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OpenOffice.org 2.2 released
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released
Posted Mar 29, 2007 22:12 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630)In reply to: OpenOffice.org 2.2 released by mikov
Parent article: OpenOffice.org 2.2 released
Now some specific answers:
Is it for cost reasons?
You bet.
Support?
A non-issue. Our tech people are very competent.
Which Linux distribution?
Techies: Debian. Non-Techies: Ubuntu. One curmudgeonly holdout: Slackware.
What hardware?
White-box Intel PCs with one AMD-64 box and one SPARC box running Solaris (for our Solaris builds.)
How do you deal with peripherals like printers and scanners?
Umm... we plug them in. And then we use them.
Do you use CrossOver office?
Nope.
Has anybody estimated the effect of lost productivity when non-engineers had to be re-trained to use Gnome/KDE and OpenOffice?
Not formally. We sat our new hires down and said "press this button to start your e-mail program, press this one to start your Web browser, and this one to start your word-processor. Oh, and forget about drive letters; everything is under /home/foo". And that was the extent of the training.
How did the company reach this decision?
I'd always used Linux even as a one-person consulting shop. I never even considered the possibility of switching to Windows as our company grew.
(Log in to post comments)
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released
Posted Mar 29, 2007 22:53 UTC (Thu) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link]
Thanks for the detailed replies. I am very happy that it is working great for you - I am being completely honest here. I hope more and more businesses take this road. I hope our business does too, eventually :-)
I still have strong reservations, though. Perhaps if the company is running Linux from the get go, as apparently yours is, with a very high ratio of engineers to "regular" employees, and new people just merge in one by one, it is much easier. However switching from Windows to Linux is different, because the shortcomings of Linux on the desktop become immediately visible by comparison.
For example, I am a little surprised about just being able to plug printers and scanners in - this is simply not true for the devices and the OSes I am using - the latter being Sarge and Edgy Eft. I don't want to make generalizations about _all printers_. However the latest printer I had to get working under Linux doesn't quite have the same options and convenience in CUPS as in Windows, is a little slower under Linux (god knows why), etc.
Same with a scanner, which in Windows comes bundled with an OCR application, which works surprisingly well. Better than the apps in Debian and Ubuntu, anyway.
The list of devices and problems can go on. Flash programmers, tools that go with them, embedded compilers, CAD applications, etc.
Each of these problems individually can be solved with some creativity. Either by finding Linux-compatible replacement, or by using Wine, Qemu, etc. Often the solution is not perfect. However when you take all the problems combined, it becomes an unsurmountable task. It often doesn't make business sense to waste time and money on solving it, when
a $400 computer with Windows is all it takes.
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released
Posted Mar 30, 2007 1:31 UTC (Fri) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]
Printers and scanners have never been a problem. We have three printers (an HP LaserJet, an HP all-in-one fax/scanner/printer and a Samsung printer) and they all just worked out of the box.
Naturally, it's easier to start running Linux than to switch from Windows --- it's called Vendor Lock-In. We switched from a proprietary PBX to Asterisk only after our irritation with the proprietary PBX drove us to the breaking point. My guess is that Windows lock-in is far more powerful than PBX lock-in, so there's much more difficulty in changing.
But that's OK. I see our use of Linux as a competitive advantage, and if our competitors are stuck running Windows... :-)
I hear your complaints about the "little" problems that add up and are easier to solve. The best way around those is to avoid the problems in the first place -- make sure you buy Linux-compatible hardware and choose Linux-friendly vendors. And the "cheap" solution of switching to Windows will have many other costs in the long run.
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released
Posted Mar 30, 2007 1:43 UTC (Fri) by beoba (guest, #16942) [Link]
CUPS: http://localhost:631
I've found that, consider that I've never had to manually install drivers for my printer (just select it off a list), I'd argue that things are easier in Linux, I just click a couple relevant links and select my printer from a pulldown list and it works. However, I had to know the above address before I could do that..
There will always be specialized tools for which there is no Linux equivalent. Are those something that we should concentrate on, or should we instead aim for the common things that are useful to the non-specialists? If we get those mainstream areas down pat, I don't see why the specialized tools wouldn't end up migrating of their own accord.
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released
Posted Mar 30, 2007 13:29 UTC (Fri) by muwlgr (guest, #35359) [Link]
Read ESR's article about CUPS, then read it again.Then try to set up a printer that is not in your CUPS lists.
Like, old parallel-port printer that is not detectable by IEEE1284.
Then run system-config-printer if you are using redhat-derived distro,
and wonder why cups-web frontend on port 631 and system-config-printer both offer each own different list of manufacturers and models.
Then change some checkboxes through cups-web and wonder how well it discards your manual changes you have made to cups.conf before.
Then announce your printer to the network by IPP or Zeroconf.
Then set up access control. Could you get accounts info somewhere from LDAP or so ?
Printing is still an abomination. Even under Windows not everything is smooth enough, not saying about Unix/Linux. GUI and Web frontends to Unix printer administration only make the problem worse.
Of course, for local/personal desktop case, all warts are more-less licked up and masked. But that's not enterprise scenario.
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released
Posted Mar 30, 2007 15:23 UTC (Fri) by ajross (subscriber, #4563) [Link]
That article was written several years ago, and things have improved rapidly since. Last month, I dropped a Xerox 6120 on my network (a printer not available in the configuration lists for my Ubuntu Breezy server) fired up the GUI and defined it using a custom PPD file with no trouble whatsoever.
Now, that's a "personal" printer with a network (er, "enterprise") interface, so I don't know how your hedging applies here. Is that proof that there are no remaining problems in CUPS? Of course not. But it is evidence that perhaps your argument isn't as absolute as you might have thought. Honestly, it sounds mostly like meaningless FUD to me. Do you have any specific bugs to report?
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released
Posted Mar 30, 2007 19:03 UTC (Fri) by muwlgr (guest, #35359) [Link]
Nice example. This printer might even dispense its PPD by http or IPP, or Windows drivers to Windows clients by SMB, as it is pretty much a server host by itself. Today it is not difficult to stuff an entire OS in it. And so, CUPS on your desktop is merely a client relaying jobs by IPP or JetDirect/9100 to the remote host. Not a hard task even for CUPS.
What I was trying to mean, is mostly related to locally-connected printers (LPT/COM/USB) which are then shared by CUPS itself. It is much, much more creative and enterprising area for poor self-admins trying to make this work.
Btw, are you getting the full DPI from your printer ? The same as from under Windows ? What about color management and other features usually offered fully only on Windows driver ? Is PPD enough to describe all bells&whistles and provide the user with convenient access to them ?
And yes, compiled binaries distributed by some manufacturers are really excellent in crashing :>
I hope you would agree that there are printers without Ethernet port, and there are distributions other than Ubuntu, and there are existing businesses built on plain dot-matrix printers connected to plain DOS boxes and printing in the blank forms without any Postscript. Trying to migrate these to Unix, we get so many components in the printing path that it is not easy to make them do what we want without some deep research.
Those who learned traditional lpd/printap printing system, would note that CUPS tries to mask the textual&commandline nature of the whole configuration process, and that only makes things worse.
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released
Posted Apr 2, 2007 10:33 UTC (Mon) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]
Those who learned traditional lpd/printap printing system, would note that CUPS tries to mask the textual&commandline nature of the whole configuration process, and that only makes things worse.
CUPS comes with perfectly reasonable command-line administration utilities, including one to set up new printers from scratch, given only a PPD file and where it is connected.
Anselm
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released
Posted Apr 11, 2007 0:33 UTC (Wed) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link]
In the past, I configured BSD lpr, System V lp, AIX's lp variant, and lpr-ng.
CUPS is easy to configure, compared to the old systems. It has much better command-line tools than any of these other systems; it's configuration files are easier to read and to change, and that "textual interface" is not hidden at all; it's well documented.
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released
Posted Apr 17, 2007 18:33 UTC (Tue) by muwlgr (guest, #35359) [Link]
Then why CUPS introduction starts from "open http://localhost:631 in your browser" ? Why RedHat-derived distros still offer "system-config-printer" tool ? Both these interfaces are worse than unusable (except for simplest and most straightforward cases). CUPS docs should start from CLI-tools overview and always give CLI equivalent for every action done in "convenient" WEB/GUI. Else there would be no end of Eric Raymond-likes with their articles of you know what content.
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released
Posted Mar 29, 2007 23:42 UTC (Thu) by job (subscriber, #670) [Link]
I never really understood what the big problem about printers and scanners were. I mean, UNIX has been around for a very long time, and even in Linux it's pretty well documented what hardware is supported. Bascially with a printer, anything goes as long as it's Postscript. With a scanner, check out the SANE compatibility list. I've never had any problems with those in Linux and other unices and I've used them extensively for many years. Now video cards and monitors, there's where the problems were! Not to mention cheap NE2k clones. Even today Xorg sometimes misbehaves, but generally hardware support is almost a non issue today.
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released
Posted Mar 30, 2007 8:33 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
The problem with printers is the vast variety of consumer-grade stuff that's not PostScript.
Even the stuff that's reasonably compatible is problematic sometimes. e.g. I just got a Samsung ML-2250. I picked it *specifically* because it used PCL so would work under Linux, but it seems that it uses PCL6 or something that GS doesn't fully support yet (you can't get full 1200dpi resolution but are stuck at 600dpi). Samsung actually ship CUPS filters that allege to support this, but they're enormous binary-only lumps that are *excellent* at segfaulting. (pxlmono works fine, but you're restricted to 600dpi, again...)
And this is a printer with relatively *good* Linux support.
(I wonder if there are docs for the 1200dpi stuff so I can add support to GS: I haven't spent the time but that's my own damn fault.)
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released
Posted Mar 30, 2007 9:56 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
HP supports open source drivers for Linux for their cheaper crap.
The HPIJ and all that stuff. I had a all-in-one printer for a long time that worked pretty well in Linux. Scanner/printing combo.
For the most part I'd stay far away from anything that isn't either Epson or HP as far as cheap printers go.
http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/OpenPrinting/Database/...
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released
Posted Mar 31, 2007 14:07 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Agreed; the only reason I went for this Samsung was because I spotted itcheap (and you can't really beat fifty quid for a mono laser! A lot of
consumer-grade inkjets cost more than that...)
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released
Posted Mar 30, 2007 18:00 UTC (Fri) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link]
I just hate bl**dy Postscript!
I've had postscript printers that crashed, and once it started your only fix was to throw the document away and start again ...
I don't know why, but I cannot get an A4 pdf document to print cleanly on to an A4 sheet of paper - it either lines up the document edge with the printer PRINTABLE edge (so the document is offset slightly to the bottom right), or "shrinks the document to fit" so the A4 image fits inside the A4 printable margins and is not quite the size it's supposed to be ... etc etc.
Give me PCL or some other simple printer language where "what you send is what you get", not something completely different ...
Oh - and I think they've fixed it now (it was a very old SuSE) - but why when I told CUPS *NOT* to auto-discover printers, did it think doing a network scan was a good idea?!?! SuSE support got a right earful over that!
lpd may be basic, but it's simple, and it works.
Cheers,
Wol
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released
Posted Mar 31, 2007 14:09 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
lpd and LPRng also support filters that can be arbitrary programs ratherthan having to conform to a rather odd API.
On my todo list (not near the top) is implementing command wrappers for
the necessary parts of the CUPS filter API so that you can write filters
in the shell for CUPS too :)
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released
Posted Apr 2, 2007 6:56 UTC (Mon) by MortFurd (guest, #9389) [Link]
And I LOVE bloody postscript. My experiences with printing seem absolutely opposite yours. I find that pdf files print more consistently using postscript, and psotscript is much easier to manipulate when something goes wrong.
We have a database system that generates mailing labels from an enormous database. The vendor provided templates only worked properly if you were using a particular brand and model printer. The program provides the labels as a pdf file. The vendor took over a year to fix the problem, in the mean time I've got users ripping out their (and my) hair over labels that print so wrong as to be unusable.
Solution:
Have them print to a virtual postscript printer. Use Ghostscript to resize and reposition the labels, then print to the users' real printer.
I was a manual setup for each user that needed to print labels, but that's better than no labels.
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released
Posted Apr 11, 2007 0:40 UTC (Wed) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link]
Your problem sounds more like Acroread and less like Postscript.
Acroread's default configuration is to scale a page, down to fit into margins, just as you describe. But at least it remembers when one changes that configuration. In addition, it defaults to Letter page format (and one can not change this default, at least I don't know how), the page format has to be changed at every 1st print of a program run; without that the page is positioned wrongly.
Postscript and CUPS does none of this scaling. If you use Acroread, look at your print configuration.
Samsung Printer Driver
Posted Apr 5, 2007 18:38 UTC (Thu) by Felix.Braun (subscriber, #3032) [Link]
Have you tried SpliX? It supports 1200x1200dpi on my ML2010. The website says it has not yet been tested on your printer, so I'm sure the authors would be interested in your feedback
Samsung Printer Driver
Posted Apr 5, 2007 19:31 UTC (Thu) by kamil (subscriber, #3802) [Link]
1200dpi on ML2010 with splix? Last I tried, it resulted in a horizontally stretched output, so that only half of a page was printed.
Anyway, thanks for the link, looks like I'm running an old beta version -- time to upgrade...
Samsung Printer Driver
Posted Apr 21, 2007 23:26 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
I'd not heard of it. I'll give it a spin. Thanks!