Free Office & Other Software Article

gerryg_2

wolfman wrote:

Apache is the most used web server, although IIS is the most used amongst the Fortune 500. Also Apache can run on Windows. Also the .Net framework is very popular (and powerful) and dictates the use of IIS.

This site is about saving money, please remind me again how much IIS costs, or .NET and you fail to to articulate the cost of lock-in between the two. Wouldn't mind your source for the Fortune 500 statement, either.

wolfman wrote:

With regards to the reason why and standards, I guess you're referring to websites. These aren't dependent upon the operating system, nor application hosting it, but down to the programmer. I can write a compliant site in .Net quite easily, just as I could in PHP..

Standards are much wider than websites - they are about interoperability and intraoperability. File formats are crucial to both, as are stable APIs. Perhaps you have been following the European Commision anti-trust action regarding inter-operability and SAMBA?

The new version of MS Office uses yet another file format and it is not clear that it will be an unencumbered standard. The licence certainly seems to prevent the file format being included in any of your favourite linux distributions

wolfman wrote:

Also price is questionable. FreeBSD may be free, but there are still maintainence costs, development costs etc... If I were using BSD it'd be for the stability and security. From what I've seen the savings aren't hugely different.

I'm losing track of your argument here. This is a site for ordinary consumers, looking for a modern software environment for as little money as possible - so I'm sure they are going to leap to a FreeBSD distro - and what maintenance costs are you factoring for such a desktop?

wolfman wrote:

You also mentioned file formats. Ok, Microsoft do have their own file formats, but these don't apply to standards.

I'm really losing the thread of your argument here. Can you remind me why Microsoft is trying to get its file format as an international standard through ECMA and tried to prevent Massachusetts from adopting an ISO standard for its default file format?

wolfman wrote:

It's more about accessibility

remind me where accessibility fits in here - are you talking about assistive technologies? in which case help me with the relevance of file formats?

are you talking about interoperability? in which case how will the binary blobs in MS formats work with other office suites?

wolfman wrote:

OpenOffice have done a great job of handling the MS formats.

and they'll have to start again with the new Microsoft format - whereas they already implement the ISO standard, as do various other office suites (I'm sure you can use Google for ODF compliant office suites.)

Of course every organisation just standardised on the ISO file format, then consumers could just choose the office suite that meets their price/feature threshold

wolfman

gerryg wrote:

This site is about saving money, please remind me again how much IIS costs, or .NET and you fail to to articulate the cost of lock-in between the two. Wouldn't mind your source for the Fortune 500 statement, either.

Errr, .Net is free. And so is IIS. If you're referring to a Windows Server license, then yes that does cost. I never said it was cheaper. There are other issues than cost when switching operating system which you obviously don't seem to understand (mainly from a business perspective). And there's not really a lock-in. .Net can be hosted on Apache, and even run on Linux.

With regards to the info, there is this article http://www.biznix.org/surveys/. There's quite a few about. Where I saw it exactly I'll need to pull out. It's basically a site with links to all the Fortune 500 that queries the web server, and finds out what's hosting it. It's strictly tied to the States, but I was merely using it as an example, that both are widely used. Personally I'd pick a development platform, and from there the web server, and finally the operating system.

gerryg wrote:

I'm losing track of your argument here. This is a site for ordinary consumers, looking for a modern software environment for as little money as possible - so I'm sure they are going to leap to a FreeBSD distro - and what maintenance costs are you factoring for such a desktop?

I always thought the appeal of the site went further than that. Small businesses at least. As I mentioned above there's more to consider than just the cost of the license. And if looking from a consumer perspective, a lot of people, most buy packaged systems that come with XP, so they're not actually saving anything by switching. The switch would be for other reasons.

I'm not sides with either. Say you save £60 leaving XP and choosing Linux. If it takes you 3 weeks before you've adapted and got it setup properly is it worth it. Some people would say yes, enjoy the challenge etc... Others may not have the time and just want something familiar that does the job.

Also I was actually referring from a business perspective given the topic switching to hosting etc... Switching OS is more than just about cost, especially for businesses. Maintenance, well you need some that can configure and update the system, and development, you'll be on a different platform. You're just looking straight at the figures saved rather than the bigger picture.

gerryg wrote:

I'm really losing the thread of your argument here. Can you remind me why Microsoft is trying to get its file format as an international standard through ECMA and tried to prevent Massachusetts from adopting an ISO standard for its default file format?

The ODF was only approved as an ISO format earlier this year, so the grounding is still very loose. Microsoft are just submitting there own XML equivalent format to be approved as an ISO standard. Don't know if it'll happen, but it's certainly a step in the right direction, given the current state of their .doc/.xls etc... formats.

That's the irony around "standards". If no one adopts them, are they really "standard".

wolfman

gerryg wrote:

On crashing - I have a linux server (Red Hat 8) running a content management system (gforge) though apache and PHP and it has been up since August 2004 - how's that? Check Netcraft.com for uptimes

Very good. Although that sounds more like server than desktop use. I use Linux on a daily basis doing all sorts, and always come across some sort of small bug/issue/crash every so often. No show stoppers, low to mid priority bugs, but there are still bugs.

gerryg wrote:

In which way is a Linux desktop not *quite* there yet? I'm curious

I find it's still not aimed at the average user, but more so at the "geek". Or at least that's how it's perceived, so people are slow(er than they would be) at taking it up. Also there's an air of uncertainty that can make the average user nervous. And a few bugs (have a look at some of the recent posts on here about Ubuntu) that can turn people away.

Linux is only free if you're time is worth nothing. It's an operating system that requires time and learning. That's just my view on it. I'm not saying Windows is any better but from personal experience I spend more time trying to do equivalent things in Linux than I do in Windows, and not through lack of experience, but often because it's a slightly longer or trickier (command line!) path.

There are still a few teething problems, but it's not so much that it isn't ready (I think it is), just that changing from Windows can be quite a push for most people. As Torvalds (I believe) has said, it'll still take another 5 years for the masses to take it up.

hollymcr

wolfman wrote:

With regards to the reason why and standards, I guess you're referring to websites. These aren't dependent upon the operating system, nor application hosting it, but down to the programmer. I can write a compliant site in .Net quite easily, just as I could in PHP.

Not quite what I meant. In order for email to work, adherance to standard like POP3/SMTP is important. For the web, HTTP/HTTPS. These things should be invisible to ordinary users, and for the most part they are because they're well defined open standards designed to allow interoperability, not vendor tie-in. In other words you don't need an Apache web browser to view a site from an Apache server, you just need a web browser.

The reason I mentioned all this was not to say "open source is wonderful, ditch MS", although I admit that is close to my view in some ways. It was more aimed at people who might consider OpenOffice then think "well its free, how good can it be?" and not try it. I want to say to those people "you're using open source software already: this site depends on it, so it can't be that bad - give it a go".

Also price is questionable. FreeBSD may be free, but there are still maintainence costs, development costs etc...

I don't know FreeBSD at all well, but substitute Linux for FreeBSD and I can tackle this head on...

Installing a "fresh" Windows 2003 server takes much more time and much more knowledge than a Linux server. Sure if you're a trained MS person there's no contest, but any one with a few minutes to spare could get (say) SME server (ww.contribs.org) up and running as a mail/web/file/web proxy/firewall/anti-spam/anti-virus server in a few minutes. Because there are no viruses to worry about it'll likely keep running for years anyway, but updates are automatic (like Windows) but rarely need a reboot (unlike Windows). It's trivial to backup a complete configuration and transfer it to another server (a handful of config files, not info buried deep in a registry), it's easy to make bulk changes (eg adding 100's of users) through command line tools (no need to battle with a GUI, although its there if you want it). Oh, and it'll run on that old PC you've got kicking around with relatively little RAM, and happily configure software RAID (ie duplicate everything across two hard disks) in case one fails. No driver disks, no messing around.

I have experience of both and Linux servers are *far* less effort to maintain. The biggest problem is that when something goes wrong you can't remember how it was set up, because it's been so long since you even had to log in to it.

If I were using BSD it'd be for the stability and security. From what I've seen the savings aren't hugely different.

You also mentioned file formats. Ok, Microsoft do have their own file formats, but these don't apply to standards. It's more about accessibility [...]

*If* the file formats were like Internet standards, you'd just pick the document writer you liked (like you pick the email client you like), as they'd all talk to each other. But they're not; if you reliably want to use Word files you need Word (although OOo is pretty damn close). Governments, particularly those not in the US (for these purposes the UK is currently a US state), don;t like the idea that their data is being stored in files that could contain all sorts of hidden information they can't access, but a big US corporation can. European and Far East governments are moving to open file formats for this reason, not price. The latest version of Office actually supports the ODF formats (albeit via a plugin).

Beeza wrote:

The one area where MS Office does win hands-down is with Access. This comes as part of MS Office Professional so, again, it won't affect a lot of users. The OpenOffice database (Base) can't hold a candle to Access. I'm an application developer by profession and would say that, compared to Access, OO Base is next to useless.

OOo Base is just a GUI, it talks to any database you like (including Access MDB files). As a mechanism for talking to Access databases it's pretty good (I like it because I can install it on machines where it'll get only occassional use without paying over the odds for Access). In so far as it acts as a GUI to (eg) Access databases it's not as good as Access - but note that it is a new part of OOo and will likely improve a lot.

For any serious database work, you'll be using MSSQL (to be charitable :-), Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL (maybe), etc, not a desktop database like Access. Then Base is pretty good as a convenient GUI when you need it, but I tend to talk to databases is their own language (ie SQL) not through a GUI so I can't say I push Base very hard.

On the flip side, both Excel and OOo Calc can handle DBF database files (which I have a lot of dealings with on legacy systems), but Excel completely messes them up unless you are *really* careful (you can't change field firmatting or column widths, for example). OOo Calc has never broken one for me yet, no matter what I do to it.

If you want to find fault with OOo it's the lack of an integrated Outlook equivalent; although there are plenty of good open source email packages around there doesn't seem to be one for Windows that handles the other PIM features of Outlook (there are good native Linux alternatives though).

sammyj47

a few weeks ago, martin reccommended purchasing a magazine that was advertising some expensive software free with the magazine, that is used for newspaper artcicles etc, aimed at journalists, i wonder if anyone knows what the magazine was, or if you know the software it was giving away, i ahve looked back thro all my previous emails and cant seem to find it
thanks

papacool

aleph_0 wrote:

Two comments:
Firstly, the link from the front page still points to the free anti-virus & related software page.
Secondly, The free operating system link is a page full of way too much writing that and gives far too much information an average novice linux user wouldn't need, and so is likely to scare people off. I'm sure there must be a better article out there somewhere to link to.

All well and good that theres free software,particularly OFFICE for the PC. What about OFFICE software for the new macbook?

woo

OpenOffice will run on the new macbook

papacool

I looked at OpenOffice today. OK you pay the postage. BUT, when you read the terms, you are actually making a contract to purchase other products on a 4/5 week agreement at a reduced price of $25 for each product they send. If you don't want 2 of them you have to post them back.... hardly free when it's boiled down. You're committed to an agreement with OpenOffice. You get 10 days to try them out. You have to email them to say you don't want the ones you don't want or else you get billed for all.

Aiadi

papacool wrote:

I looked at OpenOffice today. OK you pay the postage. BUT, when you read the terms, you are actually making a contract to purchase other products on a 4/5 week agreement at a reduced price of $25 for each product they send. If you don't want 2 of them you have to post them back.... hardly free when it's boiled down. You're committed to an agreement with OpenOffice. You get 10 days to try them out. You have to email them to say you don't want the ones you don't want or else you get billed for all.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM???????????????

sra

papacool wrote:

I looked at OpenOffice today. OK you pay the postage. BUT, when you read the terms, you are actually making a contract to purchase other products on a 4/5 week agreement at a reduced price of $25 for each product they send. If you don't want 2 of them you have to post them back.... hardly free when it's boiled down. You're committed to an agreement with OpenOffice. You get 10 days to try them out. You have to email them to say you don't want the ones you don't want or else you get billed for all.

You download OpenOffice for free here. There is no contract, activation, or registration necessary

Many scam sites try to make you purcahse Open Office at a price.
Well technically they're not scams because the whole idea of Open source software is that you can do what you want with it - including re-sell it.