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>Gaming is really the last bastion of Windows. For the consumer market, yes. As much as I love GNU/Linux and support Free Software, the reality is that pretty

>Gaming is really the last bastion of Windows. For the consumer market, yes. As much as I love GNU/Linux and support Free Software, the reality is that pretty much all business runs on Word and, even more so, Excel. Sad, but true.

codesuela 14y ago
Office 2007 and below runs just fine with Wine
bad_user 14y ago
Not all businesses. I've worked for and with plenty of small businesses where the norm was OpenOffice, running on top of Linux and Mac OS X, with non-technical people having no problem using it (after a period of bitching about it, because people in general are conservative). For example I helped a local kindergarten switch all their computers to Linux and OpenOffice (one in every classroom, plus 4 others used for administrative purposes). They are happy with the results and the BSA is not harassing them anymore. My wife works there and I'm happy to help out whenever problems occur and it's a lot better for me to SSH into those machines instead of going over there (and surely, you can also do that with Remote Desktop on Windows, but you don't have the same level of control and it's harder to secure, IMHO). Granted, it's not always easy for a company to make that switch, because as I said people are pretty conservative and fear change. This is why developers are so fluid in regards to the technologies used, because developers know how to learn the basics and build from there instead of rote learning the path from A to B. The one problem Linux does have in regards to businesses is integration with Exchange ... this is actually the deal breaker, as in Office coupled with Exchange is the real killer app, and there still isn't anything that can replace it for big organizations. But small businesses are better off going with services such as Google Apps nowadays.
- sciurus 14y ago
  "The one problem Linux does have in regards to businesses is integration with Exchange" You're forgetting active directory and group policy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_Policy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_Policy
  - danssig 14y ago
    Yes, I'm still hoping some day someone will make a Linux Distro that uses OpenLDAP for configuration as much as possible instead of flat files scattered all over the system, all with different syntax.
    - jebblue 14y ago
      LDAP is a PITA. Flat files usually have three things to remember: # is a comment key value That's the format of most config files I see.
      - danssig 14y ago
        Over the last few weeks I've been setting up a personal linux server. Every single process I add has a different configuration. Systems like Postfix have nice things like "this combination of variable settings produces this behavior, but if you change one yes to a no you get something totally different".
  - seanp2k2 14y ago
    If you grill people hard on "why do you need all that complex, expensive crap anyway?" you can switch them over to Google Apps, or Zimbra, or LibreOffice + Evolution + SLES and have all the same functionality. Share point? What does share point do that WebDAV + Samba + Apache + some kind of CMS + MediaWiki can't, besides requiring an expensive share point admin and lots of licensing fees? LDAP and kerberos have Linux implementations, but throwing the *nix way of doing this out the window in favor of the AD route is a really silly idea unless you need to integrate with existing windows crap. Basically, Windows perpetuates itself, and the solution is to drop it entirely and across the board.
    - danssig 14y ago
      >but throwing the nix way of doing this out the window in favor of the AD route is a really silly idea unless you need to integrate with existing windows crap. This betrays a lack of experience with a large organization. The "nix way" is every program having their own configuration file with its own syntax and needing a signal (or restart the process) to change said configuration. Directories are far superior for this and it isn't a "windows" thing. It was Novell who first got serious with directory services.
fl3tch 14y ago
I believe some European governments, because of mandates to use open source, want to fund the Document Foundation to get much better support for Office formats. Maybe in 5 years that argument will be moot too. Well, a boy can dream.
jiggy2011 14y ago
Perhaps so, but that does not mean that situation will last forever. Do you think the entire world will still be editing all of their documents in MS Word in 10 years time? 20 years? 50 years? There are growing numbers of alternatives, from cloud based systems and from LibreOffice etc. Not to mention that the "word processor" itself as a category of product may become less appealing. Word Processing fit into a world where communication and documents were primarily pieces of paper sent by post and fax and this is the metaphor that it is built around. I think this is mostly still in place due to the stubbornness of the generation who are currently in charge at most companies/governments and grew up around this. One project I will be working on in the near future is for a company who currently use Office. It will essentially be a modified Wiki that will allow them to share information & documents internally (converting existing .doc from outside sources into wiki entries will be one part of it, also automatically adding incoming emails to the wiki in some cases). It will also allow things like producing high quality PDFs for clients. Once this is in place they will pretty much be able to uninstall their word-processors.

codesuela 14y ago

Office 2007 and below runs just fine with Wine

bad_user 14y ago

Not all businesses. I've worked for and with plenty of small businesses where the norm was OpenOffice, running on top of Linux and Mac OS X, with non-technical people having no problem using it (after a period of bitching about it, because people in general are conservative). For example I helped a local kindergarten switch all their computers to Linux and OpenOffice (one in every classroom, plus 4 others used for administrative purposes). They are happy with the results and the BSA is not harassing them anymore. My wife works there and I'm happy to help out whenever problems occur and it's a lot better for me to SSH into those machines instead of going over there (and surely, you can also do that with Remote Desktop on Windows, but you don't have the same level of control and it's harder to secure, IMHO). Granted, it's not always easy for a company to make that switch, because as I said people are pretty conservative and fear change. This is why developers are so fluid in regards to the technologies used, because developers know how to learn the basics and build from there instead of rote learning the path from A to B. The one problem Linux does have in regards to businesses is integration with Exchange ... this is actually the deal breaker, as in Office coupled with Exchange is the real killer app, and there still isn't anything that can replace it for big organizations. But small businesses are better off going with services such as Google Apps nowadays.

sciurus 14y ago
"The one problem Linux does have in regards to businesses is integration with Exchange" You're forgetting active directory and group policy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_Policy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_Policy
- danssig 14y ago
  Yes, I'm still hoping some day someone will make a Linux Distro that uses OpenLDAP for configuration as much as possible instead of flat files scattered all over the system, all with different syntax.
  - jebblue 14y ago
    LDAP is a PITA. Flat files usually have three things to remember: # is a comment key value That's the format of most config files I see.
    - danssig 14y ago
      Over the last few weeks I've been setting up a personal linux server. Every single process I add has a different configuration. Systems like Postfix have nice things like "this combination of variable settings produces this behavior, but if you change one yes to a no you get something totally different".
- seanp2k2 14y ago
  If you grill people hard on "why do you need all that complex, expensive crap anyway?" you can switch them over to Google Apps, or Zimbra, or LibreOffice + Evolution + SLES and have all the same functionality. Share point? What does share point do that WebDAV + Samba + Apache + some kind of CMS + MediaWiki can't, besides requiring an expensive share point admin and lots of licensing fees? LDAP and kerberos have Linux implementations, but throwing the *nix way of doing this out the window in favor of the AD route is a really silly idea unless you need to integrate with existing windows crap. Basically, Windows perpetuates itself, and the solution is to drop it entirely and across the board.
  - danssig 14y ago
    >but throwing the nix way of doing this out the window in favor of the AD route is a really silly idea unless you need to integrate with existing windows crap. This betrays a lack of experience with a large organization. The "nix way" is every program having their own configuration file with its own syntax and needing a signal (or restart the process) to change said configuration. Directories are far superior for this and it isn't a "windows" thing. It was Novell who first got serious with directory services.

fl3tch 14y ago

I believe some European governments, because of mandates to use open source, want to fund the Document Foundation to get much better support for Office formats. Maybe in 5 years that argument will be moot too. Well, a boy can dream.

jiggy2011 14y ago

Perhaps so, but that does not mean that situation will last forever. Do you think the entire world will still be editing all of their documents in MS Word in 10 years time? 20 years? 50 years? There are growing numbers of alternatives, from cloud based systems and from LibreOffice etc. Not to mention that the "word processor" itself as a category of product may become less appealing. Word Processing fit into a world where communication and documents were primarily pieces of paper sent by post and fax and this is the metaphor that it is built around. I think this is mostly still in place due to the stubbornness of the generation who are currently in charge at most companies/governments and grew up around this. One project I will be working on in the near future is for a company who currently use Office. It will essentially be a modified Wiki that will allow them to share information & documents internally (converting existing .doc from outside sources into wiki entries will be one part of it, also automatically adding incoming emails to the wiki in some cases). It will also allow things like producing high quality PDFs for clients. Once this is in place they will pretty much be able to uninstall their word-processors.