LUGers,
Here, as promised, are the results of my
ill-fated survey. (I'm still interested
in penetrations, but this does not
appear to be a right forum.)
still-ignorantLee
Answers
*******
- Paul <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
- Mike LeDoux
- Tom Buskey
Thanks Guys,
Lee
Summary
*******
What have been your experiences
attempting or doing the following with
Linux?:
[Original questions are "bulleted" with
'*'s and '>'s.
Clarified text has been added since
original message between '['...']'s.
Replies have been edited and are
preceded by ' - ', and follow the item(s)
they are a response to.]
* MS Office Documents in a mix with MS-
weenies
> Word
- For simple docs, OpenOffice [OO]
does quite well
- For *really* simple docs AbiWord
works well.
> Excel
- For Excel, I've had little to no
trouble with either Gnumeric or OO's
spreadsheet.
- Little experience, but, AbiWord &
Gnumeric seem to do a decent enough
job with Word and Excel files.
> PowerPoint
- For PowerPoint, I usually have no
problems with OO. Of course, I also
seldom change stuff and send it back
to the source.
[> Embedded objects in Word documents:,
including Excel, and Word drawn
vector graphics.]
[> .wmf's & emf's -- Windows Metafile
Format & Extended Metafile Format --
2D vector graphics format, inclusive
of bitmap image]
* WYSIWYG web page and template
development
* DVD-R
* DVD-RW
- I don't have a DVD-R or DVD-RW
drive, so I can't say
- Tools are available, I've just never
used them.
* Playing standard music CDs
- Very easy! x2
* Playing standard Video DVDs
- Very easy for non-CSS DVDs
- Slightly more work for CSS (Contents
Scramble System -- alleged copy
protection system] DVDs
[Two questions:
o Are all the commercial CDs you
play, CSS?
o Are commercial CDs the only kind
that you play?]
- Several software options for this.
* Ripping Audio CDs
- Simple
- Only problem is using 'cdrecord' to
write in DAO [ddisk-at-once, versus
TAO -- track-at-once] mode. Where
collection is bunch of separate
tracks, it's not a problem. If
you're ripping a live concert, then
you get noticeable skips in music as
it changes tracks. Annoying, but not
problematic. I have not tried using
'cdrdao' yet, which is supposed to
better support DAO mode than
'cdrecord'.
* Ripping (term?) standard DVDs
- Problematic. My digicam will take
short (30 sec) AVI movies, and I
can't play them back (though I
haven't tried real hard either)
- Never tried
* Hearing & seeing the following file
types on the web:
- 'mplayer' handles nearly every .avi,
[.wmv], .asf, etc. file that I've run
across, as it uses the windows
codecs. In many cases, it handles
these files better than windows
does. x 2
> animated GIFs
- any web browser will do just
fine.
> .avi's
[> .wmv -- Windows movie video]
> .mp3's
- No problems!
> .mov's
- QuickTime movies [.mov's] are
problematic, as Apple hasn't
released many of the codecs. Some
of them work, some don't.
- Most of the QuickTime stuff embedded
in web pages doesn't work. I've
heard good things about CodeWeavers'
CrossOver plug-in, but I've never
used it myself.
* Creating and editing any of the above?
- Lots of available tools for creating
and editing audio.
- Available tools for video work are
not as polished.
* Availability of [open source
multimedia & document] applications
[as defined above, that your are
using]?
- MP3 probably has the most number of
differing applications.
- For non-open source, There is
software to do it under windows
which can be used under VMware or
Win4Lin. [Has this actually been
used by anybody, without blowing up
their brains and documents?]
* Interfaces?
> IEEE 1394 Firewire
> USB
- Both work flawlessly on my laptop.
- Both well-supported.
> USB2
- Handspring Visor and Digicam both
work just fine under USB.
- Judging from 'maddog', Firewire is
available
* Drivers
> Scanners
- Supported by the SANE group. See
FreshMeat. x 2
> Removable media (USB, 1394)
- USB has plenty of drivers.
- Reportedly, maddog just bought a
Firewire drive and works just fine.
- Works great [both?]
> Digital cameras
- Well-supported by 'gphoto2' --
FreshMeat
- Cannon G2 works well with Linux
- Older cameras are well-supported via
gphoto and 'gphoto2'.
- Most newer cameras show up as USB
Mass Storage devices, so you can
just mount them and the photos show
up as regular files.
> Video cameras
--
Lee D. Rothstein -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]
----------------
VeriTech -- 603-424-2900
7 Merry Meeting Drive
Merrimack, NH 03054-2934
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