Today, Jim Ryan gleaned this insight:
> But it also made me think, "why do I always end up back on Windows?". The
> answer for that is it's just easier to get my day to day work done. I read
> my mail, check my appointments, pay some bills, read news groups, and browse
> the web. I think that's probably pretty typical use. So why use Windows
> for that and not any of my Linux boxes?
I'll try to address as much of this as I can. Some of these things I just
have no need for, and you've said you don't like Netscape. I personally
like Netscape a lot, so I don't know what makes you say that.
On RedHat (and probably most RedHat-based systems) there is a problem with
Netscape crashing a lot. This is because of something RedHat did. There
is a bug report about it on their bugzilla site. Er, actually, there are
quite a few. The thing that helped me the most was:
http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=2711
Also make sure you're running the latest errata updates of Netscape.
Netscape does have bugs, and still crashes on me occasionally, but no more
so than my entire windows session crashes when I'm running that... At
least it doesn't take my whole session down with it, as many M$
applications do.
If you simply don't like it, I can't help you there...
Productivity
-------------
> I use Outlook for mail and contacts and appointments. Does anybody have a
> better application in Linux? That was a genuine question, not rhetorical,
> I'd like to know and try it.
To manage contacts and appointments, there are a slew of things you can
use. If you have a Palm Pilot, one of the best is gnome Personal
Information Manager (gnome-pim) because it can sync with your pilot.
As for e-mail, my experience supporting it tells me that virtually
ANYTHING is better than Outlook. Our Outlook users have the most
problems, invariably.
I like pine. It's text-mode only, but it has more features and
customizations than any other mailer I've come across. But there are
litterally dozens of mail readers for Linux. I also like Netscape for
reading mail, though it does have a few small annoyances. But I'm easily
annoyed, so I write those off.
Pine runs on Windows as well, I believe, and if I ever find myself stuck
back on a windows machine, I'll be looking for the Windows port. It
doesn't work with exchange (as an exchange client), but I wouldn't work at
a company that uses exchange for mail ever again.
Finances
---------
> I use Quicken to do my personal finance and pay bills, etc. I use
> QuickBooks to invoice.
It seems the Quicken people should do a Linux port. I hear this complaint
from a lot of people, and I suggest you call them and tell them you need
their products to run on Linux. If enough people complain, they WILL
listen.
I'm not a big money software guy, but as an alternative on Linux, there
are a few things out there. Someone else may be able to answer this
better. The one that I'm most familiar with is GNU Cash:
http://www.gnucash.org
It does everything I need it to, but then, as I said, I'm not much of a
money software guy.
You may want to take a look at Moneydance. I don't know much about it, but
it purports to be a quicken clone written in Java, so it's (theoretically)
completely cross-platform.
http://moneydance.net/
A quick search also turned up this page:
http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/finances.html
It appears to have links to tons of financial applications.
Web & News
-----------
> I use Gravity as a News reader. I haven't found anything even close under
> Linux, I'm just really hoping Microplanet ports.
Netscape. :) You'll no doubt have a lot of people tell you emacs is a
great news reader, and then there's xrn, trn, slrn, etc. I haven't used
any of these, but most of them are text-based. Netscape does a sufficient
job at reading newsgroups for me, for the most part, but I've gotten away
from reading news groups, because they're just loaded with spam and
garbage now. Mailing lists are usually much better.
> As for the web, I'm sorry, but Netscape under Linux just plain sucks. This
> is one I can't figure out, I would think they would jump on this
> opportunity, but it can't even come close to Explorer.
Don't know what to tell you there... I LIKE netscape. Try opera. You can
get it here:
http://www.opera.com/index.html
It's small and fast, but the Linux version is in Alpha testing. I saw the
windows version of it, and it was pretty nice. Haven't tried the Linux
version yet.
There are a number of other browsers for Linux, which work with varying
degrees of quality and available features. Gnome and KDE both have HTML
browsers (their file managers), and there is amaya, and several more.
Where to go from here
----------------------
As for where you can get find more options in the categories we've
discussed, or other kinds of Linux software, there are numerous software
indexes. Tucows now has a linux section. Prior to that there was another
Tucows-like site dedicated to linux software, but I've forgotten where it
was. For all I know, it may have merged with tucows. Someone else on the
list will probably know. You can also try these:
Linux Software Map
http://www.linux.org/apps/lsm.html
Gnome Software Map
http://www.gnome.org/applist/list-martin.phtml
KDE Software Map
http://www.kde.org/applications.html
Generic Linux Software Index
http://home.xnet.com/~blatura/linapps.shtml
Also, it's worth noting that many commercial software companies are
starting to port their stuff to Linux, and new companies are writing Linux
software all the time now. Try doing a basic web search for what you're
looking for. The aforementioned indexes tend to focus on FREE software.
If you prefer to pay, you are beginning to have more options.
--
PGP/GPG Public key at http://cerberus.ne.mediaone.net/~derek/pubkey.txt
------------------------------------------------------
Derek D. Martin | Unix/Linux Geek
[EMAIL PROTECTED] | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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