On Sun, 13 Feb 2000, Aravind Naidu wrote:
> For a desktop, good or bad I need Microsoft compatibility as all
> documents I get sent are in Word, Excel and Powerpoint. I would like
> to hear some stories on compatibility between these and the Linux
> versions of StarOffice, WP, KOffice etc.
To everybody's objection (and to some's surprise), I would have to say
that I personally do not believe Linux is ready for the desktop for the
majority of people.
However, I do use Linux .. on the desktop.
As for as Office stuff goes, Linux 'may' be ready, and I don't consider
Office and Desktop the same thing. There is a minor distinction there
where only a small set of programs will be run on an office machine, and
most offices exist in a networked environment, whilst home users may be
many people of various ages on a single homed machine.
Linux on the Office Desktop --
I use StarOffice. It's a little slow, but it works. Compatibility is
fairly good, however, StarOffice -WILL NOT- open password protected MS
Office documents.
I have not tried Applixware or Wordperfect, which I consider as the only
other two major usable competitors in the Office market (at this time).
Linux on the Home Desktop --
Linux games support is lacking tremendously. Most of this can be blamed
(too harsh a word perhaps) on XFree86. It was "designed" for 1 and 2Mb
video cards, NOT for 32Mb 3D OpenGL compatible cards. As a result, there
has been many small projects like GLX and DGA to try and bring more
graphics handling to XFree86, however, there were still issues which could
not be fixed by at least a partial rewrite, thus XFree 4.0. Unfortunately
I have to say, although XFree 4.0 (3.9.17) is faster in 2D, I still can't
get 3D stuff to work reliably and when I do, at a decent speed. I think
the X server still has a little way to come before it will be accepted on
the whole. Also *WHERE ARE ANTIALIASED FONTS*. Appearance means
everything, and anti-aliased fonts make a ***BIG*** difference to the
user.
Umm, where was I? Oh yes, game support. There is very limited game
support for Linux although this is rapidly increasing (thanks Loki), but
until XFree 4.0 is finalised and perhaps it may take till XFree 4.5 or
something to get everything working right, gaming will still fall behind
Windows.
As for everything else? Linux applications are being written and
perfected every day. You can't argue about availability of appropriate
tools since if you can't find it, you can usually find somebody or some
group interested in doing it for you.
There also needs to be a tiny little more work in the area of software
installation. GnoRPM is a nice little tool for the newbie, perhaps a
little work on that and some other similar tools will fill this void.
Anyhow, enough on my ranting, I'll shutup now and hope nobody gets too
offended by this message as these are my feelings in general.
Personally tho, I try to do everything under Linux. If it's remotely
possible via a hard to setup program or even if I have to write a program
myself I will spend 8 hours installing / writing software rather than
spending 5 minutes booting to Windows. My friends can verify this,
because they have had to wait for me to do things sometimes :)
Andrew.
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