Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

John,

Why should the average user have to learn how to "compile and run" on Ubuntu"? Who ever heard of anyone but developers "compiling" on Windows? The average user doesn't even have to know what it means, let alone how to find the proper compiler and learn how to use it.

In my office I use MS Office 2000 and my associate uses Open Office, which I had already tested and rejected for a major client. Why? You say "Open Office... can deal with all the file formats which MS Office produces". By "deal with", you must mean MANGLE. Yes it might even be able to display a few very basic documents "closely" to the way it would appear in MS Office, but try printing or editing and saving the document and "Watch out Nelly!". We have spent several times the cost of getting him an MS Office license, just in the wasted time reformatting shared documents over and over.

Bulleted and numbered paragraphs have their bullets and numbers replaced by Zapf Dingbats, Wingdings and and other weird symbols, and the rest of the formatting all goes to hell.

As much as I despise a monopoly, I'm forced to admit that MS Office is the standard and NOTHING is as compatible with it as necessary for problem free sharing of files with MS Office.

Wine should be spelled whine, because that's what it causes the user to do. It's slow. The compatibility is FAR from 100% and it only adds one more unnecessary layer of complexity (read: bugs, conflicts & problems). If you want/need to run Windows programs, simply run them on Windows, that's all. They aren't designed for Wine.

You just illustrated another of Linux' reasons for failing to overtake Windows already, the multiple, confusing and incompatible flavors.

You also completely twisted the "basics" comment. Robin was referring to the apps, not the OS. I fully agree with the statement you made "Linux is more powerful, more scalable, more secure and fathoms more stable than Windows." But you missed the point. You can't run PhotoShop or other complex (not basic) apps on Linux because of the extent to which it is dependent upon the Windows architecture. There are 10s, if not 100s, of thousands of Windows applications for which there is no equivalent on Linux or the effort to match the Windows app on Linux simply isn't worth it. By "basic" I clearly understand that Robin was referring to functions, such as web browsing and email.

However, you can't possibly claim that Linux is more friendly, popular or useful to the novice user than any recent version of Windows. These users will accept an occasional reboot, long before they try to tackle a compile.

Kudos on your 453 day uptime, but for the average user, it's irrelevant.