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I think you are overly optimistic, LibreOffice remains less functional than Office 97 and GIMP is a study in bad GUI design - not to mention the rest of the Cre

I think you are overly optimistic, LibreOffice remains less functional than Office 97 and GIMP is a study in bad GUI design - not to mention the rest of the Creative Suite being missing in action. I was recently shocked to learn that I can't rotate text inside a table. Also LibreOffice at one point included the full source code of Thunderbird, some OSS is well written but I am not convinced that it is better at the architecture level when compared to Microsoft's offerings. After 15-20 years the OpenSource user-land remains confusingly fragmented. Multiple monitors are a pain and applications don't have the understanding of full-screen. Working with icons on the desktops was hard, so now we have launchers, and now we are doing away with the desktop all together - my theory being that drag-able icon interaction was too hard to implement. Distro's are fragmented by their philosophies on software rather then their GUI's - resulting in horrible user experiences. Why the hell does Linux mint come in so many flavors? Drivers remain a problem, I recently had to recompile modify the kernel because my elan mouse was being detected incorrectly. Ubuntu has made large leaps but I have noticed that their GUI burns power and shutters on systems that are about 5 years old. Also, remember when computers could hibernate? But, I use Gentoo for work, 'cause kcachegrind is good. I think OSS has delivered something unique to its users but it is whole different from a general purpose operating system like Windows. I think the comparison between Latex and Word is a good comparison between he OpenSource and propriety world. When people speak to highlight the progress of OSS I am tempted to ask: How many years do I have to wait? How many years do I have to wait? How many years do I have to wait? How many years do I have to wait? How many years do I have to wait? How many years do I have to wait? How many years do I have to wait?

phaemon 13y ago
What an appalling Gish gallop. Well, as usual, the only thing to do is point out the first wrong thing. Conveniently, everything you said was wrong, so I can just pick the first clear statement you made: you can rotate text within a table.
- frozenport 13y ago
  http://ask.libreoffice.org/en/question/3990/how-to-rotate-in-text-documents/ http://ask.libreoffice.org/en/question/3990/how-to-rotate-in... also https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=48804 https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=48804 --edit, not sure why links to the bugzilla describing the issue are giving me downvotes... --edit 2 : I actually hit this bug when making a flyer, the bottom had little flaps with our groups email. It broke PowerPoint compatibility, and I had to reboot into Windows. --edit 3: You made laugh when you mentioned that "You can't invert the text quite so easily, you have to draw a rectangle with text in which can then be rotated any arbitrary degree." That sums up whats wrong with many user side facing programs. Too bad LibreOffice doesn't support pipes :-)
  - phaemon 13y ago
    Probably because both those links specifically say you can rotate text 90 and 270 degrees. You can't invert the text quite so easily, you have to draw a rectangle with text in which can then be rotated any arbitrary degree. Next time you trawl bug reports looking for anti-Linux material, try reading them more carefully.
    - clarry 13y ago
      Did you just equate Linux with OSS?
      - phaemon 13y ago
        No.
clarry 13y ago
> GIMP is a study in bad GUI design Whenever I've asked people to provide concrete examples of this, their issue has been that they expect the UI to be a 1:1 clone of whatever application they're used to (usually Photoshop) and so they don't know how to do some things, or can't operate smoothly enough as they haven't taken the time to grow muscle memory comparable to what they have with Photoshop. I'm not a big fan of GIMP, but I want to scream of frustration on the occassion that I have to work with Photoshop (which I don't know well at all).
- frozenport 13y ago
  I don't like the ideas of floating control panels everywhere. They tend to distract, I find myself constantly needing to open and close them and they also occupy a lot of space. The issue has existed for dozens of years, finally the folks at GIMP appear to have sobered up and are working on a single-window mode http://www.gimp.org/release-notes/gimp-2.8.html http://www.gimp.org/release-notes/gimp-2.8.html
  - clarry 13y ago
    Yes, the SDI vs. MDI debate has been a popular and flamy one. It's also a rather subjective issue, and preference depends on what you're used to, what window manager you run (and how you're using it's features), etc. GIMP used to get bashed a lot for this UI choice, but the haters often forget that Photoshop (originally Mac software) defaults (or at least used to, and I believe it still does?) to SDI in the Apple land. I'm glad that those who want MDI have finally stepped up and implemented it. Recently I've been using a tiling window manager that doesn't deal particularly well with floating windows. Now I have the choice.
    - dllthomas 13y ago
      "what window manager you run (and how you're using it's features)" Right, exactly. I've found that starting GIMP in ratpoison is a little glitchy - two windows spend time competing for a single frame until I pull one of them into another frame - but once I've done that I quite like the experience of using GIMP in ratpoison.
dragandj 13y ago
As for text acrobatics, I doubt anything can beat LaTeX, which is free as in freedom AND free beer.
- pmelendez 13y ago
  LaTex is awesome, period. But the learning curve is too high for common documents, which is fine because it was designed to be a great typesetting, not a word processor. On the other hand, Word is great too, I wouldn't write a book on it but most of the time I am not writing books, as for free alternatives to Word, I find them sufficient but I would rather pay 10$ per month to use word and excel than work around libre office and its limitations.
webreac 13y ago
"I can't rotate text inside a table". My memory is perhaps wrong, but I thought it was possible earlier in openoffice than in word. For information, in the menu "Paragraph style", you have a tab "Position" where you can select the "Rotation / scaling" "90 degrees".
wslh 13y ago
I think OSS has delivered a lot of excellent products but the issue that remains unsolved is the UX side. UX is critical in mobile devices. A bad designed interface makes you switch to another application beyond the product features included.

phaemon 13y ago

What an appalling Gish gallop. Well, as usual, the only thing to do is point out the first wrong thing. Conveniently, everything you said was wrong, so I can just pick the first clear statement you made: you can rotate text within a table.

frozenport 13y ago
http://ask.libreoffice.org/en/question/3990/how-to-rotate-in-text-documents/ http://ask.libreoffice.org/en/question/3990/how-to-rotate-in... also https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=48804 https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=48804 --edit, not sure why links to the bugzilla describing the issue are giving me downvotes... --edit 2 : I actually hit this bug when making a flyer, the bottom had little flaps with our groups email. It broke PowerPoint compatibility, and I had to reboot into Windows. --edit 3: You made laugh when you mentioned that "You can't invert the text quite so easily, you have to draw a rectangle with text in which can then be rotated any arbitrary degree." That sums up whats wrong with many user side facing programs. Too bad LibreOffice doesn't support pipes :-)
- phaemon 13y ago
  Probably because both those links specifically say you can rotate text 90 and 270 degrees. You can't invert the text quite so easily, you have to draw a rectangle with text in which can then be rotated any arbitrary degree. Next time you trawl bug reports looking for anti-Linux material, try reading them more carefully.
  - clarry 13y ago
    Did you just equate Linux with OSS?
    - phaemon 13y ago
      No.

clarry 13y ago

> GIMP is a study in bad GUI design Whenever I've asked people to provide concrete examples of this, their issue has been that they expect the UI to be a 1:1 clone of whatever application they're used to (usually Photoshop) and so they don't know how to do some things, or can't operate smoothly enough as they haven't taken the time to grow muscle memory comparable to what they have with Photoshop. I'm not a big fan of GIMP, but I want to scream of frustration on the occassion that I have to work with Photoshop (which I don't know well at all).

frozenport 13y ago
I don't like the ideas of floating control panels everywhere. They tend to distract, I find myself constantly needing to open and close them and they also occupy a lot of space. The issue has existed for dozens of years, finally the folks at GIMP appear to have sobered up and are working on a single-window mode http://www.gimp.org/release-notes/gimp-2.8.html http://www.gimp.org/release-notes/gimp-2.8.html
- clarry 13y ago
  Yes, the SDI vs. MDI debate has been a popular and flamy one. It's also a rather subjective issue, and preference depends on what you're used to, what window manager you run (and how you're using it's features), etc. GIMP used to get bashed a lot for this UI choice, but the haters often forget that Photoshop (originally Mac software) defaults (or at least used to, and I believe it still does?) to SDI in the Apple land. I'm glad that those who want MDI have finally stepped up and implemented it. Recently I've been using a tiling window manager that doesn't deal particularly well with floating windows. Now I have the choice.
  - dllthomas 13y ago
    "what window manager you run (and how you're using it's features)" Right, exactly. I've found that starting GIMP in ratpoison is a little glitchy - two windows spend time competing for a single frame until I pull one of them into another frame - but once I've done that I quite like the experience of using GIMP in ratpoison.

dragandj 13y ago

As for text acrobatics, I doubt anything can beat LaTeX, which is free as in freedom AND free beer.

pmelendez 13y ago
LaTex is awesome, period. But the learning curve is too high for common documents, which is fine because it was designed to be a great typesetting, not a word processor. On the other hand, Word is great too, I wouldn't write a book on it but most of the time I am not writing books, as for free alternatives to Word, I find them sufficient but I would rather pay 10$ per month to use word and excel than work around libre office and its limitations.

webreac 13y ago

"I can't rotate text inside a table". My memory is perhaps wrong, but I thought it was possible earlier in openoffice than in word. For information, in the menu "Paragraph style", you have a tab "Position" where you can select the "Rotation / scaling" "90 degrees".

wslh 13y ago

I think OSS has delivered a lot of excellent products but the issue that remains unsolved is the UX side. UX is critical in mobile devices. A bad designed interface makes you switch to another application beyond the product features included.