Quoting Federico Sevilla III ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): > I got this on the PH-CyberView mailing list. It's an interesting piece > and is perhaps quite valid, too. Comments?
David Coursey's job is to write columns that deliberately troll the Ziff-Davis readership, so they'll mob his on-line columns, spend time writing impassioned TalkBacks, spend time arguing about them on the Ziff-Davis Web forums, and of course wander around other parts of the ZD empire (which of course carefully avoids linking to anything else). That, in turn, creates banner-ad revenues, which make ZD rich and justify his salary. Everybody wins, except you, the reader.[1] Coursey inherited the Troll Master throne from Jesse Berst[2], who seems to have retired from "Anchor Desk" (ZD troll central). And of course, if he has any notion of licensing issues, and what the term "open source" means, he carefully hides it when he writes these rile-the-readership columns. Because those are totally alien concepts to his target audience. > Personally I'm "happy" with the bare-bones-basic stuff of Linux on the > desktop. But perhaps that's because I don't need much from my desktop, > anyway. Indeed, it depends on what your aim is. If the aim is defined as maintaining 100% compatibility with Microsoft's captive userbase, as the latter ascends the mandatory upgrade treadmill, there will be occasional failures, and the obvious cure is remote access from one's Linux desktop box to individual Win32 applications running remotely on the Win32 machine du jour -- accessed over the LAN using VNC, TightVNC, TridiaVNC, x0rfbserver, X11, LBX, Citrix ICA, or MLView DXPC (or using a KVM switch). On the other hand, if you just need functional satisfactory software, I think you're _better off_ on Linux/X11 -- except in a couple of areas (group scheduling, project management). > I feel there's a void in the area of the office suite, though. Personally, I think the idea of an "office suite" -- a word processor, spreadsheet, database, and presentation package joined at the hip -- is a horrible idea. But "chacun a son gout". > There's news about StarOffice 6.0 not being free except on Solaris, > though. Many companies refused to consider using StarOffice 5.2 because it didn't cost anything. Odd, but true. > Is OpenOffice ready for primetime? It's usable, and much less annoying than StarOffice 5.2. The first things you notice are that it's smaller, faster, and doesn't take over your screen in that "I am your desktop" fashion. > How about the "smaller" counterparts (AbiWord, Gnumeric)? I like Gnumeric a _lot_. It's really a standout. AbiWord is serviceable, but I usually just use vim. KWord is light and fast, but still a little rough. Here's some text I posted elsewhere about options in several "desktop" categories: ---<snip>--- Date: Fri, 8 Feb 2002 09:28:09 -0800 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [ILUG] Advice on setting up Linux please Quoting John Flanagan ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): > My main use for the PC at the moment is dial-up internet access using > ICQ, Internet Explorer, Outlook Express. Remember what I said about Linux cultural assumptions and habits? Bear in mind that you'll be hearing mostly from technical users who are network-centric, who prefer lighter tools and shy from "integration", who will go to some lengths to have no-hassle hardware and open-source software instead of proprietary competitors, and who are not allergic to the command line and getting one's hands dirty. Modems: The following will tend to make your life difficult: o PCI "winmodems" (http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/#winmodem) o USB in general, and USB winmodems in particular o ISA internal modems whose serial ports are ISA Plug'n'Play devices o (sometimes) ISA internal modems generally The following is absolutely optimal: o good-quality external modem connectable to an RS-232C serial port Most of the above is equally true on any OS. You'll just find more people who acknowledge the truth of the matter, using Linux. Web browsers, open source: o Mozilla <= I use o Konqueror <= I use o Galeon o Skipstone Web browsers, proprietary: o Netscape Communicator/Navigator 4.78 (and so on) o Netscape Communicator/Navigator 6.1 o Opera browser All the browser options are detailed here: http://kmself.home.netcom.com/Linux/FAQs/browsers.html Some Linux users will elect to install the Shockwave Flash plug-in, which is proprietary. MUAs (Mail User Agents), graphical: o Ximian Evolution: http://ximian.com/products/ximian_evolution/ o KMail: http://devel-home.kde.org/~kmail/ o Sylpheed: http://sylpheed.good-day.net/ o Mahogany: http://mahogany.sourceforge.net/ o Aethera: http://www.thekompany.com/projects/aethera/ o Post Office: http://www.tarball.net/postoffice/ o Pronto: http://muhri.net/pronto/ o Spruce: http://spruce.sourceforge.net/ o Balsa: http://www.newton.cx/balsa/ MUAs, console, open source: o Mutt: http://www.mutt.org/ <= I use MUAs, console, proprietary: o Pine: http://www.cac.washington.edu/pine/ > I also use it for some spreadsheets, Spreadsheets, graphical, open source: o gnumeric: http://www.gnome.org/projects/gnumeric/ <= I use o Kspread: http://www.koffice.org/kspread/ o Calc in OpenOffice: http://www.openoffice.org/ o SIAG: http://siag.nu/ o xspread: http://www.mnis.fr/home/linux/appli/spreadsheet/xspread.html Spreadsheets, console, open source: o sc o oleo Spreadsheets, graphical, proprietary: o NExS: http://www.greytrout.com/ o WingZ and WingZ Professional: http://www.wingz.com/ o StarCalc inside Sun StarOffice: http://www.sun.com/software/star/staroffice/ o Xess / Xesslite: http://www.ais.com/ o Vistasource's ApplixWare Office (suite) aka AnyWhere Desktop, http://www.vistasource.com/products/ (This was formerly from Applix, and was also available from SuSE as Linux Office Suite.) The redoubtable Christopher Browne has pages on Linux spreadsheets as well as on practically anything else you want to know about Linux software: http://www.cbbrowne.com/info/spreadsheetscomm.html > developing a small personal website You may want to know about these (all open source): o Bluefish: http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/essays/forking.html o Quanta Plus: http://quanta.sourceforge.net/ o PHP4 (especially on the server end): http://www.php.net/ And of course Christopher Browne has relevant material: http://www.cbbrowne.com/info/htmltools.html > and an occasional bit of programming using VB. Depending on whether you like the language or the IDE/RAD tool, see: o KBasic (open source): http://freshmeat.net/projects/kbasic/ o Phoenix Object BASIC (proprietary): http://www.janus-software.com/phoenix_body.html o GNOME BASIC (open source): http://freshmeat.net/projects/gb/ or: o My list of known IDEs / RAD tools / GUI-builders on Linux: http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/#idedev But you might be happier doing Python development, or one of a variety of better-regarded languages. Although the tools to do object BASIC exist on Linux, hardly anyone uses them. ---<snip>--- Quoting Coursey from this point (even though dealing with Coursey is a waste of one's time): > The commercial Linux community, as represented by Red Hat Chairman Bob > Young, has come to the conclusion that Linux on the desktop is a > non-starter. This is of course not what Young said. > I'm talking about buying a Macintosh, of course. I like Macintoshes, and have two of them: They make great Linux boxes. ;-> > But running OS X would actually cost these Linux geeks money, and > that's something I am not sure any of them are willing to spend. OS X is actually best understood as version 5.0 of NeXTStep, rather than as MacOS. That's what it is, under the hood. It's very pretty (even if it's a big sluggish and memory-hungry), and, if you're wedded to legacy proprietary applications, it's a good choice. My wife and mother-in-law have iBooks and a G3 tower running it, and find it works well. As a NeXTStep variant, it's even built on a decent (but eccentric, and slow) open-source BSD foundation, Apple Darwin. But, of course, the Quartz/Aqua Display-PDF default graphics engine, print engine, administrative tools, and multimedia applications are quite proprietary. I've tried to load Apple Darwin for x86 on about a dozen machines, and it's so far always failed. Apparently, the x86 port has a very narrow hardware-compatibility list. I was going to run that plus XFree86, for the sheer fun of it, and to see how it stacks up against FreeBSD. Some day, I'll find an x86 hard drive host adapter it likes. [1] There's an old saying from Usenet about this: "YHBT. YHL. HAND." (You Have Been Trolled. You Have Lost. Have A Nice Day.) [2] Whom I'm fond of referring to, in a historical reference to an earlier American journalistic embarrassment, as "Jesse Randolph Berst". (And you guys would probably regard Mr. Hearst even more unfondly than I do.) -- "Is it not the beauty of an asynchronous form of discussion that one can go and make cups of tea, floss the cat, fluff the geraniums, open the kitchen window and scream out it with operatic force, volume, and decorum, and then return to the vexed glowing letters calmer of mind and soul?" -- The Cube, forum3000.org _ Philippine Linux Users Group. 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