Try the latest SUSE, 10.0. I agree with what you say about fonts; they always looked horrible to me. But SUSE has finally got it right. They looked great out of the box (and I don't even think it used the MS fonts by default, either.)
By default SUSE's fonts are anti-aliased and, oddly, the toggle box in KDE has no effect on this. But here is a quick way to get great fonts without anti-aliasing.
Does it really matter? Most newspapers offer much (if not all) of their content online. All that matters is ad revenue, and they can even get around the cost of printing and distribution if they publish to the web. I see a transition, not a death.
Yes, it really matters because right now advertisers aren't willing to pay so much to advertise on newspaper websites. (And perhaps why should they? Google's doing a better job.) The New York Times is a good example: their Web readership is higher than their print readership, yet the Web ads generate a small fraction of their total revenues.
Switching to Linux has been a slow process for me. Originally I never had much interest in Linux because I had always heard that the hardware support was horrible. I also heard "Unix" and thought of a black, DOS Prompt-like screen.
Then somewhere or another (probably through the KNOPPIX Hacks book) I heard of KNOPPIX. I didn't know live distros existed. So I gave it a shot. I was surprised at how well it detected my hardware--even my TV tuner card worked. Lots of good software was included. I noted that some software that costs a fortune for Windows (e.g. disk partitioners and imagers) are free with Linux.
Wow, I said--if Linux is this good running off a CD, it must be even better if you install it to your hard drive. So I tried that too. My first distro was Mandriva. I also tried Debian and Ubuntu. However, this was several months ago and in all these distros, KDE had a bug in the tag library that kept me from playing any of the MP3s I had ripped in Windows. That was a pretty big flaw. I also could not get my Canon inkjet printer to work; I had found some Canon binary drivers but I couldn't get them to work. I had also tried Ubuntu, but I just wasn't a GNOME fan. So I stuck with Windows for the most part.
Even so I kept Linux around. It was better for playing DVDs than the awful Windows software I had, and I could skip past the FBI warning. Linux also came with all the tools I needed to manage my website (e.g. ssh, sftp) where I had a hodgepodge of half-decent utilities to do the same in Windows.
Only recently did I start primarily using Linux. SUSE 10.0 came out, and I loved it. It offered the ease-of-use that Ubuntu proponents say they have (my Ubuntu experiences haven't been quite so good; the last Ubuntu had jerky DVD playback.) I had tried SUSE 9.3 earlier, but the installer kept freezing on me (I might have had a bad DVD.) SUSE 10.0 even works very well on my laptop, even with the wireless--and I had always heard that Linux on laptops is hell. SUSE 10.0 on my Dell Latitude D410 is nearly flawless--just a few suspend bugs. (Mandriva 2006 was a huge disappointment on my laptop, especially considering Mandriva's brag that they're the only certified Centrino distro.)
Not only did I switch because of SUSE 10.0, but I also switched because some things had changed for me since I had first tried Linux. The KDE taglib bug that locked me out of my MP3s had been fixed. (I had reported it, too!--but KDE's Scott Wheeler said it had been fixed before I reported it.) I got tired of pumping expensive ink into the Canon, so I bought a laser--and made sure it was Postscript, just in case I wanted to switch to Linux. I also stopped using the Yahoo Music rental service (which only works with WMP) because the DRM annoyed me too much.
I like Linux because so many great programs are free. Some of my Windows software for watching DVDs and watching TV are awful; the Linux programs for this are better--and free. K3B is much better than the Roxio and Sonic programs that came with my Dell. I am also starting to learn some programming; Linux comes with programming tools that would cost a fortune in Windows. I also love Linux because I can learn about how it works. The way Windows works, as well as its surrounding culture, does not encourage experimentation and learning the way Linux does.
I have always had Linux and free software to thank for my websites--I have a hobby website that gets hosted for $11.95 a month, and it has a features/price mixture that would be impossible with Windows hosting. Now I can thank Linux for teaching me more about how computers work.
The only thing I still need Windows for is MS Money--so far I haven't been happy with GnuCash or KMyMoney, and I can't get Money to work in Wine (yes, I know that it's rated gold in the Wine app DB, but I still can't get it to work.) It seems to me GnuCash is dying, but I might give it another look, and it does seeem that KMyMoney is coming along quickly.
'free' versions of anything lack meaningful support,
Oh, I see...does Red Hat Enterprise Linux lack meaningful support? Does Novell's SUSE Linux lack meaningful support?
Oh, maybe you mean that "free beer" software lacks meaningful support. After all, Red Hat and Novell only offer support if you pay for it. Maybe you're suggesting that paying a high price for proprietary software entitles the buyer to some support. So, let me check out support offerings for IE6 for Windows for folks who got a heat-sealed box at Best Buy.
Oh! Turns out that Microsoft charges $35 per support request!
I suppose everyone is entitled to his understanding of the purpose of the GPL, but it was not my understanding that the GPL is about having a community make free improvements to one's software. My understanding is that the GPL is about giving users freedoms, not about community giveback. The FSF seems to agree.
The FSF says nothing about the GPL and community giveback. It says only that the GPL exists to give users freedoms to use and modify software. Indeed, "The freedom to use a program means the freedom for any kind of person or organization to use it on any kind of computer system, for any kind of overall job, and without being required to communicate subsequently with the developer or any other specific entity." (emphasis mine)
Check out: Tunebite and Muvaudio. After buying or renting your DRMed files from iTunes, Napster, Yahoo, etc., these programs will play back and re-record your files into DRM free MP3s (or OGGs or even WMAs, if you're silly enough to want those.) The programs also tag your new MP3s for you.
In theory (and in practice I'm sure) this degrades the music but I only play them back on cheap headphones and $50 computer speakers. I can't tell the difference.
Two reasons people don't like MS Office: cost and lock-in.
OpenOffice (or as I would prefer, AbiWord and Gnumeric) solves the cost issue, and hopefully OpenDocument will solve the lock-in issue.
Google Office might solve the cost issue if it's free (like beer). It probably won't be free like speech, and it will certainly not solve the lock-in issue. Instead of being locked in to MS, one is now locked in to Yahoo, Google, or whomever. These companies will then be free to change their terms as they wish--witness Yahoo Mail: it used to have freebies like POP access, and they now charge for them.
Perhaps an open source Ajax Office would be vaguely interesting. It would still have security and speed issues, but at least then I could put it in a cheap Web hosting account and use it as I please. A proprietary Google Office is not even vaguely interesting, with its security and lock-in issues. This is especially true in the corporate sphere, which is the one that really matters in the office suite market.
OpenOffice gets all the press attention. I'm not sure why. It seems sluggish and takes an extremely long time to load, in Linux and Windows. The download is massive. My impression of Gnumeric and Abiword has been much more favorable in both Linux and Windows: they're sleek, quick to download, and quick to load up. Also, OO screws up even basic Excel imports, which Gnumeric handles without a hiccup.
I understand Abiword and Gnumeric can't replace the entire MS suite, but surely word processing and spreadsheet are the most common office suite applications (except maybe email, which OO doesn't have either.) I certainly don't understand why an integrated bloated "Office Suite" like OO is needed to replace MS Office, when Abiword and Gnumeric seem to me to be doing a much better job right now than OO.
We don't necessarily need a single office suite like OO to replace MS Office. Right now I would support Gnumeric and Abiword.
I don't know when these companies will ever learn that making cancellation difficult merely costs them business. People might have a myriad of reasons for cancelling AOL and, believe it or not, hating AOL is only one of those reasons. Perhaps they are moving out of the country, getting DSL, or don't need Internet access anymore. If AOL made it easier for these people to cancel (e.g. ONLINE) then at least these former customers would recommend AOL to someone else.
Instead, they force people to wait on hold and then argue with some dumb rep. After that, NO ONE would recommend AOL to anyone.
I had a similar experience with Vonage. Their service deteriorated; I wanted to cancel. Maybe I would have recommended that other people try Vonage. But after they forced me to wait on hold to cancel, I tell everyone I know to stay the hell away from Vonage.
Netflix, on the other hand, makes cancellation easy. Do it anytime, on the Internet. Maybe one day I'll just get tired of watching movies. "Netflix is great," I would tell my friends. "I saw so many movies that I just got tired of movies. But I wholeheartedly recommend them." Their easy cancellation policy is one reason I signed up for Netflix.
One tip: get a credit card from MBNA. They have disposable credit card numbers. If you want to cancel a recurring service, just kill off the credit card number.
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By default SUSE's fonts are anti-aliased and, oddly, the toggle box in KDE has no effect on this. But here is a quick way to get great fonts without anti-aliasing.
Yes, it really matters because right now advertisers aren't willing to pay so much to advertise on newspaper websites. (And perhaps why should they? Google's doing a better job.) The New York Times is a good example: their Web readership is higher than their print readership, yet the Web ads generate a small fraction of their total revenues.
Then somewhere or another (probably through the KNOPPIX Hacks book) I heard of KNOPPIX. I didn't know live distros existed. So I gave it a shot. I was surprised at how well it detected my hardware--even my TV tuner card worked. Lots of good software was included. I noted that some software that costs a fortune for Windows (e.g. disk partitioners and imagers) are free with Linux.
Wow, I said--if Linux is this good running off a CD, it must be even better if you install it to your hard drive. So I tried that too. My first distro was Mandriva. I also tried Debian and Ubuntu. However, this was several months ago and in all these distros, KDE had a bug in the tag library that kept me from playing any of the MP3s I had ripped in Windows. That was a pretty big flaw. I also could not get my Canon inkjet printer to work; I had found some Canon binary drivers but I couldn't get them to work. I had also tried Ubuntu, but I just wasn't a GNOME fan. So I stuck with Windows for the most part.
Even so I kept Linux around. It was better for playing DVDs than the awful Windows software I had, and I could skip past the FBI warning. Linux also came with all the tools I needed to manage my website (e.g. ssh, sftp) where I had a hodgepodge of half-decent utilities to do the same in Windows.
Only recently did I start primarily using Linux. SUSE 10.0 came out, and I loved it. It offered the ease-of-use that Ubuntu proponents say they have (my Ubuntu experiences haven't been quite so good; the last Ubuntu had jerky DVD playback.) I had tried SUSE 9.3 earlier, but the installer kept freezing on me (I might have had a bad DVD.) SUSE 10.0 even works very well on my laptop, even with the wireless--and I had always heard that Linux on laptops is hell. SUSE 10.0 on my Dell Latitude D410 is nearly flawless--just a few suspend bugs. (Mandriva 2006 was a huge disappointment on my laptop, especially considering Mandriva's brag that they're the only certified Centrino distro.)
Not only did I switch because of SUSE 10.0, but I also switched because some things had changed for me since I had first tried Linux. The KDE taglib bug that locked me out of my MP3s had been fixed. (I had reported it, too!--but KDE's Scott Wheeler said it had been fixed before I reported it.) I got tired of pumping expensive ink into the Canon, so I bought a laser--and made sure it was Postscript, just in case I wanted to switch to Linux. I also stopped using the Yahoo Music rental service (which only works with WMP) because the DRM annoyed me too much.
I like Linux because so many great programs are free. Some of my Windows software for watching DVDs and watching TV are awful; the Linux programs for this are better--and free. K3B is much better than the Roxio and Sonic programs that came with my Dell. I am also starting to learn some programming; Linux comes with programming tools that would cost a fortune in Windows. I also love Linux because I can learn about how it works. The way Windows works, as well as its surrounding culture, does not encourage experimentation and learning the way Linux does.
I have always had Linux and free software to thank for my websites--I have a hobby website that gets hosted for $11.95 a month, and it has a features/price mixture that would be impossible with Windows hosting. Now I can thank Linux for teaching me more about how computers work.
The only thing I still need Windows for is MS Money--so far I haven't been happy with GnuCash or KMyMoney, and I can't get Money to work in Wine (yes, I know that it's rated gold in the Wine app DB, but I still can't get it to work.) It seems to me GnuCash is dying, but I might give it another look, and it does seeem that KMyMoney is coming along quickly.
Oh, I see...does Red Hat Enterprise Linux lack meaningful support? Does Novell's SUSE Linux lack meaningful support?
Oh, maybe you mean that "free beer" software lacks meaningful support. After all, Red Hat and Novell only offer support if you pay for it. Maybe you're suggesting that paying a high price for proprietary software entitles the buyer to some support. So, let me check out support offerings for IE6 for Windows for folks who got a heat-sealed box at Best Buy.
Oh! Turns out that Microsoft charges $35 per support request!
The FSF says nothing about the GPL and community giveback. It says only that the GPL exists to give users freedoms to use and modify software. Indeed, "The freedom to use a program means the freedom for any kind of person or organization to use it on any kind of computer system, for any kind of overall job, and without being required to communicate subsequently with the developer or any other specific entity." (emphasis mine)
In theory (and in practice I'm sure) this degrades the music but I only play them back on cheap headphones and $50 computer speakers. I can't tell the difference.
OpenOffice (or as I would prefer, AbiWord and Gnumeric) solves the cost issue, and hopefully OpenDocument will solve the lock-in issue.
Google Office might solve the cost issue if it's free (like beer). It probably won't be free like speech, and it will certainly not solve the lock-in issue. Instead of being locked in to MS, one is now locked in to Yahoo, Google, or whomever. These companies will then be free to change their terms as they wish--witness Yahoo Mail: it used to have freebies like POP access, and they now charge for them.
Perhaps an open source Ajax Office would be vaguely interesting. It would still have security and speed issues, but at least then I could put it in a cheap Web hosting account and use it as I please. A proprietary Google Office is not even vaguely interesting, with its security and lock-in issues. This is especially true in the corporate sphere, which is the one that really matters in the office suite market.
I understand Abiword and Gnumeric can't replace the entire MS suite, but surely word processing and spreadsheet are the most common office suite applications (except maybe email, which OO doesn't have either.) I certainly don't understand why an integrated bloated "Office Suite" like OO is needed to replace MS Office, when Abiword and Gnumeric seem to me to be doing a much better job right now than OO.
We don't necessarily need a single office suite like OO to replace MS Office. Right now I would support Gnumeric and Abiword.
Instead, they force people to wait on hold and then argue with some dumb rep. After that, NO ONE would recommend AOL to anyone.
I had a similar experience with Vonage. Their service deteriorated; I wanted to cancel. Maybe I would have recommended that other people try Vonage. But after they forced me to wait on hold to cancel, I tell everyone I know to stay the hell away from Vonage.
Netflix, on the other hand, makes cancellation easy. Do it anytime, on the Internet. Maybe one day I'll just get tired of watching movies. "Netflix is great," I would tell my friends. "I saw so many movies that I just got tired of movies. But I wholeheartedly recommend them." Their easy cancellation policy is one reason I signed up for Netflix.
One tip: get a credit card from MBNA. They have disposable credit card numbers. If you want to cancel a recurring service, just kill off the credit card number.