Linux-Misc Digest #881, Volume #27 Thu, 17 May 01 01:13:02 EDT
Contents:
Re: Frustrated (Michael Perry)
Re: How to log all connections? ("Jay")
Re: Frustrated ("Jay")
Re: Star Office -- I give up (Michael Perry)
Re: Star Office on Linux discussion? (Michael Perry)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Michael Perry)
Subject: Re: Frustrated
Date: Thu, 17 May 2001 04:50:59 -0000
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Wed, 16 May 2001 10:05:23 -0700, Christopher R. Carlen
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi:
>
> I have used Linux for 6 years. I try very hard to avoid using M$ for
> various reasons. I am posting to vent some frustration. Perhaps others
> are trying hard to do their work on Linux, and are frustrated too.
> Rather than saying something like, "I tried to use Linux, and it was too
> hard, so Linux sucks." (I hear people post like this often, after
> meager attempts to use Linux.) I am not taking that approach, because I
> understand the obstacles Linux faces, and has made so much progress in
> the face of. Considering those, it is really a far more remarkable
> system than M$ junk. But for those who develop for Linux, please listen
> to the users. Because ultimately it comes down to users. I have the
> intention of continuing to use Linux, because I want to be free. I am
> willing to pay for quality software.
>
> It is painful to use Linux to do work, because of the limited
> applications. I mean word processing, drawing, etc. Sometimes I have
> to do this office-type work. Other times I have to do scientific and
> engineering work. That can be painful too. What I mean is,
> applications for Linux frequently make me very frustrated.
>
> Often people say that the free apps are better than the commercial
> ones. Well, the fact is, that for doing work outside of the idealistic
> college environment where I suspect these sentiments are most often
> held, it is very difficult to do work, I mean professional level work,
> with Linux apps. But not impossible. I hope it continues to get
> better.
>
> The two apps I use that are of excellent quality:
>
> Mathematica (try to name a free app that can do what MMA does. Just
> try. No, I'm sorry, MuPad, Octave, etc. while very useful, don't even
> come close. Despite it's tremendous power, it is a little tricky to get
> MMA running sometimes on Linux, but the program itself is very mature.)
>
> Eagle (this mid-range professional schematic capture and PCB layout
> program is very good, and the only PCB program that at this point can be
> considered for professional work. Thank goodness Cadsoft decided to
> develop for Linux, or I would have to use Windoze 80% of the time,
> instead of the 5% I use it now.
>
> I had to pay for these programs. A lot of money too.
>
> I used to use Word Perfect for Win 3.1. It could do what I wanted, but
> it sucked real bad, crashing all the time, and stupid bugs. I paid a
> student price for Word Perfect 7.? for Linux, which was terrible. I
> mean, try to do complicated things like set precise margins in mailing
> labels, and god help you. Forget it. Here is a case of commercial
> software of really poor quality, but of course they eventually made it
> free for personal use, and why not, because if anybody knew before hand
> how bad it was, they'd never pay for it.
>
> Applixware which I also paid for was very good, although limited in
> power compared to WordPerfect. But relatively bug free, so I have no
> complaints.
>
> Now I am trying Star Office. I expected it to be a very stable, mature,
> and capable system. It is very capable, if it would only work
> reliably. I have tried to do a drawing, then copy/paste the drawing
> objects to a mailing label. I can't print it. It outputs a lengthy
> postscript file, but a printer or postscript viewer show only a blank
> page.
>
> Disappointment. I wonder if M$ Office could do what I want? I would
> try it except that I tried once to make labels in Word, and it was so
> complicated I gave up. It seemed that I couldn't just get a page of
> blank labels to appear, so I could just type manually. It wanted a
> database or something to merge with. Ugh. The user interface in
> Windoze in generable is so intolerably restrictive and disobedient that
> this is a main reason I use Linux. Star Office allows me to manually
> fill in a page of labels, but I can't print them. I wish I had time to
> modify the couple million lines of source code, but I have to get these
> labels done. I will find a workaround.
>
> Perhaps this is just a necessary consequence of the incredible
> complexity of these applications, that they will be filled with bugs.
> It's probably the same if I use M$ Office or Star Office, or whatever.
> So I'm not criticizing anyone's effort, just frustrated.
>
> I don't believe computing appliances are the future. The whole
> advantage of PCs is application integration. But I understand it is
> incredibly complex.
>
>
> --
> _______________________
> Christopher R. Carlen
> Sr. Laser/Optical Tech.
> Sandia National Labs
Well, I guess it depends on the definition of "work". Some of the work you
have defined could probably be done with a variety of Linux tools; but I
venture to guess not as easily with some other tools. My work these days is
probably not terribly demanding for Linux applications to deal with. I tend
to edit a document in StarOffice, print it, perhaps embed a spreadsheet as a
table or drawing. I don't do mailing labels so I cannot help there; but on
a whim have you searched at freshmeat for an application that would do what
you want? Here is what I found. I don't have time myself to investigate
each one; but you tell me...
http://freshmeat.net/projects/labelnation/
http://freshmeat.net/projects/slap/
But the real thing here is not the tool or what you need to "bend" to get a
tool to work. The real thing here is finding the right tool. I am convinced
that computers solve problems for us; but they also cause more problems to
crop up. Some people may write applications to deal with it; others may
choose another reality. My reality is that I use the tool that works the
best for the job I need done.
If I need something which I know beforehand that Star Presents cannot do, I
tend to boot into win4lin and do it. I don't like disappointment because it
takes time away from being productive. This to me is not selling out. Its
simply locating what will make finishing the job easier and then
implementing it. I understand the frustration. In a lot of ways, I am
frustrated with things like StarOffice and its insistence that you use its
crummy desktop manager to launch programs. I would use a tool like applix
but even the latest one seems rather primitive for some things. All in all,
the native linux version of WP was good.
The main message here is why feel frustrated or disappointed? Why not use
LInux to give you the tools you need to get the job done. I always thought
that was what these enabling technologies were all about. When I used to
use OS/2, I believed that OS/2's incarnation of win-os2 was better than
MS'es windows 3.1. It just seemed stable. OS/2 was known as the
integrating platform for a long time. The reality then and now to me is:
"use what it takes to get the job done". This could mean using a MS type
application or it could mean doing something else using sgml or something.
Part of the enjoyment for me is that I can define the tools, what I will
use, and how I manipulate them in Linux. I can even decide to boot windows
98 SE as just another application. That is truly empowering stuff.
Not the stuff that frustration is made of.
--
Michael Perry
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
====================
------------------------------
From: "Jay" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: alt.os.linux
Subject: Re: How to log all connections?
Date: Thu, 17 May 2001 05:00:34 GMT
You should see all login connections in /var/log/secure right? How about
enabling ipchains with the -l feature then you can see every single
connection in /var/log/messages.
ipchains -A input -l
"wroot" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:9dub9a$jre$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> Hi,
>
> How to log all connections? Can I log all foreign connections to my
machine
> regardless of their nature (http/ping/telnet/etc) and protocol (TCP/UDP)?
>
> Thanks
>
> Wroot
------------------------------
From: "Jay" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Frustrated
Date: Thu, 17 May 2001 05:00:33 GMT
There's MacIntosh not free but very capable. BeOS but I think it's mostly
for music and multimedia. I understand what you're saying. Soon everyone
will have a Linux software for you. As I see it there's $ Linux business in
1) streamlining and simplifying the user interface for ordinary users who
only want to surf, email, multimedia, write and print letters, use Quicken,
play games
2) selling quality software for ordinary users like Quicken, Quake III,
Wordperfect, ZoneAlarm, anti-virus, etc.
3) the free bells and whistles for enterprise users.
Personally I look for the distributors to bundle these packages on the
market and distinguish themselves from the each other. RH does a good job,
I'd thought Corel would have lead the pack on user friendliness and
usability, I don't know about the others.
"SilentNight" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:9dul4m$clf$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> Thank you. Now I know I am not alone. But continue with my frustration
> everyday
> with both $MS and Linux. Any other choice ? No, for me, at least now.
>
> SN
>
> ---
>
> "Christopher R. Carlen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> > Hi:
> >
> > I have used Linux for 6 years. I try very hard to avoid using M$ for
> > various reasons. I am posting to vent some frustration. Perhaps others
> > are trying hard to do their work on Linux, and are frustrated too.
> > Rather than saying something like, "I tried to use Linux, and it was too
> > hard, so Linux sucks." (I hear people post like this often, after
> > meager attempts to use Linux.) I am not taking that approach, because I
> > understand the obstacles Linux faces, and has made so much progress in
> > the face of. Considering those, it is really a far more remarkable
> > system than M$ junk. But for those who develop for Linux, please listen
> > to the users. Because ultimately it comes down to users. I have the
> > intention of continuing to use Linux, because I want to be free. I am
> > willing to pay for quality software.
> >
> > It is painful to use Linux to do work, because of the limited
> > applications. I mean word processing, drawing, etc. Sometimes I have
> > to do this office-type work. Other times I have to do scientific and
> > engineering work. That can be painful too. What I mean is,
> > applications for Linux frequently make me very frustrated.
> >
> > Often people say that the free apps are better than the commercial
> > ones. Well, the fact is, that for doing work outside of the idealistic
> > college environment where I suspect these sentiments are most often
> > held, it is very difficult to do work, I mean professional level work,
> > with Linux apps. But not impossible. I hope it continues to get
> > better.
> >
> > The two apps I use that are of excellent quality:
> >
> > Mathematica (try to name a free app that can do what MMA does. Just
> > try. No, I'm sorry, MuPad, Octave, etc. while very useful, don't even
> > come close. Despite it's tremendous power, it is a little tricky to get
> > MMA running sometimes on Linux, but the program itself is very mature.)
> >
> > Eagle (this mid-range professional schematic capture and PCB layout
> > program is very good, and the only PCB program that at this point can be
> > considered for professional work. Thank goodness Cadsoft decided to
> > develop for Linux, or I would have to use Windoze 80% of the time,
> > instead of the 5% I use it now.
> >
> > I had to pay for these programs. A lot of money too.
> >
> > I used to use Word Perfect for Win 3.1. It could do what I wanted, but
> > it sucked real bad, crashing all the time, and stupid bugs. I paid a
> > student price for Word Perfect 7.? for Linux, which was terrible. I
> > mean, try to do complicated things like set precise margins in mailing
> > labels, and god help you. Forget it. Here is a case of commercial
> > software of really poor quality, but of course they eventually made it
> > free for personal use, and why not, because if anybody knew before hand
> > how bad it was, they'd never pay for it.
> >
> > Applixware which I also paid for was very good, although limited in
> > power compared to WordPerfect. But relatively bug free, so I have no
> > complaints.
> >
> > Now I am trying Star Office. I expected it to be a very stable, mature,
> > and capable system. It is very capable, if it would only work
> > reliably. I have tried to do a drawing, then copy/paste the drawing
> > objects to a mailing label. I can't print it. It outputs a lengthy
> > postscript file, but a printer or postscript viewer show only a blank
> > page.
> >
> > Disappointment. I wonder if M$ Office could do what I want? I would
> > try it except that I tried once to make labels in Word, and it was so
> > complicated I gave up. It seemed that I couldn't just get a page of
> > blank labels to appear, so I could just type manually. It wanted a
> > database or something to merge with. Ugh. The user interface in
> > Windoze in generable is so intolerably restrictive and disobedient that
> > this is a main reason I use Linux. Star Office allows me to manually
> > fill in a page of labels, but I can't print them. I wish I had time to
> > modify the couple million lines of source code, but I have to get these
> > labels done. I will find a workaround.
> >
> > Perhaps this is just a necessary consequence of the incredible
> > complexity of these applications, that they will be filled with bugs.
> > It's probably the same if I use M$ Office or Star Office, or whatever.
> > So I'm not criticizing anyone's effort, just frustrated.
> >
> > I don't believe computing appliances are the future. The whole
> > advantage of PCs is application integration. But I understand it is
> > incredibly complex.
> >
> >
> > --
> > _______________________
> > Christopher R. Carlen
> > Sr. Laser/Optical Tech.
> > Sandia National Labs
>
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Michael Perry)
Subject: Re: Star Office -- I give up
Date: Thu, 17 May 2001 05:04:15 -0000
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Wed, 16 May 2001 13:35:33 -0700, Christopher R. Carlen
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I am using SO 5.2 on Suse Linux 7.1. I will summarize the problems I
> have encountered in the past two days trying this software for the first
> time. Perhaps some of this stuff
> can be resolved. The software is almost unusable with the amount of bugs
> I have encountered.
>
> 1. In Draw, I changed the zoom factor using the View menu, the rulers
> failed to rescale and then broke. Passing the mouse over the rulers
> caused them to rescale, but they no longer had cursors to track the
> mouse position. Selecting an object also failed to produce the tick
> marks on the ruler. Closing and opening the drawing fixed this. It
> hasn't happened again.
>
> 2. Numerous crashes, SO just says that some unrecoverable error has
> happened, and vanishes. Fortunately this hasn't corrupted any files, but
> it is too frequent an occurrence for "professional" software. It happens
> every 5-10 minutes or so with hard use.
>
> 3. After finishing my drawing, I created a File|New|Labels document. I
> set the format to Avery 5664 labels. I then copy/pasted my drawing
> objects to the labels. Then I tried to print. Blank page. Print to a .ps
> file. Also a blank page in the .ps viewer, although there is a lot of
> .ps generated. It seems that I cannot get anything, text or drawing
> objects to print from the labels. I can print the drawing though.
>
> 4. I experimented with printing the drawing. I can print it with the fit
> to page option. (I made the page format for the drawing 19"W x 3.5"H so
> SO warns me that it can't print it, then gives me options to fit to page
> (the page type selected in the printer options) or to posterize. Fitting
> to page worked Ok, but posterizing didn't work. Some hunks of my drawing
> printed, but others were just gone.
>
> 5. More experiments with labels. I made user-defined labels, and put
> some text on them. Amazingly, when I printed these user defined labels,
> something came out! But when I copied my drawing objects onto them, same
> old story, a blank page.
>
> 6. SO crashes with unrecoverable errors every few minutes. This is
> ridiculous.
>
> Well, I don't have time to continue as a Sun Microsystems beta tester
> for SO, so I guess I will have to give up and find other software.
> Perhaps the version number should be adjusted to 0.5.2? It is a shame
> because I had heard SO billed so many times as the office suite that can
> make Linux able to do everything M$ Windoze can do, but it unfortunately
> is of worse quality than M$ software. I have used Applixware for a
> few years, but it is weak on features. It is also very stable though. In
> fact I can hardly recall if it ever crashed. I was excited to see that
> Star Office Draw had good features for very precise drawing. But it is
> too buggy and unstable to get the nice drawing on my screen onto a piece
> of paper. Very disappointing.
>
> Good luck Sun developers, I hope you folks can get SO to be a stable
> program some day. But you have a lot of work cut out for you it seems. I
> would even be willing to pay good money for SO if it worked well.
> --
> _______________________
> Christopher R. Carlen
> Sr. Laser/Optical Tech.
> Sandia National Labs
Well, I use StarOffice 5.2 on debian unstable with kernel 2.4.4, Xfree86
4.0.3 on a Athlon 1g machine with 384mb of memory and a GeForce 2mx card
with the nvidia drivers. I mention all this because I would never classify
performance even on this system as superlative. I use StarOffice to build
some pretty complex documents including ones with drawings from the stardraw
or whatever program but also graphical images from gimp or others. My only
finding is that StarOffice seems bloated the first time it starts and it
kicks off 7 different processes to fuel itself. I find it usable to build
rather complex sales-related proposals with lots of graphical elements,
drawings, spreadsheet tables, etc.
Some proposals I work on Starwriter will mess up and I have just come to
expect it. IN those occasions I revert to using Word 2000 in win4lin to
solve the problem. As I posted to another one of your posts on the same
subject, using the right tool for the job gives you the product.
I am no Staroffice lover. It has strange habits of running, printing,
saving sometimes. I have used it though to create documents in the hundreds
of pages with intermingled drawings and tables. So it can do it. My only
caveat is that your machine better have some guts. On my tbird it does not
hesitate to open them. ON my older K6 II 500, which runs linux very well
and had 384mb of memory, it stuttered along sometimes.
--
Michael Perry
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
====================
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Michael Perry)
Subject: Re: Star Office on Linux discussion?
Date: Thu, 17 May 2001 05:05:16 -0000
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Wed, 16 May 2001 07:57:56 -0700, Christopher R. Carlen
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi:
>
> I have used Applixware for a long time, which I like but I don't want to
> pay for an upgrade if Star Office is free, and Applix is a little too
> weak on features.
>
> So I am looking for some usenet, mailing list, or other forum to discuss
> using Star Office. I have looked at starnews.sun.com, but there is very
> little traffic there, considering what I assume to be the user base of
> Star Office. Also, they have groups for every little subcategory, which
> splits traffic up to much, that I think it reduces the effectiveness of
> the forum.
>
> And ideas appreciated.
>
> Thanks.
> --
> _______________________
> Christopher R. Carlen
> Sr. Laser/Optical Tech.
> Sandia National Labs
There are several forums that Sun hosts off of its main staroffice pages.
These are not newsgroups or mail to news gateways; but actual forums where
Star/Sun support answers.
--
Michael Perry
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
====================
------------------------------
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