The main problem with power consumption is a "We no longer care about CPU cycles" attitude among many programmers, especially among the KDE and Gnome crowd.
I heard the opposite with KDE, in particular I heard they want to use things like QT4 because it will consume less resources for the equilivant functions, but can also do new things without requiring such CPU intensive workarounds. I believe I read this in a aKadamy article.
Or dbus, as if there were no othere proven methods for IPC, that don't require another daemon idling around and waking up every other millisecond eating away battery life.
dbus is the free desktop standard for IPC. If you have a problem with dbus, I suggest you talk to freedesktop.org about it.
Or just log out from a KDE session and watch those 10 or so beauties like dcopserver idling aroud, eating memory.
dcopserver will likely be done away with in KDE4, replaced by dbus since it is the freedesktop standard now. I have doubts that dcopserver is really decreasing battery life though to a large extent.
NO_HZ is nice, but only curing the symptoms of a larger problem: daemon-bloat! Get rid of them and you will see some real improvements.
I don't think getting rid of what you mentioned as 'bloat' will really buy battery time. I know the difference in battery life on my laptop when running purely in the console verses x.org+kde is 15 minutes. I have high doubts that getting rid of dcopserver will increase the battery life.
I appologize if some aren't converters but as I said, I didn't really look to deeply, those are just the first five search results.
I'm sure you can find more yourself.
You might be sick of the developers trying to catch up with Microsoft, but more than 90% of of my customer base uses their office file formats.
If you depend so much on Microsoft formats, you should use Microsoft Office, period. There is no point using OpenOffice.org to open Microsoft documents, since Microsoft Office will always open them the way they're meant to be displayed and edit them perfectly.
Please remember, the goal for OpenOffice.org is not "Free Microsoft Office clone".
I'm sorry, but there is no way around this. From a design point of view, it's improbable for me to even conceive OpenOffice.org will ever be able to display the documents exactly as Microsoft Office displays them.
Not only that, but because the OpenOffice.org interface is so limited and primitive in certain areas. It's impossible to even translate certain layouts that are used in Microsoft Documents to OpenOffice.org. So, even from supporting Microsoft Documents point of view.. The interface needs to be worked on.
*grr* Dear Open Source Community, This is why FOSS/OSS is not a threat to M$.
I find it difficult to take someone seriously who refers to Microsoft as M$, does not do paragraphs and growls at the reader. However, I will humor you.
It's interesting that you claim FOSS/OSS is not a threat to Microsoft when just yesterday Microsoft did yet another 'attack'.
i can go to any company in the first world and know how to operate their computers.
I doubt it.
Until you guys start consolidating your efforts and making ONE worth office suite (OO.o is cool, i use it as much as i can, but it is NOT a replacement for MSO yet), and ONE operating system, the world will view Linux and Open Source as the purview of nerds.
Why don't you tell Microsoft to make a single operating system, Like, Windows Vista - No editions, no server OSes. Why don't you tell Microsoft not to create multiple Office suites Which they did with Microsoft Office home/home professional/professional/enterprise, Microsoft Works, Microsoft Office Live etc.
I find it strange you criticize independent developers for creating different projects on their own and compare them to a single company who creates multiple products and then claim that this company only makes a single product.
Nothing would please me more than to reformat my hard drive, install TEH Linux (teh as in, the only one).
OF course if you want a OS, I'd suggest you choose a OS. There is only one Kubuntu, only one Centos, only one whatever.
i can't rely on OO.o until it can mail merge and has a "Send to Email Recipient" button.
Have you sent a feature request?
i can't until i know that i'm not going to need to learn shell scripting or CLI to get the thing to install or work.
Not had this issue with OpenOffice under Windows or Kubuntu. Can install it through the GUI just fine and I have never needed to use CLI to mess with OpenOffice.org yet.
i can't until i know that the files i create can be used on the most possible machines.
I think you need to learn how to use the save as dialog.
If you want to export it to a Microsoft document format, you can.
Pooling your efforts just might get that done.
So, who are you exactly? I want to know exactly what makes you a holy all knowing God that can justify this? What previous experience do you have? What research can you give me that this is the best method? Why can't you use paragraphs?
Sure, great, but don't stand there scratching your head wondering why you use Debian at home but must suffer through using Windows at work. Or why you have to load Windows when you want to play a current game, or just about any game with more than one player.
I actually use Kubuntu at home, at work and for playing games (games I run under Wine even run faster than under native windows for some reason on the same hardware). Sorry, your generalizations do not apply to me at all.
i don't want choices in operating systems, i want choices in software and hardware.
Well, maybe others want choices in operating systems, you aren't the center of the universe.
Mac and Linux (and the other pet OSes) offer a fraction of what M$ does.
Care to elaborate?
Remember kids - If someone says something you disagree with, mod them as Flamebait!
See the title? "KOffice as OpenOffice competitor"? If KOffice wants to be an OpenOffice competitor, it shouldn't drag half the KDE desktop with it.
KOffice's homepage names the goal however, "KOffice is a free, integrated office suite for KDE, the K Desktop Environment."
I believe it can be a competitor to OpenOffice.org despite it's dependencies. It's not much worse than OpenOffice.org having a dependency on Java, Microsoft Office 2007 having a dependency on.net and Windows. Infact in my opinion it's better because KDE exposes a lot of great features like kioslaves (Which Linux, OS X, Windows and their gui toolkits etc. do not support natively), low memory usage if you use other KDE applications too.
It increases memory for people who aren't running KDE.
Substantially? I don't think it makes that much of a major difference in memory if the application has the features supported internally to be honest.
Sorry, Koffice can't help you there. Personally - I don't care that it can't open word documents, I already gave up on them when newer versions of Microsoft fail to render them correctly.
I really only care about having office suites these days that have a really good user interface and a standard format that can be opened in the future. I hope Koffice will be that suite as I am a KDE user and I have been disappointed occasionally with Koffice, OpenOffice and StarOffice in their current states.
I don't care what bells and whistles are added, what shiny new GUI paint is applied, how much faster the app runs, etc, etc, etc. Office 2007 is on the street, and we are going to be hit with a barrage of OOXML files that can't be opened by anybody who's not running Microsoft. Any contender in this space needs to address this problem, and right now.
I want a good office suite with a decent interface. I don't care about Microsoft's ooxml, there is a few applications on sourceforge than convert ooxml to odt format and vise versa.
I am sick of developers wasting their time trying to catch up with Microsoft's flaws, being distracted from bigger problems.
For an organization to consider switching from MS Office to OO, they have to consider more than a side-by-side product comparison, user training, and license cost; they have to consider the fact that they already have a huge number of documents in MS Office formats. If OO cannot read or write to these files effectively and accurately, then they either have to give these documents up for lost, or manually re-format them.
Companies I've worked at have had todo this when migrating to new versions of Microsoft Office already. Issues from documents not formatting properly to absolutely giving up on some documents entirely.
Until that changes, transitioning to OO is simply not going to be cost-effective for any business that has a substantial amount of pre-existing documentation.
That's fine, but there is a bigger issue for new companies, new startups that want to start off with OOo and having greater issues with it's interface problems. It is true that OOo cannot open some Microsoft documents as well as Microsoft Office can, but I have been able to open documents in older versions of Microsoft Office which the latest and greatest Microsoft Office handled extremely poorly.
A related issue is communication between companies. Many, many times in the past when I've dealt with vendors (or been the vendor selling to another company), the proposals, specifications, reports, and so on have all been MS Office documents--Excel, Word, PowerPoint, etc.
Policies were setup in previous companies I worked for to use PDF to prevent a possible issue with certain information in Office's meta-data from getting out.
If they can't read or write MS Office documents effectively and accurately, it's going to have an impact on those business relationships--and not a good impact, either.
You have no idea what sort of crap I've seen between a version difference of Office generating a document. Microsoft Office is not the key either to this solution.
This is why I say that greater MS Office compatibility is the only way OO will see widespread adoption.
OOo is already seeing large adoption over it's open formats and cost. But many users end up disliking it due to how difficult the interface is.
Having a superior interface is great, but it's really of limited concern when it comes to deciding whether to make an organization-wide transition
A office suite which most users have difficulty using is useless to organization.
Honestly, I don't think they should bother concentrating on compatibility with a dead.doc format anymore. Microsoft can't even get it right and seeing how the classical file formats are basically memory dumps of word/excel etc. It's going to be very difficult to implement support as it requires understanding how Microsoft's office suite was built up technically and then replicating that in memory and converting it to something OOo understands...
You should seriously look at the sourcecode that converts powerpoint stuff on the fly in OOo, it's scary what they need todo to just interpret it.
OO needs to spend less time on new features and more time fixing the ones they've got, IMO. Especially when it comes to compatibility with MS Office. ODF's great, don't get me wrong, but the only way OO will see anything close to widespread adoption is when people can effectively and easily transition off of MS Office.
I disagree, I think OOo needs to make a superior interface to Microsoft Office's, a superior way of dealing with things all centeralized around the odf documentation. Being able to use the office suite is far more important than whether or not it can open documents perfectly (not really feasable thanks to how Microsoft's formats were created) from last year's office suite.
I tend to use OOo, and Staroffice a lot. They are really lacking interface-wise and there are times when I feel frustrated to the point that I start to wonder why I don't have Microsoft Office installed under Crossover because creating things like updating charts (under OOo 2.2) is so painful.
a) You have Direct X 10, for games. And, there are a ton of games for Windows.
But barely any under Direct X 10. You did forget to mention that Windows comes with the outdated OpenGL 1.5 instead of later versions like Linux and OS X have. Additionally Direct X 9 support is quite usable now under Wine.
b) You.NET, for business applications development
This is under Linux too.
c) You have a pretty good web browser. Yeah, IE has its flaws, but it works pretty good for most people. That is, I can go to the baseball site, get the scores, and it works.
Good browsers exist under Linux too.
d) You have interfaces to a whole bunch of consumer appliances, from digital cameras and video players, and more.
Good interfaces for consumer appliances exist under Linux too (I am so sick of having to insert a driver CD under Windows to use stuff).
e) Vista has a really cool sound model that I am eager to play with.
Point.
f) Unicode (UTF-16) is built in from the ground up.
UTF-8 is considered superior and the code under Linux supporting it is a lot more mature.
NTFS stacks up well against Reiser and ExtN for most applications.
I have to disagree here. NTFS is very costly in performance because of fragmentation issues
Remote Desktop and Terminal Services for Windows work really well...
ssh and ssh forwarding work really well, vnc works really well too.
So, a sound system, okay. Not that I personally think it's that great of a system due to issues with sound on Vista.
Again, how exactly can MS prevent a free OS from being distributed?
Microsoft has tried
forcing OEMs to sell Windows licenses with every computer sold (including non-windows machines)
claimed Linux infringes on it's patents - damaging it's reputation.
Claiming Linux is not standards compliant - damaging it's reputation.
Implemented standards that were extended in such a way to make it incompatible with standard compliant systems - Breaking support puposely with other operating systems/software and using this to damage their reputation
attempted to fracture the FOSS development by creating look-alike licenses to opensource, except disallowing the use on non-windows platforms
Paying off (illegally?) a lot of people to vote for their solution and against other solutions.
forcing OEM vendors to not ship with other software (preventing dual-boot setups, alternative browsers etc).
These are the things we know Microsoft did (more than what is on that list). Some of them can't happen anymore, some can - I am a little afraid to find out what things we haven't discovered yet.
Additionally, why shouldn't a new PC also bear a sticker that says "Designed for Linux" as well as "Designed for Windows"?
My laptop bares a sticker "Designed for Windows XP"... The latest graphic card drivers, wireless and soundcard drivers do not work under Windows XP service pack 2.
I've yet to find an email client that doesn't have a more-or-less proprietary format for storing messages.
The majority of e-mail clients I have encountered use mbox and maildir format, which aren't proprietary. Infact some mail servers even store messages in those formats too.
throw in built in ability to play DVDs using the deCSS library, and you've got a computer that has a complete backup system in case your hard drive dies, and i suppose even there no need to have another operating system.
Just set the region code on your DVD drive or get one of those multi-region DVD drives. You don't need that library.
Slashdot Mirror
http://sourceforge.net/projects/odf-converter/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/odftranslator/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooo-word-filter/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooconvert/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooo-convertor/
I appologize if some aren't converters but as I said, I didn't really look to deeply, those are just the first five search results.
I'm sure you can find more yourself.If you depend so much on Microsoft formats, you should use Microsoft Office, period. There is no point using OpenOffice.org to open Microsoft documents, since Microsoft Office will always open them the way they're meant to be displayed and edit them perfectly.
Please remember, the goal for OpenOffice.org is not "Free Microsoft Office clone".
I'm sorry, but there is no way around this. From a design point of view, it's improbable for me to even conceive OpenOffice.org will ever be able to display the documents exactly as Microsoft Office displays them.
Not only that, but because the OpenOffice.org interface is so limited and primitive in certain areas. It's impossible to even translate certain layouts that are used in Microsoft Documents to OpenOffice.org. So, even from supporting Microsoft Documents point of view.. The interface needs to be worked on.
It's interesting that you claim FOSS/OSS is not a threat to Microsoft when just yesterday Microsoft did yet another 'attack'.I doubt it.Why don't you tell Microsoft to make a single operating system, Like, Windows Vista - No editions, no server OSes. Why don't you tell Microsoft not to create multiple Office suites Which they did with Microsoft Office home/home professional/professional/enterprise, Microsoft Works, Microsoft Office Live etc.
I find it strange you criticize independent developers for creating different projects on their own and compare them to a single company who creates multiple products and then claim that this company only makes a single product.There is only one real Linux - Enjoy.
OF course if you want a OS, I'd suggest you choose a OS. There is only one Kubuntu, only one Centos, only one whatever.Have you sent a feature request?Not had this issue with OpenOffice under Windows or Kubuntu. Can install it through the GUI just fine and I have never needed to use CLI to mess with OpenOffice.org yet.I think you need to learn how to use the save as dialog.
If you want to export it to a Microsoft document format, you can.So, who are you exactly? I want to know exactly what makes you a holy all knowing God that can justify this? What previous experience do you have? What research can you give me that this is the best method? Why can't you use paragraphs?I actually use Kubuntu at home, at work and for playing games (games I run under Wine even run faster than under native windows for some reason on the same hardware). Sorry, your generalizations do not apply to me at all.Well, maybe others want choices in operating systems, you aren't the center of the universe.Care to elaborate?Honestly, it feels like I've been baited.
I believe it can be a competitor to OpenOffice.org despite it's dependencies. It's not much worse than OpenOffice.org having a dependency on Java, Microsoft Office 2007 having a dependency on
I really only care about having office suites these days that have a really good user interface and a standard format that can be opened in the future. I hope Koffice will be that suite as I am a KDE user and I have been disappointed occasionally with Koffice, OpenOffice and StarOffice in their current states.
I am sick of developers wasting their time trying to catch up with Microsoft's flaws, being distracted from bigger problems.
Honestly, I don't think they should bother concentrating on compatibility with a dead
You should seriously look at the sourcecode that converts powerpoint stuff on the fly in OOo, it's scary what they need todo to just interpret it.
I tend to use OOo, and Staroffice a lot. They are really lacking interface-wise and there are times when I feel frustrated to the point that I start to wonder why I don't have Microsoft Office installed under Crossover because creating things like updating charts (under OOo 2.2) is so painful.
So, a sound system, okay. Not that I personally think it's that great of a system due to issues with sound on Vista.
Speak of the devil.
These are the things we know Microsoft did (more than what is on that list). Some of them can't happen anymore, some can - I am a little afraid to find out what things we haven't discovered yet.
I wouldn't put too much faith into a sticker.
"Your ass shall be seized in front of you, and it shall not be returned to you."
The furry are coming.
Resistance is futile.
And LiveJournal provides a jabber server. So what?
It's been done before, MySpace has that MySpaceIM thing.
I didn't see such a commotion over LJ providing Jabber or MySpace doing that MySpaceIM thing.
I even have doubts since I haven't even HEARD of them that they'd be any good.