[00940]

   You make a good case as to why/how Linux and/or open source software does not work in the professional world... but what about the majority of computer users that just need something fast, compatible, and low cost? In this case I can easily see OpenOffice and Linux providing a better experience for the end user. Using OpenOffice, they don't need to worry about what format things are in, as it works with Corel, Word, and many other formats without having to pay for a newer version (to open .docx for example)

  

 

Open Office is, as of today, a nightmare for the average user. Maybe they don't need to worry about the format... but Open Office is so erratic (and it's kindly put) in the way he translates a format to another that this compatibility is pretty much worthless.

I currently live in a place housing 30 university teachers and students. I'm in charge of the computers in the house, both private and public. I equipped the public computers with both open office and MS office 2007 or 2010 but in fact noone wants to use open office. As for "private" computers, the 5 or 6 guys who had switched to Open Office all finally ended up asking for a MS Office copy (and I get a lot less phone calls asking me "why is my document looking so weird ? ").

PS: btw, you don't need to buy a new copy to open .docx. There's a free tool for that on MS website.

 

[Welly Wu]

NJIT faculty, staff, and student employees are required to use Microsoft Office for official documents. OpenOffice is offered as a free download, but hardly anyone uses it because we get copies of Microsoft Office 2003, 2007, and 2010 for free.
 
Try to create or open a complex Microsoft Office document and save it in its native format. Then, open it up in OpenOffice and try to save the file in its native format with the original content intact. Then, compare the results. It won't look and feel the same.
 
Besides, more people are using Google Documents as a free alternative to work collaboratively within their cloud infrastructure. Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 and Microsoft Office 365 offer much more professional quality results for working collaboratively on the cloud. This is the future of full featured office suites because it helps to keep costs of travel, lodging, and meals down to a minimum while maximizing the productivity of salaried employees in almost every industry worldwide.
 
OpenOffice has yet to catch on to this important trend. They have no cloud infrastructure to connect their desktop applications within the office suite.
 
As a former Liberal Arts and English Creative Writing graduate, I hate to resort to cliches, but you do get what you pay for in this world.

 

[Cankin]

Currently, no cloud for LibreOffice neither

 

[Welly Wu]

LibreOffice is derived from the OpenOffice source code except it has a different software license. It is a development that is forked from Sun Microsystems, but it is run by an independent committee.
 
Without a cloud infrastructure or tools to work collaboratively over great distances for very large and complex documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and databases along with the ability to take annotated notes along the way, both OpenOffice and LibreOffice risk the danger of becoming obsolete or reducing the size of its customer base as they flock to Google Documents or Microsoft Office.
 
Microsoft reported a steady increase in the number of sales for its Microsoft Office 2010 suite for these aforementioned reasons.

 

[Roller]

Curiously, while pc gaming did suffer with the shift from XP to Vista/7, audio itself did benefit quite a bit. Not that there were no solutions for gaming, as now gaming can be fully appreciated just like in XP with DirectSound/2D/3D converted to OpenAL.
 
About security, it is quite important to be responsible when talking a stroll through the web, as security isn't just having neat little security apps doing all the work for the user.
 
Then there's foobar2000, MediaMonkey, Winamp, J River Media Center, Microsoft Office, Steam (Windows version performance can't be compared to the sluggish OS X version), among others.
 
Single user experiences are still valid as they are experiences themselves. While XP was more prone to BSODs and having less security, that's just not something that's happening with Vista/7 kernel. While when Vista was launched, there was hell with drivers and such, it did change significantly with Service Pack 1, and Service Pack 2 got Vista quite close to what Windows 7 is now. While I used Vista, I had 2 BSODs in 2 years, and with Windows 7 I haven't had a single one.
 
I respect everyone's opinion, though it all comes to the needs of each single person.

 

[mark2410]

linux and pretty much all open source stuff is a giant fail because the people creating dont give a crap about usability.  Ubuntu is the closest yet but something still just dont work and since im no longer 20 i cant be screwed trying to make things work.  example the wifi drivers broke and refuse to work on the little netbook.  even though windows runs slow on it slow is better than doesnt work.

 

[Welly Wu]

Fortunately, my ASUS N61JV-X2 notebook PC is almost fully compatible with Ubuntu 64 bit and FreeBSD 64 bit. The nVIDIA GeForce GT 325 M and nVIDIA Optimus technologies are not supported yet and it does not look like nVIDIA will support GNU/Linux or BSD anytime soon either. Otherwise, I have had no complaints running VMWare Workstation 7.1.3 with any operating system that I throw at it. For an IT Administration & Security graduate student, it is a good thing to be able to run GNU/Linux and BSD to examine operating system architecture and security differences.

 

[Uncle Erik]

You have to keep in mind that the mobile/tablet world is in its infancy. It's like how the GUI was back in 1984. Give it a few years and most will be working on mobile platforms connected to servers.

I actually got accepted as a computer science major at the University of Arizona back in '89. Had I gone that route, anything I would have learned then would be useless today, short of learning C. Part of the reason I went for education with a more classical bent - literature, law and accounting. They get updated, but the basics of each have been consistent for several hundred years. Working with tech seemed to be too much of a crapshoot.

 

[bcasey25raptor]

i just installed ubuntu netbook remix on my netbook and i have had no problems. i am very satisfied with it. it runs better then xp and windows 7 ever did. i highly recommend anyone with a netbook to upgrade to ubuntu. personally though for a more powerful computer i go with windows 7 all the way.

 

[Argyris]

Quote:

i just installed ubuntu netbook remix on my netbook and i have had no problems. i am very satisfied with it. it runs better then xp and windows 7 ever did. i highly recommend anyone with a netbook to upgrade to ubuntu. personally though for a more powerful computer i go with windows 7 all the way.

Unless you're stuck with GMA 500 graphics. Then newer distros of Ubuntu are pretty much a no go. 

 

[Welly Wu]

Stay away from Ubuntu Unity for netbooks. It is not ready for production environments.

 

[shigzeo]

For me, the most frustrating part about Windows is that there is NO language support at OS level unless you have another disk or buy the OS in another language. I don't mind using it, though I find its security to be flimsy and its GUI a hodgepodge. It works, but it is a bugger especially if you have more than one user and those two users DON'T use the same language. It simply hasn't an elegant solution for OS-level language switching, something I've gotten used to in Linux and OSX.

 

[Welly Wu]

If you purchase Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate, then you can install an additional 30 foreign language packs and switch seamlessly among different languages on the same computer for different users. I find this to be a key advantage because I graduated with a degree in Linguistics and I studied foreign languages.

 

[Roller]

Well, additional languages can be installed on non-Ultimate versions of Vista/7. Third party tools make the job easy.
 
Also, there are modded drivers for Intel integrated chipsets which run quite acceptably.

 

[bcasey25raptor]

Quote:

Stay away from Ubuntu Unity for netbooks. It is not ready for production environments.

im not using it for serious work. just for internet browsing once in a while. oh and skype.