What *can't* you do in Linux?

[spencerpi]

Photoshop is a funny thing. If you tell a pro designer that you use Photoshop under Windows they laugh at you too.

Most of them are Macintosh lovers.  

[HibbeeBoy]

quote:Originally posted by M505:


Where did I say it is bad to be compatible with loooots of other Office suites ? Nowhere. Why did you bring this up ?

I brought it up because you are perpetuating the myth that everything must revolve around M$ Office. It doesn't.

 

quote:Originally posted by M505:

My point was and still is : as long as MS has 90% of the desktop market and dominates the Office market it will be difficult for OpenOffice to compete. Even your claim to be compatible with other Office suites makes no sense because all the other Office suites together is still only 10% of the market.

And as long as you and people like you buy into this BS the longer the situation remains the same.

 

quote:Originally posted by M505:

I'm just saying that if the competition has 90% market share they can make life very hard for OpenOffice, like I said, by starting to fiddle with their file formats is just one problem for OpenOffice. I've never used OO but I will try it when I get round to it. We have MS Office at work which I *hate*. I don't know why MS needs over 50mb of disk space for a text editor (Word). All it has to do is show the letter on screen that you type. Pretty elementary stuff if you think about it.

That said, they can do some heavy stuff within Office, embedding documents from other applications in their documents, just to name one. I seriously doubt that OpenOffice supports all those gimmicks.

I agree with you, most of the office suite applications are full of features that we just don't have a requirement for. Hence, M$ bundles "Works" with their "OS". Excel is a hugely powerful application but most of the advanced features are left alone where I work. You're also correct in a sense that a text editor is a text editor. The only yhing that differentiates one word processor from another is the crap that comes with it. That's why Open Office is appealing, I get what I need, not what M$ thinks I need.

 

quote:Originally posted by M505:
A lot of people here make it look very easy ... Photoshop ? We have The Gimp, solved. MS Office ? We have OpenOffice, solved.

It's just not true : they may come close in functionality, close enough for Joe Average but expert users will laugh at them. The lack of CMYK support in Gimp is one example.

If you take a non CMYK file to a printing company they *will* laugh at you. Deal with it and don't go claiming that The Gimp = Photoshop. It just isn't so.

Well I can't comment on those applications but I will take your word (no pun intended) for it. As the Linux platform matures, these issues will become less and less and hopefully, an even playing field will result.

I myself use Office 97 a bit at work. I also use Star Office for documents and spreadsheets too and nobody has spotted the difference when I publish them. Star Office cost me, NOWT ! So that's a good deal.

[KernelPanic]

quote:Originally posted by HibbeeBoy:

 Star Office cost me, NOWT ! So that's a good deal.

[off-topic] Americans use the word 'nowt' - hmm I thought that was just a northern colloquial british term.... [/off-topic]

[HibbeeBoy]

quote:Originally posted by Tux:


[off-topic] Americans use the word 'nowt' - hmm I thought that was just a northern colloquial british term.... [/off-topic]

Read my sig, I only live in America.
As the old saying goes,
"You can take the man out of Leith... etc" javascript: x()


                 

[raptor]

quote:Originally posted by Faust:
All the newer distributions are implementing schemes like Debians apt-get, and personally I think apt-get is simpler than Mac OSX method.  So software installation is now covered.

Apt-get process:
Go to big menu of software
Choose software you want
Click install and all the config is done for you

Mac OSX process:
Go to big download site / store
Find software you want in invariably poorly organized menus / shelves
Download software / buy software
Unzip/extract
Drag to relevant location where you have space
(Then I guess you need to set up shortcuts too?  Or do you just put it in a central location and it runs?)

I mean I don't even need to know where the binaries go because my path handles that all for me.  Why are you people still using Macs???    :confused:  

apt-get == win

 

[emh]

Those of you that won't switch because of Photoshop, you don't have an excuse anymore.    

Crossover Office from Codeweavers supports all versions of Photoshop:

http://www.codeweavers.com

They don't claim to support Dreamweaver yet, though.

[solo]

GIMP, OpenOffice etc is not part of the operating system, but I see your points. It is true that Gimp, OpenOffice sometimes lack things that are needed but when it all comes down to it, such problems regarding porting are the application vendors problems. They *will* port their stuff when Linux makes it into the desktop. Types of issues regarding software like Flash MX etc are not the OS developers problem, they are the marketers problem.

That's not to say I don't agree: the only piece of software that Linux has nothing to compare to in my mind is Macromedia Flash. I can live without Photoshop because I have GIMP and dont require the features you speak of. I can live without Dreamweaver because I am a good coder and believe code is better hand coded anyway. I would absolutely love to see Macromedia Flash MX on Linux, and I've heard rumours that they may have it on their mind.

Better USB and Firewire support: Firewire support I do not know much of in Linux, but as for USB: USB works perfectly in Linux. Maybe we need more USB *device* support, but USB support itself works great and a good amount of devices works fine. How can anyone expect the Linux developers to create device drivers for all the devices? In the Windows and Mac non-standard drivers are written by the device manufacturer. That problem will be solved *when* Linux is adopted.

Some of the arguments posted are true: we need a independent package system that allows software to have their own libraries etc., so dependency problems are nonexistant. Mac's system is nice... I'd like to see our current system RPM evolve some more and get a more universal program based (as opposed to category based /bin /lib etc). GoboLinux and others, including my own Linux are experimenting with software folders, which is a good step in the right direction.

Here's my view on what our problems are:
 - Dependency problems can turn into nightmares.
 - XFree86 needs to catch up
 - 3D sound support, as well as a standard sound system
 - Universal toolkit methods

[Faust]

I think Solo has it pretty much covered.
Also it seems that Mac OSX is still ahead in the specialist graphics / sound artist stakes...  we'll get there.    Hell our weak points are better than Windows' strong points.  

[Faust]

What is CMYK?  :confused:

[dishawjp]

Hi All,

This talk about MSOffice compatibility bothers me.  MSOffice is not even compatible with MSOffice!  I have MSOffice 97 Pro installed on my Win98 box and I got my wife to convert to using my Linux box at home when her office upgraded to M$Office 2000 and she could no longer open and edit documents and spreadsheets on our Windows computer at home. But Open Office could do the job.  There must be at least 10 "versions" of MSWord out there, but if you don't have the most current version... you can't open docs created in newer versions.  So, you have a choice.  Go out and spend a couple of hundred dollars and buy the current MSOffice suite, or get a Linux distribution that has Open Office on it.

Oh, and once she found out that my Linux computers could work with her MSOffice documents, she found out about the Linux web browsers... galeon and mozilla... with no pop-up windows and tabbed browsing.  And then both of my daughters wanted to use Linux too.  So I have 5 computers in the house, one still has Windows on it, and I have to fight to use my favorite one.  It is a dual boot machine... it will boot to both good operating systems; Red Hat 8 and Red Hat 9

Soooo there is only one Linux shortfall (other than games) that I can think of.  I need a good Linux replacement for TaxCut or TurboTax and I can  upgrade my last Windows box to Linux and the whole family will be happy.

Jim

[Faust]

Taxcat sounds like a money program right? (sorry but I dont have much to go on...) Have you tried gnucash?

[billy_gates]

quote:Originally posted by Faust:
All the newer distributions are implementing schemes like Debians apt-get, and personally I think apt-get is simpler than Mac OSX method.  So software installation is now covered.

Apt-get process:
Go to big menu of software
Choose software you want
Click install and all the config is done for you

Mac OSX process:
Go to big download site / store
Find software you want in invariably poorly organized menus / shelves
Download software / buy software
Unzip/extract
Drag to relevant location where you have space
(Then I guess you need to set up shortcuts too?  Or do you just put it in a central location and it runs?)

I mean I don't even need to know where the binaries go because my path handles that all for me.  Why are you people still using Macs???    :confused:  

You can set up shortcuts, but its definitely not needed.  I don't use shortcuts.  They would just clutter up my desktop.

However, the apt-get thing.  You are assuming idealism.  First the program has to be in the list, if its not its back to rpm's and source.  Second, I messed it up.  It wasn't even hard.  I went into Synaptic to install Ogle, mplayer, etc.  I also decided to update my out of date stuff.  Worked perfectly.  Then I decided I wanted to install something (can't remember wut it was)  So I went to the Red Hat Package Manager.  Selected my shit.  Clicked next.  Dependency problem.  Can't find blah blah version whatever.  I checked in synaptic.  had the package installed.  I figured out what was wrong.  Synaptic had updated the package to a newer than redhat version.  So it decided I had a dependency problem.  I posted for help in the linux forum, here.  No help.  No one could fix it.  Then I reformatted that partiton for Windows and sacrificed its swap for BeOS.  My computer is much happier now.

I don't know about you, but I'm a control freak.  I have to know where my files are.  Its just me.  I have to know where they are, and control over them is also good.  So on my mac, I can have a program wherever I want.  I don't want it there any longer.  Move it. it still runs perfect, with all my prefs and everything.  And most OSX programs are packages.  They are folders that the system thinks are files.  This is good, because they look clean.  There is only one file that could possibly execute it, the package file.  And all of the code files and picture files and shit are hidden away until I want to see them.  And of course seeing them is easy.  Right click "Show package contents."  Through all my using Linux, I could not say that any part of its installing things is easier than a mac.

[emh]

Yet you said in the aforementioned thread that the stuff you wanted to install installed just fine.  What happened?

[spencerpi]

quote: I agree with you, most of the office suite applications are full of features that we just don't have a requirement for. Hence, M$ bundles "Works" with their "OS". Excel is a hugely powerful application but most of the advanced features are left alone where I work.

That's ok for you then. But keep in mind that there are about 6 billion other people out there. Amongst these there *are* people that use the specialties that MS Office offers. Again : if OO claims to be compatible, it has to be compatible 100%.

 

quote: I myself use Office 97 a bit at work. I also use Star Office for documents and spreadsheets too and nobody has spotted the difference when I publish them. Star Office cost me, NOWT ! So that's a good deal.

Well, I don't know about you but I certainly don't care if my boss has to pay for the Office products or not. All that matters is that my boss gives me the tools I need to get the job done and I get my paycheck every month. If he wants to cut costs and go to OO then fine, no problem.

About the backwards compatibility problem ... I understand what you mean and yes : it *is* harsh that you have to have the latest version of Word or whatever but that's not an MS only problem. Think Oracle, think other db providers. These products grow, every version has new features that the previous one didn't have. I'm a fulltime software developer and heck, even *our own* software is not always backwards compatible. For software companies maintenance contracts with customers are a *very* important part of their income.

I *do*, however, acknowledge that there is a difference between a "healthy" maintenance contract and the knife-against-throat contracts that MS uses.

[spencerpi]

There's another reason why we continue to work on the Windows platform at work : our applications "talk" with Office. We create Reports from our applications which automatically start up Word, run Macro's, blabla. You know : the entire DDE and/or ActiveX automation story.

The good news is a lot of people here experiment with Linux after hours. One of them just gave me a bootable cd of Vector Linux 3.2, based on Slackware.