Re: [SuSE Linux] What DO you lose with Linux ???
To a certain extent I have to agree, but where I REALLY think Linux lags behind is email. I miss an email client coming close to for instance Outlook Express and The Bat! for Windows (or even Eudora!). The only one is XFmail which currently is not being developed it seems. The Outlook family are generally considered broken even by ardent Microsoft fans. They ride rough shod over standards and convention, make it difficult to quote sesnibly, don't seem to do blind copies, and will send HTML, MS-TNEF and GIF images of the paper almost without warning. If you want a free Windows mail program, use Pegasus, preferably one of the older ones, as it has gone down hill with the introduction of rich text, which is about as broken as Outlook's. Unfortunately Pegasus is not available in source code and Eudora Lite is a teaser for a commercial product.
Re: What DO you lose with Linux ???
The other problem that faces someone peeping over the hedge from M$ Windows land is ``where to find the applications''. There aren't so many magazines reviewing Linux apps as there are reviewing M$ apps. If you The magazines are paid for by the advertising. They will always concentrate on commercial products as that's where their bread and butter is (actually I normally buy computer magazines purely for the advertising!) It's something that schools seem very poor at putting across, that the world you see in the media is not the real world, but much more of a Truman show world. Shops are in a similar position; if you can legally duplicate your own Linux system, they will not give much shelf space to them, and will only have them in jewel cases, whereas there will be vast boxes to contain the CDs for the commercial products. walk into your local high street computer store you will probably see a few boxes of RedHat/Suse/..., and hundreds of boxes of M$ games, finance apps, music composition, ... This means that if you want these apps you need to know where to look and you really need an internet connection. Originally the internet bypassed the traditional advertising channels, but is now being swamped with the same sort of advertising, so even on the internet you have to know what you are looking for these days. On the othe hand, Linux is not set up to support dumb end users, so it is maybe better that there is a filter to eliminate those with little initiative. MS products are normally designed for minimal configuration by dumb users, and have a support organisation to cope with those who aren't satisfied with the defaults and can't work out how to configure the products for themselves. Open source software is now getting overwhelmed by end users expecting free consultancy as of right - most people are prepared to help those who have done their own research and failed, but not those who just want to be told how to make things work their way (often without clearly understanding what their way is).
Re: What DO you lose with Linux ???
Linux is young yet; just now becoming known to the masses. Up till not Most of Gnu Linux is actually very old; it is the commercialisation that is new. Most of Gnu/Linux is just a rework of very long established Unix tools. it has been more of a hobby for most people, it seems, than a concerted effort to be a Windows killer. So I wouldn't expect all the great apps In my view, trying to be a Windows killer, rather than itself, will be suicide for Linux. A few commercial suppliers will make a fast profit, but in the end, the people who have contributed to it will abandon it as it becomes commercialised, and the existing commercial software suppliers will start finding ways to undermine it, beyond the fear of free software. Incidentally accounting software was mentioned as a weak area. The problem with accounting software is that the people who understand the application are those most dependant on the profit motive and least likely to create freeware. (You may find that public service organisations produce free software, but that will normally be vertical market stuff for large oganizations, not horizontal market for small ones.) Being a hobby is beneficial, as it means that people are not facing commercial pressures to compromise quality for development cost and to compromise function for saleability.
