FreeBSD as Desktop OS with support for Windows
Hi People I want to use FreeBSD as my desktop OS with Gnome but I still need to do Windows luser support. I have installed Gnome 2 on FreeBSD 4.7 Stable and now I'm trying to figure out what is the best solution. Does the Vmware port still work and or should I just install Samba and which Office Software would be best suited to use that is compatible with MS Word and Exel ? I know of Openoffice, Gnomeoffice and Staroffice but have had no experience using either. Your suggestions, help much appreciated. Kind Regards, Nelis To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message
Re: FreeBSD as Desktop OS with support for Windows
# [EMAIL PROTECTED] / 2002-11-28 16:14:38 +0200: Hi People I want to use FreeBSD as my desktop OS with Gnome but I still need to do Windows luser support. I have installed Gnome 2 on FreeBSD 4.7 Stable and now I'm trying to figure out what is the best solution. Does the Vmware port still work and or should I just install Samba and which Office Software would be best suited to use that is compatible with MS Word and Exel ? I know of Openoffice, Gnomeoffice and Staroffice but have had no experience using either. Your suggestions, help much appreciated. I use TightVNC instead of vmware. Works quite fine, and it's almost free (GPL). As for office software: all my attempts to use various incarnations ended in disasters: Koffice (~1 year ago): no Kapplication lasted longer than ~30 seconds AbiWord (june/july): 70% of attempts to save a short and simple .doc made Abi go in a tight loop or just die. I ended up using wv (/usr/ports/textproc/wv), which *did* work as advertised. OpenOffice (~1 month ago): crash! boom! bang! so, my advice would be: vmware or vnc. -- If you cc me or remove the list(s) completely I'll most likely ignore your message.see http://www.eyrie.org./~eagle/faqs/questions.html To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message
Re: FreeBSD as Desktop OS with support for Windows
On Thu, 28 Nov 2002, Roman Neuhauser wrote: # [EMAIL PROTECTED] / 2002-11-28 16:14:38 +0200: Hi People I want to use FreeBSD as my desktop OS with Gnome but I still need to do Windows luser support. I have installed Gnome 2 on FreeBSD 4.7 Stable and now I'm trying to figure out what is the best solution. Does the Vmware port still work and or should I just install Samba and which Office Software would be best suited to use that is compatible with MS Word and Exel ? I know of Openoffice, Gnomeoffice and Staroffice but have had no experience using either. Your suggestions, help much appreciated. I use TightVNC instead of vmware. Works quite fine, and it's almost free (GPL). As for office software: all my attempts to use various incarnations ended in disasters: Koffice (~1 year ago): no Kapplication lasted longer than ~30 seconds AbiWord (june/july): 70% of attempts to save a short and simple .doc made Abi go in a tight loop or just die. I ended up using wv (/usr/ports/textproc/wv), which *did* work as advertised. OpenOffice (~1 month ago): crash! boom! bang! so, my advice would be: vmware or vnc. My experience with OpenOffice 1.0.1 is much better than yours, I did a lot of tasks successfully. I use vmware (version 2) continuously with 4.x-R (in the moment 4.7-R) and it works very well. As far as I know there is no support for hosting the current vmware version 3 on FreeBSD. Best regards K. Heuer To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message
Re: FreeBSD as Desktop OS with support for Windows
On Thu, 28 Nov 2002, Roman Neuhauser wrote: I use TightVNC instead of vmware. Works quite fine, and it's almost free (GPL). As for office software: all my attempts to use various incarnations ended in disasters: [snip] so, my advice would be: vmware or vnc. www.realvnc.com The original vnc project from ATT has moved to become RealVNC. I've used tightvnc for months, but I recommend you look at realvnc. It's faster, more reliable and the graphics don't take a year to update over slow links. It also has cool support for bandwidth adjustments so it can pick the best encoding to use automatically. It works very well in my experience. You can even install it on a live remote system (which I've also done many times) by checking the 'resgister as service' and 'start vnc service' boxes in the installed. To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message
Re: FreeBSD as Desktop OS with support for Windows
# [EMAIL PROTECTED] / 2002-11-28 15:58:21 +0100: On Thu, 28 Nov 2002, Roman Neuhauser wrote: # [EMAIL PROTECTED] / 2002-11-28 16:14:38 +0200: which Office Software would be best suited to use that is compatible with MS Word and Exel ? I know of Openoffice, Gnomeoffice and Staroffice but have had no experience using either. I use TightVNC instead of vmware. Works quite fine, and it's almost free (GPL). As for office software: all my attempts to use various incarnations ended in disasters: Koffice (~1 year ago): no Kapplication lasted longer than ~30 seconds AbiWord (june/july): 70% of attempts to save a short and simple .doc made Abi go in a tight loop or just die. I ended up using wv (/usr/ports/textproc/wv), which *did* work as advertised. OpenOffice (~1 month ago): crash! boom! bang! so, my advice would be: vmware or vnc. My experience with OpenOffice 1.0.1 is much better than yours, I did a lot of tasks successfully. installed 1.0.1 from the port. the installer kept complaining about not being able to write files in ~/.kde/blah/blah/blah. no wonder, I avoid using it, and have never installed it on this box. i had to click skip like 150 times. disgusting! started openoffice, went File - Autopilot - Presentation (or some such). booom! instant crash. how long does it take to click through to that place? just a fraction of the time it takes OO to start. automatic save of native MS Office documents = automatic crash of OO. pasting a graph from a winword doc file = general failure in 70% cases. in 1 out of 10 crashes the PowerPoint lookalike comes back up dead. it does offer to recover the files, but then freezes. after another kill/start, it doesn't offer the recovery anymore. summary: thanks, I'm glad I don't *have* to use *any* of this. -- If you cc me or remove the list(s) completely I'll most likely ignore your message.see http://www.eyrie.org./~eagle/faqs/questions.html To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message
Re: FreeBSD as Desktop OS with support for Windows
On Thu, Nov 28, 2002 at 04:14:38PM +0200, Nelis Lamprecht wrote: Hi People I want to use FreeBSD as my desktop OS with Gnome but I still need to do Windows luser support. I have installed Gnome 2 on FreeBSD 4.7 Stable and now I'm trying to figure out what is the best solution. Does the Vmware port still work and or should I just install Samba and which Office Software would be best suited to use that is compatible with MS Word and Exel ? I know of Openoffice, Gnomeoffice and Staroffice but have had no experience using either. At work I have the luxury of having a second computer (an old one) with Win2k on it if I have to walk a user through something, or test something before we put it into production. I use vnc (in ports) to manage the servers. I use openoffice--my workstation is running 4.7. I just downloaded openoffice from openoffice.org and installed it following the directions for Linux (using the FreeBSD binaries) more or less--untarred it into tmp, then, as user cd'd to tmp and did ./setup. It complained about being unable to register a README file, I clicked ignore, and everything went fine--I can read Word and Excel documents if necessary, and create ones that are compatible for the users if I have to do so. Quick note--at home I'm using CURRENT as workstation--started doing it just for fun, but right now, everything is working perfectly--however, the openoffice.org binaries didn't work properly--however, there is a tbz package made just for current--I don't have the url handy at this instant, but if you need it let me know (I found it by going to the FreeBSD search mailing lists thing, put in openoffice and just chose CURRENT as the only list to search and it was the first or second hit.) That works perfectly in CURRENT. If you simply need MS to walk a user through something from time to time, vnc would probably be adequate--if you need one running MS handy to test out things then you might have to use VMWare or the like. Or take some box that a user has totally ruined and slap Win2k on it and just use that when you have to use MS. :) Hope this is of some help -- Scott Robbins PGP keyID EB3467D6 ( 1B48 077D 66F6 9DB0 FDC2 A409 FA54 D575 EB34 67D6 ) gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys EB3467D6 Xander: It's time for me to act like a man... and hide. msg10462/pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: FreeBSD as Desktop OS with support for Windows
I want to use FreeBSD as my desktop OS with Gnome but I still need to do Windows luser support. I have installed Gnome 2 on FreeBSD 4.7 Stable and now I'm trying to figure out what is the best solution. Does the Vmware port still work and or should I just install Samba and which Office Software would be best suited to use that is compatible with MS Word and Exel ? I know of Openoffice, Gnomeoffice and Staroffice but have had no experience using either. Samba is only for Windows Network Neighborhood support... meaning that it allows FreeBSD to show up on a windows network. As far as I know if you have the vmware software the port should still work, but I don't know if it can download the vmware stuff from anywhere. If you get vmware working you can just use ms office inside the virtual machine... I'm not sure which of the office packages you listed works the best... but I've had pretty good experience with koffice being able to open most .doc files. Ken To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message
