EvilDave

I certainly agee with your reply if the only criteria is cost and cost alone. There certainly are a large number of programs out there that are close to being an equivilant of Windows programs. Note that I say "close". The problem that I have run into with many of the open software programs is that they are being written and maintained on a voluntary basis by their creators or people who just want to make them better--more power to them. However this improvement is a slow process and many of these programs have quirks in them that make them comeup second best to the commercial programs in Windows. For exampe, I use gedit for writing simple long winded text message on various blog post that I do. I found it odd that you could not set in "Preferences" the "Autocheck spelling" evertime that you opened a new document, even though all the previous tabs had autocheck running. I thought that ought to be simple fix really. I wrote to the author and a week or two later got a reply that said thanks, we'll look into that. Well that was 6 months ago, no fix yet. Is it a devestating problem, well no, but it is annoying.

Another example: I use DigiKam and found that when I use the "Find Duplicates" on pictures in a folder, it does not show a thumbnail of the image if the size of the picture is over about 1.1 Mb. Wrote the author and he did reply a bit quicker and said they were aware of the problem but that was several months ago and still no fix. Devestating--No! But damn annoying. I also found that DigiKam "Find Duplicates" sometimes claims two pictures that are clearly very, very differnt are called a duplicate. No so good. Now combine that with a box that presents two pictures as duplicates and one has a thumbnail and the other does not, what to do? See the problem?

The problem here is that most program creators and maintainers have real day jobs that have the first priority and these open source programs have only a second priority status at best. I understand that. If you are playing around trying to create a useful program you are more than likely doing it in your spare time. For some, once the create the program, even as a proof of concept, they are intellectually finished. Their work is done, now let the community maintain it. Well OK, considering that it is free I guess we have to be thankful for what we get. But it is the small little annoying bugs (or features if that is the way you wish to sping it) that tend to drive people away from many of these open source programs.

EvilDave

You are falling into the trap that you must be anti-cobra and pro-mongoose, or anti-mongoose and pro-cobra argument (sorry if you don't get the paradigm here, it goes back to an old story). I am not defending Microsoft or the other products that are commercially developed and maintained for windows or Mac. I merely saying that the open source community does have one weak point, and the two examples I gave, if you read carefully, were annoyances. But they do point to a real problem with open source.

Now many Linux programs, Open Office and Gimp and others work fine. But when you are in a business to make money on selling programs, you tend to make sure that any bugs are fixed. What if I were a commercial photographer and shoot all kinds of photos, and all of a sudden I need to look for duplicates in my collection. Could I trust Digikam? Don't think so. Even a simple Windows program ThumbsPlus can do what DigiKam cannot do, but it does cost around $100-200.

The point I am making here is that the quality of the open source programs can be good but they can also be fairly poor. Since developers aren't being paid to create or maintain them, they feel no obligation to put more effort into their creations (some do, some don't), they feel they have proved their point and let their baby fly. Money does provide incentive. Sure I walk away muttering about DigiKam, but then I remind myself that "ya gets what ya pay fer".

Every example you both cite about 'old and new' and software that 'does and doesn't' has comparable Windows examples.

If you send an Office 2007 document to someone with Office 2000, GUESS WHAT? They won't be able to open it.

Of course, your friend with OpenOffice can UPGRADE to OpenOffice 3.x after a 15 minute download and open your document for FREE.

What's it cost your Office 2000 buddy with the same problem to do that? Order the DVD online, take up another few gigs on the hard drive over the Office 2000 setup, possibly it will demand they upgrade their Windows 2000 to install the new Office....

So you believe that FREE Open Source software should have absolute feature-for-feature parity with Microsoft's trash, down to the dancing paperclip?

Super, I can say with certainty that Open Source software will never satisfy you. It will always be different, even though packages like OpenOffice have features that M$ Office will never have. If you approached this from OpenOffice versus M$ Office, it's exactly the same 'M$ Office Sucks' because of missing features arguments, as well as PAYING MONEY for M$ Office.

There will FOREVER be something that works the way you want it to in one package, and not another. Whether it's Open Source versus Microsoft, or even Microsoft vs. Microsoft. You can't claim that everything Microsoft has ever changed between two versions of a piece of software have been to your liking. After all, XP versus Vista and 2000 versus XP. I bet some borderline-retarded people even missed that stupid paperclip animation when they removed it from Office.

And once again, if you don't like ONE version of gee-whiz Photo Album software, take your pick of the MANY. Picassa has WIndows AND Linux versions. You can as well compare Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro. I liked PSP far better than Photoshop. As a matter of fact, the newest PSP suck. They peaked somewhere around PSP 8. At this point you couldn't PAY ME to use a new PSP. It's completely mangled. And that's nothing but Windows versus Windows comparisons. I loved Powerquest Drive Image, and Norton Ghost SUCKS. Same product, different owners again.

One very nice thing about Open Source software, the old versions tend to get picked up and maintained. For instance, Mozilla took off with Firefox, but you can still use SeaMonkey if you liked the old Mozilla UI (especially the WYSIWYG web page 'Composer').

So absolutely nothing that either of you has cited has any particular merit as points against Linux/Open Source. The exact same problems exist between different for-pay software on the same Windows platform. You can always cherry-pick weak projects and compare them to very strong products, and find your 'strong product' wins. Duh. Failing that, you can always whine about 'differences', as if being different from a MICROSOFT product is a crime.

You are confusing open-source software meaning of the word "free" to mean free as in price. Open-source software is free as in free to edit the program yourself (if you have such programming powers), and not necessarily free as in cost. It can be both -- free as in free beer and free as in the right to edit the source code and make it how you like it, but there are times when you have to pay for open-source software. OpenOffice.org is both kinds of free, while i think Sun's paid for Office suite is proprietary.

So, in other words, all the features and/or bugs with OpenOffice.org that you have cited, you (if you had the knowledge and the time) could edit it and fix it yourself. While you could not do that with Sun's paid-for Office suite, or especially Microsoft's Office. Open-source software means that anybody could write a bug fix, you do not have to wait on the vendor to make such edits. If there is a feature missing, add it yourself, and stop complaining about it. You have the freedom to do so, whether or not you have the ability and time is up to you.

"...But considering its success over other highly used word processors (remember WordPerfect) MS must be doing something right."
Brainwash? Not what I'd call right, but close enough for them...

The only reason that OpenOffice has compatibility problems with Microsoft formats is because they obfuscate them with every release in an attempt to thwart free software developers' attempts to write compatible software. If Microsoft were to adopt the OpenDocument format instead, that would help many consumers of their software, as well as of others.
Also, OpenOffice does have a save as PDF option. I have 2.3, and there is an Export to PDF button a few places right of the New, Open, and Save buttons.

---

Intel C2Q 6600 Kentsfield 2.4 GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 8MB cache | 3GB DDR3 1333MHz Corsair + OCZ RAM (DC) | NVidia 8600GT, 256MB DDR3 memory, 620MHz | 3x 250GB Samsung HD250HJ

Funny you should use that example. When I first installed MS Office 2007, the corporate standard where I worked was still MS Office 2000. Yet I was able to prepare Excell spreadsheets and Word documents at home in Office 2007 and open them just fine at work in Office 2000. You simply set the file to save in the Office 97-2003 file format. Of course you give up a few of the advantages of Office 2007. My change was predicated on three items 1) a volunteer organization I work with had shifted all their national training presentations to PowerPoint 2007 and was in the PPSX file format. 2) I knew that Office 2007 was the future, and 3) by purchased MS Office 2007 in the Home and Student version, I could install the software legally on three machines for a total cost of $120.

You really need to get more current if you are going to use a feature as a slam. Clippy has been gone for at least the last two and maybe the last three versions of MS Office. Besides, he never did really dance. And if a program is going to be touted as an XYZ replacement, it should have the major features of XYZ, and when touted as XYZ compatible, it should open and write all the XYZ file formats. Now, this is not the fauld of Sun who push OO as an alternative, but the over zealous promoters who push OO as an MS Office replacement.

Well, actually the web brower I use the most is Firefox 2 because it works the best with the PCW community website. For those who want to use OO, that's fine. Just don't tout it as 100% compatible when it's not. At best it's about 95%. Now for most people who do not use any of the advanced features, that's fine. The lack of the ability of OO Calc to save a file with a password is, for me, a major flaw. The lack of the ability of OO Write to do mail merge is, to me a major flaw. The lack of support in the Linux OS for Broadcom wireless chips is a major flaw. You keep hearing that Linux is superior because it will run on all machines, but what is left of is the fact that it may not run all features on those machines.

Yes, you say that you can modify open source software to your liking. This is probably true if 1) you had the source code, 2) were a programmer familiar with the language used and 3) had a compiler. This only excludes 99+% of the computing public, which may explain why most open source software has such a poor user penetration. Then there is the fact that if you have 10 different open source products doing similar jobs, you run into problems if you try to exchange files with someone else using a different open source program for the same function. Then there is the problem trying to find information on how to use the 10 different open source programs.

While you obviously are no fan of MS Office, and in truth, I am not either, but you do have to admit that if you want information on how to do something, you have a wide variety of training aids, classes, and how to books available. My personal favorite was WordPerfect, but as no one I know uses it, I am forced to use MS Office to exchange files. As I sit here, I am looking up on the shelf at David Pogue's excellent books on Windows 2000 Pro, Windows XP Pro and Vista. Absolutely nothing like them is available for Linux. Then, if you want to exchange files with your company's office, with only a few exceptions, it will be with MS Office. If you want to exchange files with other, most of the time it will be with MS Office. I do volunteer work with a youth organization and the vast majority of the youth have MS Office on their machines at home. This is because it is available in the schools, and in order to exchange files, they use MS Office. Now, if it is the older version of Office and they just want to write papers, they can use OO, but they generally don't. Most don't even know it exists.

While most people may have heard of Linux, it has the reputation of being a geeky programmers OS. Until it sheds that mode of operating, it will always be considered thus. And in marketing as in much of life, perception is reality. Most new machines come with Windows for a reason, and that reason is that is what is acceptable to the vast majority of computer users. It does the job for them, and they are happy. I was in my Doctor's office yesterday for my routine physical, and noticed that the OS on all the machines was Vista. It did not matter to the nurses and administrative workers using the machines, because each had a module of the medical package up, and it doesn't really matter to them what the OS is, because they never really see it except when they boot the machines. All they are worried about is the information on the screen.

For the average person, the best OS is the one that has the greatest functionality for the job they want to do with the least hassle. For 90+% of the people that is some form of Windows. For about 5-6% it is OS/X, for less than 2% it is some form of Linux. For those 2%, they are the geeky programers who talk about all the things you can do with the OS. For 80+% of the world, all they want to do is run an application and the OS should be transparent in the background. When they want to install a program, they either want to insert an autorun CD/DVD and let it do it's thing, or down load a program and double click on the download and watch it install itself. Neither feature is available in the Ubuntu 7.04 that I tried, so that automatically excludes the vast majority of users. The typical response that is seen in forums is "well, all you need to do is..." and gives a laundry list of steps to install the application. People are not going to put up with that. I won't, and I'm far more into various setups and aspects of a PC. Shoot, even the old DOS programs installed simpler than that, you just had to copy them over, and create a small batch file to run the program.

If the Linux programming community ever wants Linux to become something other than a geeky programmers OS, they need to make it far far more user friendly, and the installation of an application all but automatic. The fact that with all the volunteer programming power available, they have not done so, tells me they are perfectly satisfied with the perception and reality that it is in fact a geeky programmers language. I think they are perfectly satisfied with the 1.6% market share.

---

Thanks to Solar Wings for the special siggy.

i agree with evildave on most points but he left out that some suckers like to pay the big bucks just so they can brag to the jones that they paid

big bucks for it ( and then may not tell you about all the bugs in it but whatever it takes to stay ahead of the jones )

oh you say that linux will not (parts of it any ways like the broadcom wireless chipsets) on all machines but guess what all versions of windoze will

not run on all computers either ( pull out the wallet for more upgrades like more ram or a bigger hard drive or a new

computer and see what is cheaper ) so spend ten or twenty bucks and get a wireless card that will

work with ubuntu and it will end up being cheaper then a windoze upgrade that you might need for the next version of

windoze ( yes the system requirements for windoze is always increasing )

well with my limited knowledge i think i wold rather pay 10 or 20 for a new wireless

card or usb dongle then 100 bucks for 2 or 4 gb of ddr2 or 3 but that is just

gl and tc

chuck the under educated with my 2 cents

---

amd dual core x2 6000 with 4 gb kit of gskill ddr2@800 and a msi 4670 with 1 gb ddr3 triple boot right now with vista home premium 64 and win 7 64 and ubuntu 9.04 64

I must agree with rgreen4 in his/her response to CharlesB. Linux right now is on the threshhold of advancing from the geek corner out to the world at large. In order to do this, the majority of potential users want an OS that just plain works, has useful programs that do what they want and DO NOT WANT to become programmers. Ease of use of the OS is first and foremost. The reason the Mac succeeded in making inroads on the Windows PC is that it marketed itself as the computer for non-geek types. It sells itself on ease of use and transparency.

Without much effort, Linux can do that too. Does this mean every distro of Linux has to be this way--No! It is clear that that the Linux organization is trying to position Ubuntu in that camp. I go way back to the original Red Hat days and Ubuntu has come a very long way since those days in terms of ease of use. Should all of the distros go this way, perhaps but it is not necessary. Some distros lend themselves to corporate/enterprise use, some to scientific computing, develop them for the professional IT people.

Back to a few comments that Evildave made concerning profit incentive. I would agree that some companies want to make as cheap a product as they can get away with, this is the old "how much sawdust can you put in the salami before the buyer rejects it" approach to business that is taught in just about every Business School and MBA program. Yes, it does work for awhile. Eventually, in the competitive market, along comes a guy with the brilliant idea that "hey, maybe salami shouldn't have any sawdust in it!". What a Brilliant Concept and he goes out and makes the NEW and Improved salami. Eventually, in software, if you do not give the customer what he or she wants, your program is going to die on the vine. Customers eventually ask "am I getting my mony's worth buying this program?".

Of course any company wants to be able to make the cheapest product it can. It must compete with the guy next door. A company must get its cost/unit down to as a low as possible because the company is in BUSINESS not CHARITY! The idea behind starting a business is to make money, but doing so by satisfying some kind of consumer demand--be that hamburgers, autos, or software.

Now we all might like to bitch about Microsoft, but it must be doing something right. While I think that Office has become a bloated office software suite, clearly a very, very large number of people and businesses have bought into it. Have they made a good business decision? Some have, some have not. Each business has to evaluate their information technologies. But one thing that has to be kept in mind is that the costs to large enterprises is not just the price of the original software program but most goes into bringing the various users throughout the enterprise in being able to use the software and maintain it. In reality, a the least cost item for corporate users is the initial purchase of the software: $600 to over $1000 for a software package is peanuts in comparison to putting on each and every computer, training the people to use it, and then maintaining it--this runs into 10 to 100 times that original purchase price. Now you can see what the open source community and Linux is up against, even if a company got the software free, implementation and maintainence are where the cost is.