“To us at PC World HQ in Auckland, there seemed nothing different about Geoff as he seamlessly exchanged documents and email with our Windows/Intel PCs. But inside his Wellington home office, things were anything but business as usual as Geoff tried his luck with a Windows alternative (Linux), a Microsoft Office alternative (OpenOffice.org) and even a whole new platform (Apple). Here are notes from his new life beyond Wintel.” Read the article here.
My Secret Life as a Linux User
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
OpenOffice (StarOffice) has had commerical and open-source, full-time developers working on it for many, many years. I don’t know when Star Division started the Office suite, but it looks like they have been doing simular things since 1985. And v3.1 of StarOffice came out circa-1995. So to say that it has achived the level it has with part-time coders working for free is just silly. It has nearly as many (real, not man) years of development behind it as Microsoft Office.
Agreed. Star Office was created by a German company, it was a fully commercial product, and then Sun bought that company, and then a few years later they open sourced it only 2 years ago.
I love this part:
“did I mention Linux can have up to 16 virtual desktops?”
:))
“But inside his Wellington home office, things were anything but business as usual …”
This statement struck me as funny. It has been business as usual for lots of people for a long time now.
Did a bit of googlin’ for some dates
StarWriter has been around since 1989 (for DOS)… StarOffice has been around since 1992.
In comparison, Microsoft Word has been around since 1983 (for DOS.. 1984 for Mac).. Microsoft Excel has been around since 1985 (first on Macintosh.. Microsoft had precursor to Excel for DOS called Microsoft Multiplan since 1984 but did horribly against Lotus 1-2-3… they eventually ported Excel to Windows in 1987).. Powerpoint has been around since 1987.. it was released initially by a company called Forethought Software. Microsoft bought it in 1988. It was Microsoft Office was first released in 1989 (first for Macintosh, but MS Works, also for Macintosh, had been around since 1986)
Only 16? I can go well beyond 16 virtual desktops in WindowMaker. Perhaps 16 desktops is the KDE limit.
“It all seems reminiscent of another, seemingly prescient, Linux saying: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.””
Wasn’t it Ghandi who said that during India’s struggle for independence from the British empire? Hardly a Linux invention, but applicable still.
The rest of the article is very VERY positive on things that aren’t all that easy for regular end-users at all. Linux would do great in a supported corporate environment, but joe user at home will get annoyed really quickly.
Hehehehehe…The revolution has only begun. When computing knowledge becomes absolutely paramount in our lives, which is very very soon, and computer education is a requirement in educational institutions and coding becomes a popular hobby, then the youths will begin to explore the endless possibilities and advantages of open source software, Linux for example.
On my PC I use Star Office 5.2 instead of windows. Haven’t had that much of a problem.
Not that impressed with the port of OO to the mac. Very very slow to load and it won’t let me save directly into .doc or .rtf.
If I could get Star Office for the Mac, I’d happily give sun my money. The little tweaks they’ve addeed (plus the manual) would be well worth my money.
What good would it be to use Linux when all alternatives are better on stuff. Win for desktop BSD/Solaris for servers…
geee I just don’t get it..
Dude. Your info is so last week. Linux, these days, makes a very good desktop for advanced computer users. Maybe not the masses yet, but remember, it wasn’t too long ago that the entire computer industry was supported just by such users. As for servers, Linux fills a huge segment. The current BSD’s are okay for small single-CPU servers, but their SMP support is nowhere near mature (even FreeBSD’s). Linux scales well to dozens of CPUs, to the point where SGI considers it mature enough for its 64-CPU Altrix servers. Solaris is great for high-end machines, but it doesn’t run on commodity hardware (the x86 port blows). Besides, with kernel 2.6, the performance edge of the BSD VM is pretty minimal. However, Linux probably has better scheduling and I/O thanks to the rewritten schedulers and block layer.
These days its “my secret life as a microsoft windows xp user”
People should be proud to be using something that works for them for free. I mean if you don’t like it then thats fine, you have alternatives. But I started looking for things as cheap as I could as soon as I became a student.
Well TTYL.
GO PLAY IN TRAFFIC. ON THE HIGHWAY
If you look at OpenOffice.org code wise, it is a very advanced piece of software. Consider this, if you want it ported to your platform, all you have to do is port the SAL layer and voila, you have a fully working version of OpenOffice.org. The IRIX port is the prime example of this.
We may think Microsoft Office is great, however, what is the likelihood, or better yet, how easy would it to be to port it to another platform considering how deep it dives into the Windows API.
Well, IMHO, every person should be working each day to learn something new. As I have said, knowledge equals freedom. If you have the knowledge, you have the freedom to create what ever you like. The alternative is living an unexciting, uneducated life. Unfortunately there are those out there who simply live day to day, sucking air and simply existing fot the sake of existing.
Dude. Your info is so last week. Linux, these days, makes a very good desktop for advanced computer users. Maybe not the masses yet, but remember, it wasn’t too long ago that the entire computer industry was supported just by such users. As for servers, Linux fills a huge segment. The current BSD’s are okay for small single-CPU servers, but their SMP support is nowhere near mature (even FreeBSD’s). Linux scales well to dozens of CPUs, to the point where SGI considers it mature enough for its 64-CPU Altrix servers. Solaris is great for high-end machines, but it doesn’t run on commodity hardware (the x86 port blows). Besides, with kernel 2.6, the performance edge of the BSD VM is pretty minimal. However, Linux probably has better scheduling and I/O thanks to the rewritten schedulers and block layer.
May I suggest that you look at the discussion lists and the bottle necks in 2.4. One example would be the global worker queue in Linux vs. the more efficient model of per-cpu worker queues as used in Solaris. Another would be the lack of a mature threading model. Don’t point to NTPL because it is still not feature complete. So, just because the kernel says, “there are 64 CPU’s present” doesn’t mean it scales well.
Amazing! You can actually get email with Linux. Maybe I should switch? Not! And if FreeBSD is good on the low end and Solaris on the high end, then why do we need Linux?
Bas, and others FYI the name of the freedom fighter from India is M. K. Gandhi
You could find some info over here — http://www.gandhiinstitute.org
I’m hoping this does not get moded down, since it has nothing to do with OS news.
Its true there are many scalability bottlenecks still left in Linux. 2.6 is pretty scalable on SMP architectures, but it won’t be until 2.7 (according to Linus’s plan) that Linux reaches Solaris/IRIX level scalability on NUMA architectures. However, early reports of the Altrix’s performance are very good, and obviously, SGI thought enough of Linux to put it on those machines, rather than porting IRIX. Besides, the original question was “who uses Linux” and my point was that in between small single CPU servers and 128 processor NUMA machines, there is a huge range of commodity hardware that Linux runs on very well. It’s not Solaris or IRIX just yet, but it doesn’t need to be to be popular.
RE: Rayiner Hashem (IP: —.nv.nv.cox.net)
I suggest that you look at the services actually used. There are VERY little services use. Altrix is a big number crunching machine and all the Linux kernel does it provide the layer required for the number crunching softwar to work. There is nothing spectacular about running a 64way machine with Linux, heck, Unisys sells a 32way machine running UnixWare. The question isn’t whether it works well at a single task but how well it works for many tasks. For an uneducated person, they may assume that because Linux scales on an altrix, they can then run out and use an Itanium server 32way, serve NFS etc etc at the same speed.
As for 2.6, it isn’t out yet, and hence, I don’t like to speculate on what could or should happen in 3-4months from now. I have heard great things, however, until I see a distribution based on 2.6, I will reserve my judgement.
RE: Benjamin Huot (IP: —.dialup.efn.org)
The reason why there is focus on Linux is because it is the only free UNIX-like operating system out there which is driving to make installation, configuration and general usage much easier.
There is nothing stopping FreeBSD from achiving that, however, they have decided to go a different route, and that, to provide the best UNIX based operating system, free of charge to all and sundry.
OFF TOPIC
this is the most abused tool in academia today. Prof. that use this tool poorly/lazly ( I’ve seen too many read straight from the slides) should be shot. God I hate power point presentations.
I have also seen this product used in the business world. I hate the way people use this product
mod me down. But power point presentations are Terrible
“Amazing! You can actually get email with Linux. Maybe I should switch? Not! And if FreeBSD is good on the low end and Solaris on the high end, then why do we need Linux?”
Let’s see… Because FreeBSD is good, but is not the perfect solution? If it was THAT good, it would support my hardware like Linux do. Yes, FBSD is good, but different needs, different systems.
Check out this example: http://www-1.ibm.com/linux/news/semiconductor.shtml
Talking about IBM and Linux is a pretty poor argument.
They’re depending on consultancy services, and if they’d install BSD for instance, they wouldn’t have the same administration, it’s not as much bloat in there. That wouldn’t give them the same amount of money….
So don’t give me that IBM stuff…
Ha!, what’s with all the bsd dudes? Jealousy?? Anybody who adopts linux is also in a good position to adopt bsd, so BSD and Linux can only be good for each other.
Which is much more than you can say for Windows. Microsoft has a lot of market share on the desktop and server space. Instead of fighting cousin-helper linux and making yourself ridiculous, why don’t you BSD soldiers go out there and help grab some market share from windows?
What, you are too scared to fight?? Can’t see BSD winning or converting any windows users??? So you want to sit your ass at home, have linux go fight for you, and then you can come back and fight over the linux spoils later? Ha! Go out and fight for yourselves. Stop waiting on the linux market. Get off the linux welfare!
Multiple desktops, and dont get me started about windows version (complete crap) hes using them right. I Dont really care if you use Linux or BSD its all good, as long as its not winblows.
I use Linux at work for servers and for my desktop, I am using Linux right now to write this on a laptop. I like linux though I am annoyed about configuring it, but when I get it right it works.
I prefer to use Linux at work for the very same reasons that guy does, you have your desktops and you leave applications open. Windows isnt like that. You dont just leave your applications running all the time. Probably is the hardest thing I have to get my clients to do is leave applications open. Open Office takes time to load? So what if you load it once and leave it going all the time. It goes against what they know, but once they see it work, they get it and like it.
Now if I could get them to quit using that other annoying software, quick books, I could get them even happier. Money Dance anyone? They are amazed that I run a business using only gnucash. Is it all so hard?
I was looking at the list of analogs of Win software in Linux, mentioned in the original article:
http://linuxshop.ru/linuxbegin/win-lin-soft-en/
I agree that many of the common applications in Windows has Linux sqSome of the categories seemed to be chosen to “prove” that Linux has more alternatives.
Examples:
“Email client in The Bat style” and “Email client / PIM in MS Outlook style”…wtf? Either you have an email client or not. If you construct a category for every type of program, no wonder the list is so long. Besides, they forgot several Windows mailclients such as MailWarrior and Phoenix Mail.
“News reader”: Again they forgot to mention Agent, Gravity and Dialog.
Correction “has Linux sq” should be “has Linux equivalents”
One of the best written and most intelligent articles i’ve read in the OS/computer world.
I see you didn’t check out the example. Klick on the link so you can see what Linux is being used for (60×60 x24x7 semiconductor manufacturing).
NZ PC World is IMHO the best computer mag around for the average computer user. It has all but killed of the competition here in New Zealand!
Geoff (the writer) has some excellent contributions including a full on argument with our biggest Telco – and he is winning.
Keep it up NZ PC World
When will this BSD vs Linux arguments stop. For it’s age BSD is pretty pathetic. I mean they’ve been in existence for like several years prior to the creation of Linux. And yet Linux, a baby in the Unix world, easily comes to par and sometimes outperforms BSD. To say one is better than the other is ignorant too. They are both excellent operating systems with benefits and drawbacks.
However, I see Linux being the more successful open source operating system in the future. The sheer amount of individuals, business entities and governments developing and supporting the operating system is tremendous. And really that’s why I think Linux is and will remain the leader in the open source operating system arena. Microsoft isn’t scared of BSD or BEOS or Amiga. No. But it is shit scared of Linux and of course for obvious reasons.
I’ve tried using all the BSDs but I’ve always returned back to Linux. I personally prefer the GNU tools to the userland tools available in BSD. I think the GNU tools are much better and much mature. But this is absolutely personal. And as for which is better? I don’t know. At the level at which I use both, I see no difference. Except for hardware support and speed, which I think Linux clearly dominates, I see no difference. Yes, BSDs are great too, but I don’t know what qualms their zealots have with Linux?
Regards,
Mystilleef
Hey folks-
I just wanted to post here to Kady Mae that I have a dual boot iBook for my mobile stuff running YDL 3 with OpenOffice (I didnt put the .org crap on the end because I really dont care) and StarOffice on my Suse 8.0 at home. While both programs work fine for a pharmacist’s and independent role playing publisher’s needs such as my own on their own merit, however I have yet to port documents back and forth, so stay tuned…it may be easier to use that config rather than the x11 port of OpenOffice that they are still working on…
Just my two pfennigs…
mfb