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Linux and Open Source: The 2005 Generation (eWeek)
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols predicts good
things for free software in 2005 in eWeek. "I even see Microsoft
Office, perhaps the most bloated software suite ever, finally losing
ground. That's because Sun's open-source OpenOffice.org 2.0 is looking
very, very good. Not only does it have excellent Office file format
compatibility, it's finally become a fast application. I've used OpenOffice
for ages, but I've never warmed up to it. It's always been too darn
slow. With this last pre-beta, though... woo! Look out Microsoft Office,
OpenOffice means business."
(Log in to post comments)
Linux and Open Source: The 2005 Generation (eWeek) Posted Jan 3, 2005 15:16 UTC (Mon) by XERC (guest, #14626) [Link] I don't remember(and I don't know eather) exactly, butI guess that someone stated in this LWN forum, that OpenOffice is not able to use some of the information that is stored in the MS Word documents and that this is the reason, why it's not easy to give real support for MS Word documents. If that's true, then I have a doubt about the "business" from migration to OpenOffice "for OpenOffice". Conclusion: I like OpenOffice, just that my mother doesn't. :)
Linux and Open Source: The 2005 Generation (eWeek) Posted Jan 3, 2005 15:39 UTC (Mon) by kornak (guest, #17589) [Link] I forced my mother to use it!
Linux and Open Source: The 2005 Generation (eWeek) Posted Jan 3, 2005 16:43 UTC (Mon) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link] As the "family computer person" spends less and less time with legacy proprietary OSs and apps, the quality of free support that the rest of the family gets on them is going down. Like any IT customer, Mom is better off using what her in-house IT department is qualified on.
(Yes. my parents run Linux -- but it was a pretty easy move because they could make a clean break with all their proprietary stuff when they retired. The only thing to migrate was a couple of mailboxes of old mail.)
Linux and Open Source: The 2005 Generation (eWeek) Posted Jan 6, 2005 13:51 UTC (Thu) by wookey (subscriber, #5501) [Link] Indeed. I haven't touched windows since win98 circa 2000, so I know very little how how it works (or doesn't) these days. Thus my mother and everyone at work has now been unsubtly 'forced' to use GNU/Linux due to me saying 'oh, windows, no I can't really help you there - you can do that on Linux though' :-) The last Windows XP machine has recently been retired, and now all I have to to do is run apt-get update on all the boxen from time to time :-) (and try and find out how the hell gnome works :-( )
The conversion of all the IT experts to free software is a powerful pervasive force in society, although it takes a while to take effect. (When I first gave my mother a computer 3 years ago even I felt that she was better off having one running Windows(98) than Linux - the tipping point was close but just not quite there, especially on really low-end hardware, and I did indeed have to buy her a whole load more memory and get a bigger HD in order to install a modern gnome desktop).
Perfection Fallacy Posted Jan 3, 2005 17:11 UTC (Mon) by AnswerGuy (guest, #1256) [Link] Your argument: if OpenOffice is unable to use *any* features of the MS Office format it will not be adopted.
Effectively you're saying that its support must be perfect or it's completely for naught.
The real question is: is it good enough? If a pilot group of my users (perhaps most of the IT and half of the help desk staff) adopt OOo, and we encounter an acceptably low incidence of interoperational problems, then perhaps we do a secondary pilot of a select number of our non-technical users, especially including some who deal primarily with external customers.
If all of that works well enough, then we can adopt it. Expecting perfection is counter productive. If we find "unsupported features" then we can make
Businesses considering this transition can also take some other suggestions into account. First, the transition doesn't have to be 100% --- a significant number of employees can have copies of MS Office and OOo installed concurrently.
Also there will be some cultural adjustments to make. At some point there will be a transitional phase where all users should be encouraged to ask recipients which format they prefer (MS Office or OOo) in attachments. This will be after all users have access to OOo and while there are still significant numbers of users are also still using MS Office.
Eventually we hope that all internal documents default to OOo and that most documents exchanged with customers and business partners have also shifted to the open formats. Then we only need a few stray copies of MS Office for those stubborn "legacy" documents (and users) that still use features that are unsupported.
JimD
Perfection Fallacy Posted Jan 3, 2005 23:51 UTC (Mon) by XERC (guest, #14626) [Link] ...If a pilot group of my users (perhaps most of the IT and half of the help desk staff) adopt OOo, and we encounter an acceptably low incidence of interoperational problems, then perhaps we do a secondary pilot of a select number of our non-technical users,...I sincerely hope, that You succeed, but, some how I have a gut feeling, that the technical staff differs from the ordinary users by the following criteria: *) They don't mind learning new things. *) They don't mind doing a few extra clicks for exporting a document to some other format. *) They don't say, that "If I can send a MS Word document to my customer or friends *directly*, then why should I ever switch to the OpenOffice, where I must do save as(to MS Word format) before sending it to my friends/customers. When they are sending stuff to me, then I can't expect them to know such a difficult task as saving to an other file format. It's good, if they know, how to use the program, that is open in front of their nose and generally, the program opened in front of them is MS Word, not that...Ope..., how did You call it?" So I can have a slight, statistical, guess, that You will succeed with the technical users, but the nontechnical users will torpedo Your "ship", no matter what the arguments. Of course, as I said before, I do hope, that You succeed.
Perfection Fallacy Posted Jan 4, 2005 0:38 UTC (Tue) by pyellman (guest, #4997) [Link] Hey XERC,
I remember when the office I was working in made the gradual switch from WordPerfect, which totally dominated at that time, to MS Word, which at that time was sort of a weak WordPerfect clone. All the things you say were true then, with roles reversed, but the switch went forward anyway. The reason? MS Word was cheaper. And oh yeah, those mysterious WordPerfect GPFs played no small part too.
Peter Yellman
Linux and Open Source: The 2005 Generation (eWeek) Posted Jan 4, 2005 18:18 UTC (Tue) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link]
AFAIK, OpenOffice Note that "works fine for aunt Tillie" is not enough to get a hold on the company, it is a sysadmin's nightmare to have to wrestle with different packages for power users and ordinary ones (and their endearing incompatibilities, and non-synchronized update cicles, and...).
OO, ho, hum ... Posted Jan 3, 2005 16:58 UTC (Mon) by george (guest, #1197) [Link] I never really liked OO either ... I don't imagine it will gain many converts from among those of us who like and use emacs or vi. What I have learned to like about OO is that I no longer have to ask clueless correspondents to resend the contents of their .doc and .ppt files to me as plain text. OO gives me as much support as I care to have for .doc and .ppt files (I don't really mind if it doesn't support all of the macro viruses, thanks very much). On those very rare occasions when I have to produce a .doc file and a PDF won't do, or if I need to revise a colleague's .doc file, OO is barely adequate as a means of entering and editing text, which makes it better than MS Word. In such situations I usually use OO to extract the plain text from the vast amount of crud in which it is embedded, edit it with emacs, and then use OO to recrudify the plain text before returning it. I switched editors once, a long time ago, from TECO to emacs. (I was pretty stubborn then, too -- when I no longer had a PDP-10, I reimplemented TECO in 8080 assembly language and used that version for several years before I finally made the leap to emacs.) If I need WYSIWYG, I have a box of crayons. My two younger kids like OO just fine. The older one uses emacs because he discovered that he can concentrate on his writing better if he isn't playing with the fonts all of the time -- smart kid! Yes, I do realize that all of that sounds curmudgeonly and oddly irrelevant to the cited article, which addresses how OO will seduce those already addicted to MS Office. Here on LWN, though, I suspect there are many who have successfully avoided that addiction, or who have overcome it. For us, OO doesn't have to be perfect. It's good enough for casual use, but I wouldn't consider using it or its proprietary counterpart for serious work, because they are unbearably clumsy if you know how to use a real editor.
OO, ho, hum ... Posted Jan 3, 2005 18:03 UTC (Mon) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] It's clear that you don't collaborate much in an office environment. Good for you -- your quality of life is probably better because of it.
Realize, however, that you are in the tiny, tiny minority here. (Of American officeworkers anyway; I don't have any insight into the corproate workings of the rest of the world).
OO, ho, hum ... Posted Jan 4, 2005 0:02 UTC (Tue) by XERC (guest, #14626) [Link] I can assure You, that THE ONLYtext editor, that qualifies to be a text editor by an average European(Estonian and German at least) office worker, is MS Office. Sad, but true. Actually, Latvians seems to use something domestic: Tilde
OO, ho, hum ... Posted Jan 6, 2005 9:07 UTC (Thu) by ekj (subscriber, #1524) [Link] Quatsch.I happen to live and work in Germany, and I'm a born Norwegian. It is true that MS-Word is the most common wordprocessor in offices. But there's a large difference between "the most common wordprocessor in some setting" and to "THE ONLY text editor". Also, it's only been the most common for maybe 10 years, before that it was WordPerfect pretty much everywhere. What's changed once can change twice.
Here? No, here! Posted Jan 4, 2005 7:04 UTC (Tue) by george (guest, #1197) [Link] Thanks for your note, bronson. I agree with your comments ... but when you say that I am in a tiny, tiny minority here (and then define here as "of American officeworkers"), although you would be correct if I were an American officeworker, you are missing my point. When I said that I suspected that there are many here who have little use for OO or its evil twin, the here to which I referred is the LWN community. Many of us here adopted GNU/Linux because we like being able to make our computers behave as we wish (rather than the other way round). In my case I like my computer to behave rather like my old Sparcstation running under SunOS, but faster and more reliably (ok, I'm in a tiny minority in that respect even here, I suppose). I deplore the trend in some Linux distros and in some modern applications to lock down or hide look-and-feel controls, in order to ensure that recent Windows converts don't get confused by freedom. I believe it is fundamentally misguided to pursue the goal of making a one-size-fits-all user interface indistinguishable from that of MS Windows (if you want that experience, use WINE). The GNU tools provide a robust, modern version of the Unix user interface. They are fast, small, flexible, interoperable, and by design they generally avoid imposing arbitrary restrictions on their inputs -- everything that Windows applications are not. If you don't know how to use them, you're probably working harder than you need. If your distro succeeds in looking just like Windows, new users won't find the GNU tools, won't realize what they are missing, and may very well drift back to Windows in response to the next piece of eye candy dangled in front of them. Show them the unique strengths and capabilities of GNU/Linux, and they may become long-time committed GNU/Linux users. Oak, I agree that LyX is the WYSIWYG editor of choice for Linux, certainly when writing mathematics. I have successfully converted a handful of LaTeX-phobic friends from MS Word to LyX, although I still prefer to write LaTeX documents using emacs, where I can easily type the markup I want without using a mouse or having to look away from the text. On current PCs, LaTeX (or pdflatex, which I like very much for its ability to embed hyperlinks) is so fast that on those rare occasions when I want to check formatting while writing, it's a matter of a few seconds to do so.
OO, ho, hum ... Posted Jan 6, 2005 18:12 UTC (Thu) by rwmj (guest, #5474) [Link] It's clear that you don't collaborate much in an office environment. Good for you -- your quality of life is probably better because of it.We've started using wikis for collaboration over here, and found they work well. Of course people still do stupid stuff like writing any list as an Excel file, but they're learning ... slowly ... Rich.
OO, ho, hum ... Posted Jan 3, 2005 21:59 UTC (Mon) by oak (guest, #2786) [Link] If one wants to concentrate on content, I think LyX (a nice GUI interfacefor LaTeX) is an excellent choice, see http://www.lyx.org/. It doesn't allow one e.g. to type more than one consecutive Space or Return character (except by using an explicit hard space or return).
OO, ho, hum ... Posted Jan 3, 2005 23:55 UTC (Mon) by XERC (guest, #14626) [Link] I love vim, and use gVim, when I have to work on Windows.It's gVim even when using the MS Visual studio.... :)
OK, this comment was just some noise.
Linux and Open Source: The 2005 Generation (eWeek) Posted Jan 3, 2005 17:01 UTC (Mon) by aleXXX (subscriber, #2742) [Link] OOo 2 will be fast ? Cool :-))Alex
[OT] kio fuse gateway Posted Jan 3, 2005 21:12 UTC (Mon) by LogicG8 (guest, #11076) [Link] I apologize for being off-topic, but I believe you are the author of the KIO Fuse Gatewayand I've been trying to get word on the status of the project and get a hold of the source code for the project. The project website has been down for some time and I was unsuccessful in trying to email you. What is the state of the project? Are you still working on it? Is there any place that I can get a copy of the source code? Cheers, Adam adam at argoncorp.com
[OT] kio fuse gateway Posted Jan 4, 2005 15:41 UTC (Tue) by ecureuil (subscriber, #3507) [Link] The code is here :http://webcvs.kde.org/kdenonbeta/fuse_kio/ For Debian packages, look here : http://www.kalyxo.org/archive.html
Blah blah blah Posted Jan 3, 2005 18:00 UTC (Mon) by bluefoxicy (guest, #25366) [Link] Blah blah "Linux is going to corner the market" Blah blah "Redmond is going to die" blah blah blah.
Whatever. Redmond HAS the market and they SUCK. Their software is HORRID. Most people stay with MS because of third party software, or first party services. Either way, it's the functionality, not the stability or the quality.
If Linux gets the market, they will not suck. Alright. Now, what I want to know is HOW won't they suck, and WHY will they get the market? Why not an article predicting the advancements of security, software quality, desktop integration, soft realtime processing? Why is Linux the better gaming OS AND the better server OS? What about clustering, making Linux a more mature platform for scientific research?
Maybe I'm just tired of seeing "OSS taking over the world" headlines everywhere. Every few days it seems someone writes that OSS has just become that much cooler and is going to soon take over the world. Bring numbers next time, and a chart.
Blah blah blah Posted Jan 3, 2005 19:30 UTC (Mon) by einstein (subscriber, #2052) [Link] Such a pollyanna, all sweetness and light, must you be so sacharine?
OH, I read the article and couldn't find any trace of the "oss taking over the world" or "linux cornering the market" content you spoke of. It was more along the lines of "open source making progress", which seems to be pretty clearly happening...
mountain of expectations Posted Jan 4, 2005 1:34 UTC (Tue) by gte223j (guest, #6492) [Link] You said: "Maybe I'm just tired of seeing "OSS taking over the world" headlines everywhere. Every few days it seems someone writes that OSS has just become that much cooler and is going to soon take over the world. Bring numbers next time, and a chart"
Your expectations are too great, however, I agree with you. I noticed a while back (~3yrs) that all of the linux sites generally only have two types of stories.
1) Why we will win
This is not a bad thing, just reality.
Most of the windows oriented *news* is worse.
It did suck when I realized that "(insert year here) is the year for desktop linux," isn't going to happen soon. I am very thankfull though, that there are stories|opionions|crystal ball gazings|rants|scientific papers written about our favorite os and free software.
mountain of expectations Posted Jan 4, 2005 6:34 UTC (Tue) by dkite (guest, #4577) [Link] "(insert year here) is the year for desktop linux"When did the linux server hit critical mass? It was almost recognized in retrospect. HP said that 50% of it's blade servers are sold with Linux. Anyone making that prediction two years ago would have been considered somewhat touched. The desktop is of course a different market, but similar. The three criteria are cheaper, is it going to be around for a while, and does it do what I need? The third still needs work. But compare the application choice and quality from a year ago. As an example, KPDF has been undergoing major changes, and today the development branch was merged into head, to become part of the kde 3.4 release. I hate looking at pdf's due to the slowness of the tools. I compiled and ran this software and am blown away at the speed and responsiveness. And it is full featured. It isn't finished, with some instability, but this type of dramatic improvement is happening throughout the desktop software. I suspect that one day we will all be bothered by strangers approaching us and saying 'I installed that linux thing. How do I ...?'. Derek (who refuses to put a time limit to his prognostications)
mountain of expectations Posted Jan 5, 2005 0:02 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] I suspect that one day we will all be bothered by strangers approaching us and saying 'I installed that linux thing. How do I ...?'. Derek (who refuses to put a time limit to his prognostications) Oh, it's easy. 2010. I've said so 8 years ago and I'm ready to repeat it now. It's quite simple really: Longhorn will be released by 2006. It'll be the last widely used version of Windows. Only small percentage of users will switch to Longhorn by the end of 2007 due to "temporary economic troubles and lack of funds for upgrade". Then in 2008 economy will go down the tubes world-wide. By 2010 people will be ready to accept they are stuck with what hardware they have on hands and only few will have ability to upgrade anything. Even then they will upgrade when there are no other way to do work. At this stage Windows XP will be abandoned due to inherent insecurity and Longhorn will not not used due to lack of horsepower of hardware on hands. Then Linux and *BSD will be left as the only games in town - if there are will be games in town that is.
mountain of expectations Posted Jan 7, 2005 1:17 UTC (Fri) by gravious (guest, #7662) [Link] You, my dear, are such an optimist!
How about a more realistic guess. Your thinking about the Longhorn delivery seems right at the moment, but remember what happens when the Microsoft hype-machine gets going. What we need to be doing now is being able to trump Longhorn when it is shipped. I'm thinking a collective one month free purchase from all Linux vendors to coincide with the 2006 launch to burst their bubble - ah, that would be sweet. (But, then again, I would think that, it's not coming out of my pocket.) Having seen what Ubuntu could do in 04, I say that 05 is the year of Linux desktop maturity (finally!) across the board and that 06 becomes the year of the showdown. Remember, it took Microsoft a long time to get to XP from Windows 3.0, it'll take a while for Linux to get the plumbing right. I think that udev, hal, d-bus desktop integration is going to solidify this year and from then on it becomes an application contest. Also I think Novell are going to be the ones to challenge Microsoft in the enterprise, along with Apple.
regards,
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