"Bundle an office client. It's KDE...KOffice isn't there by default? ???"
KOffice is nice enough for what it is, it just isn't very much. OpenOffice aims to be a complete replacement for MS Office, and if a machine is powerful enough to run it then it's a much better idea.
(I just went through this with the loved one's new FreeBSD/KDE box. If someone knows how to use MS Office, then OpenOffice is presently the only way to go.)
Hardware drivers. USB drivers. gphoto2 support for the camera of the week. All the little candy fit-and-finish stuff.
The difference between Windows and Unix is: Windows comes with everything out of the box, but doesn't work after that; Unix comes with nothing out of the box, but once you get stuff working it stays working.
Lindows needs to work on the tons of driver candy, and encourage manufacturers to do so.
Uh, I used to use Westpac just fine with Mozilla and even Lynx. The fancy menus may not work, but the banking itself works with anything that does 128-bit SSL.
Certainly beat NAB's first try at Internet banking - their own custom client software that didn't work and broke your system... I found out about that particular piece of shit from the ISP tech support end of things...
You have to consider, though, that Netscape remains the main sponsor by far - they pay for a pile of developers and most of the web and development infrastructure.
Mozilla could seriously do with some more large sponsors, though. It's just such a pity Apple didn't go for Gecko, for instance.
The idea is that the Gecko stuff will be put into the Gecko Runtime Environment, which will be a DLL - loaded once, rather than for each process using it.
Quite a few OS makers. Typically just maintaining their platform's port of Mozilla (Sun, HP, IBM), but, e.g., Red Hat pay Chris Blizzard to do a lot of work on the Linux version and oversee the nightly RPMs.
Speaking as a Mozilla/Phoenix partisan, I must in fairness point out that there is in fact a version number's worth of difference between IE5 and IE6: they rewrote large chunks of the renderer to be standards compliant. In fact, they had to use the Gecko model of 'standards mode' and 'quirks mode' to cope.
So we've had our influence on Microsoft, and they've had to come into line with real standards!
No-registration link in Taipei Times
on
The Future of the CD
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I would question this. I recently put a Win98 user in front of my FreeBSD box, with KDE and Mozilla set up for them. They had no problems whatsoever.
This person has the technical clue and geek thinking abilities of a small piece of cheese, and they did just fine - Mozilla, KsIRC, KDE Patience (Freecell!), MP3 playing, KWord for editing their.DOC resume...
I realise I'm working from a sample of one here, but IMO, KDE 3 is ready for prime time. The Unix usability problem is solved. The hard part now is greater application integration, easy hardware support and so on.
Don't forget a 'wishlist' page, for the features you aren't interested in or haven't time for. Even the features you hate - if someone else wants to fork and implement them, good luck to them:-)
You place Mozilla under 'successes' and OpenOffice under 'failures'. I would say that given another year, OpenOffice will significantly improve. It's reached a usability level such that it can now really get going - somewhat like Mozilla did in early 2001. It's a 'not just yet' that I think is pretty much certain to get there.
Slashdot Mirror
If this takes off, Microsoft will promptly eat their market and destroy them.
Of course, it's still skanky rat piss compared to the British real ale. And that's skanky rat piss compared to the beer in Belgium or Germany.
Well, I didn't see one, running Mozilla. And my email is remarkably clean, running Mozilla. BWAAhahaha!
Not perfect yet, but being worked on: http://recall.mozdev.org/.
With SuSE, you're buying support. With your XP educational license, you're not - the direct comparison would be downloading SuSE off the FTP server.
Heh. My way to get Linux binaries to work is having both linux_base-6 and linux_base-7 installed in FreeBSD. A better Linux than Linux ;-)
Currently verging on vapor, but an idea whose time is very soon if not now.
KOffice is nice enough for what it is, it just isn't very much. OpenOffice aims to be a complete replacement for MS Office, and if a machine is powerful enough to run it then it's a much better idea.
(I just went through this with the loved one's new FreeBSD/KDE box. If someone knows how to use MS Office, then OpenOffice is presently the only way to go.)
The difference between Windows and Unix is: Windows comes with everything out of the box, but doesn't work after that; Unix comes with nothing out of the box, but once you get stuff working it stays working.
Lindows needs to work on the tons of driver candy, and encourage manufacturers to do so.
Certainly beat NAB's first try at Internet banking - their own custom client software that didn't work and broke your system ... I found out about that particular piece of shit from the ISP tech support end of things ...
EMusic sells subscriptions for downloading (officially licensed) MP3s. I'm amazed this company isn't better-known.
Phoenix is actaully a very successful internal fork - compare to egcs, which became the next version of gcc.
Mozilla could seriously do with some more large sponsors, though. It's just such a pity Apple didn't go for Gecko, for instance.
The idea is that the Gecko stuff will be put into the Gecko Runtime Environment, which will be a DLL - loaded once, rather than for each process using it.
Quite a few OS makers. Typically just maintaining their platform's port of Mozilla (Sun, HP, IBM), but, e.g., Red Hat pay Chris Blizzard to do a lot of work on the Linux version and oversee the nightly RPMs.
Word is that Mozilla 1.4-final will be the base for Netscape 7.1 or whatever they call it.
So we've had our influence on Microsoft, and they've had to come into line with real standards!
Taipei Times shortened version of the article.
Heh. Vastly increased heat production. 10k RPM drives get quite hot!
tcpdump or sniff and hand them a tape ;-)
But the puzzle is indeed partially solved. IMO.
This person has the technical clue and geek thinking abilities of a small piece of cheese, and they did just fine - Mozilla, KsIRC, KDE Patience (Freecell!), MP3 playing, KWord for editing their .DOC resume ...
I realise I'm working from a sample of one here, but IMO, KDE 3 is ready for prime time. The Unix usability problem is solved. The hard part now is greater application integration, easy hardware support and so on.
Yes. I can just see WMP9 requiring a kernel patch and to be run setuid.
Don't forget a 'wishlist' page, for the features you aren't interested in or haven't time for. Even the features you hate - if someone else wants to fork and implement them, good luck to them :-)
You place Mozilla under 'successes' and OpenOffice under 'failures'. I would say that given another year, OpenOffice will significantly improve. It's reached a usability level such that it can now really get going - somewhat like Mozilla did in early 2001. It's a 'not just yet' that I think is pretty much certain to get there.