I saw this, actually one of my friends said this is what he was going to use. For me it lacks a consistent UI (Not a fan of the big color icons) and apps like Pixelmator I couldn't live with out.
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Moving to Linux?
- Thread starter ajvizzgamer101
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I saw this, actually one of my friends said this is what he was going to use. For me it lacks a consistent UI (Not a fan of the big color icons) and apps like Pixelmator I couldn't live with out.
who in the world will do scripting on a document other than unix geeks!
seriously ... no one else cares about this "scriptable" advantage.
Scripting is useful when handling large documents... As opposed to VBA, a lot more people know Python, Perl, or Shell.who in the world will do scripting on a document other than unix geeks!
seriously ... no one else cares about this "scriptable" advantage.
Run much faster? I don't know what kind of system your on, but I've never had a speed issue with ANY word processor.
Ive used word at home, at work, and in school. Even if your only doing personal use, I still think that Word is still the way to go, its super easy to use, compatible with anything, and not only is it idiot proof, it still has all the features anyone in business is ever going to need. And, its not even that expensive for what your getting.
I'm not dissing Abiword, I have it on a couple machines, its an awesome free program, but its just not word.
This.
OSX and Windows are still the best choices for most people.
That said, I converted one of my G5s into a Linux box, and its pretty sweet.
Better interface, better formatting, better spell check, more compatibility overall, I find word to be faster, AbiWord has issues booting up from time to time on all my machines, and the interface is straight out of 1995.
Its good for a free Program, but it just can't compete with word.
Don't get me wrong, I am not a Microsoft Fanboy, though they do make some good products, and word is one of them.
I've put people older than the sun itself onto Linux with varying degrees of success. I run Fedora as my main OS myself.
An OS is a tool itself and not suitable for everybody.
An OS is a tool itself and not suitable for everybody.
I beg to disagree with that. On all of my experiences dating from Fedora to Linpus & Ubuntu, there is always that feeling of "is it going to find the WiFi network? is it going to shut down OK?"
That for me is a deal breaker at the moment.
I tried easing my parents into Linux while they were going through this weird, ultra paranoid "what if we get a virus and someone steals our credit cards" spiel.
They didn't take to it. Mostly because it didn't have a solitaire game as good as the one installed by default on Windows. You'd think that cards are cards, right? Apparently not. It's gotta be pretty, too.
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Sounds more like you've got a laptop with incompatible hardware. Dunno if I'd blame Linux for that exactly.
One thing I noticed with Linux that I found myself doing was continally tweaking the system to improve it. You can take this as a negative or a positive depending on your perspective. One thing that I found problematic however was upgrading my system. Either when I used ubuntu or fedora, in both cases it was easier to reinstall the OS then upgrade, but with the reinstall I had to re-apply my tweaks. I learned to document and back up those tweaks to make it easier but still...
Odd, KDE Games has a much prittier version of Klondike than Windows. It even has other versions of Patience.
That was entirely your fault.
Be careful what you say, Mac OSX is unix based.
Odd, KDE Games has a much prittier version of Klondike than Windows. It even has other versions of Patience.
That was entirely your fault.
I'm pretty sure that's the one I ended up installing. I went through the whole process of installing KDE APIs inside of Gnome and everything just because it was the nicest looking solitaire game I could find for Linux.
Mom just didn't take to it for some reason. Probably because it was different looking at thus wasn't "her" solitaire game. Whatever. The one thing I learned from that whole experience is that I'm keeping her on Windows 7 until her laptop bursts into flames, and I have no other choice but to move on.
Running Word 2008 on a single core G4 is incredibly slow. Office 2010 doesn't launch very quickly on low end hardware, as well.
.docx, the native format of Word, is a pain to render on anything that's not Word.
The standalone version of MS Word is $120. $120 for a word processor. And yes, you can buy the whole suite, but not everybody makes use of Excel and PowerPoint, and it still ends up costing about the same price.
Well, thats out dated hardware that belongs as a " fun machine " or in the bin, no offense. its not useful hardware anymore, I don't see why microsoft needs be focusing on throwaway machines ( Yes, I still have my g4 tower, I'm not hating )
Correct me If I'm wrong, but thats a word format, why should Microsoft care about making it compatible with other word processing programs?
120 Bucks? Pocket change for what your getting.
I was just stating one example. Many people get by with old Pentiums today and open-source alternatives that are much faster than Word, and for free. Many netbooks don't do very well on Word, and netbook users would see a speed increase by switching to open-source programs, and it would function well.
Because not everybody uses Word. It doesn't work for everyone, and many can't afford it. Microsoft shouldn't require everybody to use their word processor just to be able to exchange text documents with others. OLPC, for example, fits into that category.
For a program that already requires at least mid-range hardware and still only does text editing, and something that MicroSoft can give out as many copies as possible at nearly no cost, it is certainly overpriced. It's still a text editor. And many won't see much of a benefit from Word anyways if all they'll be doing is manipulating text and maybe occasionally adding a graph.
Word processors have always been fairly expensive, at least on the high end, which is where Office currently sits.
$120 isn't all that much for what's considered a professional piece of software. You want expensive, go look at Photoshop. It starts out at $600 for the entry level kit. All it does is edit photos. What about 3DS Max? Modo? They start out at $1200. Zbrush? $500.
When it comes to software you do stuff with, it gets expensive. $120 is on the low end of the scale.
$120 isn't all that much for what's considered a professional piece of software. You want expensive, go look at Photoshop. It starts out at $600 for the entry level kit. All it does is edit photos. What about 3DS Max? Modo? They start out at $1200. Zbrush? $500.
When it comes to software you do stuff with, it gets expensive. $120 is on the low end of the scale.
Web browsers? Sure.
Music and office programs are both inferior on Linux. There is no ms office (which people often want) and no ableton live, etc.
The alternatives are half-baked.
Compared to other word processors, though, Office is pretty expensive.
MuseScore and Audacity are amazing music apps on Linux. Also, there's RhythmBox and Banshee for listening to music, and those are great. I wouldn't call apps like those 'half-baked'. A lot of good Linux software out there isn't really well-known, though, and if its popularity increases enough that probably won't be a problem for much longer.
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I'm already moving away from OSX/iOS. A couple of months ago, I bought an Asus ultrabook that has a build quality equal to the MBA, and its 1600x900 display is better than any 13" non-Retina Macbook. It was also much cheaper. I'm selling my 13" MBP. I'm debating if I want to leave it on Win7 or load Linux on it. I will keep my Mini, just because it makes a good media server. I don't see myself buying another Mac notebook, though.
Yeah, maybe by a bit. In a perfect world, Word would be about 60-80 bucks for home users who don't have to rely on the high end office interconnectivity overhead or other bells and whistles. Right now, you're buying into the standard as much as the program itself.
Still, it's not that expensive.
Win 7 might be more easy thinking about driver support etc. if the disk is big enough how about dual-boot. With a shared partion for easy exchange of files.
Sorry, but Amarok is by far superior to iTunes. XMMS was the definitive MP3 player, better and faster than even Winamp back in the days. Support for file formats is waaaay up there with Linux.
Oh and you don't get DRM. Another big plus.
Music is definately not an area that is lacking for the "Facebook + music playing" crowd under Linux.
That's my thinking. It only has a 128GB SSD, so there really isn't much storage to work with.