Dvorak Likes Linux

On Mar 25, 11:13*pm, krw wrote:
On Wed, 25 Mar 2009 21:43:54 -0400, Yousuf Khan
wrote:
IBM is already riding two horses, it's got AIX.

IBM has any horse you're willing to pay them to ride.

Circus clown-style, even.

Yousuf Khan

On Mar 25, 9:43*pm, Yousuf Khan wrote:


IBM is already riding two horses, it's got AIX.


Yeah, and, wow, what a vibrant open source development community AIX
has around it. IBM isn't going to try to take on the world with AIX.
With Solaris, it might be tempted.

I just know that you will respond that the Solaris development
community isn't exactly hopping, either, so I'll save you the
trouble. IBM has the resources to push Solaris much more effectively
than Sun could.

What's more, word is that Oracle wants to purchase RedHat. IBM/
Solaris and Oracle/RedHat will be happy to let Microsoft and Whobuntu
slug it out for the desktop.

Robert.

Robert Myers wrote:
So, how do you understand the market that defines it (IOW what is the
market what defines it, which part of the global market is the market you

The implied context of this conversation is the people who define the
conversation by posting and the cultures they live in.
[...]
You're not a typical user.

So -- in this current context Linux is general purpose


For most end users, Linux is not currently a
plausible answer to that question.
Linux seems adequate, for example, for SOHO use.

There's always something. It used to be Tru-Type fonts and SMB
networking. Last I looked, even to get the claimed functionality out
of Ubuntu (to look at YouTube, for example), you had to use a codecs
that was of questionable legality. There are usually ways around
these issues, but you have to be willing to hack and fiddle.

Microsoft is forever messing around with SMB to make it hard for Samba
and those who want to make Samba transparent. I still haven't gotten
SMB networking to Linux to work after the most recent Microsoft
"Service Packs." I'm sure I'll wind up learning much more than I want
to know about Microsoft's latest authentication kinks.

But SMB is not required for SOHO to begin with.


Your MS-Word documents and presentations come out looking funny in
Star Office.

They also look funy in different versions of MS Office to begin with.
Then I even got an document (made in MS Office, of course) which would
hang Word (probabli slightly different version that it was careated
with), if someone tried to scroll thru the Index and document body
boundary. It was important technical documentation. Fortunately OO
Writer did read it.

I can live with that, but many people can't. If you
have to hack and fiddle or if the OS won't do what people generally
expect it to do, then it's not a general-purpose OS.

I dont have to. I even much prefer installing linux distro, where are
all batteries included (printer drivers, office, etc) than Windows and
all the separate stuff.

Think how
important it is to Apple that Microsoft continue to support Office on
the Mac.

These limitations are all a result of Microsoft monopolistic business
practices? For the most part, yes. What do you plan on doing about
it?

Just reducing windows usage (Windows in VmWare sandbox is enough for me
as I develop windows software in it). As a premium I'm not affraid being
ridden by malware.


--
"Never underestimate the power of human stupidity" -- L. Lang
--
http://www.tajga.org -- (some photos from my travels)

In article , Yousuf Khan wrote:
Or, as most governments throughout the world have learned: start using
the ODF industry standard.

Even here, there can be a gotcha or two waiting to bite you. I created a
spreadsheet (a fairly simple one, at that) in NeoOffice on my Mac mini, but
wasn't able to open foo.ods in OpenOffice on my notebook (under either
Windows or Linux). Saving foo.ods as foo.xls got the file to where it'd
load into OpenOffice.

(It's probable that there's a bug in either NeoOffice or OpenOffice (or
maybe both) that's responsible for this malfunction.)

_/_
/ v \ Scott Alfter (remove the obvious to send mail)
(IIGS( http://alfter.us/ Top-posting!
\_^_/ rm -rf /bin/laden What's the most annoying thing on Usenet?

On Mar 28, 4:30*pm, (Scott Alfter)
wrote:
In article , Yousuf Khan wrote:

Or, as most governments throughout the world have learned: start using
the ODF industry standard.

Even here, there can be a gotcha or two waiting to bite you. *I created a
spreadsheet (a fairly simple one, at that) in NeoOffice on my Mac mini, but
wasn't able to open foo.ods in OpenOffice on my notebook (under either
Windows or Linux). *Saving foo.ods as foo.xls got the file to where it'd
load into OpenOffice.

(It's probable that there's a bug in either NeoOffice or OpenOffice (or
maybe both) that's responsible for this malfunction.)

If enough people had that experience and started using non-Microsoft
xls as a "standard," it would do more damage to the Microsoft monopoly
than nominally open standards, which are never quite standard
enough.

As it is, most people encounter a "but it isn't Microsoft" problem and
it's back to the loving arms of Bill Gates.

Robert.