Stan Beer
Monday, 17 November 2008 11:54
Opinion and Analysis
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OpenOffice plus Evolution, even back then, was a fair
approximation to Microsoft Office, though not quite as slick.
That was fine for me for a day or so. However,
when I tried to open MS Office spreadsheets and Powerpoint
presentations, or even complex Word documents with embedded
spreadsheets and presentations, emailed to me from business associates,
they often didn't translate correctly. What that meant was I needed a
copy of MS Office - oops it doesn't run on Linux.
Then of course there was the web browser. Firefox is a great open
source browser. Like many others, I use it in on Windows. I also used
it on Ubuntu - it ran noticeably slower than on Windows.
Like many others, I get annoyed with some website developers who insist
on optimising websites for their clients to run on Internet Explorer.
In Windows, it forces me to launch IE to view those sites properly. In
Linux, I don't even have that choice.
Where's the so-called freedom?
I could go on about how primitive Skype is on Linux compared to the
latest Windows version, how I can't even install iTunes, how any open
source application worth having is available on Windows, while many
aren't available on Linux, but what's the point? The Linux "tinority"
will try to howl me down.
What do I mean by tinority? I mean, these zealots are far too small in
number to be called a minority - that mantle belongs to Mac OS X users.
Accurate statistics of desktop operating system users are hard to find
and they vary according to the source. However, rough estimates are
possible to obtain.
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