Linux will never truly become a 'desktop' system.. what am I running on my computer and doing everything I used to do in Windows?
Playing Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, Neverwinter Nights and UT2k3. Watching DVDs and Divx movies. Browsing the web and writing email. Using AIM/ICQ/MSN to chat with friends.
And here I was thinking I was using Linux.
Yes there are quite a few. I only included native games that I had personally played.
And yes, with wine/winex there are many, many windows games that run just as well as they do in windows.
I was just pointing out that Linux is becoming a valid platform for many game developers.
Funny, I run Linux and seem to recall enjoying playing:
Neverwinter Nights,
Unreal Tournament 2003,
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory,
America's Army,
Return To Castle Wolfenstein,
and Quake 3
None of which require WineX or VMWare to be installed.
Yes, there are some games that only run in Windows, but developers are starting to see how easy it is to make a Linux port and pick up some free advertising and some more sales simply for the fact that there's a native linux client.
Another game coming soon that will ship with a linux version included in the windows box is Savage.
(what was I saying about free advertising?)
I wouldn't appreciate this either...
I think that may have had some influence on the decision to let them go.
Saying that any of the MS office products are the pinnacle of productivity suites is just as idiotic.
I know several "normal" people who hate the MS office suite, and I personally haven't had it installed on my computer since Office 97. I think there have always been better alternatives. When I was taking composition in college, Corel Wordperfect was much more efficient and had much better grammer checking than Word 2000/XP. I'd say Excel is quite a bit better in it's category than Word, but there are programs I much prefer over Excel.
I'm not anti-Microsoft at all, I just don't care for MS Office. I don't really know of many casual users who really like Office. Most people hate the paperclip and the automatic formatting that Office tries to help you with. Most people also think that MS Office is their only option.
I recently started using OpenOffice 1.1 and am very impressed with it's capabilities. I didn't care for 1.0 at all, but 1.1 is great. A few people who have seen it on my computer and used it have asked me to install it on theirs.
My point is, many people don't care for the MS Office suite, and yes there are several other options that people actually prefer after using them (OpenOffice, Corel, Gobe, etc).
Wow, either you have a shitty gentoo setup or Windows 2000 SP4 totally rocks.
I have an Athlon T-bird 1.33GHz, 512MB, and a plain old 60GB ATA100 5400RPM hard drive. It doesn't take longer than 5 seconds to start *any* of the OOo programs (OOo 1.1rc1).
I agree that OOo could use some more work.. but wow! 50 seconds? That's funny.
9) Openoffice has no footnote support
Tools -> Footnotes...