Star Office now costs money, so a lot of people switch to Open Office. There is a group of wealthy/affluent/well off linux users who would pay for it.
There is a flaw in that logic: It is very hard to find a retail shop which sells StarOffice for Linux - or indeed many other softwares for Linux. Shops always have the Windows version but rarely stock the Linux versions.
Therefore, since the Windows versions are easy to obtain, they sell better as opposed to Linux versions which dosn't sell cos manyb shops don't sell these in the first place.
I think the part that disturbs me the most is this: I work at a college, and this means there's going to be that many more students running around with word processor documents that they can't print in our labs. Headaches, ahoy.
I don't think that will be much of a problem -- I use Microsoft Word at school and Openoffice at home yet I can seamlessly transfer documents between the two without any problems.
Just teach the students to save all files in DOC format or a standard format which most people can read. Make a poster or something showing how to save DOC files in OpenOffice, WordPerfect etc and point at it whenever someone asks why Word can't read an non-MS propirety format.
or pdf, I have NEVER understood why there wasn't a push to save OO documents in.pdf format.
Probally because all the major apps, including MS Word, WordPerfect and {Open,Star}Writer can't read or edit PDF files, while they've all invested lots of money and time into developing a good format for their softwares and making sure their apps can read other software's native formats.
PDF's a nice format for distributing files that don't need to be edited, such as manuals, product brouchers and such, but for everything else you need a good format for editing files such as Word's DOC format, OpenOffice zipped SXW format, or whatever.
- James
Re:I have never really liked USB for certain thing
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Even if they have EOL's OS 9, that's no reason to prevent future hardware from booting it. Windows 95 has been EOLed, but you could still boot it on your new PC if you wanted to.
That's not entirely true: Windows 95 refuses to load on my AMD Athlon 1700+ on a motherboard with VIA chipsets while it works perfectly on an Intel Pentium MMX 166 on a motherboard with Intel chipsets.
I assume that the VIA chipsets are causing Windows 95 to crash since it has very limited support for non-Intel chipsets.
Look at this, and virtually every other thread, regarding ATI. See how many complaints there are about the poor drivers despite the superior hardware. Contrast to nVidia, whose drivers support every card made going back 3 years, have great performance, and are usually very stable.
This may be good for Microsoft and Linux users, but what about users of FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, and all the other x86 OSes? Users of these OSes (including myself) have to put up with the substandard "nv" driver, which does not even support hardware OpenGL. Even the open-source S3 drivers has more features (such as XVideo support) than the standard nVidia drivers, despite the fact nVidia cards are clearly superior to S3 cards from a hardware perspective.
In contrast, ATi is very well supported across many of the various x86 OSes which XFree86 supports. The ATi driver, which was developed using funding from ATi even does hardware OpenGL aswell as many other enchancments. ATi, aswell as companies like S3, has done more for open-source software than nVidia has done. They have donated an entirely open-sourced driver to XFree86, enabling it to be ported over to different systems -- while nVidia has opted to only provide a driver for Linux systems running XFree86 only.
I bought a nVidia TNT2 card just so I could get a video card that worked with FreeBSD/XFree86. But my next purchase will be an ATi card due to the simple fact that it is superior to nVidia when it comes to drivers that works on FreeBSD/XFree86. I couldn't care less about the quality of the Windows drivers since I hardly use Windows these days.
"AbiWord is small and compact (20 times smaller than OpenOffice!),"
The person that posted this should have realised that OpenOffice is a office suite, not a word processor. Therefore you can't compare them, it's like comparing apples to oranges. The numbers would change once whoever made AbiWord also made a spreadsheet, presentation, database, and drawing program.
FreeBSD installer while fast and efficient is the same installer they have used for years.
What's is the problem with the current installer? If it works well for the purpose it was designed for in the first place there isn't really any need for a new method of installing that may or may not improve on the current installer used in the 4.x releases of FreeBSD.
That said, there are, I beleive, some work on a new installer which will be able to work in either text-only mode or graphical (X11) mode and will include many other improvements over the current installer. However, from what I know, it probally won't be used till 5.0-RELEASE or later releases.
The only reason I still use linux is its popularity and all the apps I want run on it. It supports the hardware I have, the applications I want are on the cd in.rpm format.
I rectently bought a very new box and FreeBSD 4.5 worked right-out-of-the box with all the stuffs except the onboard AC'97 sound so its hardware compatibility is, IMHO, quite good. It may not support some of the more exotic hardwares but it does have decent support for most hardwares that are in common use.
Also, I have yet to find any decent UNIX program that doesn't work on FreeBSD -- i currenly have around 130 different packages installed (including KDE, GNOME, gaim, freeciv, doom, galeon, xchat and many others) and they all work perfectly. FreeBSD also has excellent linux binary emulation which emulates many Linux binaries (including StarOffice, Netscape, Acrobat Reader, Opera, and others) flawlessly.
- James
Font Smoothing has been available to Windows since at least OSR2 (or Win95 with Plus).
Windows 95 OSR 2.0 (version 4.00.950B) and all earlier versions of Windows 95 does not come with font smoothing -- you have to download Microsoft's font smoother from their site or get their Plus! thing.
However, Windows 95 OSR 2.5 (the version with the USB support) might have included font smoothing support -- but I can't confirm this as I only have OSR 2.0.
Good point, but the the only changelogs for 1.5.1->1.5.2 I could find were the ones on the FTP servers.
The FTP link was also linked from the release announcement which leads me to beleive that the NetBSD developers intended to have people check out the Changelog via FTP.
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There is a flaw in that logic: It is very hard to find a retail shop which sells StarOffice for Linux - or indeed many other softwares for Linux. Shops always have the Windows version but rarely stock the Linux versions.
Therefore, since the Windows versions are easy to obtain, they sell better as opposed to Linux versions which dosn't sell cos manyb shops don't sell these in the first place.
- James
I don't think that will be much of a problem -- I use Microsoft Word at school and Openoffice at home yet I can seamlessly transfer documents between the two without any problems.
Just teach the students to save all files in DOC format or a standard format which most people can read. Make a poster or something showing how to save DOC files in OpenOffice, WordPerfect etc and point at it whenever someone asks why Word can't read an non-MS propirety format.
- JamesProbally because all the major apps, including MS Word, WordPerfect and {Open,Star}Writer can't read or edit PDF files, while they've all invested lots of money and time into developing a good format for their softwares and making sure their apps can read other software's native formats.
PDF's a nice format for distributing files that don't need to be edited, such as manuals, product brouchers and such, but for everything else you need a good format for editing files such as Word's DOC format, OpenOffice zipped SXW format, or whatever.
- JamesDVI does have a different connector to VGA.
-James
That's not entirely true: Windows 95 refuses to load on my AMD Athlon 1700+ on a motherboard with VIA chipsets while it works perfectly on an Intel Pentium MMX 166 on a motherboard with Intel chipsets.
I assume that the VIA chipsets are causing Windows 95 to crash since it has very limited support for non-Intel chipsets.
- James
Do you mean 1.6?
- James
However, Linus dosn't have anything at all to do with NetBSD.
This may be good for Microsoft and Linux users, but what about users of FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, and all the other x86 OSes? Users of these OSes (including myself) have to put up with the substandard "nv" driver, which does not even support hardware OpenGL. Even the open-source S3 drivers has more features (such as XVideo support) than the standard nVidia drivers, despite the fact nVidia cards are clearly superior to S3 cards from a hardware perspective.
In contrast, ATi is very well supported across many of the various x86 OSes which XFree86 supports. The ATi driver, which was developed using funding from ATi even does hardware OpenGL aswell as many other enchancments. ATi, aswell as companies like S3, has done more for open-source software than nVidia has done. They have donated an entirely open-sourced driver to XFree86, enabling it to be ported over to different systems -- while nVidia has opted to only provide a driver for Linux systems running XFree86 only.
I bought a nVidia TNT2 card just so I could get a video card that worked with FreeBSD/XFree86. But my next purchase will be an ATi card due to the simple fact that it is superior to nVidia when it comes to drivers that works on FreeBSD/XFree86. I couldn't care less about the quality of the Windows drivers since I hardly use Windows these days.
"AbiWord is small and compact (20 times smaller than OpenOffice!),"
The person that posted this should have realised that OpenOffice is a office suite, not a word processor. Therefore you can't compare them, it's like comparing apples to oranges. The numbers would change once whoever made AbiWord also made a spreadsheet, presentation, database, and drawing program.
- James
Some of their international sites, such as their New Zealand site, hasn't been combinded yet.
- James
FreeBSD installer while fast and efficient is the same installer they have used for years. What's is the problem with the current installer? If it works well for the purpose it was designed for in the first place there isn't really any need for a new method of installing that may or may not improve on the current installer used in the 4.x releases of FreeBSD. That said, there are, I beleive, some work on a new installer which will be able to work in either text-only mode or graphical (X11) mode and will include many other improvements over the current installer. However, from what I know, it probally won't be used till 5.0-RELEASE or later releases. The only reason I still use linux is its popularity and all the apps I want run on it. It supports the hardware I have, the applications I want are on the cd in .rpm format.
I rectently bought a very new box and FreeBSD 4.5 worked right-out-of-the box with all the stuffs except the onboard AC'97 sound so its hardware compatibility is, IMHO, quite good. It may not support some of the more exotic hardwares but it does have decent support for most hardwares that are in common use.
Also, I have yet to find any decent UNIX program that doesn't work on FreeBSD -- i currenly have around 130 different packages installed (including KDE, GNOME, gaim, freeciv, doom, galeon, xchat and many others) and they all work perfectly. FreeBSD also has excellent linux binary emulation which emulates many Linux binaries (including StarOffice, Netscape, Acrobat Reader, Opera, and others) flawlessly.
- James
Font Smoothing has been available to Windows since at least OSR2 (or Win95 with Plus).
Windows 95 OSR 2.0 (version 4.00.950B) and all earlier versions of Windows 95 does not come with font smoothing -- you have to download Microsoft's font smoother from their site or get their Plus! thing.
However, Windows 95 OSR 2.5 (the version with the USB support) might have included font smoothing support -- but I can't confirm this as I only have OSR 2.0.
- James
There are some other nice alternatives such as {Free,Net,Open}BSD's ports/pkgsrc collections and so on.
Good point, but the the only changelogs for 1.5.1->1.5.2 I could find were the ones on the FTP servers.
The FTP link was also linked from the release announcement which leads me to beleive that the NetBSD developers intended to have people check out the Changelog via FTP.
Either way, I'm still looking foward to 4.4-RELEASE it as it has been quite a while since 4.3-RELEASE.
I've just realised that the list isn't even in alphabetical order - New Zealand is actually included in the list.
I noticed that in their country and nationality list New Zealand is not included (along with a few other countries like England!).