I'm in a very similar situation. My son and I are perfectly happy with Google Fi with our Nexus 5x phones. My daughter wanted an iphone, wife needed better coverage (she spends a lot of time in areas that are only served by AT&T). I bought my daughter a $150 iPhone 5C at Walmart, wife a $150 Asus phone on Amazon, and they're both on Walmart Straight Talk with bills at around $45 each per month. Not quite a cheap as Google Fi, but they've got what they want.
I've got a Sager Clevo gaming notebook with an 860M, and there's nothing to hate about it. It lasts a long time on a charge. It plays most games at their highest res. It runs Linux great. It's light, with an SSD for the OS drive. It runs two external monitors when I'm using it for work. It has no DVD, so it's lightweight. It doesn't run the Nvidia card when I'm not playing 3d games (uses the onboard Intel graphics). This GTX980 on a Clevo would likely have all those same benefits. You folks trash talking gaming notebooks are nuts.
I spend my days coding webapps in vim on a widescreen portrait, the browser in a widescreen landscape, and usually a 3rd monitor to the side with email and chat windows. I can fit over 100 lines of code on the portrait monitor. The future is now, man.
Would it be proper for the judge to demand passwords to the FB accounts of the pertinent employees of the Honeybaked Ham Co.? Wouldn't access to their accounts be equally valuable for deciding the case? Why is the female plaintiff the only one subject to turning over access to all FB communications?
No love for Bill Joy?
on
Vim Turns 20
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· Score: 1
Where's the love for Bill Joy? Vim is great and all, as are all the ports of vi, the plugins that give vi functionality to eclipse, firefox, etc... But really, isn't Bill the real hero here?
I use in in windows via cygwin, I use it on every linux server, desktop, and laptop I work on. I use it on my phone. I use it on my tablet. Vi's focus on dual modes, and no mouse, is just wonderful.
you need to do a little more research on rsync, ssh, cygwin, public/private keys, etc... a rsync+ssh solution does everything you are asking for. cross platform. encrypted. partial-file changes are efficient. easily scheduled.
i have setup exactly what you're wanting several times, on a variety of platforms with rsync and ssh.
No praise for Bill Joy?
on
Vim 7 Released
·
· Score: 2, Informative
This thread isn't complete without mention of Bill Joy, the creator of vi. He's the one that should be thanked for most of the things that everyone has mentioned that they love about vim.
Good point. If I recall correctly, in the summer there's usually several reports of power companies complaining that they can't meet the electrical needs of their customers because of all the air conditioners pulling extra juice. Add to that everyone's car sucking down 11kwh (20a * 110v * 5h) every night and I don't see how they could meet the demand without new power plants.
Not that there's anything wrong with building new power plants... Maybe that's just a side effect.
The downloadable standard version (single OS) is only $99. The downloadable pro version (multi OS) is $399.
$99 isn't too out of line when compared with the alternatives.
What's bad about realbasic is that they don't have an IDE for linux. The only thing linux about realbasic is that the mac or windows development IDE can create linux executables. This makes it somewhat incomparable to gambas.
I've tried winex about half a dozen times over the last three or so years, and every time my conclusion has been that it's more trouble than it's worth.
Games generally push the limits of affordable technology. If a cutting-edge game is designed solely for windows, it usually pushes the limits of memory, CPU, and graphics to such an extreme that it's barely playable on a typical gaming PC. HL2 is no exception. If you take that barely playable game and then run it through an additional layer of overhead (winex) then it's going to be less than "barely playable." How could it not be?
Doom3 is cutting edge, yet it works great in Linux. The powers that be at Id were nice enough to devote sufficient resources to insuring that a native Linux version existed. Maybe it was done out of respect for the community that makes the high-availability servers possible that host the multiplayer doom (and quake, and RTCW) games. Whatever the reason, Id deserves the Linux gaming community's support.
The makers of HL2 seem to have shown very little desire to support Linux. They don't want the Linux gaming community's business. I can accept that, and move on. If the game is so friggin great, I'll suck it up, buy Windows XP home for $100 or so, install it on a 10G partition, and play the damn game. It probably won't take any longer to get going, or cost much less (if any) in the long run.
Whether you can code C or not seems irrelevant to this discussion. I think you're just trying to avoid my assertion that you're not qualified to bash linux. If you've done plenty of linux software installs and you've never stumbled across esoteric things such as package managers, then you're either a masochist or you're lying. My vote is for masochist.
Yes, most linux applications are installed with a single command. It probably sounds bizarro from your perspective, but it's true
Re:Oooo, one game is written for linux...point tak
on
A Babe in Tuxland
·
· Score: 1
I suspect you probably paid lots of dollars for your MCSE training, please don't take it too hard, but yes... You're clueless.
You said "all the good games come out for Windows", so I pointed out one hot-off-the-shelves game rather than listing every game that's played in linux. I didn't realize I was dealing with clueless moron that can't google before he spews nonsense, so here's a nicely formatted list of games that run under linux: http://icculus.org/lgfaq/gamelist.php
Most clue-burdened linux users don't install from raw sourcecode, so your mythtv install example isn't really applicable. Open source software developers usually don't like to provide a package for every fricking linux distro out there, so they provide the source. The typical user installs packages via the package manager that their distro employs. Assuming the correct software sources are utilized, here's what a typical user might do to install mythtv:
If the above term "software sources" confuses you, consider it analagous to "best buy" for a windows user such as yourself, minus the driving, money, and bloatware.
Trust me, I know how to do this stuff in Windows. I did it from windows 3.1 forward, I did it in DOS, I did it in OS2, I did it on C64, Apple II, Timex sinclair, and now I do it in Linux. I don't the impression, however, that you've ever really given linux a chance or ever hung out with any real live linux users. It just aint that hard. You may be a bonafide windows guru, but when that prompt in front of you is a bash prompt you are absolutely clueless. Stick to what you know.
Re:Because what can you do with Linux?
on
A Babe in Tuxland
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· Score: 2, Interesting
It's all relative to your skill level and available dollars I suppose.
What you did, from your perspective, might seem cut and dry and inexpensive to you. You built the PC yourself. It's safe to say that some would say it's bizarro to expect the user to build their own PC. Some would say it's bizarro to expect the user to fork over all the money for WinXP when open-source alternatives are available.
From my perspective installing mythtv or freevo on a debian box requires no more effort than installing XP, rebooting, visiting windowsupdate, rebooting, visiting windowsupdate, rebooting, installing ATIs software, rebooting, updating ATIs software, etc... I can have a mythtv box setup from absolute scratch (box of parts from newegg.com) in less than 5 hours.
I too have a multimedia PC in my livingroom. It's based on linux. It took very little time to get up and running. It can:
rip dvd, encode to divx
play divx
pause live TV (mythtv)
host recorded TV files (mpeg) for any PC in the house
play games (mostly UT2004)
play mp3s
I'm sorry but a house full of kids with all Linux *is* bizarro world because it's not normal.
I'll agree that a house full of kids using Linux isn't normal. If normal is what you're shooting for then feel free to point your gun at the ground and shoot. I'm sure you'll hit your target.
All of their friends use Windows
Yes, most of their friends use Windows. Most of their friends are normal. Most of their friends' parents drive SUVs. We don't have an SUV. Should I go buy an SUV?
all the good games come out for Windows
We play a lot of Unreal Tournament 2004 at hour house. Is it not a good enough game for you?
and all the good professionally written, professionally packaged, and easily installed software is written for Windows
I've run out of patience on this one. You're clearly clueless.
I don't know if he's lying or not, but he's definitely not living in bizarro world. FWIW, I've got three kids (3-16), each has a linux PC, my desktop and laptop are linux, my wife's desktop is linux and her laptop is an ibook. Not a single windows PC in the house. We'd probably have more macs if we could justify the cost, but linux windows managers have matured so much in the last year or two that os x just doesn't seem worth the expense.
Have you got a Linux Users Group (LUG) close by? If so then I'd recommend going to one of their meetings . You'll likely find plenty of linux geeks eager to help there. If you don't have a LUG nearby then I'd recommend downloading the ISO for a linux newbie-friendly distro (http://www.mandrakesoft.com/ for instance), burn it to a CD, and try it out. Mandrake's install wizard will resize your existing WinXP partition to free up space for linux, and automatically create a dual-boot selection so you can choose your OS when you boot.
Also, you wouldn't necessarily need to live nearby a LUG to seek assistance from them. We geeks at my local LUG (http://www.carlug.org) are more than happy to help anyone that cares to ask for help on our mailing list.
Regarding the programs you're seeking:
browser: mozilla firefox email: mozilla thunderbird movie player: mplayer graphics editor: gimp word processor: openoffice firewire movie import: Cinelerra dvd rip to divx: dvdrip cdrom burning: k3b
FWIW, OO works much better if you import a few of your Windows fonts into linux. Particularly, get Times New Roman and Arial. TNR will make almost all Word documents appear exactly the same in Linux OO as Word. I do this in Mandrake 9.x through the font configurator in drakconf.
Re:What do you mean 99% useless to others?
on
KDE 3.2.0 Released
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· Score: 1
>>App installation and uninstallation requires either compiling by hand, or using tools that require root access
tools? what tools? apt-get? urpmi? rpm? Are those tools confusing? Would you prefer that software installs itself like bonzi buddy, gator, etc?
>>Driver support still is not there.
try plugging a two-year old webcam into a mandrake 9.2 box. Odds are it will be auto-detected and a link to gnome-meeting will be put on the desktop. Plugin a thumbdrive, automatically detected and mounted. Plugin most any printer, drivers will already be there. Mandrake 9.2 seems better at autodetecting and configuring more devices than any other OS I've ever used, from DOS all the way through XP.
>>Try comparing Ninvidia's latest Linux offering with their Win32 for example.
Haven't seen what their drivers look like for Win32, but they work just fine in linux. I don't really see how they could be any better other than opening up the source.
>>My wife and daughter use XP and will continue to do so until they can sit down and USE their computers without having to futz around with the OS.
My wife (uses fluxbox), my 2 yr. old son (still using KDE til he grows up a little more and learns to type), my 5 yr. old daughter (uses fluxbox), and my 15 yr. old daughter (uses fluxbox) have been making it fine in linux for over a year. No dual boot, no VMWARE, just linux.
People generally perform to fulfil expectations. If you expect them to use linux, they'll probably be able to use it just fine. If you give them XP and a set of crutches and tell them "you're not ready for linux yet, it's too hard", then you're not doing them any favors in my opinion.
If, however, you don't happen to be an idiot, and you use linux, this worm is a non-issue with regard to _your_ PC. Just as MSBLAST, melissa, iloveyou, and the countless other worms and virii that plague non-*nix users were non-issues.
And, plenty of non-idiots use MS Windows and MSN messenger. They may be less techincally literate than the average linux user, but they're not necessarilly idiots. If some helpful linux geek had set them up with a linux box to surf, chat, and email on, they'd be in the same "this is a non-issue" category as all the other *nix users.
Unreal Tournament Classic (not UT2003) runs great in Linux. You can purchase it for around $10 in the bargain bin at my local CompUSA, so everyone could afford to legally have a copy on their machine. It runs just fine on my daughter's Celeron 700 with a four-year old Voodoo card, so I suspect it would run great on your newer faster better office PCs.
There are lots of mods for it if you get bored with the factory DM, CTF, and assault modes.
Also, as many have mentioned, quake3 runs fin on a box like yours. It's a great game and is getting pretty cheap now too. My family and friends still find UT classic and Q3 just as fun, if not more, than the newer games.
To use mandrake in a business environment, here's what I seem to usually install:
1. Mozilla Firebird (I use latest nightly build) 2. Thunderbird (pine for real geeks) 3. Gaim (centericq for real geeks) 4. OpenOffice (not mandrake's version) 5. xmms 6. vnc 7. mplayer 8. mozilla calendar 9. gkrellm 10. java + flash + real player for flash
On the winders side, here's what I usually install: 1. putty 2. firebird 3. open office 4. tightvnc 5. winamp ( version 3.0)
that's about it. In windows I usually ssh to a linux box and run pine and centericq for mail and chat. it works great, it's fast, and I get access to all my chat history and imap email.
To make open office much more usable, I run the following script in mandrake in.xinitrc:
#/usr/bin soffice -quickstart && exec ooqs.sh
and name it ooqs.sh. it will keep OO preloaded permanently, files open almost instantly.
in mandrake, I run drakfont and import all my windows fonts. it makes word documents look MUCH better when imported.
all the above apps are free to use with no licensing fees. they're all well supported too.
Slashdot Mirror
What about Freecad? Best I can tell it works fine on RPi.
I'm in a very similar situation. My son and I are perfectly happy with Google Fi with our Nexus 5x phones. My daughter wanted an iphone, wife needed better coverage (she spends a lot of time in areas that are only served by AT&T). I bought my daughter a $150 iPhone 5C at Walmart, wife a $150 Asus phone on Amazon, and they're both on Walmart Straight Talk with bills at around $45 each per month. Not quite a cheap as Google Fi, but they've got what they want.
I've got a Sager Clevo gaming notebook with an 860M, and there's nothing to hate about it. It lasts a long time on a charge. It plays most games at their highest res. It runs Linux great. It's light, with an SSD for the OS drive. It runs two external monitors when I'm using it for work. It has no DVD, so it's lightweight. It doesn't run the Nvidia card when I'm not playing 3d games (uses the onboard Intel graphics). This GTX980 on a Clevo would likely have all those same benefits. You folks trash talking gaming notebooks are nuts.
Never take programming or programming-career advice from someone who doesn't know that Java and JavaScript are completely different languages.
I spend my days coding webapps in vim on a widescreen portrait, the browser in a widescreen landscape, and usually a 3rd monitor to the side with email and chat windows. I can fit over 100 lines of code on the portrait monitor. The future is now, man.
Would it be proper for the judge to demand passwords to the FB accounts of the pertinent employees of the Honeybaked Ham Co.? Wouldn't access to their accounts be equally valuable for deciding the case? Why is the female plaintiff the only one subject to turning over access to all FB communications?
Where's the love for Bill Joy? Vim is great and all, as are all the ports of vi, the plugins that give vi functionality to eclipse, firefox, etc... But really, isn't Bill the real hero here?
I use in in windows via cygwin, I use it on every linux server, desktop, and laptop I work on. I use it on my phone. I use it on my tablet. Vi's focus on dual modes, and no mouse, is just wonderful.
Thanks for vi Bill!
you need to do a little more research on rsync, ssh, cygwin, public/private keys, etc... a rsync+ssh solution does everything you are asking for. cross platform. encrypted. partial-file changes are efficient. easily scheduled.
i have setup exactly what you're wanting several times, on a variety of platforms with rsync and ssh.
This thread isn't complete without mention of Bill Joy, the creator of vi. He's the one that should be thanked for most of the things that everyone has mentioned that they love about vim.
_ greatest_gift/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/09/11/bill_joys
Good point. If I recall correctly, in the summer there's usually several reports of power companies complaining that they can't meet the electrical needs of their customers because of all the air conditioners pulling extra juice. Add to that everyone's car sucking down 11kwh (20a * 110v * 5h) every night and I don't see how they could meet the demand without new power plants.
Not that there's anything wrong with building new power plants... Maybe that's just a side effect.
Meebo is a huge security risk.
/., watch a kazillion users log in with their yahoo uid and pwd
1. create meebo, post on
2. harvest yahoo uid and pwds, log into yahoo email, search for ebay or paypal emails
3. request forgotten password at ebay and paypal, fetch results from yahoo email acct
4. life, meet living hell
The downloadable standard version (single OS) is only $99. The downloadable pro version (multi OS) is $399.
$99 isn't too out of line when compared with the alternatives.
What's bad about realbasic is that they don't have an IDE for linux. The only thing linux about realbasic is that the mac or windows development IDE can create linux executables. This makes it somewhat incomparable to gambas.
I've tried winex about half a dozen times over the last three or so years, and every time my conclusion has been that it's more trouble than it's worth.
Games generally push the limits of affordable technology. If a cutting-edge game is designed solely for windows, it usually pushes the limits of memory, CPU, and graphics to such an extreme that it's barely playable on a typical gaming PC. HL2 is no exception. If you take that barely playable game and then run it through an additional layer of overhead (winex) then it's going to be less than "barely playable." How could it not be?
Doom3 is cutting edge, yet it works great in Linux. The powers that be at Id were nice enough to devote sufficient resources to insuring that a native Linux version existed. Maybe it was done out of respect for the community that makes the high-availability servers possible that host the multiplayer doom (and quake, and RTCW) games. Whatever the reason, Id deserves the Linux gaming community's support.
The makers of HL2 seem to have shown very little desire to support Linux. They don't want the Linux gaming community's business. I can accept that, and move on. If the game is so friggin great, I'll suck it up, buy Windows XP home for $100 or so, install it on a 10G partition, and play the damn game. It probably won't take any longer to get going, or cost much less (if any) in the long run.
The url in firefox is empty in new tabs, so here's what I do:
1. drag over the url
2. hit ctrl+t (creates new tab)
3. middle-click to paste url into browser
4. hit enter
Whether you can code C or not seems irrelevant to this discussion. I think you're just trying to avoid my assertion that you're not qualified to bash linux. If you've done plenty of linux software installs and you've never stumbled across esoteric things such as package managers, then you're either a masochist or you're lying. My vote is for masochist.
Yes, most linux applications are installed with a single command. It probably sounds bizarro from your perspective, but it's true
I suspect you probably paid lots of dollars for your MCSE training, please don't take it too hard, but yes... You're clueless.
You said "all the good games come out for Windows", so I pointed out one hot-off-the-shelves game rather than listing every game that's played in linux. I didn't realize I was dealing with clueless moron that can't google before he spews nonsense, so here's a nicely formatted list of games that run under linux:
http://icculus.org/lgfaq/gamelist.php
Most clue-burdened linux users don't install from raw sourcecode, so your mythtv install example isn't really applicable. Open source software developers usually don't like to provide a package for every fricking linux distro out there, so they provide the source. The typical user installs packages via the package manager that their distro employs. Assuming the correct software sources are utilized, here's what a typical user might do to install mythtv:
Mandrake users: urpmi mythtv
Gentoo users: emerge mythtv
Debian user: apt-get install mythtv
If the above term "software sources" confuses you, consider it analagous to "best buy" for a windows user such as yourself, minus the driving, money, and bloatware.
Trust me, I know how to do this stuff in Windows. I did it from windows 3.1 forward, I did it in DOS, I did it in OS2, I did it on C64, Apple II, Timex sinclair, and now I do it in Linux. I don't the impression, however, that you've ever really given linux a chance or ever hung out with any real live linux users. It just aint that hard. You may be a bonafide windows guru, but when that prompt in front of you is a bash prompt you are absolutely clueless. Stick to what you know.
What you did, from your perspective, might seem cut and dry and inexpensive to you. You built the PC yourself. It's safe to say that some would say it's bizarro to expect the user to build their own PC. Some would say it's bizarro to expect the user to fork over all the money for WinXP when open-source alternatives are available.
From my perspective installing mythtv or freevo on a debian box requires no more effort than installing XP, rebooting, visiting windowsupdate, rebooting, visiting windowsupdate, rebooting, installing ATIs software, rebooting, updating ATIs software, etc... I can have a mythtv box setup from absolute scratch (box of parts from newegg.com) in less than 5 hours.
I too have a multimedia PC in my livingroom. It's based on linux. It took very little time to get up and running. It can:
I'm sorry but a house full of kids with all Linux *is* bizarro world because it's not normal.
I'll agree that a house full of kids using Linux isn't normal. If normal is what you're shooting for then feel free to point your gun at the ground and shoot. I'm sure you'll hit your target.
All of their friends use Windows
Yes, most of their friends use Windows. Most of their friends are normal. Most of their friends' parents drive SUVs. We don't have an SUV. Should I go buy an SUV?
all the good games come out for Windows
We play a lot of Unreal Tournament 2004 at hour house. Is it not a good enough game for you?
and all the good professionally written, professionally packaged, and easily installed software is written for Windows
I've run out of patience on this one. You're clearly clueless.
I don't know if he's lying or not, but he's definitely not living in bizarro world. FWIW, I've got three kids (3-16), each has a linux PC, my desktop and laptop are linux, my wife's desktop is linux and her laptop is an ibook. Not a single windows PC in the house. We'd probably have more macs if we could justify the cost, but linux windows managers have matured so much in the last year or two that os x just doesn't seem worth the expense.
What's so bizarro about this world?
Have you got a Linux Users Group (LUG) close by? If so then I'd recommend going to one of their meetings . You'll likely find plenty of linux geeks eager to help there. If you don't have a LUG nearby then I'd recommend downloading the ISO for a linux newbie-friendly distro (http://www.mandrakesoft.com/ for instance), burn it to a CD, and try it out. Mandrake's install wizard will resize your existing WinXP partition to free up space for linux, and automatically create a dual-boot selection so you can choose your OS when you boot.
Also, you wouldn't necessarily need to live nearby a LUG to seek assistance from them. We geeks at my local LUG (http://www.carlug.org) are more than happy to help anyone that cares to ask for help on our mailing list.
Regarding the programs you're seeking:
browser: mozilla firefox
email: mozilla thunderbird
movie player: mplayer
graphics editor: gimp
word processor: openoffice
firewire movie import: Cinelerra
dvd rip to divx: dvdrip
cdrom burning: k3b
Good luck.
FWIW, OO works much better if you import a few of your Windows fonts into linux. Particularly, get Times New Roman and Arial. TNR will make almost all Word documents appear exactly the same in Linux OO as Word. I do this in Mandrake 9.x through the font configurator in drakconf.
>>App installation and uninstallation requires either compiling by hand, or using tools that require root access
tools? what tools? apt-get? urpmi? rpm? Are those tools confusing? Would you prefer that software installs itself like bonzi buddy, gator, etc?
>>Driver support still is not there.
try plugging a two-year old webcam into a mandrake 9.2 box. Odds are it will be auto-detected and a link to gnome-meeting will be put on the desktop. Plugin a thumbdrive, automatically detected and mounted. Plugin most any printer, drivers will already be there. Mandrake 9.2 seems better at autodetecting and configuring more devices than any other OS I've ever used, from DOS all the way through XP.
>>Try comparing Ninvidia's latest Linux offering with their Win32 for example.
Haven't seen what their drivers look like for Win32, but they work just fine in linux. I don't really see how they could be any better other than opening up the source.
>>My wife and daughter use XP and will continue to do so until they can sit down and USE their computers without having to futz around with the OS.
My wife (uses fluxbox), my 2 yr. old son (still using KDE til he grows up a little more and learns to type), my 5 yr. old daughter (uses fluxbox), and my 15 yr. old daughter (uses fluxbox) have been making it fine in linux for over a year. No dual boot, no VMWARE, just linux.
People generally perform to fulfil expectations. If you expect them to use linux, they'll probably be able to use it just fine. If you give them XP and a set of crutches and tell them "you're not ready for linux yet, it's too hard", then you're not doing them any favors in my opinion.
If, however, you don't happen to be an idiot, and you use linux, this worm is a non-issue with regard to _your_ PC. Just as MSBLAST, melissa, iloveyou, and the countless other worms and virii that plague non-*nix users were non-issues.
And, plenty of non-idiots use MS Windows and MSN messenger. They may be less techincally literate than the average linux user, but they're not necessarilly idiots. If some helpful linux geek had set them up with a linux box to surf, chat, and email on, they'd be in the same "this is a non-issue" category as all the other *nix users.
Unreal Tournament Classic (not UT2003) runs great in Linux. You can purchase it for around $10 in the bargain bin at my local CompUSA, so everyone could afford to legally have a copy on their machine. It runs just fine on my daughter's Celeron 700 with a four-year old Voodoo card, so I suspect it would run great on your newer faster better office PCs.
There are lots of mods for it if you get bored with the factory DM, CTF, and assault modes.
Also, as many have mentioned, quake3 runs fin on a box like yours. It's a great game and is getting pretty cheap now too. My family and friends still find UT classic and Q3 just as fun, if not more, than the newer games.
a couple of corrections:
this:
5. winamp ( version 3.0)
was supposed to be this:
5. winamp (< version 3.0)
and this:
#/usr/bin
was supposed to be this:
#!/usr/bin
To use mandrake in a business environment, here's what I seem to usually install:
.xinitrc:
1. Mozilla Firebird (I use latest nightly build)
2. Thunderbird (pine for real geeks)
3. Gaim (centericq for real geeks)
4. OpenOffice (not mandrake's version)
5. xmms
6. vnc
7. mplayer
8. mozilla calendar
9. gkrellm
10. java + flash + real player for flash
On the winders side, here's what I usually install:
1. putty
2. firebird
3. open office
4. tightvnc
5. winamp ( version 3.0)
that's about it. In windows I usually ssh to a linux box and run pine and centericq for mail and chat. it works great, it's fast, and I get access to all my chat history and imap email.
To make open office much more usable, I run the following script in mandrake in
#/usr/bin
soffice -quickstart && exec ooqs.sh
and name it ooqs.sh. it will keep OO preloaded permanently, files open almost instantly.
in mandrake, I run drakfont and import all my windows fonts. it makes word documents look MUCH better when imported.
all the above apps are free to use with no licensing fees. they're all well supported too.