Re: [libreoffice-users] Linux alternative
My son is a technical illiterate and one time, when I had got tired of rescuing his scsrewed-up (often virus-infected) Windows box, I gave him Ubuntu. He only uses his computer to surf to his webmail and to facebook. Nonetheless, he came to me after a week and asked me to re-install Windows as he 'didn't understand how to use linux'. So now I have an iso of his disk which I reinstall as necessary. There's never anything on the actual disk other than the operating system. James On 2015-07-19 02:02, Tim---Kracked_P_P---webmaster wrote: On 07/18/2015 11:54 AM, charles meyer wrote: Hi Jack, You’re most welcome. I think many Windows users are married to old verbiage they heard years ago (some unfounded) about how you’ll need to learn to code or have to learn language like the old DOS to make Linux work and so propelled by fear they remain with Windows. I’m looking forward to all the good work and advancement Eric (on this list) makes with his foray into voice recognition but can you or Gary on this list or others recommend any Linux-based voice recognition? Nuance has dragged their heels in so many ways including developing voice recognition for more than one voice at a time so I don’t feel like I can count on them to offer a Linux-based version by 2020 when MS is supposed to end W7 support. Thanks for disabusing readers of their “Linux-fear” in your article and for your and others voice recognition recommendations. Charles. I started with computers when punch-cards were still common and computers smaller than a refrigerator was not. I wished I still remembered all the programming skills I have back then [but that ended with the strokes]. Users are pampered with a GUI and other modern items on their really small sized systems, compared to what I started working with. You try writing a general ledger accounting system from scratch in COBOL and then tell me that people do not have it so easy now. Well, at least if you do not have to do the GUI programming from scratch instead of using templates, or needing to do AI work withing a game environment. But the basic business stuff was much harder to produce back then when colored printing, or even graphical printing, from a low to middle environment business computer was not available at all. I was programming computers for over a decade before I ever saw a colored printer, let alone afford one. -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Linux alternative
Tim, agree with you there- Cobol was considered e great modern productivity improvement. I started in assembly. Getting a system running by inserting the bootstrapper papertape on the first punched holes, ste the start address through phisical switches and press the start butten. Only after the bootstrapper was loaded the rest of the program could be loaded We came a long way since then, but I agree that all the new stuff around now is depriving young people from basic understanding that a computer doesn't know anything, and is not capable of doing anything by itself. Rob. On 19 jul. 2015, at 02:02, Tim---Kracked_P_P---webmaster wrote: On 07/18/2015 11:54 AM, charles meyer wrote: Hi Jack, You’re most welcome. I think many Windows users are married to old verbiage they heard years ago (some unfounded) about how you’ll need to learn to code or have to learn language like the old DOS to make Linux work and so propelled by fear they remain with Windows. I’m looking forward to all the good work and advancement Eric (on this list) makes with his foray into voice recognition but can you or Gary on this list or others recommend any Linux-based voice recognition? Nuance has dragged their heels in so many ways including developing voice recognition for more than one voice at a time so I don’t feel like I can count on them to offer a Linux-based version by 2020 when MS is supposed to end W7 support. Thanks for disabusing readers of their “Linux-fear” in your article and for your and others voice recognition recommendations. Charles. I started with computers when punch-cards were still common and computers smaller than a refrigerator was not. I wished I still remembered all the programming skills I have back then [but that ended with the strokes]. Users are pampered with a GUI and other modern items on their really small sized systems, compared to what I started working with. You try writing a general ledger accounting system from scratch in COBOL and then tell me that people do not have it so easy now. Well, at least if you do not have to do the GUI programming from scratch instead of using templates, or needing to do AI work withing a game environment. But the basic business stuff was much harder to produce back then when colored printing, or even graphical printing, from a low to middle environment business computer was not available at all. I was programming computers for over a decade before I ever saw a colored printer, let alone afford one. -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Linux alternative
On 07/19/2015 07:52 AM, Rob Jasper wrote: Getting a system running by inserting the bootstrapper papertape on the first punched holes On my first computer, I had to use the front toggle several bytes into memory, before there was anything to run. I also worked on some Data General Nova computers which had the boot loader option. I also worked on a PDP-8i, where I had to toggle in the RIM loader before it could boot. -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Linux alternative helpsupport
On 07/19/2015 07:52 AM, Tom Davies wrote: Hi :) If Win8 started up at the normal desktop (as it can be set to do now) and then the Metro stuff is used just as the old; Start button - All Programs Then it's kinda ok - err after adding in new tiles for Kodi, LibreOffice, Chrome/Firefox etc, removing quite a lot of the default useless ones and moving around all the tiles into something that makes some kind of sense and makes useful programs/documents/things easier to get to. Then using the Windows key brings up that programs menu. Regards from Tom :) You know, you raise another point about Windows 8.1 that irks me. Many, if not most, think one of the main problems with Windows 8 is/was the missing Start menu. I truly don't miss the Start menu and don't like any window managers or desktop environments that try to retain that look/behavior. I think GNOME shell got it right by having the Applications menu, where one would find the applications they wanted to run. But I digress... anyway, I don't miss the Start menu at all. I don't like how Metro has its tiles laid out. Look at ANY new desktop or laptop system with Windows 8 pre-installed. After the initial setup process, you see the Metro desktop and its tiles. Where is the MS Office tile? Off to the far right somewhere, requiring you to scroll to see it. I'm on a *desktop* system and using a Word processor is something I'm probably going to want to do so why not put the tile for MS Office in the same set of tiles where you can EASILY access the online stuff? Stupid strike #1. When I'm on the desktop side, I can double-click a photo to see it. If I'm not careful, I can get flipped to the Metro side and view the photo. Cool. When I'm done looking at the photo, I have no clue what to do because the X to close the window isn't in view (I have to know to move the mouse to the top of the screen to get it to appear). Stupid strike #2 (the flip from the desktop to Metro). Now, these aren't things I've personally struggled with but things I've personally witnessed many others struggle with as they get new computers I setup for them. To be fair, I have no issue with Windows 8's underpinnings and security changes. It's mostly the UI behavior I have issue with. Of course, if one wants to take the time to learn how to use Windows 8 effectively and efficiently, more power to them. I would also state, if they could take the time to learn how to use Windows 8, they could (and should) take the time to learn how to use LibreOffice effectively and efficiently instead of slamming it for not looking or behaving exactly like MS Office. :) Peace... The other Tom On 18 July 2015 at 22:59, Tom Williams tomd...@comcast.net mailto:tomd...@comcast.net wrote: On 07/18/2015 11:28 AM, Tom Davies wrote: Hi :) Something i really appreciate most about Linux is that it's so easy to change the gui - or more importantly that if you don't like the crazy new things that have been done to the gui then you can fairly easily go back to the old one or on to something else entirely. The under-laying system remains the same. Back in the day, I used to have 3 or 4 window managers I used to switch between. lol As for Windows 8's metro, I mean modern UI, I'm not digging it and I never have. The other Tom -- /When we dance, you have a way with me, Stay with me... Sway with me.../ -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org mailto:users%2bunsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- /When we dance, you have a way with me, Stay with me... Sway with me.../ -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Linux alternative helpsupport
Hi :) Both Cinnamon and Mate (pronounced similarly to Latte) are both supposedly drop in replacements for the Gnome DE that Ubuntu used to use. They both started with the same code-base that everyone using a Gnome DE on any distro was familiar with and then just upgraded it. VERY similar to the way LibreOffice has evolved from OpenOffice. The new Gnome was heading in a direction that almost no-one liked - apparently they were moving away from touch and away from accessibility. Hence so many forks appearing and also distros moving to other DEs. Ubuntu found that an almost unheard-of DE was aiming for greater accessibility and opening up greater flexibility for touch gestures and stuff. Also being such a tiny team would give Ubuntu more opportunity to steer them if needed. The Gnome people dug their heels in and wouldn't budge from their plans to return to a by-gone era. Cinnamon and Mate are now well-established, just as LibreOffice is. Doubtless there are many people working in and sharing code and/or ideas between many such projects. It is very possible to install Mate or Cinnamon into most distros now. At the login screen you might see a logo for the default DE, or a drop-down menu, where you can switch from one to another. So you can kinda test-drive different DEs in a single working install of whichever distro. Much of the under the bonnet stuff you ask about tends to go with whichever DE was the most recently installed but some stuff remains the same. So it's not a perfect test-drive but might help give you an idea. It's probably best to create a new partition and test-drive some of these things yourself. A virtual machine might be quite good too but a bare-metal install has to deal with the quirkiness of real hardware and might give a better idea of how things really work. Regards from Tom :) On 18 July 2015 at 19:48, Johnny Rosenberg gurus.knu...@gmail.com wrote: Tom, you might want to take a look at Linux Mint (current version 17.2) ; if you're using a desktop as your main box, I think you will find the GUI - I personally prefer Cinnamon - far superior to Ubuntu's Unity (Cinnamon can, of course, be installed on Ubuntu to replace Unity) and the OS is a dream to use. On my triple-boot machine, it boots (from GRUB), for example, much more quickly than Windows 8.1 Pro, which I keep around solely in order to be able to help retirees with their Windows problems. It doesn't require, as does Windows, that the machine be rebooted just about every time a minor update is installed, and things like the BSOD simply don't appear You guys who use Mint with Cinnamon (from now on I will only say ”Mint”, but I mean Mint with the Cinnamon desktop every time), I would like to know a little more about a few details, if you don't mind: I currently use Ubuntu 14.04 and I have used Ubuntu since 7.04. I was very impressed by the first version I installed, then even more impressed for every new version up to 10.10. After that it seems like the Ubuntu team spied on my. ”Now, let's see what features Johnny Rosenberg like to use… aha… aha… I see… yes, that one too, ok, let's remove them!” So basically everything that I like with Ubuntu is gone now or doesn't work. Let's asume that I want to give Mint with Cinnamon a go, what about the following? In old Ubuntu version, let's say a wrote a Bash script that I intended to use with FLAC files. That's not too crazy, because I actually wrote quite a few such scripts… Now, I want to run these scripts with on FLAC files without too much effort. I just want to right click a FLAC file, then ”Open with” and finally just select my script. To make this happen, in old Ubuntu I could just right click a FLAC file → Properties → Open with, and from there just enter a command line manually to reach my script. This is of course impossible in Ubuntu 14.04. There are methods, but none of them works. I have edited text files, been fiddling around with Ubuntu Tweak and other tools, but no success. Nautilus Actions doesn't seem to work properly anymore and so on. It's possible to use the Script folder (~/.local/share/nautilus/scripts) but then my script will be available for ALL kinds of files. Not good. What about Mint in this case? I use icons on my desktop. Maybe I shouldn't, but I find it convenient. I try to have just a few of them, though. Anyway, I want my icons on certain places and in certain sizes. I size up important icons, for instance. This works in Ubuntu, but when I logout and then login again, or restart the computer, all of my desktop icons are the same size again and placed from up to down, left to right in alphabetic order… Does this work properly in Mint? My Android phone always appear on different places. If I write a script that will move files to and from my phone, I need to write special routines to determine where the phone is located. At the moment it's at
Re: [OT] [libreoffice-users] Linux alternative
On 07/18/2015 07:51 PM, toki wrote: On 07/18/2015 10:08 PM, James Knott wrote: Tell that to all the scientists who use supercomputers. The vast majority of them, including my cousin, run Linux. If you want state of the art software, that costs a fortune, you run *Nix. If you want almost state of the art, that costs a small fortune, it is as likely to run on Mac OS X, as on Windows. If you want software that is almost state of the art, but is affordable, you run Windows. If you want software that is good enough for most purposes, you run Linux. Joe Sixpack wants something slightly better than good enough for most purposes, but doesn't want the cash outlay that state of the art requires. Thus far, Windows has been that happy medium. jonathon I disagree with most of this, but the good enough for most purposes part really bothers me. :) Joe Sixpack is most familiar with Windows and will stick with it. Familiarity is definitely worth its weight in gold. :) Peace... The other Tom -- /When we dance, you have a way with me, Stay with me... Sway with me.../ -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Linux alternative helpsupport
Hi :) Err, i tend to stick with Unity for myself. Some of my work-colleagues couldn't cope with the simplicity and the way it doesn't look like Xp or Win7. So i had a quick look at KDE again and was surprised at how fast it's become. It even out-performed Cinnamon and Mate and even LXDE on many of our ancient machines AND it looked quite similar to Xp/Win7. Quite a few people found it much easier to use. So i've been using it myself quite a bit and found how to fix some of the inevitable teething problems in any 'new' system. Any system needs a bit of tweaking in order to get it working the way anyone would be happy with so i've been finding a few of those out for myself. However i really like Unity now [shrugs]. For me the big advantage of KDE is that now i can do more distro-hopping and try out many different distros while keeping a fairly familiar Gui/DE/Window-manager. Regards from Tom :) On 18 July 2015 at 22:59, Tom Williams tomd...@comcast.net wrote: On 07/18/2015 11:28 AM, Tom Davies wrote: Hi :) Something i really appreciate most about Linux is that it's so easy to change the gui - or more importantly that if you don't like the crazy new things that have been done to the gui then you can fairly easily go back to the old one or on to something else entirely. The under-laying system remains the same. Back in the day, I used to have 3 or 4 window managers I used to switch between. lol As for Windows 8's metro, I mean modern UI, I'm not digging it and I never have. The other Tom -- /When we dance, you have a way with me, Stay with me... Sway with me.../ -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Linux alternative helpsupport
On Sun, 19 Jul 2015, Tom Davies wrote: Hi :) Err, i tend to stick with Unity for myself. Some of my work-colleagues couldn't cope with the simplicity and the way it doesn't look like Xp or Win7. So i had a quick look at KDE again and was surprised at how fast it's become. It even out-performed Cinnamon and Mate and even LXDE on many of our ancient machines AND it looked quite similar to Xp/Win7. Quite a few people found it much easier to use. people who liked kde3 might try an active development of it called Trinity Desktop https://www.trinitydesktop.org/; I favor a branch called exegnu http://exegnulinux.net; I think both make a livecd/usb. it is debian-based and you may have to do a couple of things to get the wifi drivers for your system. my only association with these projects is as a contented user. mileage may vary. f. So i've been using it myself quite a bit and found how to fix some of the inevitable teething problems in any 'new' system. Any system needs a bit of tweaking in order to get it working the way anyone would be happy with so i've been finding a few of those out for myself. However i really like Unity now [shrugs]. For me the big advantage of KDE is that now i can do more distro-hopping and try out many different distros while keeping a fairly familiar Gui/DE/Window-manager. Regards from Tom :) On 18 July 2015 at 22:59, Tom Williams tomd...@comcast.net wrote: On 07/18/2015 11:28 AM, Tom Davies wrote: Hi :) Something i really appreciate most about Linux is that it's so easy to change the gui - or more importantly that if you don't like the crazy new things that have been done to the gui then you can fairly easily go back to the old one or on to something else entirely. The under-laying system remains the same. Back in the day, I used to have 3 or 4 window managers I used to switch between. lol As for Windows 8's metro, I mean modern UI, I'm not digging it and I never have. The other Tom -- /When we dance, you have a way with me, Stay with me... Sway with me.../ -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- Felmon Davis Advice is a dangerous gift; be cautious about giving and receiving it. -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Linux alternative
On 07/19/2015 04:52 AM, Rob Jasper wrote: Tim, agree with you there- Cobol was considered e great modern productivity improvement. I started in assembly. Getting a system running by inserting the bootstrapper papertape on the first punched holes, ste the start address through phisical switches and press the start butten. Only after the bootstrapper was loaded the rest of the program could be loaded We came a long way since then, but I agree that all the new stuff around now is depriving young people from basic understanding that a computer doesn't know anything, and is not capable of doing anything by itself. Rob. No matter how far computers have come, they still cannot count higher than one. Blessings, Joe -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [OT] [libreoffice-users] Linux alternative
On 19/07/15 02:43 PM, Tom Williams wrote: On 07/18/2015 07:51 PM, toki wrote: On 07/18/2015 10:08 PM, James Knott wrote: Tell that to all the scientists who use supercomputers. The vast majority of them, including my cousin, run Linux. If you want state of the art software, that costs a fortune, you run *Nix. If you want almost state of the art, that costs a small fortune, it is as likely to run on Mac OS X, as on Windows. If you want software that is almost state of the art, but is affordable, you run Windows. If you want software that is good enough for most purposes, you run Linux. Joe Sixpack wants something slightly better than good enough for most purposes, but doesn't want the cash outlay that state of the art requires. Thus far, Windows has been that happy medium. jonathon I disagree with most of this, but the good enough for most purposes part really bothers me. :) Joe Sixpack is most familiar with Windows and will stick with it. Familiarity is definitely worth its weight in gold. :) Peace... The other Tom Agreed. There may be some niche software that runs on Windows or Macs that beats the Linux alternatives but for general purposes, I find Linux to be far better. I hate working on Windows or Macs compared to Linux. There are just too many things that Windows and Macs don't do that are easy on Linux. -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Linux alternative helpsupport
Hi :) If Win8 started up at the normal desktop (as it can be set to do now) and then the Metro stuff is used just as the old; Start button - All Programs Then it's kinda ok - err after adding in new tiles for Kodi, LibreOffice, Chrome/Firefox etc, removing quite a lot of the default useless ones and moving around all the tiles into something that makes some kind of sense and makes useful programs/documents/things easier to get to. Then using the Windows key brings up that programs menu. Regards from Tom :) On 18 July 2015 at 22:59, Tom Williams tomd...@comcast.net wrote: On 07/18/2015 11:28 AM, Tom Davies wrote: Hi :) Something i really appreciate most about Linux is that it's so easy to change the gui - or more importantly that if you don't like the crazy new things that have been done to the gui then you can fairly easily go back to the old one or on to something else entirely. The under-laying system remains the same. Back in the day, I used to have 3 or 4 window managers I used to switch between. lol As for Windows 8's metro, I mean modern UI, I'm not digging it and I never have. The other Tom -- /When we dance, you have a way with me, Stay with me... Sway with me.../ -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Linux alternative
On 07/18/2015 09:32 AM, Thomas wrote: On 2015/07/18 6:50, Jack Wallen wrote: Thank you for sharing that, Charles (I'm the author). Glad to know it resonated. Jack Thank YOU, Mr. Wallen, for your article. Although I know, this does not belong here, just a word. I have been trying (STRUGGLING) to move away from MS and get friendly with Linux for 7-8 years now! So far with little success. Yet, I still keep trying. many thanks jack, :-) I'm not an expert, I start to use linux, basically opensuse, in 2000, and I agree with thomas, my son, my sister, my nephews uses linux, but, if I didn't install it and configure it and solved the problems that rised up and sometimes continues to pop up, they never started to use linux. too complicate... :-) To quote from your article: Each of these distributions ... are ideal for users seeking an alternative to Windows. ... They are user-friendly and will get the job done. That is definitely NOT my experience. Maybe the statement (and Linux) is meant for computer specialists. I am not one of those. Whenever I ask my (what must sound to the computer experts) stupid questions, I get in every of the many friendly communities the advice: If you don't know s**t about computers, you should not dare go near the damn thing (=Linux). My experience is, that Linux is making the transition VERY difficult for non-experts, ordinary mortal men, that just want to work with the computer - without knowing about computer science, software design, programming techniques etc. But I am probably boring you. Sorry for that. Thomas -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Linux alternative
On 2015/07/18 6:50, Jack Wallen wrote: Thank you for sharing that, Charles (I'm the author). Glad to know it resonated. Jack Thank YOU, Mr. Wallen, for your article. Although I know, this does not belong here, just a word. I have been trying (STRUGGLING) to move away from MS and get friendly with Linux for 7-8 years now! So far with little success. Yet, I still keep trying. To quote from your article: Each of these distributions ... are ideal for users seeking an alternative to Windows. ... They are user-friendly and will get the job done. That is definitely NOT my experience. Maybe the statement (and Linux) is meant for computer specialists. I am not one of those. Whenever I ask my (what must sound to the computer experts) stupid questions, I get in every of the many friendly communities the advice: If you don't know s**t about computers, you should not dare go near the damn thing (=Linux). My experience is, that Linux is making the transition VERY difficult for non-experts, ordinary mortal men, that just want to work with the computer - without knowing about computer science, software design, programming techniques etc. But I am probably boring you. Sorry for that. Thomas -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Linux alternative
On 17-7-2015 23:47, Gary Dale wrote: On 17/07/15 05:25 PM, charles meyer wrote: For those on the list using or contemplating Linux, this was interesting. Frankly though, I'm confused as to why more software vendors don't compile to libwine . libwine is about 'bondage'.. It seems some people are just into bondage. :) -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Linux alternative
hi. personal experience. I started using linux about 12 years ago installation and configuration are just a bit longer than in windows systems (but you can find a lot of documentation). Linux systems are, by the way, more transparent (if you want to know what happens behind the interface), customizable and versatile than windows systems. You can run linux on micro computers (e.g. raspberry), very old computers (I have ubuntu on a notebook with 256 mb ram); you can use a wider set of data formats (texts, images...) and so on. then it depends on your needs: if you have particular softwares or hardwares that require windows... However, open source software (LibreOffice, Gimp, Blender...) has made impressive progresses in the last years, so that just a small number of users can note the difference (provided they don't just trust the name or think that higher costs mean higher quality). Paolo Debortoli On Saturday, July 18, 2015 10:31 AM, yahoo-pier_andreit pier_andr...@yahoo.it wrote: On 07/18/2015 09:32 AM, Thomas wrote: On 2015/07/18 6:50, Jack Wallen wrote: Thank you for sharing that, Charles (I'm the author). Glad to know it resonated. Jack Thank YOU, Mr. Wallen, for your article. Although I know, this does not belong here, just a word. I have been trying (STRUGGLING) to move away from MS and get friendly with Linux for 7-8 years now! So far with little success. Yet, I still keep trying. -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Linux alternative
On 18/07/15 04:31 AM, yahoo-pier_andreit wrote: On 07/18/2015 09:32 AM, Thomas wrote: On 2015/07/18 6:50, Jack Wallen wrote: Thank you for sharing that, Charles (I'm the author). Glad to know it resonated. Jack Thank YOU, Mr. Wallen, for your article. Although I know, this does not belong here, just a word. I have been trying (STRUGGLING) to move away from MS and get friendly with Linux for 7-8 years now! So far with little success. Yet, I still keep trying. many thanks jack, :-) I'm not an expert, I start to use linux, basically opensuse, in 2000, and I agree with thomas, my son, my sister, my nephews uses linux, but, if I didn't install it and configure it and solved the problems that rised up and sometimes continues to pop up, they never started to use linux. too complicate... :-) The same issue afflicts Windows. It's just that Windows usually comes pre-installed. Having performed a lot of installs of both types, I've found the Linux installs to be simpler and a lot faster. Windows may get to the login screen a bit faster but then you've got interminable updates to install with reboots needed between most of them. As for needing assistance, I find a lot more problems cropping up with Windows than with Linux. And yes, most end-users aren't equipped to deal with them but that isn't dependent on the operating system. However fixing Windows problems is more difficult and sometimes even fruitless (e.g. Windows Updates that mysteriously fail). I've used Linux pretty much exclusively (except for an income tax program that I haven't got to work in wine) for 18 years. I find Windows to be awkward and limiting. And after looking at Windows 8, it seems to be getting worse, not better. -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
[OT] Re: [libreoffice-users] Linux alternative
On Sat, 18 Jul 2015, Thomas wrote: Although I know, this does not belong here, just a word. I have been trying (STRUGGLING) to move away from MS and get friendly with Linux for 7-8 years now! So far with little success. Yet, I still keep trying. this makes me wonder what the top two or three things are that people find hard in adopting Linux. I don't want to count the yrs I've used Linux. I was never a full-time user of Windows, I used OS/2 before Linux and Desqview on some version of DOS before that. for the most part I'm barely aware of the operating system: launch a program and work or play is my mode. never gave up command-line habits either, the pictures confuse me like holding a conversation via charades. f. -- Felmon Davis In most instances, all an argument proves is that two people are present. -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [OT] Re: [libreoffice-users] Linux alternative
Hi :) I'm sure people on this mailing list might be happy to help with 1 or 2 questions about how to do a certain thing or 2 in linux. Such questions often turn out to be quite popular threads even though they are a little off-topic. I think a lot of people take a similar route to me. Even now i still use Windows occasionally (admittedly usually only because i'm forced to or because someone doesn't know how to use it and/or has broken it). I suspect that most linux users have a dual-boot somewhere with an option to boot into Windows. I think it's something that almost everyone does somewhere near the start of their journey into linux land. I guess what i'm saying is that i suspect that linux usage is always growing so fast that most linux users are fairly new - that certainly seemed true in the Vista era and maybe early in Win8's era too. Err wrt In most instances, all an argument proves is that two people are present. i don't think that is true at all. I have often seen people disagreeing with a position they were recently adamant about. For example my boss orders me to do something. I do it. Then he tells me off for doing it and claims he'd never had said that. I've also found myself arguing with myself too. I'm not sure if an argument is possible even if no-one is present but it wouldn't surprise me. ;) Regards from Tom :) On 18 July 2015 at 18:44, Felmon Davis dav...@union.edu wrote: On Sat, 18 Jul 2015, Thomas wrote: Although I know, this does not belong here, just a word. I have been trying (STRUGGLING) to move away from MS and get friendly with Linux for 7-8 years now! So far with little success. Yet, I still keep trying. this makes me wonder what the top two or three things are that people find hard in adopting Linux. I don't want to count the yrs I've used Linux. I was never a full-time user of Windows, I used OS/2 before Linux and Desqview on some version of DOS before that. for the most part I'm barely aware of the operating system: launch a program and work or play is my mode. never gave up command-line habits either, the pictures confuse me like holding a conversation via charades. f. -- Felmon Davis In most instances, all an argument proves is that two people are present. -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Linux alternative
On 18/07/15 01:29 PM, Tom Davies wrote: Hi :) +1 But Wine is about bondage in the sense that it keeps you using stuff that is made for Windows. Making stuff that needs Wine in order to work kinda keeps you locked-in to the Windows world. By contrast we see many native GnuLinux programs are then ported over to Mac and Windows apparently without a huge amount of effort. Firefox and LibreOffice/OpenOffice are great examples of that as they have then become serious competitors to alternatives that were only written for Windows and then have been unable to be ported to anything else. If programs plan to become cross-platform then initially writing for Linux seems to be the optimum route. Writing for Mac seems to be the next best option. Starting with Windows means programs or almost anything else faces a nightmare up-hill struggle. Even Microsoft themselves take an extra whole year to port their office suite to Mac and even then it's a stripped-down version. Writing for Wine is a neat trick that i have not heard of before. It sounds like it neatly avoids any need for porting at all. Wine runs on Mac too so that is all 3 major platform covered in one hit. It feels like there must be an inherent flaw aside from the ethical issue of not quite breaking free of the Windows world. If not why on earth wouldn't everyone be doing this? ;) Regards from Tom :) Not at all. Wine gives people the opportunity to leave Windows while still running the same software. So long as that software is under a Free license, what makes it any different from stuff that runs on JVM (for example)? I don't need to port my programs when I use Wine/Libwine. They run perfectly on both platforms, And I don't need to have anything to do with Windows whereas if I port my programs, I need a Windows platform to test them on. I feel like I'm perfectly free from the Windows world except that I need a VM to run an income tax program and to run Windows versions of browsers (did you know that the Windows version of Firefox doesn't always render pages the same as the Linux version?). There is actually a fair amount of software developed to Windows APIs. Samba and Mono (and programs that use Mono) are two that come to mind immediately. Some people oppose this (especially when the Windows APIs aren't public) but others accept it as a small price to pay to spread Free Software. -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Linux alternative
On 07/18/2015 05:29 PM, Tom Davies wrote: If programs plan to become cross-platform then initially writing for Linux seems to be the optimum route. If a programming team delivers a usable Linux product in one year, then for a second platform, it will take the same team six months to deliver it. If a programming team delivers a usable Windows product in one year, then it will take a second team that is twice the size of the first team, two years, to deliver the program on a different platform. FWIW, writing to WINE/LibWINE is equivalent to writing a program for Windows, in terms of overall productivity, and cross-platform support. Furthermore, with WINE/LibWINE, your program won't have the same look and feel as other software on the same platform. jonathon * English - detected * English * English javascript:void(0); # Writing for Wine is a neat trick that i have not heard of before. It sounds like it neatly avoids any need for porting at all. It also means that bug fixing is an order of magnitude more difficult,because bug isolation requires looking at: * your source code; * The WINE/LibWIN library; * The OS that the bug was reported on; -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [OT] Re: [libreoffice-users] Linux alternative
On 07/18/2015 05:56 PM, Tom Williams wrote: Comments about how Linux is good for basic things and not good for productivity. Tell that to all the scientists who use supercomputers. The vast majority of them, including my cousin, run Linux. Also, a while ago, all the computers on the International Space Station were switched from Windows to Linux. http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/open-source-insider/2013/05/international-space-station-adopts-debian-linux-drop-windows-red-hat-into-airlock.html http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/155392-international-space-station-switches-from-windows-to-linux-for-improved-reliability Apparently viruses can even survive in space! http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/12/international-space-station-virus-epidemics-malware -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [OT] Re: [libreoffice-users] Linux alternative
On 18/07/15 06:10 PM, Malgosia Askanas wrote: On 2015-07-18 04:02 PM, Gary Dale wrote: The top reason people find hard is almost certainly that you have to install it. That's not entirely accurate. There are a few (not many) companies that specialize in selling Linux-preinstalled machines. The two that immediately come to mind are System76.com and ThinkPenguin.com . -malgosia True but largely irrelevant. You can't go to the local Best Buy or Staples and pick up one. -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [OT] Re: [libreoffice-users] Linux alternative
Heh heh. But then the _real_ top reason would be that you can't acquire a Linux machine in a hurry. True enough. On 2015-07-18 06:16 PM, Gary Dale wrote: On 18/07/15 06:10 PM, Malgosia Askanas wrote: On 2015-07-18 04:02 PM, Gary Dale wrote: The top reason people find hard is almost certainly that you have to install it. That's not entirely accurate. There are a few (not many) companies that specialize in selling Linux-preinstalled machines. The two that immediately come to mind are System76.com and ThinkPenguin.com . -malgosia True but largely irrelevant. You can't go to the local Best Buy or Staples and pick up one. -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Linux alternative
On 18/07/15 02:25 PM, Harvey Nimmo wrote: On Sat, 2015-07-18 at 08:21 -0400, Tim---Kracked_P_P---webmaster wrote: On 07/18/2015 03:42 AM, Eric wrote: On 07/17/2015 05:25 PM, charles meyer wrote: For those on the list using or contemplating Linux, this was interesting. http://www.techrepublic.com/article/alternative-is-the-question-linux-is-the-answer/ No one really addressed software only written for Windows - e.g. Dragon Naturally Speaking. There doesn't seem to be a good open source or Linux-based voice recognition software. That can be a deal breaker. yes it can be. As someone dependent on NaturallySpeaking, I can tell you that most of the native limits speech recognition solutions do not measure up and would probably take a multimillion dollar effort to make a functional equivalent. Then there is the issue of supporting it, fixing bugs, adding features, working with the community current open-source funding techniques just don't measure up to the financial needs of critical projects like this would be. So how is it, I am using NaturallySpeaking to dictate on the next? Well the wine solution is pretty fragile and doesn't work with the latest NaturallySpeaking. It still has problems with using community supported extensions such as natlink and vocola. Instead, I'm using a different solution which is running NaturallySpeaking in a Windows virtual machine and using a tool I developed called speech bridge (See github) to link speech recognition functionality in Windows to whatever the hell Linux is doing. It's moving slow, I am changing things as I need them. I'm getting to the point where I could use some assistance but I'm going to hold off asking until I have a good specification/Definition. --- eric There are only two or three Win-only software I need to use, that I have not found an easy to use alternative for a .deb based Linux OS. Also, I have not found any way to use my external USB-based wifi antenna, for better/faster useful access 10 floors below my router's antennas. IF so, then Linux would be use for that work environment, Also, for the speech issue, I have never been able to got that to work properly for Ubuntu and Linux Mint, as least text to speech. I have not worked with speech to text or speech system control before, so I have not really looked into that, much. I couldn't find a good OCR solution for linux either. Project for someone? Cheers Harvey You're kidding right? Check out https://help.ubuntu.com/community/OCR for a quick overview of the current state of affairs. -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Linux alternative
On 07/18/2015 02:39 PM, Paolo Debortoli wrote: hi. personal experience. I started using linux about 12 years ago installation and configuration are just a bit longer than in windows systems (but you can find a lot of documentation). Linux systems are, by the way, more transparent (if you want to know what happens behind the interface), customizable and versatile than windows systems. You can run linux on micro computers (e.g. raspberry), very old computers (I have ubuntu on a notebook with 256 mb ram); you can use a wider set of data formats (texts, images...) and so on. then it depends on your needs: if you have particular softwares or hardwares that require windows... However, open source software (LibreOffice, Gimp, Blender...) has made impressive progresses in the last years, so that just a small number of users can note the difference (provided they don't just trust the name or think that higher costs mean higher quality). Paolo Debortoli yes, but as I say, you are quite expert, my sister had a pc with windows, and to allow her to use linux the only way is to install linux by me :-) :-) On Saturday, July 18, 2015 10:31 AM, yahoo-pier_andreit pier_andr...@yahoo.it wrote: On 07/18/2015 09:32 AM, Thomas wrote: On 2015/07/18 6:50, Jack Wallen wrote: Thank you for sharing that, Charles (I'm the author). Glad to know it resonated. Jack Thank YOU, Mr. Wallen, for your article. Although I know, this does not belong here, just a word. I have been trying (STRUGGLING) to move away from MS and get friendly with Linux for 7-8 years now! So far with little success. Yet, I still keep trying. -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Linux alternative
On Sat, 2015-07-18 at 16:05 -0400, Gary Dale wrote: On 18/07/15 02:25 PM, Harvey Nimmo wrote: On Sat, 2015-07-18 at 08:21 -0400, Tim---Kracked_P_P---webmaster wrote: On 07/18/2015 03:42 AM, Eric wrote: On 07/17/2015 05:25 PM, charles meyer wrote: For those on the list using or contemplating Linux, this was interesting. http://www.techrepublic.com/article/alternative-is-the-question-linux-is-the-answer/ No one really addressed software only written for Windows - e.g. Dragon Naturally Speaking. There doesn't seem to be a good open source or Linux-based voice recognition software. That can be a deal breaker. yes it can be. As someone dependent on NaturallySpeaking, I can tell you that most of the native limits speech recognition solutions do not measure up and would probably take a multimillion dollar effort to make a functional equivalent. Then there is the issue of supporting it, fixing bugs, adding features, working with the community current open-source funding techniques just don't measure up to the financial needs of critical projects like this would be. So how is it, I am using NaturallySpeaking to dictate on the next? Well the wine solution is pretty fragile and doesn't work with the latest NaturallySpeaking. It still has problems with using community supported extensions such as natlink and vocola. Instead, I'm using a different solution which is running NaturallySpeaking in a Windows virtual machine and using a tool I developed called speech bridge (See github) to link speech recognition functionality in Windows to whatever the hell Linux is doing. It's moving slow, I am changing things as I need them. I'm getting to the point where I could use some assistance but I'm going to hold off asking until I have a good specification/Definition. --- eric There are only two or three Win-only software I need to use, that I have not found an easy to use alternative for a .deb based Linux OS. Also, I have not found any way to use my external USB-based wifi antenna, for better/faster useful access 10 floors below my router's antennas. IF so, then Linux would be use for that work environment, Also, for the speech issue, I have never been able to got that to work properly for Ubuntu and Linux Mint, as least text to speech. I have not worked with speech to text or speech system control before, so I have not really looked into that, much. I couldn't find a good OCR solution for linux either. Project for someone? Cheers Harvey You're kidding right? Check out https://help.ubuntu.com/community/OCR for a quick overview of the current state of affairs. No, I'm not really kidding. Command line programs are only the start of the journey. It is quite a bit more to have something that is well integrated with the corresponding display and text tools. -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Linux alternative
I couldn't find a good OCR solution for linux either. Project for someone? Cheers Harvey I also battled to find a good OCR program for a couple of years on my Linux System (PClinuxOS)!! Then about two years or eighteen months back I came across the combination of YAGF with Tesseract. This combination works fantastically with basically just clean-up to do on almost any scanned document. I can recommend this to anyone who needs, or uses, OCR as a regular job, (as I do). IanW Pretoria RSA. -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [OT] Re: [libreoffice-users] Linux alternative
On 07/18/2015 10:44 AM, Felmon Davis wrote:
On Sat, 18 Jul 2015, Thomas wrote:
Although I know, this does not belong here, just a word.
I have been trying (STRUGGLING) to move away from MS and get friendly
with Linux for 7-8 years now!
So far with little success. Yet, I still keep trying.
this makes me wonder what the top two or three things are that people
find hard in adopting Linux.
I've found a number of people simply expect _any_ computer to look, act,
and feel like Windows. I installed LibreOffice on the computer of a
client of mine because MS Office Starter Edition kept acting funny when
he would try to open MS Office documents attached to email messages.
One day, we were talking about his using Excel vs Calc to update a
spreadsheet. He insisted he couldn't use Calc because it didn't do what
Excel did. I asked him to show me the things he could do in Excel but
couldn't do in Calc and we both discovered he actually _could_ do all of
the things he needed to do in Calc but the way he needed to do those
things were a little different. In another case, I showed an IT guy I
used to work with an Ubuntu system. He wanted to run an application and
went straight to the lower left corner of the screen, looking for the
Start menu.
The more people learn Windows, especially as their first computing
interface, the more they tend to think all computers behave that way.
Of course, this isn't an absolute statement. :)
Something else I've found is non-Linux users tend to expect a higher
standard of performance from Linux for it to even be considered a
viable option. For example, if Linux can't support {fill in the
blank} perfectly, Linux isn't ready for prime time. Let's forget the
fact that Windows might have issues supporting {fill in the blank} as
well. lol
This thread could not have come at a better time since I recently read
the TechRepublic article and another article about Linux being an
alternative to Windows. In the other article, I was floored by various
comments made by others who had read that article. Comments about how
Linux is good for basic things and not good for productivity. So,
if you want to just read email and surf mainstream websites, Linux is
great. If you want to do real work, you need Windows for that. I
had to laugh since I find myself doing real and productive work on
Linux on a daily basis, and without using the command line unless I want
to use ImageMagick to process some images in batch.
I've switched my mom to Linux and while she's not doing anything
sophisticated, I've noticed her computer question volume has decreased
significantly. Her computer usage hasn't changed much from when she
used Windows XP except I think she's actually listening to more music on
her computer now, while reading email and surfing the web.
Sorry for being so long winded. :)
Peace...
The other Tom
--
/When we dance, you have a way with me,
Stay with me... Sway with me.../
--
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Re: [libreoffice-users] Linux alternative
On 18/07/15 05:15 PM, Harvey Nimmo wrote: On Sat, 2015-07-18 at 16:05 -0400, Gary Dale wrote: On 18/07/15 02:25 PM, Harvey Nimmo wrote: On Sat, 2015-07-18 at 08:21 -0400, Tim---Kracked_P_P---webmaster wrote: On 07/18/2015 03:42 AM, Eric wrote: On 07/17/2015 05:25 PM, charles meyer wrote: For those on the list using or contemplating Linux, this was interesting. http://www.techrepublic.com/article/alternative-is-the-question-linux-is-the-answer/ No one really addressed software only written for Windows - e.g. Dragon Naturally Speaking. There doesn't seem to be a good open source or Linux-based voice recognition software. That can be a deal breaker. yes it can be. As someone dependent on NaturallySpeaking, I can tell you that most of the native limits speech recognition solutions do not measure up and would probably take a multimillion dollar effort to make a functional equivalent. Then there is the issue of supporting it, fixing bugs, adding features, working with the community current open-source funding techniques just don't measure up to the financial needs of critical projects like this would be. So how is it, I am using NaturallySpeaking to dictate on the next? Well the wine solution is pretty fragile and doesn't work with the latest NaturallySpeaking. It still has problems with using community supported extensions such as natlink and vocola. Instead, I'm using a different solution which is running NaturallySpeaking in a Windows virtual machine and using a tool I developed called speech bridge (See github) to link speech recognition functionality in Windows to whatever the hell Linux is doing. It's moving slow, I am changing things as I need them. I'm getting to the point where I could use some assistance but I'm going to hold off asking until I have a good specification/Definition. --- eric There are only two or three Win-only software I need to use, that I have not found an easy to use alternative for a .deb based Linux OS. Also, I have not found any way to use my external USB-based wifi antenna, for better/faster useful access 10 floors below my router's antennas. IF so, then Linux would be use for that work environment, Also, for the speech issue, I have never been able to got that to work properly for Ubuntu and Linux Mint, as least text to speech. I have not worked with speech to text or speech system control before, so I have not really looked into that, much. I couldn't find a good OCR solution for linux either. Project for someone? Cheers Harvey You're kidding right? Check out https://help.ubuntu.com/community/OCR for a quick overview of the current state of affairs. No, I'm not really kidding. Command line programs are only the start of the journey. It is quite a bit more to have something that is well integrated with the corresponding display and text tools. The command line tools are excellent but they are just the backends. Choose the GUI that suits your purposes. Some are better tuned to preserving column structures while others do a great job on multiple pages You have choice. You can use a different GUI or different backend for different purposes. -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [OT] Re: [libreoffice-users] Linux alternative
On 18/07/15 06:30 PM, Malgosia Askanas wrote: Heh heh. But then the _real_ top reason would be that you can't acquire a Linux machine in a hurry. True enough. No, the real reason is that people don't have the option in front of them to even realize that it is possible. -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Linux alternative
On 07/18/2015 11:00 AM, Gary Dale wrote: And after looking at Windows 8, it seems to be getting worse, not better. I have to use 8.1 on my work computer and have 10 in a virtual machine. While 10 is an improvement on 8.1, it's still nowhere near what W7 was. -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Linux alternative helpsupport
On 07/18/2015 11:28 AM, Tom Davies wrote: Hi :) Something i really appreciate most about Linux is that it's so easy to change the gui - or more importantly that if you don't like the crazy new things that have been done to the gui then you can fairly easily go back to the old one or on to something else entirely. The under-laying system remains the same. Back in the day, I used to have 3 or 4 window managers I used to switch between. lol As for Windows 8's metro, I mean modern UI, I'm not digging it and I never have. The other Tom -- /When we dance, you have a way with me, Stay with me... Sway with me.../ -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [OT] Re: [libreoffice-users] Linux alternative
On 2015-07-18 04:02 PM, Gary Dale wrote: The top reason people find hard is almost certainly that you have to install it. That's not entirely accurate. There are a few (not many) companies that specialize in selling Linux-preinstalled machines. The two that immediately come to mind are System76.com and ThinkPenguin.com . -malgosia -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Linux alternative
On 18/07/15 11:35 AM, Luuk wrote: On 17-7-2015 23:47, Gary Dale wrote: On 17/07/15 05:25 PM, charles meyer wrote: For those on the list using or contemplating Linux, this was interesting. Frankly though, I'm confused as to why more software vendors don't compile to libwine . libwine is about 'bondage'.. It seems some people are just into bondage. :) Not really. Wine has a free license (LGPL). While the individual programs you run on Wine may have other licenses, you aren't obligated to use programs whose license doesn't meet your expectations. What Wine and Libwine do is allow developers to develop and test cross-platform programs on a Linux platform. I have a program that I developed exactly that way. While I could compile a Linux-specific version, I find it easier to just market the single version since it runs on Linux and Windows. The point is that there is no extra work to develop and sell a Linux version of your software if you use the right products. And you not only get a larger target market but also give your customers greater flexibility. For example, I support a small office that uses a Windows-only program. The developers not only don't make a Linux version but they double-down on bondage by only using Windows databases (Access or SQLServer for an extra charge). Had they supported MySQL/MariaDB, I could have at least moved the database to a separate server without worrying about extra licensing, etc.. Windows is like a pyramid scheme that way. They sucker developers into using only their products so that users have no choice but to buy licenses to run their products properly. -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
[libreoffice-users] Linux alternative helpsupport
Hi :) I think this mailing list is often quite helpful about wider issues than it is meant for. This mailing list has been quite supportive of people with questions about various versions of Linux. I really like it when someone who has been a huge help to others about technical issues in LibreOffice is then supported by others in return. My history with Linux ... It took me a few goes before i found which version of Linux suited me most. I'm very much a pointclick user so i went with Gateway (or user-friendly) distros to start with. Mostly they are all good and so just settling with anything is good but sometimes trying a different flavour makes things feel more comfortable. Mageia (formerly Mandriva in the same way that LibreOffice was formerly OpenOffice) felt magical to me, fresh from Windows, but i didn't like the blues in the default theme at the time. Wolvix was a really friendly and tiny team. I could imagine meeting them at certain types of gigs and enjoying beers and moshing. But Slackware is not hugely easy for pointclick users so i tried a few others and settled on Ubuntu as being my main distro while still doing a bit more distro-hopping. Something i really liked was that during that stumbling around distro-hopping stage nothing i learned was wasted. Even just using Wolvix and it's excellent installer helped me learn how to use Mageia and others better. The biggest step was from Windows but moving around between different distros felt like everything stayed the same except the wallpaper and other fairly trivial bitsbobs. Over the last 7-8 years i have accidentally learned a few command-line things so i would have to remember to use different names for a few things but the basic grammar of the commands remains the same and most of the commands are identical in all versions of linux. I have also accidentally learned how to ssh into remote machines (at least ones i've been given passwords for!) to do a bit of systems administration on multiple machines at once and i can rsync or scp to rapidly upload stuff to the company's web-hosters or between desktops or between servers - all with the same commands regardless of which version/flavour of linux they use. I've also learned how to create virtual machines to use Windows inside Linux gaining the advantage of Linux solid foundations and minimal use of resources to abstract-away some of the typical problems of installing Windows. Plus i would have never learned about powerful tools to clone drives and many other things that i would probably never have learned, or that having learned once would have to keep relearning new tools in order to keep doing the same thing. Wine and Play on Linux and Crossover and others are all great ways of running Windows programs within Linux without needing an extra layer(s) for emulators or virtual machines. Some versions/flavours of Linux can be installed within Windows, such as Ubuntu's Wubi and Puppy-Linux but that seems to be an odd way of doing it. Using Windows as the base and then having another OS within that either as the Wubi or the Puppy-Linux way or inside a virtual machine seems a bit weird to me. Windows is not really a good stable foundation plus it tends to be quite heavy in it's use of resources and doesn't have a reputation of playing well with others. Linux is much stronger on bare-metal so you'd be missing some of the key advantages of Linux and really kinda combining the worst aspects of both types of OSes. However, many people have a lot of success with it and it might be a good way-in. So, anyway, i hope that people do ask more questions about how to use Linux on this mailing list and that we are able to help signpost people to the best places to ask questions or even just quickly help directly solve the problem. Regards from Tom :) On 18 July 2015 at 16:00, Gary Dale garyd...@torfree.net wrote: On 18/07/15 04:31 AM, yahoo-pier_andreit wrote: On 07/18/2015 09:32 AM, Thomas wrote: On 2015/07/18 6:50, Jack Wallen wrote: Thank you for sharing that, Charles (I'm the author). Glad to know it resonated. Jack Thank YOU, Mr. Wallen, for your article. Although I know, this does not belong here, just a word. I have been trying (STRUGGLING) to move away from MS and get friendly with Linux for 7-8 years now! So far with little success. Yet, I still keep trying. many thanks jack, :-) I'm not an expert, I start to use linux, basically opensuse, in 2000, and I agree with thomas, my son, my sister, my nephews uses linux, but, if I didn't install it and configure it and solved the problems that rised up and sometimes continues to pop up, they never started to use linux. too complicate... :-) The same issue afflicts Windows. It's just that Windows usually comes pre-installed. Having performed a lot of installs of both types, I've found the Linux installs to be simpler and a lot faster. Windows may get to the login screen a bit faster but then you've got
Re: [libreoffice-users] Linux alternative
On 18-7-2015 18:00, Gary Dale wrote: Windows is like a pyramid scheme that way. They sucker developers into using only their products so that users have no choice but to buy licenses to run their products properly. And that is exactly why you should not _DEVELOP_ using libwine (using it, because there's not yeat a good alternative, is a complete different story -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Linux alternative
Hi :) +1 But Wine is about bondage in the sense that it keeps you using stuff that is made for Windows. Making stuff that needs Wine in order to work kinda keeps you locked-in to the Windows world. By contrast we see many native GnuLinux programs are then ported over to Mac and Windows apparently without a huge amount of effort. Firefox and LibreOffice/OpenOffice are great examples of that as they have then become serious competitors to alternatives that were only written for Windows and then have been unable to be ported to anything else. If programs plan to become cross-platform then initially writing for Linux seems to be the optimum route. Writing for Mac seems to be the next best option. Starting with Windows means programs or almost anything else faces a nightmare up-hill struggle. Even Microsoft themselves take an extra whole year to port their office suite to Mac and even then it's a stripped-down version. Writing for Wine is a neat trick that i have not heard of before. It sounds like it neatly avoids any need for porting at all. Wine runs on Mac too so that is all 3 major platform covered in one hit. It feels like there must be an inherent flaw aside from the ethical issue of not quite breaking free of the Windows world. If not why on earth wouldn't everyone be doing this? ;) Regards from Tom :) On 18 July 2015 at 17:00, Gary Dale garyd...@torfree.net wrote: On 18/07/15 11:35 AM, Luuk wrote: On 17-7-2015 23:47, Gary Dale wrote: On 17/07/15 05:25 PM, charles meyer wrote: For those on the list using or contemplating Linux, this was interesting. Frankly though, I'm confused as to why more software vendors don't compile to libwine . libwine is about 'bondage'.. It seems some people are just into bondage. :) Not really. Wine has a free license (LGPL). While the individual programs you run on Wine may have other licenses, you aren't obligated to use programs whose license doesn't meet your expectations. What Wine and Libwine do is allow developers to develop and test cross-platform programs on a Linux platform. I have a program that I developed exactly that way. While I could compile a Linux-specific version, I find it easier to just market the single version since it runs on Linux and Windows. The point is that there is no extra work to develop and sell a Linux version of your software if you use the right products. And you not only get a larger target market but also give your customers greater flexibility. For example, I support a small office that uses a Windows-only program. The developers not only don't make a Linux version but they double-down on bondage by only using Windows databases (Access or SQLServer for an extra charge). Had they supported MySQL/MariaDB, I could have at least moved the database to a separate server without worrying about extra licensing, etc.. Windows is like a pyramid scheme that way. They sucker developers into using only their products so that users have no choice but to buy licenses to run their products properly. -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Linux alternative helpsupport
Hi :) Something i really appreciate most about Linux is that it's so easy to change the gui - or more importantly that if you don't like the crazy new things that have been done to the gui then you can fairly easily go back to the old one or on to something else entirely. The under-laying system remains the same. I actually really like Unity but i also quite like the Win8 metro thing now that i've found how to move things around and pin/unpin things from it. The Windows key is good for getting to a classic desktop or back to the menu/Metro-thingy on 8.1. I've also been getting into KDE recently too, despite the blue. Regards form Tom :) On 18 July 2015 at 19:11, M Henri Day mhenri...@gmail.com wrote: 2015-07-18 19:09 GMT+02:00 Tom Davies tomc...@gmail.com: Hi :) I think this mailing list is often quite helpful about wider issues than it is meant for. This mailing list has been quite supportive of people with questions about various versions of Linux. I really like it when someone who has been a huge help to others about technical issues in LibreOffice is then supported by others in return. My history with Linux ... It took me a few goes before i found which version of Linux suited me most. I'm very much a pointclick user so i went with Gateway (or user-friendly) distros to start with. Mostly they are all good and so just settling with anything is good but sometimes trying a different flavour makes things feel more comfortable. Mageia (formerly Mandriva in the same way that LibreOffice was formerly OpenOffice) felt magical to me, fresh from Windows, but i didn't like the blues in the default theme at the time. Wolvix was a really friendly and tiny team. I could imagine meeting them at certain types of gigs and enjoying beers and moshing. But Slackware is not hugely easy for pointclick users so i tried a few others and settled on Ubuntu as being my main distro while still doing a bit more distro-hopping. Something i really liked was that during that stumbling around distro-hopping stage nothing i learned was wasted. Even just using Wolvix and it's excellent installer helped me learn how to use Mageia and others better. The biggest step was from Windows but moving around between different distros felt like everything stayed the same except the wallpaper and other fairly trivial bitsbobs. Over the last 7-8 years i have accidentally learned a few command-line things so i would have to remember to use different names for a few things but the basic grammar of the commands remains the same and most of the commands are identical in all versions of linux. I have also accidentally learned how to ssh into remote machines (at least ones i've been given passwords for!) to do a bit of systems administration on multiple machines at once and i can rsync or scp to rapidly upload stuff to the company's web-hosters or between desktops or between servers - all with the same commands regardless of which version/flavour of linux they use. I've also learned how to create virtual machines to use Windows inside Linux gaining the advantage of Linux solid foundations and minimal use of resources to abstract-away some of the typical problems of installing Windows. Plus i would have never learned about powerful tools to clone drives and many other things that i would probably never have learned, or that having learned once would have to keep relearning new tools in order to keep doing the same thing. Wine and Play on Linux and Crossover and others are all great ways of running Windows programs within Linux without needing an extra layer(s) for emulators or virtual machines. Some versions/flavours of Linux can be installed within Windows, such as Ubuntu's Wubi and Puppy-Linux but that seems to be an odd way of doing it. Using Windows as the base and then having another OS within that either as the Wubi or the Puppy-Linux way or inside a virtual machine seems a bit weird to me. Windows is not really a good stable foundation plus it tends to be quite heavy in it's use of resources and doesn't have a reputation of playing well with others. Linux is much stronger on bare-metal so you'd be missing some of the key advantages of Linux and really kinda combining the worst aspects of both types of OSes. However, many people have a lot of success with it and it might be a good way-in. So, anyway, i hope that people do ask more questions about how to use Linux on this mailing list and that we are able to help signpost people to the best places to ask questions or even just quickly help directly solve the problem. Regards from Tom :) On 18 July 2015 at 16:00, Gary Dale garyd...@torfree.net wrote: On 18/07/15 04:31 AM, yahoo-pier_andreit wrote: On 07/18/2015 09:32 AM, Thomas wrote: On 2015/07/18 6:50, Jack Wallen wrote: Thank you for sharing that, Charles (I'm the author). Glad to know it resonated. Jack
Re: [libreoffice-users] Linux alternative helpsupport
Tom, you might want to take a look at Linux Mint (current version 17.2) ; if you're using a desktop as your main box, I think you will find the GUI - I personally prefer Cinnamon - far superior to Ubuntu's Unity (Cinnamon can, of course, be installed on Ubuntu to replace Unity) and the OS is a dream to use. On my triple-boot machine, it boots (from GRUB), for example, much more quickly than Windows 8.1 Pro, which I keep around solely in order to be able to help retirees with their Windows problems. It doesn't require, as does Windows, that the machine be rebooted just about every time a minor update is installed, and things like the BSOD simply don't appear You guys who use Mint with Cinnamon (from now on I will only say ”Mint”, but I mean Mint with the Cinnamon desktop every time), I would like to know a little more about a few details, if you don't mind: I currently use Ubuntu 14.04 and I have used Ubuntu since 7.04. I was very impressed by the first version I installed, then even more impressed for every new version up to 10.10. After that it seems like the Ubuntu team spied on my. ”Now, let's see what features Johnny Rosenberg like to use… aha… aha… I see… yes, that one too, ok, let's remove them!” So basically everything that I like with Ubuntu is gone now or doesn't work. Let's asume that I want to give Mint with Cinnamon a go, what about the following? In old Ubuntu version, let's say a wrote a Bash script that I intended to use with FLAC files. That's not too crazy, because I actually wrote quite a few such scripts… Now, I want to run these scripts with on FLAC files without too much effort. I just want to right click a FLAC file, then ”Open with” and finally just select my script. To make this happen, in old Ubuntu I could just right click a FLAC file → Properties → Open with, and from there just enter a command line manually to reach my script. This is of course impossible in Ubuntu 14.04. There are methods, but none of them works. I have edited text files, been fiddling around with Ubuntu Tweak and other tools, but no success. Nautilus Actions doesn't seem to work properly anymore and so on. It's possible to use the Script folder (~/.local/share/nautilus/scripts) but then my script will be available for ALL kinds of files. Not good. What about Mint in this case? I use icons on my desktop. Maybe I shouldn't, but I find it convenient. I try to have just a few of them, though. Anyway, I want my icons on certain places and in certain sizes. I size up important icons, for instance. This works in Ubuntu, but when I logout and then login again, or restart the computer, all of my desktop icons are the same size again and placed from up to down, left to right in alphabetic order… Does this work properly in Mint? My Android phone always appear on different places. If I write a script that will move files to and from my phone, I need to write special routines to determine where the phone is located. At the moment it's at ”/run/user/1000/gvfs/mtp:host=%5Busb%3A001%2C006%5D/”, for instance. I find that annoying and it reminds me about Windows’ silly drive letters, which I also find annoying and… well, silly… What about Mint in this case? Connecting Android devices that is, I already know that Mint doesn't use drive letters… :P Kind regards Johnny Rosenberg So I agree with Jack Wallen - Linux *is* the answer to the question of alternatives to Windows. I'd disagree with him just a bit when it comes to «good» and «bad» Windows OSs - the problem with Vista (Windows 6.0) wasn't the OS itself, which was, in fact, a great improvement over XP (Windows 5.1) - try defragging the same files on the two systems and you'll see what I mean - but rather that it was released before the manufacturers of peripherals like, e g, printers, had gotten around to creating drivers that worked with it, which was a real bummer for consumers. Two years later, when Windows 7 (i e, Windows 6.1), which amounted to a Vista SP with a better GUI, was released, those drivers were in place, and everybody, i e, Windows users, breathed a sigh of relief, Then came Windows 8 (Windows 6.2), a relatively minor upgrade from Windows 7, where the MS leadership made the disastrous mistake of forcing the Metro GUI on all users. However, all that had to be done to make the new OS work in a way familiar to Windows users was to install the lovely little shell program from *Classic Shell* http://classicshell.net , which gave users a GUI almost indistinguishable from that of Windows 7. I don't know how many retirees we have saved from throwing their computers out the window by this simple expedient. In Windows 8.1 (Windows 6.3), Microsoft started a slow retreat back to the familiar start button, but even here the installation of Classic Shell was needed to bring relief to users who communicated with their computers mainly via a mouse/touchpad and a keyboard, rather than sweeping their fingers over a touch
Re: [libreoffice-users] Linux alternative helpsupport
2015-07-18 19:09 GMT+02:00 Tom Davies tomc...@gmail.com: Hi :) I think this mailing list is often quite helpful about wider issues than it is meant for. This mailing list has been quite supportive of people with questions about various versions of Linux. I really like it when someone who has been a huge help to others about technical issues in LibreOffice is then supported by others in return. My history with Linux ... It took me a few goes before i found which version of Linux suited me most. I'm very much a pointclick user so i went with Gateway (or user-friendly) distros to start with. Mostly they are all good and so just settling with anything is good but sometimes trying a different flavour makes things feel more comfortable. Mageia (formerly Mandriva in the same way that LibreOffice was formerly OpenOffice) felt magical to me, fresh from Windows, but i didn't like the blues in the default theme at the time. Wolvix was a really friendly and tiny team. I could imagine meeting them at certain types of gigs and enjoying beers and moshing. But Slackware is not hugely easy for pointclick users so i tried a few others and settled on Ubuntu as being my main distro while still doing a bit more distro-hopping. Something i really liked was that during that stumbling around distro-hopping stage nothing i learned was wasted. Even just using Wolvix and it's excellent installer helped me learn how to use Mageia and others better. The biggest step was from Windows but moving around between different distros felt like everything stayed the same except the wallpaper and other fairly trivial bitsbobs. Over the last 7-8 years i have accidentally learned a few command-line things so i would have to remember to use different names for a few things but the basic grammar of the commands remains the same and most of the commands are identical in all versions of linux. I have also accidentally learned how to ssh into remote machines (at least ones i've been given passwords for!) to do a bit of systems administration on multiple machines at once and i can rsync or scp to rapidly upload stuff to the company's web-hosters or between desktops or between servers - all with the same commands regardless of which version/flavour of linux they use. I've also learned how to create virtual machines to use Windows inside Linux gaining the advantage of Linux solid foundations and minimal use of resources to abstract-away some of the typical problems of installing Windows. Plus i would have never learned about powerful tools to clone drives and many other things that i would probably never have learned, or that having learned once would have to keep relearning new tools in order to keep doing the same thing. Wine and Play on Linux and Crossover and others are all great ways of running Windows programs within Linux without needing an extra layer(s) for emulators or virtual machines. Some versions/flavours of Linux can be installed within Windows, such as Ubuntu's Wubi and Puppy-Linux but that seems to be an odd way of doing it. Using Windows as the base and then having another OS within that either as the Wubi or the Puppy-Linux way or inside a virtual machine seems a bit weird to me. Windows is not really a good stable foundation plus it tends to be quite heavy in it's use of resources and doesn't have a reputation of playing well with others. Linux is much stronger on bare-metal so you'd be missing some of the key advantages of Linux and really kinda combining the worst aspects of both types of OSes. However, many people have a lot of success with it and it might be a good way-in. So, anyway, i hope that people do ask more questions about how to use Linux on this mailing list and that we are able to help signpost people to the best places to ask questions or even just quickly help directly solve the problem. Regards from Tom :) On 18 July 2015 at 16:00, Gary Dale garyd...@torfree.net wrote: On 18/07/15 04:31 AM, yahoo-pier_andreit wrote: On 07/18/2015 09:32 AM, Thomas wrote: On 2015/07/18 6:50, Jack Wallen wrote: Thank you for sharing that, Charles (I'm the author). Glad to know it resonated. Jack Thank YOU, Mr. Wallen, for your article. Although I know, this does not belong here, just a word. I have been trying (STRUGGLING) to move away from MS and get friendly with Linux for 7-8 years now! So far with little success. Yet, I still keep trying. many thanks jack, :-) I'm not an expert, I start to use linux, basically opensuse, in 2000, and I agree with thomas, my son, my sister, my nephews uses linux, but, if I didn't install it and configure it and solved the problems that rised up and sometimes continues to pop up, they never started to use linux. too complicate... :-) The same issue afflicts Windows. It's just that Windows usually comes pre-installed. Having performed a lot of
Re: [libreoffice-users] Linux alternative
On Sat, 2015-07-18 at 12:00 -0400, Gary Dale wrote: On 18/07/15 11:35 AM, Luuk wrote: On 17-7-2015 23:47, Gary Dale wrote: On 17/07/15 05:25 PM, charles meyer wrote: For those on the list using or contemplating Linux, this was interesting. Frankly though, I'm confused as to why more software vendors don't compile to libwine . libwine is about 'bondage'.. It seems some people are just into bondage. :) Not really. Wine has a free license (LGPL). While the individual programs you run on Wine may have other licenses, you aren't obligated to use programs whose license doesn't meet your expectations. What Wine and Libwine do is allow developers to develop and test cross-platform programs on a Linux platform. I have a program that I developed exactly that way. While I could compile a Linux-specific version, I find it easier to just market the single version since it runs on Linux and Windows. The point is that there is no extra work to develop and sell a Linux version of your software if you use the right products. And you not only get a larger target market but also give your customers greater flexibility. For example, I support a small office that uses a Windows-only program. The developers not only don't make a Linux version but they double-down on bondage by only using Windows databases (Access or SQLServer for an extra charge). Had they supported MySQL/MariaDB, I could have at least moved the database to a separate server without worrying about extra licensing, etc.. Windows is like a pyramid scheme that way. They sucker developers into using only their products so that users have no choice but to buy licenses to run their products properly. The rather dishonest propaganda of proprietary software tends to be: if you don't pay for a product, then you *are* the product. What they fail to say is that if you do pay for a product, you are also the product and pay considerably to remain the product as well. Cheers Harvey -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Linux alternative
On 18/07/15 01:04 PM, Luuk wrote: On 18-7-2015 18:00, Gary Dale wrote: Windows is like a pyramid scheme that way. They sucker developers into using only their products so that users have no choice but to buy licenses to run their products properly. And that is exactly why you should not _DEVELOP_ using libwine (using it, because there's not yeat a good alternative, is a complete different story That's not really a good argument. Software freedom is about choice. A lot of people don't have the option to quit Windows right away (if ever) so I give them the option of running software that runs on multiple platforms - the same as Mozilla, The Document Foundation, GIMP and a lot of others do. Being Open Source and under a Free License, I can't keep anyone else from recompiling my software to run on Windows, so why shouldn't I do it myself? -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Linux alternative
On 07/18/2015 11:54 AM, charles meyer wrote: Hi Jack, You’re most welcome. I think many Windows users are married to old verbiage they heard years ago (some unfounded) about how you’ll need to learn to code or have to learn language like the old DOS to make Linux work and so propelled by fear they remain with Windows. I’m looking forward to all the good work and advancement Eric (on this list) makes with his foray into voice recognition but can you or Gary on this list or others recommend any Linux-based voice recognition? Nuance has dragged their heels in so many ways including developing voice recognition for more than one voice at a time so I don’t feel like I can count on them to offer a Linux-based version by 2020 when MS is supposed to end W7 support. Thanks for disabusing readers of their “Linux-fear” in your article and for your and others voice recognition recommendations. Charles. I started with computers when punch-cards were still common and computers smaller than a refrigerator was not. I wished I still remembered all the programming skills I have back then [but that ended with the strokes]. Users are pampered with a GUI and other modern items on their really small sized systems, compared to what I started working with. You try writing a general ledger accounting system from scratch in COBOL and then tell me that people do not have it so easy now. Well, at least if you do not have to do the GUI programming from scratch instead of using templates, or needing to do AI work withing a game environment. But the basic business stuff was much harder to produce back then when colored printing, or even graphical printing, from a low to middle environment business computer was not available at all. I was programming computers for over a decade before I ever saw a colored printer, let alone afford one. -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [OT] [libreoffice-users] Linux alternative
On 07/18/2015 10:08 PM, James Knott wrote: Tell that to all the scientists who use supercomputers. The vast majority of them, including my cousin, run Linux. If you want state of the art software, that costs a fortune, you run *Nix. If you want almost state of the art, that costs a small fortune, it is as likely to run on Mac OS X, as on Windows. If you want software that is almost state of the art, but is affordable, you run Windows. If you want software that is good enough for most purposes, you run Linux. Joe Sixpack wants something slightly better than good enough for most purposes, but doesn't want the cash outlay that state of the art requires. Thus far, Windows has been that happy medium. jonathon -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Linux alternative
Thank you for sharing that, Charles (I'm the author). Glad to know it resonated. Jack On 07/17/2015 05:25 PM, charles meyer wrote: For those on the list using or contemplating Linux, this was interesting. http://www.techrepublic.com/article/alternative-is-the-question-linux-is-the-answer/ No one really addressed software only written for Windows - e.g. Dragon Naturally Speaking. There doesn't seem to be a good open source or Linux-based voice recognition software. That can be a deal breaker. But, for those of us not interested in grappling with W10, it's a conundrum. Charles. -- /Jack Wallen/ Award winning author of dark, twisty fiction And tech journalist Find out more on Get Jack'd http://www.monkeypantz.net TechRepublic http://www.techrepublic.com and Linux.com. http://www.linux.com -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Linux alternative
On 17/07/15 05:25 PM, charles meyer wrote: For those on the list using or contemplating Linux, this was interesting. http://www.techrepublic.com/article/alternative-is-the-question-linux-is-the-answer/ No one really addressed software only written for Windows - e.g. Dragon Naturally Speaking. There doesn't seem to be a good open source or Linux-based voice recognition software. That can be a deal breaker. But, for those of us not interested in grappling with W10, it's a conundrum. Charles. There's some pretty decent Linux voice recognition software out there, and lots of articles talking about the various options. Frankly though, I'm confused as to why more software vendors don't compile to libwine and get software that runs on both (and Macs). They could also switch their database options to Sqlite or MariaDB and reduce their costs while getting a more reliable product. It seems some people are just into bondage. :) -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
[libreoffice-users] Linux alternative
For those on the list using or contemplating Linux, this was interesting. http://www.techrepublic.com/article/alternative-is-the-question-linux-is-the-answer/ No one really addressed software only written for Windows - e.g. Dragon Naturally Speaking. There doesn't seem to be a good open source or Linux-based voice recognition software. That can be a deal breaker. But, for those of us not interested in grappling with W10, it's a conundrum. Charles. -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
