Quoting Raul Ocampo ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): > Thanks for the inputs. > I started work on this just this morning. > I setup RH 7.3 using default "workstation" installation of redhat.
Please note that this means you're (probably) running a GNOME desktop with the sawfish window manager. In 64 MB of total RAM. Have a look at the output of "top" to see how heavily loaded memory is, and you'll understand my comment about how much happier you'll be if you double the physical RAM. > I downloaded Samba 2.2.5 and Open Office 1.0. RH 7.3's Samba 2.2.3a was probably good enough. I'm disappointed in Red Hat Software for not including OpenOffice.org: Apparently, there's some politics between them and Sun Microsystems. > RH box that I setup was able to connect to W2K File server via > "smbmount" this will work for the meantime but I need a much user > friendlier solution. I'll take a look at LinNeighborhood. I'm also > thinking now how will the Linux Desktops change their passwords on the > W2K Active Directory File Server. I have no experience with this, but anticipate that Active Directory will be an ongoing problem for you. Be sure to follow those links I posted, as an initial step towards understanding the problem. (I'm sure there are better information resources available, too, which you'll have to find, yourself.) > Open Office together with Amiword (or is it Abiword) and Gnumeric > opened word and excel files without problems. I was also able to print > a simple Document from RH to the W2K print server with a HP 1100 > attached to it. I like Abiword and Gnumeric very much. For one thing, they're much smaller in RAM and faster than OpenOffice.org (please note correct name). However, Abiword doesn't yet include table support and has relatively poor import/export abilities. Gnumeric is generally useful, fast, robust, light, and stable, but its Excel support isn't quite a match for OpenOffice.org's Star Calc component. > I hit a wall on the printing of old word and excel files opened via > OpenOffice. Although it gets spooled on the W2K print server, the > quality of the output is very very bad. Printing on OpenOffice.org is still a bit weak. Understand that Sun acquired the company (Star Division) that then produced Star Office 5.0 as a proprietary package, offered Star Office 5.0a, 5.1, and 5.2 as free-of-charge binary-only proprietary software, and did all it could to create a good open-source variant (OpenOffice.org) based on the Star Office source code it had bought. Unfortunately, some of Star Office consisted (and still does consist) of third-party code used under licence. Sun could not legally open-source that code, as Sun didn't own it. Therefore, Sun open-sourced the code it _did_ own, and tasked some of its employees and numerous outside volunteers with writing replacement code to fill in the gaps (printing, databases, thesaurus and spelling-checking support, font-handling, and the basic GUI). Most of that work has been very successful (basic GUI, for which they used GTK+ instead of the earlier Motif), some less so (basic spelling-checking is now there, but it's not great, printing sort of works but isn't great), and some parts aren't there yet at all (thesaurus, databases). The database part can be cured in the Linux version of OpenOffice.org by interconnecting it to MySQL or PostgreSQL. Instructions for doing so came out recently, and I've mirrored them here: http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/linux-info/openoffice.org-database http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/linux-info/openoffice.org-mysql.pdf http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/linux-info/openoffice.org-mysql.txt The situation with OpenOffice.org font support (which of course affects printing) involves one problem with the font cache that can be worked around, and a set of Apple Computer patents on TrueType font hinting that won't be cured completely until the patents expire: http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/linux-info/openoffice.org-fonts If you want to avoid all of the above problems, you'll have to pay US $75 a copy (or whatever it is) for Sun Microsystems's Star Office 6.0 package for Linux. (Among other things, Sun pays patent royalties to Apple, and so can use the font-hinting covered by Apple's patents.) I have no doubt that OpenOffice.org will improve rapidly, however. (Among other things, Sun pays patent royalties to Apple, and so can use the font-hinting covered by Apple's patents.) I have no doubt that OpenOffice.org will improve rapidly, however. (It already has!) -- Cheers, The difference between common sense and paranoia is that common sense Rick Moen is thinking everyone is out to get you. That's normal; they are. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Paranoia is thinking they're conspiring. -- J. Kegler _ Philippine Linux Users Group. Web site and archives at http://plug.linux.org.ph To leave: send "unsubscribe" in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe to the Linux Newbies' List: send "subscribe" in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
