In a previous message, Derek Fountain wrote:

Wait until she gets going and notices the different looking applications (KDE vs GNOME vs OO, etc.),

Mostly soluble by using metathemes such as Keramik/Geramik or QtCurve. All Gtk and Qt apps then have the same appearance. As for OOo, and mozilla and any other skinnable app, that's going to be the same in Windows in all likelihood.

lack of sensible drag and drop behaviour across applications,

? Windows has very poor D&D. Linux isn't always better, but the middle-click paste is universal and far more flexible than Windows.

Linux on the desktop is just about ready for engineers who know what they're doing, or people who have a limited set of requirements needed to fulfill a predictable set of tasks.

That's a little harsh - I don't fall into either group and yet SuSE is perfect for me. I am a self-employed editor, using my computer heavily for web, MSWord, email and many other things that aren't "a predictable set". But I agree that linux isn't really ready for Joe User yet. But in a corporate setting where people are used to being unable to change settings anyway, it's easily equal to Windows for the users. Provided their hardware is up to it - but then, the same is true of Windows, too! As a suggestion to the original poster, try a different WM or desktop. I'd recommend Rox (http://rox.sourceforge.net/). It's modular, slimline and vey capable. I use the Rox filer on my Gnome desktop, because it's faster and easier to use than Nautilus, but it also has a full desktop environment available. John -- John Pettigrew Headstrong Games john@headstrong-games.co.uk Fun : Strategy : Price http://www.headstrong-games.co.uk/ Board games that won't break the bank Valley of the Kings: ransack an ancient Egyptian tomb but beware of mummies!

On Sunday

In your case I'd say that web, email and word processing make for a pretty limited work area. How about things like DTP or press ready CMYK graphics? How about web site development? Or CAD? How about a programmable graphical database front end? Or a decent XML/XSL editor? I need all of those on a regular basis.

Good point. Linux is great at my house,. Here it does everything I need, & does it well. The fact that gimp cannot work directly in cmyk and there is no match for either iosdraw5 or illustrator9 means theres no way I could use it at work. At work, I use NT4 & MacOS9, cause linux just doesn't have the apps yet. -Trey

In a previous message, Derek Fountain wrote:

...

...

lack of sensible drag and drop behaviour across applications,

? Windows has very poor D&D. Linux isn't always better, but the middle-click paste is universal and far more flexible than Windows.

I suppose it depends on how one defines sensible behaviour. On Windows I open Word, then drag and drop a .doc file from Explorer onto it. Word opens the file ready for editing. Do the same onto OO Writer from Konqueror and the path to the file is entered into the document!

Try doing it in a variety of Windows apps and see what happens (most won't follow this behaviour)! It's not an OS-level thing so saying "MS Office does it like this so every other app should" isn't helpful when comparing the OSes. You are really only comparing apps - so, if they run MS Office on linux, they'll see no difference in functionality from when they use Windows.

...

...

Linux on the desktop is just about ready for engineers who know what they're doing, or people who have a limited set of requirements needed to fulfill a predictable set of tasks.

That's a little harsh - I don't fall into either group and yet SuSE is perfect for me. I am a self-employed editor, using my computer heavily for web, MSWord, email and many other things that aren't "a predictable set". But I agree that linux isn't really ready for Joe User yet.

So how do you differ from Joe User? Why is it ready for you, but not him?

I'm willing to spend a little time mucking around in config files and using the command line. Most people aren't. That's the issue with linux ATM. You don't have to be a software engineer to use it but it helps not to be afraid of the system, either.

In your case I'd say that web, email and word processing make for a pretty limited work area.

You didn't say "limited", you said "predictable", and there's a big difference. *Everyone* works within a limited set of tasks. The question is whether they are the same tasks all the time (as in an office machine) or not. And I use quite a varied range of software.

How about things like DTP or press ready CMYK graphics?

No, because there are no good solutions ATM (as I'm sure you know). There are a couple of DTP apps that are showing promise but nothing that's at production level. And I'm desperate for the GIMP to support CMYK - I have quite a lot of work that could then be done using it that I presently use RISC OS and Windows for.

How about web site development?

A fair bit - I use Bluefish to maintain four websites, two of them mine and two for other organizations.

How about a programmable graphical database front end?

I'm just starting to play with Rekall, which is very nice, because I desperately need something that is equivalent to Access, FileMakerPro or Datapower (pick your platform...) - i.e. something that gives nice, clear forms, powerful facilities and good-looking reports. With a little more work, Rekall is looking like it could finally become the desktop DB front end that linux seriously lacks - nothing else that I've seen even tries to produce reports that could actually be printed and sent to a client without serious embarassment.

I need all of those on a regular basis.

Good for you. I use apps in some of those areas and some apps in areas you don't mention (scriptable word processing, image manipulation in RGB originated from digital camera and client files, music and video manipulation, PIM and PDA syncing, instant messaging, and games). We all use a "limited" set of apps. The question is whether there is somewhere between "engineers" and "predictable tasks" - I think that the answer is "Yes".

Linux on the desktop has only solved a small subset of the problems users face. It needs time to mature.

I never questioned that. Indeed, I said explicitly that it wasn't ready for Joe User. However, for a great number of people, it does everything they need very well - indeed, better than Windows. I am one of those people and I assume you're another (or why are you using it?). John -- John Pettigrew Headstrong Games john@headstrong-games.co.uk Fun : Strategy : Price http://www.headstrong-games.co.uk/ Board games that won't break the bank Knossos: escape the ever-changing labyrinth before the Minotaur catches you!

In a previous message, "Carlos E. R." wrote:

The 03.07.06 at 13:06, John Pettigrew wrote:

...

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lack of sensible drag and drop behaviour across applications,

? Windows has very poor D&D. Linux isn't always better, but the middle-click paste is universal and far more flexible than Windows.

Try to copy paste between Mozilla and OO, for example.

Works fine here using either middle-click or copy&paste. What's the problem?

Or try to find or use "paste as" between different applications.

I never use "Paste as...", sorry! John -- John Pettigrew Headstrong Games john@headstrong-games.co.uk Fun : Strategy : Price http://www.headstrong-games.co.uk/ Board games that won't break the bank

In a previous message, Carlos E. R. wrote:

The 03.07.07 at 08:53, John Pettigrew wrote:

...

...

Try to copy paste between Mozilla and OO, for example.

Works fine here using either middle-click or copy&paste. What's the problem?

[snip]

So far, so good... but format is destroyed, fontsizes, etc, and with html tags and codes inserted as text. I haven't tried exactly this in windows, but I bet it works.

That's exactly the point - try copying and pasting between two *non-MS* apps under Windows and see what happens. Formatting etc. can only be maintained if the two apps use the same method to apply formatting. This is where "Paste as..." is useful. However, even with Paste as, it can be very hit and miss. When I was using Windows, I often ran into problems trying this sort of thing. Again, the problem is that people equate MSOffice behaviour with Windows behaviour. The two are very different - not all Windows apps (not even all good, well-written Windows apps) behave in the same way WRT C&P or D&D. This leads to confusion - just as in linux. Windows does have more useful features where they are implemented (such as Paste as) but they are far from universal. If you want an equivalent test, you need to look at copying and pasting between (say) components of koffice. John -- John Pettigrew Headstrong Games john@headstrong-games.co.uk Fun : Strategy : Price http://www.headstrong-games.co.uk/ Board games that won't break the bank Knossos: escape the ever-changing labyrinth before the Minotaur catches you!

On Sunday 06 July 2003 22:19, Carlos E. R. wrote:

The 03.07.06 at 13:06, John Pettigrew wrote:

...

...

lack of sensible drag and drop behaviour across applications,

? Windows has very poor D&D. Linux isn't always better, but the middle-click paste is universal and far more flexible than Windows.

Try to copy paste between Mozilla and OO, for example. Or try to find or use "paste as" between different applications.

Why, when someone mentions drag and drop, do people start talking about cut and paste? Cut and paste works fine on Linux - better than Windows in many cases. Drag and drop is different from cut and paste. Between KDE apps, or GNOME apps, it works fine. Going between applications of different types it sucks. You never know quite what is going to happen. This is one of the key things which Windows users expect to just work, but doesn't, which is why I mentioned it to the original poster. -- "...our desktop is falling behind stability-wise and feature wise to KDE ...when I went to Mexico in December to the facility where we launched gnome, they had all switched to KDE3." - Miguel de Icaza, March 2003

Derek Fountain:

Cut and paste works fine on Linux - better than Windows in many cases.

Oh really? Quite often I can't copy and paste even within the same window of Konqueror. Pasting always works, but copying doesn't: that is, I often paste what was in the clipboard *before* I went through the horribly Windowsish rigmarole of click-move-click-Ctrl-C. But of course, you wrote about cut and not copy. Well, copying seems so flaky that I'm wary of cutting! Meanwhile, the *only* copy/paste problem I know of in Win2k is -- but no, that would be OT.

...

Can't argue with that. Once Windows gets itself going (i.e. everything is cached which needs to be) it'll start Word or Excel just about instantly - certainly quicker than it's possible to time. OO is an embarassment in this respect, as is KDE to a lesser extent.

In your experience, would you say this is true even if you're using the openoffice quickloader included in SuSE 8.2?

On a 128MB machine already laden with KDE? I've never tried it. I'd have thought that the VM would come under pressure and would rapidly free up the physical pages containing the cached OO information, thereby negating much of the effect of the quickloader. Or maybe the quickloader does it's thing by preventing the need for relinking, in which case it will still be mostly effective? I don't know. What's your experience? -- "...our desktop is falling behind stability-wise and feature wise to KDE ...when I went to Mexico in December to the facility where we launched gnome, they had all switched to KDE3." - Miguel de Icaza, March 2003

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Sunday 06 July 2003 09:52, Bruce Marshall wrote: <snip>

You may be experiencing some of the slowness that others experienced with 8.2. I was running 8.0 on an AMD 800mhz computer and was quite happy but once I loaded 8.2, things slowed down considerably. If I tried to start OO, it would spend 3 minutes showing me the 'frame' of the window with the desktop showing through, then it would fill in the window... but still it would take about another 2 minutes for the keyboard to become active in OO. In otherwords, it was painful.

<snip> Hey Bruce, My friends system did the exact same thing when I first installed it (8.2). I figured maybe I didn't tell it to install the Athlon kernel or something, so I did a re-install (and remembered about halfway through that *I* didn't need to tell it what CPU was being used...yeah, a real brain fart), and on the second installation his system was moving *fast*. In some instances his Slot A Athlon 500MHz is faster than my T-Bird Athlon 1.3GHz (most notably his YaST2 control center pops up *much* faster than on my machine). I have no idea why the second installation should have made KDE more responsive, than on the first installation (I changed nothing during the installation, I did it all exactly the same as I did the first installation, even formatted the partition(s)), all I know is his 8.2 on his system (256MB pc133 RAM and the Athlon mentioned above), is as fast or faster than his ol' lady's P4 2GHz w/ 256MB DDR RAM, W98SE system. Heh, go figure. lol John - -- - -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.12 G! d- s+:++ a? C+++ UL--- P L+++ E-- W++ N+++ o K- w--- O- M- V- PS+ PE Y+ PGP++ t+ 5 X R+ tv-- b++ DI++ D+ G e h r y** - ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.2 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE/CFDyH5oDXyLKXKQRAnLpAJ9KxOr3WsYTMCJPMmgIsFqpqJDg3wCfQrMg 3u47Q/QHdLfBEPlFS8X/9q4= =XB8a -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

I was running 8.0 on an AMD 800mhz computer and was quite happy but once I loaded 8.2, things slowed down considerably. If I tried to start OO, it would spend 3 minutes showing me the 'frame' of the window with the desktop showing through, then it would fill in the window... but still it would take about another 2 minutes for the keyboard to become active in OO.

That's not the way OO(o) starts on my 8.2 machine. (This has 512MB of RAM because the increase from 256MB cost peanuts and I had a hunch that it would be worth it. And it has a 2GHz CPU as this was the cheapest available bar one, and the man in the shop told me that it generated less heat than, and thus was a better choice than, the sole cheaper CPU.) I might have taken the option to have OO start up quickly -- I really don't remember (how would I look?) -- but I certainly have done nothing to reduce the bloat of KDE, etc.: I have animated icons and all the other gimmickry. I would play with these things, but I'm too timid/ignorant, and anyway most delays with this computer are minimal and don't irritate me at all. (Indeed, it's so fast that I happily installed folding@home, which is doing its thing even as I type.) What annoys me much more than slowth is the combination of two major irritations: (1) OOo Writer successfully imitates MS Word (and WordPerfect and Lotus Word too, I suppose), hiding controls where I can't easily get at them. (Well, I believe that I can open the ZIP files, edit the XML contents, rezip, and rename -- but this seems unnecessarily tiresome.) So, just to take one example, how can I hide a chunk of text? With good old XyWrite, I'd flip into command mode and insert "<>" at the end; with OOo (unless I misunderstand) I create a frame, cut the text, paste the text into the frame, and then minimize the size of the frame. Urgh. (2) The console I mean konsole here looks bad. File listings with mc (Midnight Commander) have wobbly columns. If I use and close the red menu in mined (an editor), bits of it remain splattered over my black text. As I page through a long text file, bits and pieces of previous pages mingle with the page I'm trying to view. I've no idea what's to blame. I'm very aware that I'm just another dipshit Joe User and shouldn't whinge and should instead work out what the problem is and try fixing the source appropriately. But the sad fact is that I'm not a programmer. Anyway, I wonder if Linux/GNU/KDE/SuSE is what I'm looking for: the GUI stuff seems OK if you like to be in an "Office" cocoon (I don't), while using programs such as mined in the konsole is, frankly, a nightmare after using TSE Pro in Take Command/32 in Win2k. True, neither TSE Pro nor TC is free (let alone GPL'd), but if 100 Euros could buy me a konsole upgrade and a (sadly non-existent) TSE Pro for Linux, I'd leap at the chance. Of course, if anyone can (perhaps in a separate thread) give any advice for the konsole display problems, I'd be delighted.

Warning: gormless newbie again! In brief: can I please have an idjit-level explanation of how to install new fonts? Jason writes (in the thread "8.2 slower than Windows 2000 on 450MHz PIII?") apropos of my konsole display irritations:

I had this problem until I changed the font. In Konsole, Settings->Font->Custom. Works fine for me with Bitstream Vera Sans Mono. Don't forget to click on Settings->Save Settings to make the change permanent.

I don't think that's the key to fixing my irritation, but anyway a spot of Googling took me to some pages that made this font look very interesting. So I got it, within a bz2 file that I've opened up on my capacious hard drive. Righty-ho, what do I do with the fonts therein? (I need to know, because right now I only have a single Japanese font installed, and desperately want a "gosikku" and "maru-gosikku" alternatives.) Earlier, I installed Trebuchet MS and Georgia using what I thought was common sense and a spot of enterprise; they're kind-of installed, but they look terrible. (Not aliased, perhaps?) I infer that I did it wrongly and should instead have followed some kosher procedure. The 8.2 Personal user guide suggests that this is done via KDE Control Center | System Administration | Font Installer; but all I see here is a list of already-installed fonts; there's no obvious way to tell it to look at the content of such-and-such a directory. The explanation toward the end of "Integrating Additional (True Type) Fonts" in the administration manual very reasonably assumes that I know roughly what I'm doing; unfortunately I don't, so the part about installation is over my head. (The stuff about character sets is fine.) Meanwhile, http://kitschparade.ath.cx/vera.php says "Newer distributions [of Linux] can use fontconfig to install Bitstream Vera", but when I look at man:fontconfig I've only the haziest idea of what it's on about. Urgh. Maybe I should have settled for "Lindows" or that other OS. . . .

I see you show /usr/lib/X11/fonts. For info /usr/lib/X11 is a symlink to /usr/X11R6/lib/X11. I might suggest the force option - "fonts-config -f" (NOTE: su to root may fail due to $PATH not reflecting "s"bin - su is NOT always equal to root - try "su -"). Jason wrote:

I prefer to use the konsole (sorry!). Install the fonts using the following procedure:

cd to the directory where you downloaded the fonts su to root. cp *.ttf /usr/lib/X11/fonts/truetype/ fonts-config

HTH,

Jason

-- 73 de Donn Washburn __ " http://www.hal-pc.org/~n5xwb " Ham Callsign N5XWB / / __ __ __ __ __ __ __ 307 Savoy St. / /__ / / / \/ / / /_/ / \ \/ / Sugar Land, TX 77478 /_____/ /_/ /_/\__/ /_____/ /_/\_\ LL# 1.281.242.3256 a MSDOS Virus "Free Zone" OS Email: n5xwb@hal-pc.org Info: http://www.knoppix.net

First, my thanks to Jason, John, Fergus, and Donn for their/your patient advice. I've noted the comments on what I might do with Konsole; I'll attend to them later and reply (if need be) in a different thread. Me:

...

Righty-ho, what do I do with the fonts therein?

I tried again, and this time it was pretty obvious via the control center. I don't know why yesterday I couldn't get the install module to look in any directory. I did know that a lot of fonts were in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype/ and was tempted just to plonk them there, but wondered if that was a place reserved for fonts that were already installed. Anyway, today I was able to get it to look elsewhere, and it all went fairly smoothly. (Again, some parts weren't obvious, but I'll spare you a blow-by-blow as we'd all fall asleep and anyway I didn't take notes.) John says: [oh, again I couldn't copy and paste! Second attempt:]

Maybe, but if any of them are 'new' to you, you'd have just as much trouble learning, unless you just dig in and start 'doing' things. Click buttons, look and see what's around in there, what does 'this' do, hmmm... wonder what'll happen if I click that....etc, etc.

That's exactly how I found my way around other, erm, operating environments. But I'd (wrongly?) got the impression that although this might be a harmless way to try out (most!) programs, it wasn't good for installation in KDE/GNU/Linux. After all, there's a lot of talk of how one's better off using a SuSE-specific rpm to install software unless one knows what one's doing (and I'm painfully aware that I don't know what I'm doing). For fonts specifically, I installed Trebuchet MS and Georgia (copied over from my 'doze laptop) a month or so back via some carefree method (which I've now forgotten); perhaps as a result of that method, both fonts look atrocious in Konqueror and Mozilla (though they're fine in OOo), and I'd noted that there's a Sourceforge project http://sourceforge.net/projects/corefonts/ that "consists of a source rpm that can be used to easily create a binary rpm package that, when installed, gives access to Microsoft's TrueType core fonts for the Web", which (perhaps wrongly) suggested to me that TrueType fonts need some kind of special treatment. (Come to think of it, perhaps all it does is extract the fonts from the .EXE files in which they're M$-specifically compressed.)

cd to the directory where you downloaded the fonts su to root. cp *.ttf /usr/lib/X11/fonts/truetype/ fonts-config

That's the kind of procedure I prefer. I am happy to have got wget to work yesterday without boring this mailing list with a single question; I enjoyed looking through the list of options, typing wget --random-wait -nH -E -r -l5 -k -p -np http://somethingorother/ and watching it all come tumbling in.

...

Urgh. Maybe I should have settled for "Lindows" or that other OS

Nah. You'll love it.

I hope so (and wget re-whetted my appetite). I'm not giving up yet.

I know at least 30 people who've had computers for anywhere between 1 and 3 years, and *still* don't know anything but how to read email and surf the web.

I know, I know. I've known some who won't copy and paste; they prefer to retype. A couple of years ago, when I was still occasionally using diskettes, someone here needed half a dozen or so in a hurry and found that we'd accidentally bought a box of unformatted ones. I was in a rush so I did not offer to do it for her. Instead, not remembering (or seeing any advantage in) a 'doze GUI alternative, I fired up FORMAT at the control line, and (trying hard and successfully not to yawn) walked her through the process with the *first* diskette. She's Japanese; the prompts were in Japanese; I explained in Japanese. As you may remember, you're asked if you want to format another (Y/N) and so forth -- all pretty elementary. But she was totally stumped by the second diskette; I had to re-explain such techie esoterica as that "press any key" [in Japanese] means, well, "press any key" . . . etc. etc.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Monday 07 July 2003 05:43, Peter Evans wrote:

Warning: gormless newbie again! In brief: can I please have an idjit-level explanation of how to install new fonts?

<snip>

Righty-ho, what do I do with the fonts therein? (I need to know, because right now I only have a single Japanese font installed, and desperately want a "gosikku" and "maru-gosikku" alternatives.) Earlier, I installed Trebuchet MS and Georgia using what I thought was common sense and a spot of enterprise; they're kind-of installed, but they look terrible. (Not aliased, perhaps?) I infer that I did it wrongly and should instead have followed some kosher procedure. The 8.2 Personal user guide suggests that this is done via KDE Control Center | System Administration | Font Installer; <snip>

Since you have a tarball of the font(s), the first thing you might want to do is create a new directory in your /home (I call mine...fonts). Next, cut and paste the tarball into that new directory, then right-click on it and choose 'extract here' (just go with the defaults). You said it's a bz2, correct? If so, you may have to right-click a second time (meaning you may now see a file with just .tar and no .tar.bz2)...no big deal. Now you should have either a new directory inside the one you just made or just a bunch of fonts inside the one you just made. Open Control Center->system administration->font installer , click the 'administration mode' button, root password should be asked from you. Then click the 'add' button, you'll highlight whichever of the font directories you're adding the new fonts to, and just show it where it/they are (navigate back to /home/peter/fonts and IIRR, you can then hold the 'ctrl' key down and highlight all the fonts for that particular font directory, then click 'okay' or whatever it is). It may take a little fooling around with, I'm going from memory here (even though I'm sitting at my machine now and looking at the install font in control center...too lazy to actually click through the steps, heh), but it's really simple. How did you miss this when you went to it the first time? Are you sure you weren't in YaST2 Control Center? You should be in the 'regular' Control Center, not YaST's. If you're scared to click some buttons to try something, you won't get far in Linux and you'll never see all the really neat stuff there is and how much power and control you have with this OS.

Urgh. Maybe I should have settled for "Lindows" or that other OS. . . .

Maybe, but if any of them are 'new' to you, you'd have just as much trouble learning, unless you just dig in and start 'doing' things. Click buttons, look and see what's around in there, what does 'this' do, hmmm...wonder what'll happen if I click that....etc, etc. I know at least 30 people who've had computers for anywhere between 1 and 3 years, and *still* don't know anything but how to read email and surf the web. Ask 'em to look into a news group, and I get that 'dumb cow' look. Tell 'em to right-click on the two miniature monitors in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen and choose 'disconnect' to disconnect from the 'net...no need to unplug the system. (These two instances are *real*...I get them all the time from my customers. I always hear "Wow! I didn't know that!", and I tell 'em it's because if they're afraid of digging in, they *never* know anything about it.) John -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.2 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE/CWowH5oDXyLKXKQRAocJAJ0d8uY/XFkSgnB5hBOQEQZadFY3UQCgtdgs x+OXMnTQsHvRt1NrhjECU7M= =4pOK -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

[A belated response to a thread from some days ago] There are two main issues here. The one which most immediately affects non-Linux users who might be temptable to switch to linux is of course the comparison between Linux and Windows where superficial criteria of use and performance are concerned: speed, familiarity, resources like drag-&-drop, use of "Find", ... This aspect will influence how strongly people feel tempted in the first place, before they have experience of using Linux. The one which will really affect users in the long term is getting their work done. For that, the software which does what they want, and does it at least as well and as quickly and easily as the software they already use, will be the crucial factor. Linux, as such, is "infrastructure". The applications are not Linux, even if they run on Linux and, indeed, even if they have been written for or can be compiled for Linux. People like John Pettigrew, who is 'a self-employed editor, using my computer heavily for web, MSWord, email and many other things that aren't "a predictable set"', while their functional needs are determined by what their work requires, can nonetheless choose what they use to do the job so long as the job gets done. They may even be in a position to decide to some extent what their work will require, i.e. tailor the work they do to what their tools permit. Others will have their requirements set by the company environment they work in. In this case, either there are Linux-compatible tools for the job, or not. If there are, then well and good. If not, then they have to look elsewhere. This is a common situation, and in practice many people mix-&-match between what they can do with Linux and what they have to turn to Windows for. Personally I was fortunate in my early (1992+) experiences with Linux, since the nature of the work (scientific, technical, mathematical,...) lay within areas where Unix itself had already been much used for many years. As a result there was a lot of suitable software, originally developed on Unix, to do the job (including troff, now groff, for writing up such stuff). When not already ported to Linux, I could port it myself. A mixture of 'octave' (matlab "clone") for numerical computation, 'gnuplot' and 'plotmtv' for graphics, and 'groff' for the writing, just about met almost all my needs. On occasion I wrote my own C code for particular jobs. The major exception was a database program: for this, however, I ran dBase-IV under 'dosemu' and it worked fine. A spreadsheet would might been handy at times, but I have never liked those things and so was quite cheerful about not having one (and, if someone sends you a CSV spreadsheet file you can enjoy using say 'awk' to extract the data and 'vi' to tweak its format to make an 'octave' data file, and vice versa to re-construct a CSV file to send back). But there were other areas where I would have liked to use Linux but didn't have the resources. CAD, DTP, OCR, ... . As it happened I didn't actually _need_ to do this things; I just felt I would lke to get into them. But I had faith that Linux would sooner or later acquire them. Now, 10 years later, this is becoming reality. But it has been a long wait, and needed patience. These days, VMWare even allows me to run any OS within Linux and therefore practically any application. Fortunately, the pace of uptake of Linux and the demands of users are generating more and more high-grade software usable on Linux. I'm confident that, while there are still areas where Linux-compatible software is inadequate or absent, these gaps will fairly soon be filled and users will not need so much patience. And people who are curious about Linux, and wonder both how they will get on with using it, and whether it can do the jobs they want, are likely to find it at least as attractive (in most ways) as what they are already used to. Best wishes to all, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 167 1972 Date: 27-Jul-03 Time: 14:34:20 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

On Monday 07 July 2003 05:06, Bruce Marshall wrote:

Gee, 8 times you mentioned gnu/linux and never did you mention just 'linux'.

Either you are RMS in disguise or you've been reading too much of his &^$#.

Sorry, it's still linux to most people and it will never be gnu/linux to me.

Just my $.02

Don't know why this bothers you. Never read any of his stuff, ever (except I remember reading parts of the first page or two of the gnu web site some time back. Don't remember what any of it said. When I'm talking about the kernel, I phrase it as linux. When I'm talking about a specific distribution, I mention the name of the distro. When I'm talking about a generic distro, which includes applications in addition to the kernel, (and which btw Linus had no involvement with), I phrase it as gnu/linux. Especially since the gpl license made it all possible. You are aware that there are other distros with gnu, and without the linux kernel right? Or that Debian is Debian GNU/Linux, according to http://www.debian.org/ right? You are of course free to refer to the software as whatever you want. And since I was posting to a suse email list, but am actually moving toward debian with some of my installations because of the reinstall nature of new .0 releases of suse (while still keeping some suse installations), I wasn't going to ruffle feathers or start a flame war on distribution preferences. Apparently using the term gnu/linux is more enraging to you than mentioning the wrong distro on a distro specific list. What are you so angry about with RMS? -- All spam received is reported to SpamCop. http://spamcop.net/

On Monday 07 July 2003 10:46, Derek Fountain wrote:

...

Put more RAM in the machines, 128 is not enough for a good result.

Lots of people have said that now. Am I the only one who finds it disturbing? It's a dual boot machine which works quite acceptably under Windows, but apparently needs more memory to get decent performance under Linux.

Didn't it always used to be the other way round?

Needs more to get the desired performance if you want to use it as a graphical desktop, I suppose is what I meant - and their machines work acceptably for 3 year old Windows. KDE 1 didn't need the extra RAM, and you could get the speed up in other ways, e.g. using blackbox, fluxbox, or a dozen other WMs. I was running 7.3 very nicely on 128MB RAM, and I'm sure 8.2 will run nicely on it as well. I just got the impression the enquirer wanted a nice flashy graphical desktop, and for the 20 quid he'd have to spend I think doubling the physical RAM would give him the best bang for buck. I don't think it's that unfair to model the default install of a 2003 Linux distro on presumptions of 2003 entry level hardware, particularly as you can so easily cut back on the RAM and other hardware requirements in the many ways people have outlined. Best Fergus

-- "...our desktop is falling behind stability-wise and feature wise to KDE ...when I went to Mexico in December to the facility where we launched gnome, they had all switched to KDE3." - Miguel de Icaza, March 2003

-- Fergus Wilde Chetham's Library Long Millgate Manchester M3 1SB Tel: +44 161 834 7961 Fax: +44 161 839 5797 http://www.chethams.org.uk