Bah, humbug. All you need is to require a well-known make tool (such as gnumake), and have your supported (and supposedly tested) platforms' compilers and compile flags collected in a makefile the said make tool understands. It's very easy to provide a template makefile (to be included) for this purpose. Maybe in some place, I dunno, like the Internet.
In the olden days, we had polymake (aka BSD make), POSIX bare-bones make (in Solaris), and GNU make, plus some lesser known variants of the aforementioned. It was painful to write makefiles that would work in all of them, while still retaining some conditional behaviour in order to for example use the correct compiler flags for a given platform. All you need to solve this old problem, is to require one make (which, preferably, supports the advanced features of include and if) in the build environment.
Autotools solves the problem of requiring a specific make tool by requiring perl, m4, autoconf, automake, libtool, bash, GNU versions of cp and ls and awk, bison,... Configure always wants to check for things like my fortran compiler... And autotools still tend to fail when building is attempted in an environment which is not explicitly known and tested a priori (just as one example, try building gnats for Mac OS X - gnats uses autotools and autotools supports darwin9, so it should work, right?).
The grandpa was right. Autotools is evil, just like teaching Java to fledgling CS students. Things should be done right, not just with a bigger hammer and a helping of spaghetti.
I am not quite sure if Apple is actually looking for particularly perspective customers... They seem to be mostly after the pro-consumer sector. You know, people with a rather narrow perspective.
Same here. Even earlier, having the big single button and the whatwasitcalled, SideTrack thingy was just a huge efficiency improvement in using a laptop. This from a heavy X stuff user. YMMV of course, but I now also intensely dislike the awkward IBM button-thingy.
Ergonomics is something Apple does well, and ergonomics correctly applied leads to efficiency.
The powerpc ibooks (and afaik imacs, never had a powerpc one) did have that artificial restriction. One bit changed in the boot loader prompt was sufficient to remove the restriction (the "firmware hack"), and it was so common that in practice it didn't even affect warranty (yes, I tested this). The intel macbooks and imacs do not have the mirror-only restriction.
And I completely agree, the artificial restriction was annoying. I suspect that consumer feedback to that effect (mine included) affected the decision not to have it in the intel line-up, i.e. when a sufficient excuse came to remove the restriction without looking silly. The non-pro mac versions are better than pros also for some business stuff (desktops & road warrioring), in which mirror-only is a stupid restriction.
My main annoyance of Apple is the rev.A quality suckage (and the truly sucky quality of Leopard, up to and including 10.5.1). I'm the friggin' customer, not a beta tester. My time is worth a lot, and that's a premium I'm not willing to pay. Consequently I am no longer an early adopter... but it sucks to just drool at all the new stuff:-P
Improves Windows Vista's built-in file backup solution to include EFS encrypted files in the backup
Improves network connection scenarios by updating the logic that auto selects which network interface to use (e.g., should a laptop use wireless or wired networking when both are available)
Enhanced the BitLocker encryption support to volumes other than bootable volumes in Windows Vista (for Enterprise and Ultimate SKUs
Enables a standard user to invoke the CompletePC Backup application, provided that user can supply administrator credentials
Adds full support for the latest IEEE draft of 802.11n wireless networking
Enables support for hotpatching, a reboot-reduction servicing technology designed to maximize uptime. It works by allowing Windows components to be updated (or "patched") while they are still in use by a running process
SP1 reduces the number of UAC (User Account Control) prompts from 4 to 1 when creating or renaming a folder at a protected location
Reading the list in another way: this means that with Vista SP1, Windows users will now have modern, cutting edge features such as:
Vista can now boot on modern PCs!
Vista now reports the actual amount of RAM installed (although it can use only 2GB of it)!
Vista can now eject removable NTFS-formatted drives without data loss!
Vista can now create and participate in ad-hoc WLAN networks with >50% success rate*!
Vista now allows users to encrypt their data drives as well as the Vista system drive!
Vista can now back up user's files even when the hard drive is encrypted!
Vista now allows a user to actually run a backup!
Vista now support 802.11n WLAN networking!
Vista can now install fixes to software, without requiring a full system reboot!
Vista now allows a user to create a folder with just one (1) UAC verification prompt!
Et cetera... in other words -- I had no clue that Vista was this badly broken to begin with. Data loss when ejecting removable NTFS volumes? Doesn't know which network interface to use? Cannot encrypt other than the system drive? Cannot backup encrypted drives? 2GB RAM limit? WTF?!?!
Boggles the mind, quite frankly... If I'd had any of the abovementioned issues in my current home/work machine line-up, I'd had probably found a new system vendor very quickly. I'm constantly moving between a number of 802.11n and g and wired networks, both infra and ad-hoc, often multi-homed, with 2 or 3 virtual machines running various Linux versions, alongside MS Word and Powerpoint, on encrypted disks both internal and removable, and yes backups are critical as this is business use. (Although we know how to make all this happen also in Linux or BSD, having things just work was why me and most of our company has moved to macs...)
Just amazing.
*) 50% figure by NOOMA**, ****
**) Based on wording "improved success rate" taken to imply a significant*** failure rate.
***) Significant = double-digit percentage figure.
****) NOOMA = Numbers Out Of My Ass.
Not that my opinion matters, but I think a lot of really talented people are wasting their time getting pulled between OOXML and ODF.
I have been involved in some standardization efforts, and from what I can tell -- that's exactly the point.
In many standardization efforts there are participants whose sole purpose is to delay, confuse, or break the standard, or at least wear the active proponents down. Typically in these cases these disruptive participants are trying to protect their own product or implementation -- sometimes they are just playing for time to catch up to competitors in their R&D department, sometimes they are trying to water the standard down so that their proprietary solution would be more successful.
It's not very hard to see which would be the case in this instance.
I myself, and practically all of my friends, are in a similar position to yours. Easy try-before-you-buy leads to an increasing CD collection. Which all immediately get ripped to iTunes or similar for easy consumption. This is how the world works today.
The 6070 is a decent Series 40 phone. If you are OK with the low rez screen for e-mail and web access, and the somewhat crappy audio support, then this is most likely a better choice for you than the iPhone.
The N95 is a feature-rich Series 60 phone. If you are OK with a dog slow user interface, the phone crashing every now and then, owning a Windows XP/Vista PC for updating the somewhat buggy software every couple of months, and the somewhat crappy audio support, then this may be a better choice for you than the iPhone. The GPS functionality in the N95 is quite well done, so if you're a heavy user of TomTom or the like, and looking to upgrade both your GPS device and your phone, and you can live with the crappy software, then this could be a good choice for you.
The best Nokia phone currently available IMHO is the 6290. Folding 3G S40 with a decent feature set. Some units have problems sending attachments in e-mail (they plain old reboot) even with the latest software, and the battery life is in practice modest at best. We got one for the wife a couple of weeks ago and she's been reasonably happy.
Nokia does have the tech and the know-how to do an iPhone killer, but since they are trying to kill the S40 to favor the more expensive S60 software platform, they will never be able to make it. Certainly none of their current offerings compete with the key points of the iDevice: regular-Joe usability for the selected features that are available, and coolness.
Airplanes typically don't stand up to serious attacks. I'm not sure where you're trying to go with this analogy.
I was actually thinking more of the space part of aerospace... sort of trying to make a point that when cost of software failure is sufficiently high, the software will be very rigorously un-sucked prior to launch. Whereas in non-space-exploration kind of thing the cost of failure is typically less than what decent testing would have cost in the first place -- except when people die, and stuff -- and in any case the cost is carried by the software user and not the vendor.
It is, for the software vendor. The software vendor gets to push the cost of un-sucking the code to the consumers who actually need suck-less code. Of course the consumers never get that, they get to mitigate threats instead, which is almost as good. Sort of.
Funny that "threat mitigation" doesn't exist in the aerospace industry...
OMFG. The last link actually promotes the Nokia E70.
Yes, it's a nice piece of kit. I own one. I use it as little as possible. Except for beating puppies with. People don't bring me puppies much, anymore.
The S60 software sucks golf balls through a garden hose with the force of a 10 beaufort hurricane. With the nice keyboard, I can type fast enough to crash the phone without fail. The stupid software is too slow to handle the friggin' input. And don't even get me started on how ridiculously slow it is in doing other things, like...well, anything. Opening the addressbook. Viewing a received SMS. Try to take a photo of a snail -- nope, missed it, the object of your photographic passion already disappeared into the horizon! Sometimes it's somewhat snappy when you do the same thing for the second time. Except that you don't usually want to. You would have wanted it done the first friggin time.
The old S40 based model with the same keyboard design was actually a quite good phone. Naturally it was discontinued as soon as the crappy S60 look-alike came out.
I don't have an iPhone, but I will definitely try one out when they appear in shops around here. Nothing sucks as badly as a S60 Nokia.
That way if you saw 8555 and 7999 you could easily tell that the latter is the maxed out version of the previous revision of the core [and likely faster].
Bu... but... but that would make sense. I mean, people could actually see which was older or newer, or better suited for their use. How do you expect the manufacturer to be able to both a) crank out new versions with high premium prices, and b) still manage to sell off old stock with a scheme like this?!
Pfft. How un-capitalistic.
By the way: my c2d macbook pro fried the other day and was shuffled to service. I dug my old ibook G4 (Freescale 7448 CPU -- their numbering scheme is eerily like what you described!) out from the soon-to-be-trash pile to act as a temporary replacement, restored backups, and you know what? For 90% of the stuff I do (for work), the only effective difference I see that the battery lasts twice as long.
Argh. I wish someone made a modernized, OSX compatible laptop using the old 'books as templates... stuff in a Freescale 8641D CPU, some low-power pci-e GPU (x1300?), and a lcd-backlit screen... this update should consume the same wattage than the G4 I'm using now, and have modern-ish oomph. Grr. I wants that instead of new names for Intel's power drainers.
So if the submitter has a problem with Chinese products because they backed the oppressive myanmar government then he should also boycott US products due to us backing Saddam and various other tyrannical dictators.
You make a good point, sir.
I'm european, and I have boycotted US products for years now, for the reasons you mention, among others. Due to the collapsing $, US-made things are cheap, so there are temptations -- for example, Chrysler makes semi-decent cars which are quite cheap here. Still I bought a Korean car instead. I eat often in fast food places and McD's is the cheapest, but I choose to use locals instead. Most entertainment produced in the US is fast food too and it's easy to find more entertaining alternatives. And so on. I am voting with my wallet, and I know I'm not alone in this. So what you posit perhaps in sarcasm is in fact happening.
The only real thing that I haven't found a non-US replacement is Apple. And their products are made in China. Grr, argh.
(Yes, I am not idealistic enough to actually inconvenience myself...)
So at that point, the Finnish guy will take out his shiny N-Series Nokia Smartphone (with a REAL Operating System, with REAL applications, a REAL SDK and a lot of freedon to offer) and tell you to go stick your iPhone where the sun don't shine, because it's the only thing he would think about doing with it.
Erhm... I'm a Finnish guy and I have been actually working with this tech. Sure, the Nokia smartphones have a lot of features -- but I'd ditch one in a heartbeat for a good user experience. And "REAL OS"... you must be joking, right? "REAL SDK"... hehheh... (= the sound of laughter typed in Finnish)
I actually recently did toss my 3G, big-screen E70 for a measly GPRS-only Sony-Ericsson K750i, with a superior user interface (where you don't have to wait for 2..30 seconds for a keypress to be followed with an action, which may also be a crash).
Yes, there is a market for the iPhone even in Finland, the Nokia country -- even if it was 2G-only, which I don't believe it will be once it hits these markets.
I think the main tipping point for public Linux adoption will occur when...
The little devil (who has flame retardant underwear) in me urges me to point out that actually, Open Source != Linux. Linux just tends to be the most well-known "easy" OSS keyword to mention. Even considering that the Japanese are talking about server platforms (i.e. OSS like OpenOffice or Gnome are not obvious candidates).
I still prefer the BSDs as small-to-medium-scale server-side platforms, for their much more controlled life cycle and internal consistency. Linux is popular in home use, which is why we're seeing a lot of fresh sysadmins writing "bash scripts"... ergh.
Note that I'm not saying Linux is not a viable or even good server platform. It is. It's just not the only OSS one, or even best for all purposes.
No wonder Microsoft is scared and trying to pull FOSS patent issues out of their sleeve. They really do need to hang on to their existing customers with their bare teeth... competing with products seems to be something they are unable to do these days (well, ever, really).
Actually, for all practical purposes, it does. The Linux kernel is a bit iffy, but all userland Linux binaries run just fine. The Linux syscall emulation works really well.
This does not come as a surprise for people having worked in IT and with OSS for some time.
Now, if this report gets public bodies to use and require use of OO/ODF, the large corporations (whose customers or legislators the public bodies tend to be) might move to OO/ODF as well, and then also us small subcontractors could finally junk the P-O-S, all-defaults-are-nonsensical, pay-for-incompatible-upgrades MSOffice. Someone just needs to get the ball rolling...
Damn, it's good to see the EU bureaucracy sometimes produce sensible results!
Slashdot Mirror
<offtopic>
Bah, humbug. All you need is to require a well-known make tool (such as gnumake), and have your supported (and supposedly tested) platforms' compilers and compile flags collected in a makefile the said make tool understands. It's very easy to provide a template makefile (to be included) for this purpose. Maybe in some place, I dunno, like the Internet.
In the olden days, we had polymake (aka BSD make), POSIX bare-bones make (in Solaris), and GNU make, plus some lesser known variants of the aforementioned. It was painful to write makefiles that would work in all of them, while still retaining some conditional behaviour in order to for example use the correct compiler flags for a given platform. All you need to solve this old problem, is to require one make (which, preferably, supports the advanced features of include and if) in the build environment.
Autotools solves the problem of requiring a specific make tool by requiring perl, m4, autoconf, automake, libtool, bash, GNU versions of cp and ls and awk, bison, ... Configure always wants to check for things like my fortran compiler... And autotools still tend to fail when building is attempted in an environment which is not explicitly known and tested a priori (just as one example, try building gnats for Mac OS X - gnats uses autotools and autotools supports darwin9, so it should work, right?).
The grandpa was right. Autotools is evil, just like teaching Java to fledgling CS students. Things should be done right, not just with a bigger hammer and a helping of spaghetti.
</offtopic>
I am not quite sure if Apple is actually looking for particularly perspective customers... They seem to be mostly after the pro-consumer sector. You know, people with a rather narrow perspective.
Same here. Even earlier, having the big single button and the whatwasitcalled, SideTrack thingy was just a huge efficiency improvement in using a laptop. This from a heavy X stuff user. YMMV of course, but I now also intensely dislike the awkward IBM button-thingy.
Ergonomics is something Apple does well, and ergonomics correctly applied leads to efficiency.
The powerpc ibooks (and afaik imacs, never had a powerpc one) did have that artificial restriction. One bit changed in the boot loader prompt was sufficient to remove the restriction (the "firmware hack"), and it was so common that in practice it didn't even affect warranty (yes, I tested this). The intel macbooks and imacs do not have the mirror-only restriction.
And I completely agree, the artificial restriction was annoying. I suspect that consumer feedback to that effect (mine included) affected the decision not to have it in the intel line-up, i.e. when a sufficient excuse came to remove the restriction without looking silly. The non-pro mac versions are better than pros also for some business stuff (desktops & road warrioring), in which mirror-only is a stupid restriction.
My main annoyance of Apple is the rev.A quality suckage (and the truly sucky quality of Leopard, up to and including 10.5.1). I'm the friggin' customer, not a beta tester. My time is worth a lot, and that's a premium I'm not willing to pay. Consequently I am no longer an early adopter... but it sucks to just drool at all the new stuff :-P
You, Sir, are an exceptionally well-versed and insightful Christian. I was rather impressed by your well-considered analysis. Kudos.
Isn't it funny how that sounds like a virus?
As an IT professional, I would like to highlight a few additional items (please do bear with me, a point should follow :-)
Reading the list in another way: this means that with Vista SP1, Windows users will now have modern, cutting edge features such as:
Et cetera... in other words -- I had no clue that Vista was this badly broken to begin with. Data loss when ejecting removable NTFS volumes? Doesn't know which network interface to use? Cannot encrypt other than the system drive? Cannot backup encrypted drives? 2GB RAM limit? WTF?!?!
Boggles the mind, quite frankly... If I'd had any of the abovementioned issues in my current home/work machine line-up, I'd had probably found a new system vendor very quickly. I'm constantly moving between a number of 802.11n and g and wired networks, both infra and ad-hoc, often multi-homed, with 2 or 3 virtual machines running various Linux versions, alongside MS Word and Powerpoint, on encrypted disks both internal and removable, and yes backups are critical as this is business use. (Although we know how to make all this happen also in Linux or BSD, having things just work was why me and most of our company has moved to macs...)
Just amazing.
*) 50% figure by NOOMA**, ******) Based on wording "improved success rate" taken to imply a significant*** failure rate.
***) Significant = double-digit percentage figure.
****) NOOMA = Numbers Out Of My Ass.
That's SOP in the Bush administrations' "War on Terra".
War on Terra... what a shiveringly horrible articulation of dubya's agenda...
Not that my opinion matters, but I think a lot of really talented people are wasting their time getting pulled between OOXML and ODF.
I have been involved in some standardization efforts, and from what I can tell -- that's exactly the point.
In many standardization efforts there are participants whose sole purpose is to delay, confuse, or break the standard, or at least wear the active proponents down. Typically in these cases these disruptive participants are trying to protect their own product or implementation -- sometimes they are just playing for time to catch up to competitors in their R&D department, sometimes they are trying to water the standard down so that their proprietary solution would be more successful.
It's not very hard to see which would be the case in this instance.
<nitpick>
Most C programmers do not consider printf(3) a system call.
Most C++ programmers I know of are heavy users of assert(3). But maybe that's just a local phenomenon.
I know a lot of consultants, and from my perspective just the opposite holds true... *shudder*
Most users of computers have a lot of security in their machines. Since Windows dominates the marketplace, that security is indeed typically not on.
</nitpick>
"Even when all that remained was a head on a stick, the male turkeys remained turned on."
Strangely appropriate for slashdot...
I myself, and practically all of my friends, are in a similar position to yours. Easy try-before-you-buy leads to an increasing CD collection. Which all immediately get ripped to iTunes or similar for easy consumption. This is how the world works today.
No, you are not the only one...
The 6070 is a decent Series 40 phone. If you are OK with the low rez screen for e-mail and web access, and the somewhat crappy audio support, then this is most likely a better choice for you than the iPhone.
The N95 is a feature-rich Series 60 phone. If you are OK with a dog slow user interface, the phone crashing every now and then, owning a Windows XP/Vista PC for updating the somewhat buggy software every couple of months, and the somewhat crappy audio support, then this may be a better choice for you than the iPhone. The GPS functionality in the N95 is quite well done, so if you're a heavy user of TomTom or the like, and looking to upgrade both your GPS device and your phone, and you can live with the crappy software, then this could be a good choice for you.
The best Nokia phone currently available IMHO is the 6290. Folding 3G S40 with a decent feature set. Some units have problems sending attachments in e-mail (they plain old reboot) even with the latest software, and the battery life is in practice modest at best. We got one for the wife a couple of weeks ago and she's been reasonably happy.
Nokia does have the tech and the know-how to do an iPhone killer, but since they are trying to kill the S40 to favor the more expensive S60 software platform, they will never be able to make it. Certainly none of their current offerings compete with the key points of the iDevice: regular-Joe usability for the selected features that are available, and coolness.
Airplanes typically don't stand up to serious attacks. I'm not sure where you're trying to go with this analogy.
I was actually thinking more of the space part of aerospace... sort of trying to make a point that when cost of software failure is sufficiently high, the software will be very rigorously un-sucked prior to launch. Whereas in non-space-exploration kind of thing the cost of failure is typically less than what decent testing would have cost in the first place -- except when people die, and stuff -- and in any case the cost is carried by the software user and not the vendor.
It is, for the software vendor. The software vendor gets to push the cost of un-sucking the code to the consumers who actually need suck-less code. Of course the consumers never get that, they get to mitigate threats instead, which is almost as good. Sort of.
Funny that "threat mitigation" doesn't exist in the aerospace industry...
OMFG. The last link actually promotes the Nokia E70.
Yes, it's a nice piece of kit. I own one. I use it as little as possible. Except for beating puppies with. People don't bring me puppies much, anymore.
The S60 software sucks golf balls through a garden hose with the force of a 10 beaufort hurricane. With the nice keyboard, I can type fast enough to crash the phone without fail. The stupid software is too slow to handle the friggin' input. And don't even get me started on how ridiculously slow it is in doing other things, like ...well, anything. Opening the addressbook. Viewing a received SMS. Try to take a photo of a snail -- nope, missed it, the object of your photographic passion already disappeared into the horizon! Sometimes it's somewhat snappy when you do the same thing for the second time. Except that you don't usually want to. You would have wanted it done the first friggin time.
The old S40 based model with the same keyboard design was actually a quite good phone. Naturally it was discontinued as soon as the crappy S60 look-alike came out.
I don't have an iPhone, but I will definitely try one out when they appear in shops around here. Nothing sucks as badly as a S60 Nokia.
That way if you saw 8555 and 7999 you could easily tell that the latter is the maxed out version of the previous revision of the core [and likely faster].
Bu... but... but that would make sense. I mean, people could actually see which was older or newer, or better suited for their use. How do you expect the manufacturer to be able to both a) crank out new versions with high premium prices, and b) still manage to sell off old stock with a scheme like this?!
Pfft. How un-capitalistic.
By the way: my c2d macbook pro fried the other day and was shuffled to service. I dug my old ibook G4 (Freescale 7448 CPU -- their numbering scheme is eerily like what you described!) out from the soon-to-be-trash pile to act as a temporary replacement, restored backups, and you know what? For 90% of the stuff I do (for work), the only effective difference I see that the battery lasts twice as long.
Argh. I wish someone made a modernized, OSX compatible laptop using the old 'books as templates... stuff in a Freescale 8641D CPU, some low-power pci-e GPU (x1300?), and a lcd-backlit screen... this update should consume the same wattage than the G4 I'm using now, and have modern-ish oomph. Grr. I wants that instead of new names for Intel's power drainers.
Umm but you're not boycotting slashdot?
Of course not. What actual impact would boycotting slashdot have?
Besides, this is where actually mentally active americans seem to hang out...
So if the submitter has a problem with Chinese products because they backed the oppressive myanmar government then he should also boycott US products due to us backing Saddam and various other tyrannical dictators.
You make a good point, sir.
I'm european, and I have boycotted US products for years now, for the reasons you mention, among others. Due to the collapsing $, US-made things are cheap, so there are temptations -- for example, Chrysler makes semi-decent cars which are quite cheap here. Still I bought a Korean car instead. I eat often in fast food places and McD's is the cheapest, but I choose to use locals instead. Most entertainment produced in the US is fast food too and it's easy to find more entertaining alternatives. And so on. I am voting with my wallet, and I know I'm not alone in this. So what you posit perhaps in sarcasm is in fact happening.
The only real thing that I haven't found a non-US replacement is Apple. And their products are made in China. Grr, argh.
(Yes, I am not idealistic enough to actually inconvenience myself...)
So at that point, the Finnish guy will take out his shiny N-Series Nokia Smartphone (with a REAL Operating System, with REAL applications, a REAL SDK and a lot of freedon to offer) and tell you to go stick your iPhone where the sun don't shine, because it's the only thing he would think about doing with it.
Erhm... I'm a Finnish guy and I have been actually working with this tech. Sure, the Nokia smartphones have a lot of features -- but I'd ditch one in a heartbeat for a good user experience. And "REAL OS"... you must be joking, right? "REAL SDK"... hehheh... (= the sound of laughter typed in Finnish)
I actually recently did toss my 3G, big-screen E70 for a measly GPRS-only Sony-Ericsson K750i, with a superior user interface (where you don't have to wait for 2..30 seconds for a keypress to be followed with an action, which may also be a crash).
Yes, there is a market for the iPhone even in Finland, the Nokia country -- even if it was 2G-only, which I don't believe it will be once it hits these markets.
I think the main tipping point for public Linux adoption will occur when...
The little devil (who has flame retardant underwear) in me urges me to point out that actually, Open Source != Linux. Linux just tends to be the most well-known "easy" OSS keyword to mention. Even considering that the Japanese are talking about server platforms (i.e. OSS like OpenOffice or Gnome are not obvious candidates).
I still prefer the BSDs as small-to-medium-scale server-side platforms, for their much more controlled life cycle and internal consistency. Linux is popular in home use, which is why we're seeing a lot of fresh sysadmins writing "bash scripts"... ergh.
Note that I'm not saying Linux is not a viable or even good server platform. It is. It's just not the only OSS one, or even best for all purposes.
No wonder Microsoft is scared and trying to pull FOSS patent issues out of their sleeve. They really do need to hang on to their existing customers with their bare teeth... competing with products seems to be something they are unable to do these days (well, ever, really).
Actually, for all practical purposes, it does. The Linux kernel is a bit iffy, but all userland Linux binaries run just fine. The Linux syscall emulation works really well.
This does not come as a surprise for people having worked in IT and with OSS for some time.
Now, if this report gets public bodies to use and require use of OO/ODF, the large corporations (whose customers or legislators the public bodies tend to be) might move to OO/ODF as well, and then also us small subcontractors could finally junk the P-O-S, all-defaults-are-nonsensical, pay-for-incompatible-upgrades MSOffice. Someone just needs to get the ball rolling...
Damn, it's good to see the EU bureaucracy sometimes produce sensible results!