5 ms·

That's an impressive number, all things considered. Many people rant about Open/LibreOffice not being comparable to MS Office, and while there probably is no g

by debacle 13y ago

That's an impressive number, all things considered. Many people rant about Open/LibreOffice not being comparable to MS Office, and while there probably is no good replacement for Outlook in Linux (simply from an ease of use standpoint), swriter and scalc provide 99.9% of the features that most people use MS Office for. Overall, I'm eager for the time when a major US municipality switches over to Linux desktops. It just makes sense.

edelans 13y ago
It makes even more sense when your country isn't the home country of the NSA... !
- puller 13y ago
  Is there some reason why the open source desktop is a worse idea in the US? I don't think so...
  - bediger4000 13y ago
    Only that you're likely to get a "NO!" answer from Legal or from Corporate Security or some internal organization that's quite opaque, has veto power, and deals with US Government contracts, or has security clearances or something like that.
officemonkey 13y ago
What is the best email/calendar/contact manager on Linux?
- debacle 13y ago
  I honestly don't know. I've tried Zimbra and Thunderbird and some other client I can't remember the name of, but in general even Thunderbird isn't great - I usually resort to webmail.
- phaer 13y ago
  In this combination i'd say evolution, but i do not know the kde universe too well.
- fps 13y ago
  gmail/google calendar/google contacts. I've been a desktop Linux user for 14 years, and while Evolution worked well enough for a while, it really stagnated about 8 years ago as all the users switched to webmail. I tell chrome to pretend it's on Windows and use Outlook Web Access when I need to interact with Exchange, and I actually like that better than outlook on windows anyway, but nothing beats gmail.
  - a8da6b0c91d 13y ago
    I'm using Evolution on imap now and it sucks. I'd been using mutt for many years and decided it was time to try a GUI client now that most emails are fairly graphical. Evolution will routinely chew on my disk for over thirty seconds before starting up, for no clear reason. It pops up strange error messages about host resolution when I know the host is up just fine and quite reachable. It doesn't atomically handle email moves, so I've closed the client and later reopened it to find messages I've moved right back in their original places.
- pbhjpbhj 13y ago
  kontact/kmail (KDE mail ua) used to integrate all that stuff the only thing it lacked was an ability to handle HTML email. At the time the developers kept insisting that email should all be plaintext and they weren't going to allow HTML mailing in kmail. I moved to thunderbird. The rest of KDE4 caught up to being release standard at about version 4.6 and Kontact looks good but I've become entrenched with TB now.
- mbq 13y ago
  Thunderbird+Lightning (for calendar and contacts). Or Claws mail for a "pro" (rough but very fast and functional) solution.
Pxtl 13y ago
The biggest problem comparing open/libreoffice is that compatibility is 99% of the focus here. Trying to implement Microsoft's horrible file-formats just sucks all the oxygen out of the room - the users obsess over compatibility (for good reasons), and that means the developers have to obsess over compatibility (also for good reasons) but this makes it really hard for LibreOffice to actually focus on real features. Also, as an aside, my wife's learning LaTeX for some math courses... she was shocked at how well her OOO Draw files could be converted and opened up in Inkscape, which in turn played nice with LaTeX. Having good compatibility between various small applications actually was surprising to someone used to the closed-source software world.
- pachydermic 13y ago
  Do you know about LyX? I loved that program for my math classes (mostly proof writing). Personally, I liked the shortcuts it provided so that I didn't have to write raw LaTeX for everything.
  - shequi 13y ago
    Have you (either of you) tried LaTeXiT[1]? As a gui interface/equation editor it helped me texify my stats submissions and also helped as a quick reference for some of those characters I don't use regularly. [1] http://pierre.chachatelier.fr/latexit/latexit-home.php?lang=en http://pierre.chachatelier.fr/latexit/latexit-home.php?lang=...
- slacka 13y ago
  As someone who was part of a failed LibreOffice roll-out, I have to agree in my experience compatibility is the issue holding LO back. But users don't obsess, they just require decent interoperability. If basic features like charts can't be imported[1], of course it's a showstopper. I have to disagree with everyone here saying that basic MSO interoperability is some impossible goal. If that was the case how has TextMaker achieved such better results?[2] LibreOffice and OpenOffice both have a group of paid developers. While I understand that volunteer wouldn't want to work on this, why can't the paid developers put some effort into this? [1] https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=96426 https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=96426 [2] http://www.infoworld.com/d/applications/office-compatibility-torture-test-302?page=0,0 http://www.infoworld.com/d/applications/office-compatibility...
auctiontheory 13y ago
Overall, I'm eager for the time when a major US municipality switches over to Linux desktops. It just makes sense. The problem is, it's been making sense for a decade now, at least for the office suite. But these wins against Microsoft remain one offs. There are many reasons for this, but IT professionals are part of the "problem." Someone with a lifetime of MSFT certifications and training can come up with a dozen reasons why open source is bad. He needs to save his livelihood.
- teddyh 13y ago
  “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” — Upton Sinclair
- singold 13y ago
  This made me remember the other day in my job (I'm the webmaster) when I asked the IT dept. to install Firefox or Chrome (at least) on my machine (I was developing the main site on winXP + IE8). They told me that they couldn't because of 'security concerns'
PeterisP 13y ago
The feature parity of libreoffice is much closer than the polish parity. There is still so much to do in terms of UI polishing in LibreOffice that I wouldn't know where to start.

by debacle 13y ago

edelans 13y ago

It makes even more sense when your country isn't the home country of the NSA... !

puller 13y ago
Is there some reason why the open source desktop is a worse idea in the US? I don't think so...
- bediger4000 13y ago
  Only that you're likely to get a "NO!" answer from Legal or from Corporate Security or some internal organization that's quite opaque, has veto power, and deals with US Government contracts, or has security clearances or something like that.

officemonkey 13y ago

What is the best email/calendar/contact manager on Linux?

debacle 13y ago
I honestly don't know. I've tried Zimbra and Thunderbird and some other client I can't remember the name of, but in general even Thunderbird isn't great - I usually resort to webmail.
phaer 13y ago
In this combination i'd say evolution, but i do not know the kde universe too well.
fps 13y ago
gmail/google calendar/google contacts. I've been a desktop Linux user for 14 years, and while Evolution worked well enough for a while, it really stagnated about 8 years ago as all the users switched to webmail. I tell chrome to pretend it's on Windows and use Outlook Web Access when I need to interact with Exchange, and I actually like that better than outlook on windows anyway, but nothing beats gmail.
- a8da6b0c91d 13y ago
  I'm using Evolution on imap now and it sucks. I'd been using mutt for many years and decided it was time to try a GUI client now that most emails are fairly graphical. Evolution will routinely chew on my disk for over thirty seconds before starting up, for no clear reason. It pops up strange error messages about host resolution when I know the host is up just fine and quite reachable. It doesn't atomically handle email moves, so I've closed the client and later reopened it to find messages I've moved right back in their original places.
pbhjpbhj 13y ago
kontact/kmail (KDE mail ua) used to integrate all that stuff the only thing it lacked was an ability to handle HTML email. At the time the developers kept insisting that email should all be plaintext and they weren't going to allow HTML mailing in kmail. I moved to thunderbird. The rest of KDE4 caught up to being release standard at about version 4.6 and Kontact looks good but I've become entrenched with TB now.
mbq 13y ago
Thunderbird+Lightning (for calendar and contacts). Or Claws mail for a "pro" (rough but very fast and functional) solution.

Pxtl 13y ago

The biggest problem comparing open/libreoffice is that compatibility is 99% of the focus here. Trying to implement Microsoft's horrible file-formats just sucks all the oxygen out of the room - the users obsess over compatibility (for good reasons), and that means the developers have to obsess over compatibility (also for good reasons) but this makes it really hard for LibreOffice to actually focus on real features. Also, as an aside, my wife's learning LaTeX for some math courses... she was shocked at how well her OOO Draw files could be converted and opened up in Inkscape, which in turn played nice with LaTeX. Having good compatibility between various small applications actually was surprising to someone used to the closed-source software world.

pachydermic 13y ago
Do you know about LyX? I loved that program for my math classes (mostly proof writing). Personally, I liked the shortcuts it provided so that I didn't have to write raw LaTeX for everything.
- shequi 13y ago
  Have you (either of you) tried LaTeXiT[1]? As a gui interface/equation editor it helped me texify my stats submissions and also helped as a quick reference for some of those characters I don't use regularly. [1] http://pierre.chachatelier.fr/latexit/latexit-home.php?lang=en http://pierre.chachatelier.fr/latexit/latexit-home.php?lang=...
slacka 13y ago
As someone who was part of a failed LibreOffice roll-out, I have to agree in my experience compatibility is the issue holding LO back. But users don't obsess, they just require decent interoperability. If basic features like charts can't be imported[1], of course it's a showstopper. I have to disagree with everyone here saying that basic MSO interoperability is some impossible goal. If that was the case how has TextMaker achieved such better results?[2] LibreOffice and OpenOffice both have a group of paid developers. While I understand that volunteer wouldn't want to work on this, why can't the paid developers put some effort into this? [1] https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=96426 https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=96426 [2] http://www.infoworld.com/d/applications/office-compatibility-torture-test-302?page=0,0 http://www.infoworld.com/d/applications/office-compatibility...

auctiontheory 13y ago

Overall, I'm eager for the time when a major US municipality switches over to Linux desktops. It just makes sense. The problem is, it's been making sense for a decade now, at least for the office suite. But these wins against Microsoft remain one offs. There are many reasons for this, but IT professionals are part of the "problem." Someone with a lifetime of MSFT certifications and training can come up with a dozen reasons why open source is bad. He needs to save his livelihood.

teddyh 13y ago
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” — Upton Sinclair
singold 13y ago
This made me remember the other day in my job (I'm the webmaster) when I asked the IT dept. to install Firefox or Chrome (at least) on my machine (I was developing the main site on winXP + IE8). They told me that they couldn't because of 'security concerns'

PeterisP 13y ago

The feature parity of libreoffice is much closer than the polish parity. There is still so much to do in terms of UI polishing in LibreOffice that I wouldn't know where to start.