Maybe I'll burn major karma on this post, but I'll ask anyway....
What the hell is it with Slashdot and New York Times articles? The Slashdot editors are always rejecting submissions in favor of identical ones that link to the NYT. And here's another weird example: a Slashdot editor feels some overwhelming need to add a link to the NYT on an item that clearly doesn't need it.
I'm sometimes shy to admit it, but I bought one of these things waaaaay back when he first started making them, and he only had 4 designs to offer. That was back before they were battery-powered. I bought one of them for my brother for his 28th birthday, and later I decided I couldn't stand not having one, and bought the Defiant light saber (the cheapest they had.. in case I didn't think it was cool after I bought it.)
I still think it's way cool, even though the Ep1 and Ep2 movies weren't all that great. At least I have my own light saber!:)
Additionally, what is meant by the term "computer?" Is it the CPU, or the HD, or the RAM, or the MB, or what? If you upgrade all those items, one at a time, are you then required to buy a new OS because it's essentially a new computer now?
My brother was put in the same position after upgrading his motherboard (keeping his hdd, floppy, cdrom, case, monitor) with a faster model to run Linux, and shipping me his old p-200 mb. I put the p-200 board in a new case with some spare parts I had, and it runs as a nice Linux-based backup server in my house for my two other Linux boxen (make tar file backup, scp the tar file to the backup server.)
When my brother again upgraded his computer (bought a new one), he decided to sell the other one. What to do with the OEM Win95 cdrom? Microsoft says this is tied to the original computer... does that mean the motherboard (I have) or the computer case (he has)?
In the end, we decided that the license was probably tied to the motherboard that I have, and I authorized him to destroy the license and media since I didn't need it.
But the issue of how to tie an OS license to a computer will come up again and again. With systems shipped from OEMs that have the little license sticker on the case, this may be interpreted differently (he who has the license sticker holds the right-to-use on the license?)
No Jedi-geek outfit would be complete without a cool lightsaber from Parks Sabers. I have the Defiance lightsaber (from before they came with blades and electronics). A must-have for any fan geek!
When I was out hiring for our last open position at work (it's filled now... don't send me email) I had been hoping to find someone with experience on an OSS project. That actually would have been my ideal, as I believe this offers real-life experience in a way that lets you dip your toes into the water on your own time.
But alas, that didn't happen. Maybe next time I need to do hiring...
- Contribute to FreeCOM (our command.com) or the FreeDOS kernel. It's not as hard as you would think, especially if you start small by applying some bug fixes.
- Apply some contributed patches to Freemacs (a GNU emacs clone for DOS). The patches are already there.. you just need to apply them. This should be fairly easy!
- Patch an existing program to use Cats or MSGLIB to support internationalization. It's not hard.. just read through the docs and you'll be fine.
There are other things, too, but if you are looking for suggestions these should get you on your way. I'm sure that any sane employer will look on this as valuable experience, as you will have demonstrated the ability to work with others on a project, and contribute to the code.
Re:looking for all FreeDOS source code
on
FreeDOS
·
· Score: 1
Yeah, you should be able to find everything at the FreeDOS archive at ibiblio. Also, you can download the latest distribution, and there is a Source disk set right there with the source code.
Hope that helps! -jh
Not cygwin, but GNUish ...
on
FreeDOS
·
· Score: 1
You can't run cygwin (that's for Windows) but you can run the GNUish utilities. GNUish was started a long time ago to port (or recreate) GNU utilities on DOS. It's great!
Re:The real reason for FreeDOS...
on
FreeDOS
·
· Score: 1
Seriously, it was way too cool when I was able to play DOOM in FreeDOS for the first time... talk about a milestone for an OS project!
Re:Current project status (NOT!)
on
FreeDOS
·
· Score: 1
I know you're just being funny, but you were modded at level 3, so I guess I should point out a few things.
TRUE: the project has recreated all of the userland DOS applications including COMMAND.COM, XCOPY.EXE, FDISK.EXE, and many more. Yes, the.bat language has been recreated in FreeCOM (our command.com). There are BASIC interpreters out there for FreeDOS (I prefer BW-Basic, for those very rare occassions I touch BASIC.)
FALSE: the system runs on an implementation of IO.SYS written by some Scandinavian college kid.
Not quite. FreeDOS was implemented from scratch, originally by Pat Villani (from the US, an embedded developer at the time.) Since then, we have had a few kernel maintainers, the last one being Bart Oldeman (UK).
Re:Not a DOS webserver? tsk tsk.
on
FreeDOS
·
· Score: 1
While it's a funny comment [laughs...] you should know two things:
1. The FreeDOS Project is not running on its own server. We are being hosted by the kind folks at llamacom, who provide me with space, MySQL, and a few other things including POP email addresses.
2. Yes, there really is a DOS-based web server out there. FISH (FreeDOS Internet Services Host) is running on a '386-SX with 4MB memory. Of course, you don't need a suped up machine like this to run FISH... it will run on far fewer requirements.
FISH was created really as an example of TCP/IP programming under FreeDOS. I don't think there was a real expectation that this could ever (or should ever) replace Apache for serving web pages. But for a very long time, FISH caught a lot of attention because.... hell, you were running a DOS-based web server! (It was pure hack value, man.... sometimes you gotta do it for the hack value.)
[...] get enough people to sign on the line, and Dr. Dos could be opensourced easier than trying to develop FreeDOS.
Bzzt!! You're wrong. There has been a longstanding effort with Caldera to release DR-DOS as open source software. Technically, DR-DOS (nee OpenDOS) was open source for a while, but only in the "look but do not touch" philosophy. You could read the source code to OpenDOS, but if you tried to re-use it anywhere OR EVEN FIX BUGS (EVEN IF ONLY FOR YOUR OWN USE) you were in violation of the OpenDOS license. It was silly.
Since then, OpenDOS's name was changed back to DR-DOS, and the license has changed as well. It is not going to become an open source project... probably ever.
I consider Lara Croft to be the first CG idol.. I would actually put Lara as the first true idoru. Like Terai, Lara has a "biography" (she's still single, guys!) and a web site as well as many fan sites.
Like an idoru, you can pretty much put Lara anywhere to advertise any product. Lara has already been in several commercials (Lucozade, SciFi channel,...) and has modeled clothes from various designers. Of course you can also buy books about her, calendars featuring Lara, and movies about her. Not to mention the games that introduced us to Lara.
I think Lara Croft the GG idol has now expanded beyond Lara Croft the game character. You have real-life models portraying her at conventions (E3) and in movies (Angelina Jolie). Fan sites are all over the place. And I'm sure I'm not the only person who would have preferred that the movie had starred the virtual character rather than Angelina (who was great and all, but not quite there.)
It's nice that Yuki Terai is getting attention for bringing "idoru" into the every day, but I think someone else has been there first.
(And don't even get me started on Ananova, who not only has a CG body and personality, but voice as well...)
You will screw up, and have to recover. Nothing compares to removing "libc.so"
Everyone makes this kind of mistake at some point in their sysadmin career. Definitely you will learn from it. For me, I was lucky when my Big One was "chown -R user." from the/bin directory! (Solution: compare against an identical, non-screwed system, and chown things back to the right owner.)
One poor unfortunate soul did "rm -rf *' from within/usr and wound up re-installing his system! Lesson learned: always double-check where you are before running a recursive command.:)
My first job after university was as a UNIX sysadmin for a network of about a dozen UNIX systems, all of them pretty old. My BA was in physics, but in my last year and a half in school, I had realized that I was more interested in computers than in "real physics".
In my final year at university, I landed a programming internship at a small geographics company (a friend of mine worked there, and recommended me, since I had the requisite C fundamentals). Working there helped me get to know the other guys on the IT staff, so that when I got my BA, I was able to score an interview for their tech department.
For me, my opportunity was timing; the sysadmin had just quit about a month before, and was still "on retainer" as a consultant until they replaced him (a practice I still find odd.)
I guess what helped me the most was that I had a good sense for problem-solving on a UNIX system, which is something like 90% of a sysadmin's job. I was also willing to learn a new UNIX system (I already was familiar with HP-UX, but they also used the old Apollo AEGIS variant of UNIX). You don't need to have several years' experience in the field with any particular UNIX system to get a job as a UNIX admin. If you can show that you are familiar with one UNIX at some kind of admin level, and can demonstrate an aptitude for learning new things and solving problems, then you shouldn't have a problem. Go for the smaller companies, where they are generally more willing to take a junior-level person to do admin stuff.
Don't be discouraged by the fact that you are 33 (that's not all that old, even in the tech industry).
Since you don't have a big UNIX admin background, your first step should be to get a copy of some UNIX system (BSD, Linux,...) and run it as though it were a production system. Don't use GUI admin tools - you'll learn more without them - do everything from the command line or by editing files. Preferably, get at least two boxes, and set up a small network in your house (even if they are side-by-side). Experiment with setting up accounts, allowing different users to share and edit files, setting up (and managing) an NIS server and an NIS slave, setting up (and maintaining) a DNS server and a DNS slave, and setting up a web server.
As an added bonus, learn sh scripting and awk/sed (you can get a lot done with these). For extra points, learn perl.
DOS is definitely alive and well, and I'm not just saying that because I founded the FreeDOS Project.:)
DOS is still used in embedded systems all over the world. The last time I checked, McDonald's cash registers were still running DOS with a McGUI. FreeDOS also appears in such cool devices as a pinball machine! (I think that one is my favorite.)
On our web site we recently posted a news item about running FreeDOS in a PDA. A few weeks ago, we posted a "success story" from someone who uses FreeDOS to support various doctors' offices.
Is DOS going to remain in the limelight? Well, probably not. DOS hasn't really hit the big news in a long while, and I suspect that DOS will remain the mainstay of embedded programmers for a long time to come. But the desktop war has been taken by Linux (and that other company... they also have a GUI with windows...) While FreeDOS+SEAL is very cool (think KDE) I think we'll see that you'll only find FreeDOS on desktops in places that cannot afford the bigger, newer, shinier systems.
From the article: The system promises fewer computer crashes and will allow users to delete data from their hard drive.
Wow! What a feature that Microsoft has added. I might have been happy with a new version of Windows that crashed less, but now I can delete data from my hard disk!
So I guess Windows has been write-only up 'til now.
Let me be bold and italicized for this next one: There is no more integrated desktop. None. It sucked, and everyone knew it, so it's gone. Each component is seperate, with it's own icon (Text Document, Spreadsheet, Presentation, etc.)
Oops. That's my bad. It is a typo: I meant to say "I think my main complaint with StarOffice5.2 is the silly desktop."
Yes, the silly desktop has gone away in OpenOffice, and for that I am grateful. Sorry 'bout that. I'm updating the page now.
It's only slightly offtopic... OpenOffice 638c (latest build) is probably pretty close to StarOffice 6beta.
The other day, I downloaded OpenOffice build 638C for Linux
and for Windows. I use Red Hat
Linux (7.1) at home, and I already use StarOffice (5.2) for my
regular office needs. It works great. I think my main complaint with
OpenOffice is the silly desktop. Other than that, I consider it a
fully functional office suite that can replace my MS Office needs
anytime.
I didn't see any cool OpenOffice screenshots, so I made my own of
the text document program. I didn't do any (yet?) of the spreadsheet
program, or presentation software.
These were really captured for the benefit of my brother, but I'm
posting them
here
so that others can see them.
I think this guy needs a little more experience than 3months "daily usage" of Linux. I have been using Linux since 1993, and at work since sometime around 1998. I guess that qualifies me to make some comments on the process here:
He recommends using StarOffice to replace Word97/Excel97/Powerpoint97. I completely agree here. I haven't had any need to replace an Access db application, since I don't use that part of MS Office, but I guess replacing it with an intranet web application is about as good as anything.
In my experience, StarOffice 5.2 is a fine replacement for MS Office. My only beef with it is that StarOffice loads an entire freaking desktop in order to bring up a simple Word document. (!) But I can understand the infrastructure here, at least: their intent seems to be to load as much as you can at startup, and assume you'll never need to exit StarOffice. Just bring it up once, and leave it there for the rest of the workday. Launching a document from within the StarOffice 5.2 desktop is pretty fast once the desktop itself is loaded. However, I think you need to make this point clear to any client or user who will be making a switch to StarOffice.
Now, I believe StarOffice 6 (developed as open source under the name OpenOffice) will be much better. That is, you should be able to launch a Word document, and that's all that comes up - a word processor frame.
What I was very shocked to see was that this guy recommends writing a PS file, then using (by hand) the ps2pdf program to create a PDF file. Yeah, very cool and everything. It certainly does work. But if I had recommended this method to my wife when she made the switch from MS Office / Windows to StarOffice / Linux (she migrated with her a 90+ pg thesis!) she would have sent me up a tree. The more professional solution would be to create a queue in the Xpdefaults file that creates PDF files. There is an 'Acrobat distiller' option in the printer setup dialog, but to be honest I think I had set up StarOffice with a filter that wrote to 'gs' and created a default file on the desktop. This is more than a solution "that works", it's a solution that doesn't give the user the attitude of "I had to do it myself".
If there's one thing that Windows has done for the user, it's that Windows gives the appearance of doing everything for you. Under Windows, you don't have to drop to a command prompt to get stuff done. You just do it from the app. IMO, making a migration from Windows to Linux, you need to be careful that the environment is set up in much the same way.
I have been using Mozilla since 0.7, and it has been my primary browser since 0.8. The mail client finally became stable enough for me to move all my mail over in 0.9. Mozilla 0.9.2 and Mozilla 0.9.3 have both been very solid for me. Since 0.9.2, Mozilla has been easily as good as IE.
So, the "news" that Mozilla won't go for 1.0 until next year won't affect me. Mozilla is already my primary browser. I find remarkably few bugs that affect me (the only annoying bug affects overlapping table cells, simultaneous colspan/rowspan, since we use simultaneous colspan/rowspan on our web site.)
Re:Word of caution to existing Mozilla users...
on
Mozilla 0.9.3 Released
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I used to blow away my previous Mozilla install directory every time I downloaded a newer release, then I decided it was too hard to "downgrade" to the last (working) Mozilla if I hit a snag. So now I download the newer Mozilla in a different directory under Windows. Mozilla 0.9.2 is under program_files/mozilla_0.9.2 and Mozilla 0.9.3 is now under program_files/mozilla_0.9.3. I unzip the install package from there, and everything works fine. I have done this since Mozilla 0.8, and everything works as expected.
Oh yeah, I use the zip install packages. I find it is easier to install, since I know everything is there. I'm also a command line guy so I don't mind using unzip from the command line.
Installing the newer releases in a separate directory has made it very easy for me to roll back if I don't like something in the newer release. It also makes it easier to report bugs - is this a bug that appears only in the new version? I close the new Mozilla, and open the old one, and re-test.
I recommend this to anyone who is running Mozilla on Windows.
Slashdot Mirror
I scored 36 out of 40 in the Test Firing range. Do you think the US Army would hire sharpshooters based on this score ?
Only if they let you aim your M-16 with a mouse.
Maybe I'll burn major karma on this post, but I'll ask anyway ....
What the hell is it with Slashdot and New York Times articles? The Slashdot editors are always rejecting submissions in favor of identical ones that link to the NYT. And here's another weird example: a Slashdot editor feels some overwhelming need to add a link to the NYT on an item that clearly doesn't need it.
What gives?
I'm sometimes shy to admit it, but I bought one of these things waaaaay back when he first started making them, and he only had 4 designs to offer. That was back before they were battery-powered. I bought one of them for my brother for his 28th birthday, and later I decided I couldn't stand not having one, and bought the Defiant light saber (the cheapest they had .. in case I didn't think it was cool after I bought it.)
I still think it's way cool, even though the Ep1 and Ep2 movies weren't all that great. At least I have my own light saber! :)
Additionally, what is meant by the term "computer?" Is it the CPU, or the HD, or the RAM, or the MB, or what? If you upgrade all those items, one at a time, are you then required to buy a new OS because it's essentially a new computer now?
My brother was put in the same position after upgrading his motherboard (keeping his hdd, floppy, cdrom, case, monitor) with a faster model to run Linux, and shipping me his old p-200 mb. I put the p-200 board in a new case with some spare parts I had, and it runs as a nice Linux-based backup server in my house for my two other Linux boxen (make tar file backup, scp the tar file to the backup server.)
When my brother again upgraded his computer (bought a new one), he decided to sell the other one. What to do with the OEM Win95 cdrom? Microsoft says this is tied to the original computer ... does that mean the motherboard (I have) or the computer case (he has)?
In the end, we decided that the license was probably tied to the motherboard that I have, and I authorized him to destroy the license and media since I didn't need it.
But the issue of how to tie an OS license to a computer will come up again and again. With systems shipped from OEMs that have the little license sticker on the case, this may be interpreted differently (he who has the license sticker holds the right-to-use on the license?)
While it is true that GTA3 will only appear on the PS2 of all home consoles, GTA3/PC is available for sale now: http://www.rockstarwarehouse.com/
No Jedi-geek outfit would be complete without a cool lightsaber from Parks Sabers. I have the Defiance lightsaber (from before they came with blades and electronics). A must-have for any fan geek!
When I was out hiring for our last open position at work (it's filled now ... don't send me email) I had been hoping to find someone with experience on an OSS project. That actually would have been my ideal, as I believe this offers real-life experience in a way that lets you dip your toes into the water on your own time.
But alas, that didn't happen. Maybe next time I need to do hiring...
If you want a suggestion, I would recommend helping out the FreeDOS Project. The FreeDOS Documentation Project (FD-DOC) lists a few of these suggestions for helping out with FreeDOS:
- Take any of the open projects on the FreeDOS Software List.
- Contribute to FreeCOM (our command.com) or the FreeDOS kernel. It's not as hard as you would think, especially if you start small by applying some bug fixes.
- Apply some contributed patches to Freemacs (a GNU emacs clone for DOS). The patches are already there .. you just need to apply them. This should be fairly easy!
- Patch an existing program to use Cats or MSGLIB to support internationalization. It's not hard .. just read through the docs and you'll be fine.
There are other things, too, but if you are looking for suggestions these should get you on your way. I'm sure that any sane employer will look on this as valuable experience, as you will have demonstrated the ability to work with others on a project, and contribute to the code.
Yeah, you should be able to find everything at the FreeDOS archive at ibiblio. Also, you can download the latest distribution, and there is a Source disk set right there with the source code.
Hope that helps! -jh
You can't run cygwin (that's for Windows) but you can run the GNUish utilities. GNUish was started a long time ago to port (or recreate) GNU utilities on DOS. It's great!
Seriously, it was way too cool when I was able to play DOOM in FreeDOS for the first time ... talk about a milestone for an OS project!
I know you're just being funny, but you were modded at level 3, so I guess I should point out a few things.
TRUE: the project has recreated all of the userland DOS applications including COMMAND.COM, XCOPY.EXE, FDISK.EXE, and many more. Yes, the .bat language has been recreated in FreeCOM (our command.com). There are BASIC interpreters out there for FreeDOS (I prefer BW-Basic, for those very rare occassions I touch BASIC.)
FALSE: the system runs on an implementation of IO.SYS written by some Scandinavian college kid. Not quite. FreeDOS was implemented from scratch, originally by Pat Villani (from the US, an embedded developer at the time.) Since then, we have had a few kernel maintainers, the last one being Bart Oldeman (UK).
While it's a funny comment [laughs...] you should know two things:
1. The FreeDOS Project is not running on its own server. We are being hosted by the kind folks at llamacom, who provide me with space, MySQL, and a few other things including POP email addresses.
2. Yes, there really is a DOS-based web server out there. FISH (FreeDOS Internet Services Host) is running on a '386-SX with 4MB memory. Of course, you don't need a suped up machine like this to run FISH ... it will run on far fewer requirements.
FISH was created really as an example of TCP/IP programming under FreeDOS. I don't think there was a real expectation that this could ever (or should ever) replace Apache for serving web pages. But for a very long time, FISH caught a lot of attention because .... hell, you were running a DOS-based web server! (It was pure hack value, man .... sometimes you gotta do it for the hack value.)
[...] get enough people to sign on the line, and Dr. Dos could be opensourced easier than trying to develop FreeDOS.
Bzzt!! You're wrong. There has been a longstanding effort with Caldera to release DR-DOS as open source software. Technically, DR-DOS (nee OpenDOS) was open source for a while, but only in the "look but do not touch" philosophy. You could read the source code to OpenDOS, but if you tried to re-use it anywhere OR EVEN FIX BUGS (EVEN IF ONLY FOR YOUR OWN USE) you were in violation of the OpenDOS license. It was silly.
Since then, OpenDOS's name was changed back to DR-DOS, and the license has changed as well. It is not going to become an open source project ... probably ever.
I consider Lara Croft to be the first CG idol .. I would actually put Lara as the first true idoru. Like Terai, Lara has a "biography" (she's still single, guys!) and a web site as well as many fan sites.
Like an idoru, you can pretty much put Lara anywhere to advertise any product. Lara has already been in several commercials (Lucozade, SciFi channel, ...) and has modeled clothes from various designers. Of course you can also buy books about her, calendars featuring Lara, and movies about her. Not to mention the games that introduced us to Lara.
I think Lara Croft the GG idol has now expanded beyond Lara Croft the game character. You have real-life models portraying her at conventions (E3) and in movies (Angelina Jolie). Fan sites are all over the place. And I'm sure I'm not the only person who would have preferred that the movie had starred the virtual character rather than Angelina (who was great and all, but not quite there.)
It's nice that Yuki Terai is getting attention for bringing "idoru" into the every day, but I think someone else has been there first.
(And don't even get me started on Ananova, who not only has a CG body and personality, but voice as well...)
You will screw up, and have to recover. Nothing compares to removing "libc.so"
Everyone makes this kind of mistake at some point in their sysadmin career. Definitely you will learn from it. For me, I was lucky when my Big One was "chown -R user ." from the /bin directory! (Solution: compare against an identical, non-screwed system, and chown things back to the right owner.)
One poor unfortunate soul did "rm -rf *' from within /usr and wound up re-installing his system! Lesson learned: always double-check where you are before running a recursive command. :)
My first job after university was as a UNIX sysadmin for a network of about a dozen UNIX systems, all of them pretty old. My BA was in physics, but in my last year and a half in school, I had realized that I was more interested in computers than in "real physics".
In my final year at university, I landed a programming internship at a small geographics company (a friend of mine worked there, and recommended me, since I had the requisite C fundamentals). Working there helped me get to know the other guys on the IT staff, so that when I got my BA, I was able to score an interview for their tech department.
For me, my opportunity was timing; the sysadmin had just quit about a month before, and was still "on retainer" as a consultant until they replaced him (a practice I still find odd.)
I guess what helped me the most was that I had a good sense for problem-solving on a UNIX system, which is something like 90% of a sysadmin's job. I was also willing to learn a new UNIX system (I already was familiar with HP-UX, but they also used the old Apollo AEGIS variant of UNIX). You don't need to have several years' experience in the field with any particular UNIX system to get a job as a UNIX admin. If you can show that you are familiar with one UNIX at some kind of admin level, and can demonstrate an aptitude for learning new things and solving problems, then you shouldn't have a problem. Go for the smaller companies, where they are generally more willing to take a junior-level person to do admin stuff.
Don't be discouraged by the fact that you are 33 (that's not all that old, even in the tech industry).
Since you don't have a big UNIX admin background, your first step should be to get a copy of some UNIX system (BSD, Linux, ...) and run it as though it were a production system. Don't use GUI admin tools - you'll learn more without them - do everything from the command line or by editing files. Preferably, get at least two boxes, and set up a small network in your house (even if they are side-by-side). Experiment with setting up accounts, allowing different users to share and edit files, setting up (and managing) an NIS server and an NIS slave, setting up (and maintaining) a DNS server and a DNS slave, and setting up a web server.
As an added bonus, learn sh scripting and awk/sed (you can get a lot done with these). For extra points, learn perl.
DOS is definitely alive and well, and I'm not just saying that because I founded the FreeDOS Project. :)
DOS is still used in embedded systems all over the world. The last time I checked, McDonald's cash registers were still running DOS with a McGUI. FreeDOS also appears in such cool devices as a pinball machine! (I think that one is my favorite.)
On our web site we recently posted a news item about running FreeDOS in a PDA. A few weeks ago, we posted a "success story" from someone who uses FreeDOS to support various doctors' offices.
Is DOS going to remain in the limelight? Well, probably not. DOS hasn't really hit the big news in a long while, and I suspect that DOS will remain the mainstay of embedded programmers for a long time to come. But the desktop war has been taken by Linux (and that other company... they also have a GUI with windows...) While FreeDOS+SEAL is very cool (think KDE) I think we'll see that you'll only find FreeDOS on desktops in places that cannot afford the bigger, newer, shinier systems.
-jh
From the article: The system promises fewer computer crashes and will allow users to delete data from their hard drive.
Wow! What a feature that Microsoft has added. I might have been happy with a new version of Windows that crashed less, but now I can delete data from my hard disk!
So I guess Windows has been write-only up 'til now.
Oops. That's my bad. It is a typo: I meant to say "I think my main complaint with StarOffice5.2 is the silly desktop." Yes, the silly desktop has gone away in OpenOffice, and for that I am grateful. Sorry 'bout that. I'm updating the page now.
Guess I picked a bad day to quit amphetamines! :)
It's only slightly offtopic... OpenOffice 638c (latest build) is probably pretty close to StarOffice 6beta.
The other day, I downloaded OpenOffice build 638C for Linux and for Windows. I use Red Hat Linux (7.1) at home, and I already use StarOffice (5.2) for my regular office needs. It works great. I think my main complaint with OpenOffice is the silly desktop. Other than that, I consider it a fully functional office suite that can replace my MS Office needs anytime.
I didn't see any cool OpenOffice screenshots, so I made my own of the text document program. I didn't do any (yet?) of the spreadsheet program, or presentation software. These were really captured for the benefit of my brother, but I'm posting them here so that others can see them.
Currently, all links point back to www.freedos.org but this will change as I make further updates to the news CGI system. :)
He recommends using StarOffice to replace Word97/Excel97/Powerpoint97. I completely agree here. I haven't had any need to replace an Access db application, since I don't use that part of MS Office, but I guess replacing it with an intranet web application is about as good as anything.
In my experience, StarOffice 5.2 is a fine replacement for MS Office. My only beef with it is that StarOffice loads an entire freaking desktop in order to bring up a simple Word document. (!) But I can understand the infrastructure here, at least: their intent seems to be to load as much as you can at startup, and assume you'll never need to exit StarOffice. Just bring it up once, and leave it there for the rest of the workday. Launching a document from within the StarOffice 5.2 desktop is pretty fast once the desktop itself is loaded. However, I think you need to make this point clear to any client or user who will be making a switch to StarOffice.
Now, I believe StarOffice 6 (developed as open source under the name OpenOffice) will be much better. That is, you should be able to launch a Word document, and that's all that comes up - a word processor frame.
What I was very shocked to see was that this guy recommends writing a PS file, then using (by hand) the ps2pdf program to create a PDF file. Yeah, very cool and everything. It certainly does work. But if I had recommended this method to my wife when she made the switch from MS Office / Windows to StarOffice / Linux (she migrated with her a 90+ pg thesis!) she would have sent me up a tree. The more professional solution would be to create a queue in the Xpdefaults file that creates PDF files. There is an 'Acrobat distiller' option in the printer setup dialog, but to be honest I think I had set up StarOffice with a filter that wrote to 'gs' and created a default file on the desktop. This is more than a solution "that works", it's a solution that doesn't give the user the attitude of "I had to do it myself".
If there's one thing that Windows has done for the user, it's that Windows gives the appearance of doing everything for you. Under Windows, you don't have to drop to a command prompt to get stuff done. You just do it from the app. IMO, making a migration from Windows to Linux, you need to be careful that the environment is set up in much the same way.
So, the "news" that Mozilla won't go for 1.0 until next year won't affect me. Mozilla is already my primary browser. I find remarkably few bugs that affect me (the only annoying bug affects overlapping table cells, simultaneous colspan/rowspan, since we use simultaneous colspan/rowspan on our web site.)
Oh yeah, I use the zip install packages. I find it is easier to install, since I know everything is there. I'm also a command line guy so I don't mind using unzip from the command line.
Installing the newer releases in a separate directory has made it very easy for me to roll back if I don't like something in the newer release. It also makes it easier to report bugs - is this a bug that appears only in the new version? I close the new Mozilla, and open the old one, and re-test.
I recommend this to anyone who is running Mozilla on Windows.
I couldn't find the man page for one(1). This doesn't seem to exist:
$ man 1 one
No entry for one in section 1 of the manual
In fact, there isn't an entry for 'one' in any section:
$ man one
No manual entry for one
Perhaps you meant zero(4)? (Sorry, couldn't resist.) :)