Guest post by Netbook innovator Asustek has announced that it will ship three models of its Eee PC with Ubuntu 10.10 preinstalled. Canonical announced Asus’ decision to load the Eee PC 1001PXD, 1011PX and 1015PX with Ubuntu 10.10 from 1 June as one that will “make it one of the most user-friendly PCs on the market”. Asus said that “many more” Eee PC models running Ubuntu will be available later this year. Linux fans will hope that in the three years since Asus started shipping Linux on its Eee PCs users will have realised that Linux is far more lightweight and suited to netbook computing than Windows.
I’d really like to see them release a linux 12″ with usb3, hdmi and gigabit. I would seriously consider buying one of those to replace my current netbooks.
Setting their sites a little low this time?
🙂
…will probably never come, now that the Desktop dies.
But maybe one day Windows will be remembered as the arcane OS that ran on these huge machines everyone had at home 🙂
How about the year of the Linux Laptop ?
There is little evidence so far that tablets can be good at actually productive tasks, and laptops sound like the logical evolution of the desktop for persons who can deal with their smaller screen and don’t change any hardware but RAM and mass storage devices.
Edited 2011-06-04 07:50 UTC
Right now, Desktop Linux isn’t very good at productive tasks either. Unless you’re willing to use workarounds like Wine (which may not work) for legacy support or change over all your productivity software to the less popular Linux equivalents (if they exist).
Tablets will eventually get there because they are popular enough with the general public for developers to support those platforms. Industry standard applications (eg. Adobe Creative Suite, Pro Tools, Microsoft Office, AutoCad, Rosetta Stone) will be available for Android/iOS way before a Desktop Linux version is even considered.
No, no, what I’m talking about is a fundamental incompatibility of current tablet hardware (relatively small finger-based touchscreen with no stylus support) with productive tasks.
Let’s face it, Photoshop for iOS is nowhere near the capabilities of the desktop/laptop version. Question is, could it even be, while using such a low-powered interface ?
Of course, you are right that the tablet productivity problem might still be solved before the mythical Year of the Linux Desk… err… Laptop happens
Edited 2011-06-04 14:10 UTC
“Without stylus support”
Where have you been living for the last year ? I have an iPad 1 and I use a capacitive stylus made by Acase and it works great, I can write with it, etc. and keeps my screen nice and clean.
I also have an Android tablet for testing purposes (Android is not ready to play in the big show yet). I use resistive stylus with it made by Nintendo for the DNS. For resistive screens just about anything that won’t scratch the surface will do, and again, it keeps my screen nice and clean.
Linux is perfectly good at productive tasks.
There are over 100,000 applications which run on Linux. Something to suit almost everyone’s needs, and certainly everything that one would reasonably want to do on a netbook.
To support your outrageos claim, your challenege is to name some task (suited to a netbook configured to run Linux) that Linux would not allow people to do. This will prove impossible for you o do.
I’ve never used a Netbook but assuming it can run Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Suite there’s your answer. If not then, well, Netbooks aren’t very productive either are they?
One does need to run the explicit programs Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Suite in order to produce the output that those prgrams allow you to prodcue.
There is no output of those programs that one might reasonably want to attempt to produce on a netbook that cannot be produced on a Linux netbook.
Try again.
Edited 2011-06-05 23:24 UTC
You forgot to add: “For me, Desktop Linux…”
For a home users (like many people around me), Linux/Firefox/LibreOffice is far better than the equivalent (Bootlegged Windows + Old Office + whatever IE that came with the non-upgrade-able due to WGA).
More-ever, the change between Office 2000/XP/2K3 and LibreOffice 3.x is far less radical compared to moving to the ribbon based Office 2K7/2K10.
Never the less, I do agree that using Linux on the desktop requires two things:
1. Availability of comparable software.
2. Time.
Switching OS, any OS takes time to master.
– Gilboa
Edited 2011-06-05 16:59 UTC
I myself don’t use my computer for productive tasks. I just know that most semi/professional users need industry standard applications to do their jobs. That’s is, those users that actually need a PC.
If they are using expensive professional programs that are only available for Windows, why are they buying a netbook?
Even then, getting away from netbooks, the traditional notions of “my type of work needs an industry standard application that can only be run on a Windows PC” are very questionable these days.
One favourite that used to be mentioned a lot in this context is AutoCAD.
Now, one can run Bricscad:
http://www.bricsys.com/en_INTL/bricscad/index.jsp
… even on Linux.
http://www.bricsys.com/en_INTL/bricscad/comparison.jsp
You are out of date.
I suspect that most people buying Netbooks aren’t doing so for productivity. It sounds like Netbooks in general aren’t very good for productivity.
As for alternative applications:
What percentage of people use OpenOffice vs Microsoft Office? How many people are trained to use OpenOffice? How many employers are asking for people certified in OpenOffice? I would ask this same question for all productivity applications/suites available on Desktop Linux.
Exactly. This thread, and my original challenge to you, is/was about netbooks. There is no reason at all (productivity included) why someone should not get at least as much utility out of their netbook with Linux as with Windows as the OS. Considering that netbooks are often purchased because the buyer is price concious, this means that the Linux option is actually far better for most netbook buyers.
This is simply prejudice on your part. Over a year ago a survey determined (using a decent method) that OpenOffice was installed on between 10% to 20% of machines (depending on geographic location), including business machines.
The OpenOffice/LibreOffice UI is closer to what most people are used to/trained for than the ribbon UI.
LibreOffice 3.4 is out now.
http://blog.documentfoundation.org/2011/06/03/the-document-foundati…
http://www.libreoffice.org/download/3-4-new-features-and-fixes/
LibreOffice is a fork of OpenOffice that has collected a huge number of developers and is steaming ahead where OpenOffice has stalled. LibreOffice has removed most of the OpenOffice legacy cruft, and is sleek and responsive as a result, which is important on a netbook. This now is the competition to MS Office.
I can think of no area, for the scope of use on a netbook, where LibreOffice 3.4 would not be as “productive” on a netbook as MS OFFice.
Considering that netbook purchasers are likely to be price sensitive, and that MS Office could potentially double the cost of one’s netbook, and LibreOffice can do everything one would want to do on a netbook just as well, yet LibreOffice adds $0 to the cost of the machine, your attempt to name MS Office as the “must have netbook application only available for Windows” is floundering desperately.
Edited 2011-06-06 02:08 UTC
Me and Neolander were talking about productivity. How good are Tablets at productive tasks? How good is Desktop Linux at productive tasks? Generally speaking productive tasks are things you do for an employer, client or strategic partner.
Realistically, how can you expect most employees/businesses to get work done without Microsoft Office? The same can be asked of other industry standards.
Realistically, about 10% to 20% of businesses have already discovered that you can indeed get work done without Microsoft Office. Microsoft Office is not a standard, it is merely a commonly-used tool with a lot of mindshare. That does not make it a necessity, especially on a netbook.
Microsoft Office has a significant failing as well … it has no effective support for interoperability. It has very poor handling (comapred to OpenOffice/LibreOffice) of legacy formats, its support of ISO standard ISO/IEC 26300:2006 (ODF 1.0) is abysmal, its support for ODF 1.2 is non-existant, as is its support for ISO/IEC 29500 Strict (it only really supports ISO/IEC 29500 transitional).
At last count, the “File Open” dialog box for LibreOffice/OpenOffice recognised 115 different office file formats. One hundred and fifteen. If you have a netbook out in the field and someone hands you a USB memory stick with a random document on it, generated from who knows where or when, you are far more likely to be able to open it in OpenOffice/LibreOffice.
Edited 2011-06-06 03:32 UTC
As for the wider question of “how good is it at <doing something>” … the applications to support doing whatever is within the scope of a netbook are very good. They have a huge advantage when it comes to utility/value for money as well.
As for the question of “how good is Linux as a netbook OS” … there are at least three netbook-oriented “desktop” systems for GNU/Linux.
These are
1 Unity:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_%28user_interface%29
2 Meego:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MeeGo_%28operating_system%29
and 3 Plasma/netbook:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KDE_Plasma_Workspaces#Netbook
There is also Plasma/contour (meant for tablets primarily) that is still being worked on.
Targeted as they are for small screens, and featuring things like multiple virtual desktops, all three of these are better suited for productivity on a netbook than Windows is.
http://www.techworld.com.au/article/367882/keeping_up_unitys_kde_pl…
Edited 2011-06-06 04:27 UTC
http://mashable.com/2010/05/31/google-windows/
http://www.geeklyupdate.com/2010/06/02/google-hq-abandons-windows-m…
http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2008/08/ibm-targets-microso…
http://ocw.novell.com/suse-linux-enteprise-operating-system-migrati…
http://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/announcements/2010/10/new…
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Major_OpenOffice.org_Deplo…
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/12/linux_versus_windows_linux_…
Edited 2011-06-06 06:54 UTC
Biased again … and it is 3 years out of date. Oh and Linux is big on the desktop now … oh wait it still isn’t.
Biased …. again … of course novell are going to try to sell their product.
This survey is extremely biased from the article itself …
It is an invitation only survey … they could have cherrypicked respondents.
$500 million and 500 employees is actually a massive margin … I am pretty sure we have over 500 employees but we have a revenue of approximately 100 million.
Unless the survey is 3rd party and independant it is almost worthless.
Some of the numbers are out of date or are wrong … for example the City of Munich is listed under Germany which is it is known that they failed to convert their desktops to Linux/OO in the time period …
http://limuxwatch.blogspot.com/2008/01/timeline-of-failure.html
This is server not desktop … the conversation was about desktop … nobody is denying that Linux is good as a server OS … we are questioning its merit as a Desktop OS.
Googling the odd article on the internet that does support your beliefs isn’t an arguement … you are cherry articles to support a flimsy arguement … pathetic.
Sigh!
The question posed was this: “how can you expect most employees/businesses to get work done without Microsoft Office”.
The articles I linked to were all examples of people and organisations getting work done without Microsoft Office.
How is this biased?
How does it not demonstrate the point?
http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/06/01/us-google-microsoft-windo…
“Google phases out Microsoft Windows use: report”
This is most decidedly an example of an organisation not using Windows and MS Office, and yet still getting its work done.
Your challenge is to explain how this is not an example that answers the question originally posed.
Put up or shut up.
SIGH!!
Lets ignore all the points I actually raised with each article … and continue beating the GPL drum
… You googled a random set of articles that were just press releases of intentions by large companies or were sites such that had the word “Linux” somewhere in their name so are likely to be biased … due to the nature of the website itself.
… I even pointed out why the evidence couldn’t be taken at face value … which I took from text that was in the actual article itself.
Regardless, there were still copious examples of companies doing work without MS Office.
By some measures, Windows has just 90% of the OS market.
http://gs.statcounter.com/#os-ww-monthly-201103-201105-bar
OK, so there are literally millions of examples right there of people doing work without MS Office installed.
Sheesh! It isn’t even a contentious point, it is a no-brainer.
What exactly is your problem, anyway? Pull you head in.
No, not regardless … you are spreading mis-information … and I proved you wrong. Don’t like it too bad.
Sure they are but I suspect many of them are running Windows/Mac workstations and Linux server, not uncommon … as the “proof” which you supplied was of dubious accuracy we won’t actually know.
And if by some measures, Windows share has 50% share if the sample you took Desk at home as your only Sample Data … That statement is almost totally meaningless.
Anyway a monopoly is considered in business as anything over 30 or 33% (can’t remember quite which) and Microsoft has 3 times this … I think they still have a firm grip.
The “other” category is actually higher than linux … what is a web browsing statistic actually got to do with Desktop productivity exactly?
Yes it is, because you haven’t proven anything.
You spreading mis-information by googling links to prove your point. You are argueing from a point where you believe that you are 100% correct.
A Monopoly in business is actaull
You did no such thing. There is simply no way that all, or even most, businesses need to use MS Office.
Furthermore, a good percentage of them simply don’t:
http://www.webmasterpro.de/portal/news/2010/02/05/international-ope…
So many buisnesses don’t use MS Office that the point is utterly proven … buisnesses simply don’t need to use MS Office. There are far better capable and value-for-money alternatives open to them.
The only one spreading misinformation is you, in trying to pretend that using MS Office is a necessity. You are wrong.
I love it … you don’t actually respond to some of the point … and continue with your diatribe … it is utterly ridiculous … You posted a load of links that fitted your arguement … I refuted them quite successfully … yet you continue to pretend I didn’t do it …. utterly ridiculous …
My favourite was in another thread where you tried to prove that Windows Vista and 7 was slower … and the link you posted actually agreed with my statement … you didn’t respond to that either because it didn’t fit your opinion … you are such an ignoramus.
Another dubious statistic from another website that you googled.
So quite a few businesses don’t … most do .. you can use Open Office … but it is far from optimal , the cost of an Office license is actually less than a days pay … you aren’t saving that much compared to staff costs …
OO and alternatives simply are not as good as Microsoft Office … if you seriously think differently you are fucking deluded. OO is a crap piece of software and I cannot seriously recommend it to anyone.
I will have to hammer this point home … I don’t google random links that fit with my arguement … you do. I don’t need to google random links to fit my arguement because I am right and you are not.
Well I can tell you now that you are in fact wrong.
I have worked with a number of companies who do not reside within the IT sector and still chose to switch to OOo. I have also worked with a number of self employed consultants that have done the same. The all managed fine.
Not that you’ll care because your comment I quoted is perhaps the most arrogant and narrow-minded comment posted on here in a loooong time.
I appreciate many on here have internet egos they need to uphold, but there’s no disgrace in admitting you’re wrong.
My complaint was that he posted a load of links all of very dubious accuracy and tried to sell it as absolute proof
I should’ve chosen my words more carefully.
What is frustrating is that the constant attacks against Windows and Office and recommending GPL programs instead of Propriety application just because they are open source, even if they cannot do the job itself … it’s tiresome.
I agree that using open source purely for the reason that it’s open source is a little weak.
However there is only so much complexity an office suite needs – hence why the biggest changes in MS Office over the last 10 years has been the switch to ribbon.
Thus even with OOo playing catch up, it only needs to catch up to where MS Office was 10 years ago for it to be a practical replacement. In my opinion OOo had reached that point a while back.
If you move to Mac, you can still easily use Office.
So you still cannot draw the conclusion that Google gets by without Office.
Not all of Google employees moved to Mac … and they can still get their work done.
I don’t need all of Google to operate without MS Office to make my point.
My actual point was … that people can get their work done without MS Office. Never did I claim that all people do so, nor did I claim that all people at Google did so.
I have put up extensive proof of the actual point I was making. You have put up absolutely nothing to refute that actual point.
So, once again I say, put up or shut up.
Edited 2011-06-06 23:20 UTC
The original question as I read it was in regard to *most* employees/businesses not using Office. Therefore, you would need a majority of Google to not use Office, which I don’t see the data to indicate.
If that was your point, then you’ve diverged away from the conversation, don’t get snarky just because you can’t keep track of what’s being discussed.
Non sequitur. The question posed was this: “how can you expect most employees/businesses to get work done without Microsoft Office”. To counter this does NOT require that I show that *most* employees/businesses do not use MS Office, it requires only that I can show a not-insignificant number of employess not using MS Office, yet still getting work done. This I did.
The only thing preventing the number of people not using MS Offcie being much higher is the FUD and misinformation spread about alternatives. Perfectly functional, useable alternatives to MS Office do indeed exist, statistically significant numbers of people do indeed use those alternatives perfectly effectively to get their work done, evidence to show this is so is easily found, and no-one has shown a single whit of eveidence to the contrary.
Are you clear on this now? Understand?
Don’t get snarky just because you can’t conduct a logical discussion.
Edited 2011-06-07 00:41 UTC
How is it a non-sequitur? I’m directly addressing your line of reasoning. Seems pretty sequitur to me.
If you want to show how you expect someone to do something, show someone else doing it. You tried to do that with Google, but your data doesn’t support it. You don’t know how many Windows machines were replaced with Linux or Mac machines, so you don’t know what the uptake of Office replacements are.
Logic 101. In order to contradict a statement such as “most fish live in the sea”, all I need to do is point to a statistically significant number of freshwater fish in existence. I do NOT need to show that the number of freshwater fish is greater than the number of saltwater fish. All it takes is a few percent of fish to be freshwater fish, and the statement “most fish live in the sea” is disproven.
At best, one can say “a majority of fish live in the sea”. It is perfectly correct to say that a majority of office suite users use Microsoft Office … I have no qualms with that.
Of course the data supports it. There are statistically significant numbers of people, including a decent percentage of Google employees, who don’t use Microsoft Office, yet they can get their work done. I have shown this.
This study is also further evidence:
http://www.quantenblog.net/free-software/openoffice-market-share
http://www.webmasterpro.de/portal/news/2010/02/05/international-ope…
This isn’t contentious at all, these are facts. A significant, measureable number of people do not in fact use MS Office, yet they still get their work (involving the use of an office suite) done. It is such a significant number that the contention that “*most* people cannot get their work done without using MS Office” is thoroughly and utterly disproven.
QED. Logic 101.
Edited 2011-06-07 02:04 UTC
I feel like you don’t know what the word “most” means.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/most
It does in-fact mean “the majority of”, thanks.
So then, what is the percentage of google employees?
Even if we accept that, which we don’t (why have two words mean exactly the same thing when they are normally used with grades of meaning), then your counter-argument still fails. The original question posed was this: “how can you expect most employees/businesses to get work done without Microsoft Office”.
Even if for the moment we take “most” and “majority” to mean the same, which they don’t but anyway … the original contention was then that over half of users CANNOT get their work done without using MS Office. I have shown that between 10% and 20% of users CAN, and do, get their work done without using MS Office. This is easily enough numbers to show the original contention is false. Even though over half of office suite users do in fact use MS Office, it is perfectly clear that they don’t HAVE TO use MS Office in order to get their work done. The statistically significant, easily measurable numbers of office suite users who use an alternative office suite, and yet still manage to get their work done, is easily enough to show that using MS Office is simply not necessary.
More popular does not mean required.
QED. Logic 101.
Edited 2011-06-07 03:19 UTC
I’m not saying that people need MS Office, I don’t know either way if they do or not. I’m just saying that your arguments are flawed.
Another made up analogy: 20% of people use trucks, therefore most people don’t need cars.
Clearly this may not be true, maybe those who use cars really need the extra seating and passenger room. This is essentially why I feel your point is flawed.
That is not an analogy, that is just plain straight out ridiculous.
Now IF you had said, for example, something like: “20% of people use Ford vehicles, therefore most people don’t need Toyotas” … you would be right. You would then be comparing some different brands of the same type of product, which is exactly what MS Office, LibreOffice and OpenOffice actually are.
Sheesh! It is not rocket science. Why is this simple, easily shown concept so very hard for you to grasp?
It just depends on how obvious you want the differences to be, trucks and cars are both vehicles with different functional characteristics. I was trying to make the functional differences obvious, I don’t need different brands to do that.
But then again your analogy is flawed in that you’re taking ALL products made by a certain manufacturer rather than specific ones that have specific differences. Again, I was trying to highlight that different products have different capabilities.
Anyhow, the point is that you cannot conclude one way or the other in this fashion, the whole line of reasoning you’re attempting to use is silly.
I certainly can use this argument, it is perfectly valid.
It is entirely possible to set up a computer “seat” include the full functionality of a typical office suite without using MS Office. One typically ends up with better functionality at much lower cost.
There are some bits and pieces that differ between LibreOffice and MS Office, but these can easily be made up (in each case) by external programs.
For example, MS Office normally only includes elementray (embedded) vector drawing capabilities (one can buy Visio as an extension, but that is not found on most MS Office installations). LibreOffice includes a more powerful, separate, vector drawing application. However, one can add this missing capability to MS Office by supplementing it with, say, Adobe Illustrator or Macromedia Freehand, or even Inkscape.
Likewise, LibreOffice does not include anything like Outlook. One can easily remedy this by pairing LibreOffice with Mozilla Thunderbird with Lightning plugin. LibreOffice does not include anything like OneNote. One can remedy this by pairing it with gnote or basket notes or something similar.
Neither suite includes raster graphics composition. On Linux I’d provide this with Krita, but on Windows … Photoshop perhaps? (this office seat is getting VERY expensive by now).
Meh. Six of one, half a dozen of the other. Whatever the actual need for your office computer “seat” is, a solution can be found centering around either MS Office or LibreOffice. The LibreOffice-based solution will almost certainly be far cheaper. No brainer.
One does not need MS Office. It is as simple as that.
Edited 2011-06-07 05:05 UTC
Your underlying assumption here is flawed, also. You are simply assuming that MS Office is the better product, which is an assumption not that well supported by actually looking at the products in question:
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/five-tips/five-tips-for-migrating-…
“Many small businesses are migrating from Microsoft Office to alternative solutions to save money and sidestep the Ribbon interface that arrived with Office 2007. There are plenty of alternatives, but none of them stacks up to Microsoft Office as well as LibreOffice.”
In addition, “user ratings” might surprise you and show a different preference than what you (or journalists) would assume:
http://microsoft-office-2007.en.softonic.com/compare/libreoffice,mi…
Edited 2011-06-07 04:27 UTC
First, I did not assume that Office was a better product.
Second: Oh wow, an article with no references stating that businesses are moving away from MS Office.
Third: You have 5 data points for user ratings on LibreOffice, can you guess what significance level those would offer?
That might surprise you.
Bonus points for you.
What did you just say a moment ago, that you immediately contradict here? Sorry, but you just lost your bonus points.
I know of a few companies that use OOo/LibreOffice instead of MS Office. Some of which don’t even work in the IT sector so are staffed with completely IT illiterate staff, and yet they have coped just as well.
The problem with people like yourself is you’re blinded by your own prejudice and fail to see just how capable competing platforms are. So you keep harping on about meaningless monopolies without ever discussing feature sets – let alone proving any point.
So I dare you to list one killer feature in MS Office that you use regularly and you believe does not work on OOo. Prove to us that companies /NEED/ MS Office.
if you think about it, “peace of mind” is already a feature, and a very important one
the longer one company has been in existence and the larger it is, the higher the chances it has been using the industry standard solution (aka “current market encumbent product”) for a very long time (whatever the reason for adopting it originally) and the larger the amount of documents it has produced with it
but when you have an archive of documents that have to be preserved (and have a workflow built around that solution that, ehm, works) features stop being your primary concern – since to a business, sw is just a tool but documents are assets
you become concerned in maintaining their flawless editability and exchange, and in altering as little as possible that workflow (since any change in workflow must be justified with an increase in effectivess and efficiency of business activities -thus increased productivity- otherwise it’s a loss and shouldnt be applied)
so, you’ll adopt the product which gives you the most *guarantees* (possibly mathematical certainty) about that – and this, only when you get to replace the version you are currently using (which may be only when the current one really becomes too old to be able to perform its duty anymore, or when the system it runs on in turn is to be replaced requiring new sw licenses or…)
and even in the offshoot chance MSO and OOo/LO were on exact *feature* parity, you’d probably go for MSO…
because that’s what you made your documents with in the first place, what gives you those most guarantees, and because if anything goes wrong you can blame a at least in theory- more accountable party… what chance of being indemnified would you have with a free community developed product?
so it’s not entirely correct to ask what killer feature does MSO have over its competition – the correct question is:
what killer features does the OOo/LO have that is so compelling to justify migrating away from MSO?
Edited 2011-06-08 15:50 UTC
Well ironically the killer feature OOo/LO has over MSO IS compatibility.
OOo supports more documents than MSO and (due to ODF being truly open) actually offers the closest to a guarantee for future compatibility out of the two.
The moment you use a proprietary editor that saves in a proprietary format, you are dependant on that company keeping legacy compatibility. So ironically all the points (bar the MS branding point) you made in favour of MS Office are more true in favour of OOo/LO.
And before people chip in about XMLOO being open, not the entire spec is. There are extensions that MS Office applications use that are still closed. So users / companies could still run into problems years down the line when MS depreciates XMLOO without opening their proprietary extensions.
I’m not someone to harp on about saying “open source is better than closed” etc. At the end of the day it’s about using the best tools for the job. However if compatibility is a concern (as you described), then open source IS the safer choice.
what if my company has already adopted MSO and has a mass of documents in .doc form? what if all my friends and colleagues have Office and any document they send me (or that i send to them) is in .doc? what if .doc is the ONLY format i care about and absolutely totally dont’ give a shit whether “more documents” are supported?
actually, online reviews from some time ago indicated that, out of several competing office suites (yes, you may be surprised to know than there’s more beyond open/libre office.. ) it was the one with the more importing and exporting quirks (to little surprise given that, despite availability of doc/xls/ppt specifications at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc313118.aspx, OOo’s import filter was developed by reverse engineering), way worse than what the closed but cheap SoftMaker achieved…
of course, but what makes you think MS wouldn’t or shouldn’t keep it (since they have ALL the interest in doing so and much to lose should they fail) ?
i dont’ see how that can be (see above), my points were in favor of company workflow and assets (documents) not of MSO per se
had OOo been as entrenched as MSO currently is, it would be MS the one with a hard time
premise: i abolutely totally hate both OOXML *and* ODF because they’re XML based formats, thus verbose and technically inefficient (and no, i dont’ believe the rationale for it according to which human readability, thus the possibility for the user to manually edit the generated xml and edit tags to fix parsing errors, is a must)
anyway, yes, OOXML’ spec is tied to MSO and not fully open, but this doesnt’t contradict the point – if i have started using office 2007 for any reason (say, the ribbon) i better stay with office and use doc/docx as my archive format forever, than seriously consider migrating
to each his own poison, they say…
OOo works with .doc too.
For your information, I’ve use Lotus Smart Suite, MS Office (both Windows and Mac variants), Google Doc, KOffice OOo/LO, more console/text-based packages than most people would have heard of and a tone of smaller modern projects too.
So do get off your high horse.
I don’t think Office’s binary format specification was available when OOo started working on compatibility. Plus, and as i said earlier, there’s still proprietary extensions which aren’t documented. IIRC this is because they call upon certain features that fall outside of Offices direct formatting, however they still need to be rendered and thus still need to be reverse engineered.
I’m not saying OOo is perfect, but it was 3 or 4 years ago since the last time I found a .DOC file that OOo rendered too badly to be usable.
However, and as I said before, if compatibility and future-proofing is an issue then people shouldn’t be using proprietary de facto standards. I’ve seen so many businesses get completely screwed over because they think company xyz is a large business thus blindly accepts xyz‘s “standards” without really thinking about future ramifications should (or rather when) xyz depreciates that standard and starts trying to sell their next product.
In fact it happens so often that I’m amazed so few businesses have wised up to it.
The problem is we just don’t know.
If you’re running a business dependant on data (as you described in your earlier post), then you simply cannot afford to take any gambles on that data. proprietary formats are a long term gamble as you’re banking entirely on the owners of said standard to keep porting their decryption/conversion tools to each new platform (both software and hardware).
You’re confusing de facto standards with open standards.
Just because a proprietary standard is more widespread now, it doesn’t mean that the owners of said standard will keep porting it. Come Windows 14 on whatever hardware replaces x86 / silicon CPUs, you might find that the owners just didn’t see any financial benefit in keeping their proprietary format alive when it was already superseded 15 years earlier (and this is assuming that company is even still around)
However open standards can by ported by anyone as the complete specification is there and free to use.
Now I’m not about to say that open is better. However for the sole example of ensuring long term compatibility (like you raised), open is better/
They’re not really that inefficient. In fact it’s one of the cleanest way to ensure the markup is kept separate from the document while still having a hierarchical pool of metadata.
So much so that you’ll find many proprietary binary blobs using a tagged system like XML (obviously using bytes keys instead of ASCII keywords).
You claim they’re verbose, well that’s largely needed (for the reason stated above), however it doesn’t impact the user as the whole document (which is actually a large number of XML files) is compressed to a ZIP archive and thus dedupped.
You’re still missing the point though (re the lack of garentee that OOXML will be maintained in the future).
If you want to use MS Office 2007+ specifically because of the ribbon bar (though why anyone would is beyond me; I find it counter-intuitive), then that’s a perfectly acceptable reason to use one package over another.
However to use MS Office 2007+ because it’s a de facto standard and thus you hope that your documents will still be readable in 10 / 20 / 50 years time – well that’s just a gamble.
Indeed.
I have already pointed out that BricsCAD is a perfectly viable alternative to AutoCAD, and that LibreOffice is a perfectly viable alternative to Microsoft Office.
However, CAD is a high-end application that no-one in their right mind would be running on a netbook. As for Pro Tools … along with MS office, these are applications that one might actually have a use for on a netbook, providing the price was right. But Pro Tools? … the software alone would cost as much again as the netbook.
Here is a capable solution, software included, for the price of a netbook hardware alone:
http://createdigitalmusic.com/2008/11/indamixx-laptop-is-first-pre-…
Edited 2011-06-06 02:40 UTC
Well that depends entirely on what your job is.
Less popular != less productive
I use OpenOffice for everything and never ran into a hitch. In fact OO Calc is actually better than Excel for working with CSV files. OO Writer is better for working with PDFs
Professional suites are an extreme end of the spectrum used by a relatively small niche of people.
The reality is most people don’t need Photoshop, AutoCad or Pro Tools. They don’t even want that level of complexity – they’d sooner use something simpler and quicker to learn.
Those that do need professional suites will also need beefier systems than netbooks and the majority of laptops. So they wouldn’t be buying these EeePCs anyway. Thus your examples are silly.
Maverick seems an odd choice to me.
Why not pick 10.04 an LTS or 11.04 the latest release? Personally I like 11.04 and the Unity desktop it is also very suited to small screens
Shouldn’t you be able to simply run an upgrade to the current version?
Maverick is probably the version they had time to QA.
Lucid is old and somewhat buggy compared to Maverick; Natty is new and probably a bit dangerous considering the all new Unity thing (which I enjoy quite a bit btw).
Maverick is the right call.
Maverick is supported until April 2012 Lucid supported until April 2013. I tend to agree with your assessment of Lucid being a little buggy if I have a criticism of Ubuntu it would be that the LTS should be more conservative and stable, however, to me it looks a better option on the basis of supported life.
I’d rather have Natty – but I can well I can see the issues. I expect 11.10 to be a great release.
that 10.10 is what Asus may preinstall now because of stability and all, but it’s not necessarily what users will have on their EEE’s in a few months – thanks to automatic whole-distribution updates and the fact that it’s not an LTS
Asus better hope that Ubuntu doesn’t Karmic again on them – the kernel panic when Alt-F2’ing to disable the internal wireless was already almost inconceivable in a self respecting *non beta* relase … but the official developers’ position (“we wont’ take time to merge the [already made and merged upstream] fix to this [long known] bug in our kernel, since it’d involve a freeze and the risk of missing the release deadline”… seriously , releasing day X was more important than releasing stable SW… WTH) was seriously unexcusable
moreover, most netbook buyers view them as normal laptops, just smaller, capable of running the same applications (which in turn are well beyond those for mere web browsing) and OTOH most applications a PC user has or needs are for windows
so the reality is sooner or later they’ll need a windows license on their netbooks too, anyway
but last time i checked, a single OEM license for windows your local retailer could give you with a new pc or piece of HW was priced around 80 €, but thanks to the high volumes and economies of scales account for just 15-20 € on a laptop or netbook (in practice, the one between a 200-250 € Atom n450 with W7 and a ca. 300-350 € N550 dual core Atom – again with W7 – is more relevant a price differenze – with the advantages that result from already having 7)
and i’d like to see proof that Ubuntu is “far more lightweight” than windows, when it really feels sluggish on any configuration below a Pentium 4 – and no, please dont post any of those “Phoronix test suite” crap…
desktop is all about user interaction, look and feel and responsiveness: the correct method to evaluate them in an unambiguous form would be to simulate a series of use cases (eg “the user is now trying to interactively perspectively adjust and resize the picture in the GIMP by dragging the handle”) in common *desktop* (meaning interactive GUI) applications (like, a word processor or an image editor) giving realistic data sets
and measure not only the time it takes to apply a gaussian blur, but the actual delay between a simulated user input and the effect on the gui – the higher this latency the more likely sluggishness using that application on that desktop
of course this means automating common applications injecting events and checking when the window, menu or toolbar has been updated, of course it is complex and may not be possible with current frameworks, toolkits and tools
but please, PLEASE, dont’ think that a bunch of batch tasks is a realistic benchmark for anything regarding desktop interactivity, if anything they represent all that goes by the definition of non-interactive
Edited 2011-06-04 12:09 UTC
You hear that a lot, but I don’t believe it.
People that buy netbooks usually have another computer already that they use for “real work”. If that real work involves windows, the computer will have windows.
Netbook is something that sits in the living room for casual browsing. Linux can do that job better than windows (mostly because it doesn’t require virus scanners that kill the performance on low end hardware).
Hmmm, where I live I also see people use them at work, typically as a Powerpoint-projector interface.
For work purposes, people can (and do) get non-cheap small devices as well. These asus/acer things are mostly targeted at consumers.
not always.
in fact, each and every person i know who considered getting a netbook, was going to use it as his/her *first* (yes, there exist professionals who have successfully managed to get their job done with just pen and paper till just yesterday) or anyway main, pc (a netbook, oh so compact, oh so portable, oh so cheap, would have been an ideal foray into IT for a doctor, lawyer or accountant with work to do, possibly on the go);
and either scrapped the netbook for a pentium T / i3 laptop after some months, or scrapped the idea and went for the laptop directly;
apparently, some types of people aren’t so keen with having one machine for each task… like they have one office, one desk, one armchair, one photocopier, one dvd player, etc, they also see the PC as something of which to have just one, as versatile as possible
Edited 2011-06-05 22:52 UTC
This may be so, but it doesn’t say anything at all about a need to run Windows.
Linux is, if anything, more versatile than Windows, and for price sensitive consumers, such as those who might buy a netbook, Linux wins hands down.
Well, from a maintenance and data locality point of view, it makes some sense.
I’ve been using Asus EEEpc’s with Ubuntu for 2 years now. it’s a great match (on the whole, Asus seems to have consistently chosen linux-friendly hardware for their wireless cards, graphics cards, etc.
Although OpenOffice has stagnated somewhat in recent months, people might be interested to hear that the new kid on the block, LibreOffice, is forging ahead in leaps and bounds.
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/open-source-office-software-sec…
http://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/2011-05-09-libreoffice-fud.ht…
Much of the legacy “cruft” code from OpenOffice has been removed, and new features are now being added:
New in version 3.3
http://www.libreoffice.org/download/new-features-and-fixes/
New in version 3.4
http://www.libreoffice.org/download/3-4-new-features-and-fixes/
Edited 2011-06-07 04:01 UTC
I still can’t find anywhere to actually buy one of these. The article says June 1, 2011, but where can you actually get one?