Comments on: Economy + sucks = Linux 4TW

By: dreikin

dreikin — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 21:59:30 +0000

frequently peppered with VB macros. Not really. They are too dangerous to actually use.

And when has that ever stopped business (or other not-technically-competent) users from doing so?

By: Barry

Barry — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 19:29:38 +0000

There are no proprietary formats that are not easily opened, saved, and manipulated with OO.org

Did anyone say Visio? 😉

But vanilla documents and spreadsheets can still trip up OOo. I’ve been using OpenOffice (and before the open source fork, StarOffice) as my main office suite since 2002 and in that time both compatibility and overall quality have improved immensely — but because Office file formats have to be reverse-engineered it’ll never be 100% compatible. (it’s not even 100% across different versions of Office). I still get glitches opening up some Office files, if only minor layout issues.

I think the only way around this is to move to open standards for file formats (as some governments are doing).

It’s all over for windows.

I wish someone would tell that to the web designers and developers who go out of their way to code for that platform and IE in particular. Thankfully it’s not as common a practice as it was in the “browser wars” days, and switching to something like Firefox is probably the easiest first step to using open source on the desktop.

Having said all that, the focus of the original article is about the increased use of Linux on servers. If you’re deploying new machines to run the usual file/print/web serving, firewalls, app servers and so on, you can transparently (to the users) switch to open source.

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 18:12:08 +0000

Office documents being in proprietary formats,

There are no proprietary formats that are not easily opened, saved, and manipulated with OO.org.

frequently peppered with VB macros.

Not really. They are too dangerous to actually use.

Add to that some websites mandating IE on Windows

It’s all over for windows. Only a matter of time, and with the panic about the economy, the time is now.

Not so much any more, and that is going away as we speak.

By: Barry

Barry — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 17:16:30 +0000

…have been taken over by MSers.

Excuse my cold.

By: Barry

Barry — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 17:14:42 +0000

Spiv, I must disagree. Conversion for most businesses would be non-trivial, thanks to Office documents being in proprietary formats, frequently peppered with VB macros. Add to that some websites mandating IE on Windows (and sometimes Firefox, plus Safari on Macs). The latter happens with depressing regularity: some of the sites I frequent (BBC, ticketek.co.nz…) have been taken over my MSers.

I hope I live to see the day when standards are adhered to and vendor lock-in is a thing of the past.

By: Spiv

Spiv — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 15:22:26 +0000

I think most offices could switch their people over to linux and be up and good within a few weeks. Heck, they could start buying netbooks and eee-boxes and save a ton of money on that too. How much machine do you need to crunch spreadsheets and write docs? How much training do you need to switch from clicking “MS office” to “open office?”

Personally I think all but a few things should be on the internet (or private network server, in security issue places) and therefore platform independent as far as the desktops accessing them are concerned.