Free Office Software Article

darrelljon

I think this article is misleading. The distinctions it attempts to draw is unhelpful and confusing.
1. Free software as a commercial giveaway
2. Freeware, Shareware and Open Source Software

Which category then does Adobe Reader or Winzip come under? What about Freespire? A better distinction would be between open source and proprietary, both of which can be paid for or free.

As to the drawbacks of open source software it says;

support is limited as there are no big bucks backing it up

How does this fit in with Sun (making $309m p.a.) support for OpenOffice, Novell (making $1.2bn p.a.) support for SuSE or Red Hat (making $278m p.a.) supporting Fedora?

Finally something that's been touched on before and is more a matter of opinion;

while Linux is great for computer geeks, you do need a bit of advanced knowledge to install and use it

Surely for a complete beginner, using live Linux discs is easier than installing Windows? Surely having a spreadsheet program, presentation program and PDF reader preinstalled in Linux is easier than installing it in Windows? Overall, if your hardware just works out-of-the box, I think Linux is easier.

bat999

We're not mindreaders!:D
Give us a link.

espresso

Just polished my crystal ball, is this what you are referring to?

bat999

espresso wrote: »

is this what you are referring to?

Ah, I never thought of looking there.:o

Red_Rose_Exile

I notice that neither Zoho nor Ajax13 get a mention

BillScarab

darrelljon wrote: »

I think this article is misleading. The distinctions it attempts to draw is unhelpful and confusing.
1. Free software as a commercial giveaway
2. Freeware, Shareware and Open Source Software

Which category then does Adobe Reader or Winzip come under? What about Freespire? A better distinction would be between open source and proprietary, both of which can be paid for or free.

As to the drawbacks of open source software it says;
How does this fit in with Sun (making $309m p.a.) support for OpenOffice, Novell (making $1.2bn p.a.) support for SuSE or Red Hat (making $278m p.a.) supporting Fedora?

Finally something that's been touched on before and is more a matter of opinion;
Surely for a complete beginner, using live Linux discs is easier than installing Windows? Surely having a spreadsheet program, presentation program and PDF reader preinstalled in Linux is easier than installing it in Windows? Overall, if your hardware just works out-of-the box, I think Linux is easier.

I may be worng but I thought that the companies you listed as supporting open source software charge for their support. The software may be free but if you want to help ou need a support contract. If 'Fred Moneysaver' phones up Sun and says I'm having trouble with OpenOffice I don't think he'll get very far.

As for Linux it may well be easy for people to boot off a live CD, but most people are faimiliar with Windows, they know where things are, it's what they use at work. Linux is unfamiliar, yes it may not take long to acclimatise but it si different. Oh, linux has had plenty of problems int he past with hardware drivers, so the 'just working out of the box' statement is not necessarily true either. I seem to remember Ubuntu having big problems with Nvidia cards in the past for example.

superscaper

BillScarab wrote: »

I seem to remember Ubuntu having big problems with Nvidia cards in the past for example.

Still has a big problem with netgear stuff as well. (talk about headaches) I liked using it but I wouldn't exactly describe it as working out of the box either.

darrelljon

BillScarab wrote: »

I may be worng but I thought that the companies you listed as supporting open source software charge for their support. The software may be free but if you want to help ou need a support contract. If 'Fred Moneysaver' phones up Sun and says I'm having trouble with OpenOffice I don't think he'll get very far.

As for Linux it may well be easy for people to boot off a live CD, but most people are faimiliar with Windows, they know where things are, it's what they use at work. Linux is unfamiliar, yes it may not take long to acclimatise but it si different. Oh, linux has had plenty of problems int he past with hardware drivers, so the 'just working out of the box' statement is not necessarily true either. I seem to remember Ubuntu having big problems with Nvidia cards in the past for example.

Thanks for your reply, (I meant to post this in a pre-existing topic about the Free Office software article on this site). The quote about open source software is "the problem's that support is limited as there are no big bucks backing it up" which I don't think specifically applies to open source. Closed and open source software offer professional paid contracts, but open source tends to offer free forums and wikis too. So, in what way is support limited with open source? If anything, the converse is true.

As for Windows familiarity, this has changed with Vista, and Linuxes such as Xandros, LinuxXP or Freespire may be found to be more familiar to users of Windows XP.

Ubuntu and other Linuxes will support nVidia cards fine, except for possibly the extended 3D capabilities. Since the article is about Free Office software and more (not about 3D gaming) it seems wrong to describe Linux as "need a bit of advanced knowledge install and use it" for the purpose of word-processing etc.

BillScarab

Forums and wikis aren't what I would define as 'support' adn they exist for Windows too. As SUperscraper says there are problems with netgear kit as well and that is typically used at home by people running office apps.

Remember this website and forum is aimed very much at non-techies. Worrying about whoch category Acrobat or Winzip comes under is pointless, people just want to use their comuters as efficiently and cheaply as possible. Hopefully the article will help them. I don't think the majority of people on this forum are even going to consider Linux, the idea of replacing their OS is too big a step.

darrelljon

BillScarab wrote: »

Forums and wikis aren't what I would define as 'support' adn they exist for Windows too. As SUperscraper says there are problems with netgear kit as well and that is typically used at home by people running office apps.

Remember this website and forum is aimed very much at non-techies. Worrying about whoch category Acrobat or Winzip comes under is pointless, people just want to use their comuters as efficiently and cheaply as possible. Hopefully the article will help them. I don't think the majority of people on this forum are even going to consider Linux, the idea of replacing their OS is too big a step.

What support then does closed-source have that open-source lacks?

Perhaps it would be better for the article not to attempt to draw a distinction between "free software as commercial giveaway" and "freeware, shareware and open source software" at all. After all, it isn't referred to in the rest of article.