Yes.
Iirc running Org 97 thru 6.1 (on Wine on Mint 14-15) there were a few artifacts -- maybe once every 15 minutes a border would render a pixel off, or something like that -- but no functional or data handling problems. Because it's so small, it'll also run ok under some iffy win32 emulators -- just for giggles I once got it running on my N900 phone. Let me know if you try it on Android.
It's funny to see comments praising OneNote as the best thing since sliced bread...
Don't get me wrong, I like OneNote, and use it at work. But in a moment of snark I dug up a copy of Lotus Organizer 6 (from 1999) and installed it on my Win8 work machine. Lo and behold, I can keep notes in a multi-tabbed interface. I can format them all kinds of ways, add pictures, embed doc and ppt files, share the org file with other users, and generally do anything OneNote can do. I can keep a full calendar, manage contacts, track tasks, and keep linked notes.
Everything old is new again, with Redmond's fresh coat of pastels and waaaaay too much whitespace in the UI. Then again, these products are sinkholes for data -- from the latest
Meanwhile in the real world, for just making notes and getting crap done quickly and effectively, the ubiquitous lab/moleskine/black notebook is the way to go.
The soon-to-be-ex-mayor of Seattle is pushing hard for bike lanes everywhere, but it's probably the single issue that will cause him to be thrown out of office.
Seattle'c cyclists have an overwhelming culture of disregard for traffic laws, disdain for pedestrians, and no respect for other vehicular traffic. For example, on one of the major arterials I commute through, fewer than 1 in 5 cyclists stop for ANY red light over the busiest 2-3 miles. If traffic is busy, around 1 in 4 will just ride on the sidewalk thru groups of pedestrians (which is illegal) without signaling (which is illegal) without following traffic OR pedestrian signals (which is illegal). No one knows what the green bike lanes mean to vehicle traffic (there's no clear law), and the "sharows" (chevrons + bike icon painted on the road) are intended to encourage lane sharing... but there's no public guidance or traffic law specific to them, and they've been plunked down all over the place with little planning (e.g. on narrow high-speed roads for which NO slow vehicle is appropriate) -- which leads to confusion from motor vehicles and even more reckless behavior by cyclists. And to compound the whole mess, cycling is very seasonal here (it rains some in Seattle, and the city is only slightly less hilly than SanFran)... so most lanes are very lightly used (zero to maybe a couple dozen riders a day) outside of summer months. It's funny how the mayor's cycling lobby is really loud about how many miles of bike lanes implemented (i.e. motor vehicle capacity reduced, and idling/pollution increased), but dead silent on usage metrics (which isn't a little low, it's a lot low... like an order of magnitude low WRT justifying removal of MV capacity).
I have a decent bike, and I ride. My adult-size kids commute to school by bike+bus. I *like* cycling. But ironically Seattle's inane and badly-planned bike-lane implementation, combined with the reckless/arrogant road behavior encouraged by the likes of the nutbag Cascade Bicycle Club*** has created such confusion and hostility on the road that I don't feel safe riding anymore.
(***Just because I ride does not mean that these arrogant idiots represent me. If you live around Seattle, think about that next time you see my kid riding home from school, after you've been stuck behind a Cascade-sponsored rolling roadblock. And think about your vote for Mayor, as you sit idling on Greenwood Ave, recently cut down to one single lane, in a 3-block backup
I did this last weekend for the first time. I'd resisted being that-obnoxious-dude-with-the-headphones-on-in-a-public-space but the experience was pure joy. I walked in, and you know what? No audible adverts. I could read my shopping list and get thru it in half the time. No impulse buys. And one other curious thing -- when I took the earbuds out at the cashier line (if they make me self-checkout, i'll just buy from amazon), I noticed that the music is truncated to maximize advert time. 30sec of a song... 15sec announcement.... 45sec song.... 15sec advert.... 30sec song....
Yeah. Headphones back in.
Thinkgeek has a totally geeky side-holster that has potential. http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/c616/ It's about as subtle as a black toolbelt can be, but it's not as bad looking as a fanny pack, it fits common devices, and it's relatively ergonomic (moves with you and doesn't bounce around). It also has the advanatage of NOT looking like a shoulder holster under a jacket and getting you shot by a mall cop when you have the urge for Angry Birds. The downside is Thinkgeek's sizing for the holster is complete nonsense; it says it fits up to a 43in waist, but fully extended it just barely fits my kid with a 32in waist. And I STILL had to buy extra nylon webbing and clips to make an extension to get the thigh strap to work (so your iplop or phablet don't go flying out). So if you're no bigger than a US men's medium, this is a pretty nice option.
YMMV.
“there are two things that would make Linux much more attractive. First, a Linux equivalent to InstallShield, one which detects and installs dependencies, allows configuration customizations, shows you what it's going to do, asks your approval, and then lets you know what it's doing as proceeding and gives you usable error messages. “
Done. And fully mature for many years. One of the nice contributions Ubuntu made was to take the
BTW, this is the same magic that lets me take a bootable USB drive with Mint, and run the entire install process (full OS, office suite, internet, graphics, media+codecs, etc) from bare metal to fully installed in under 6 minutes, and then to bring the whole system fully up to date over a typical home cable connection in another 8-10. The install process is astonishingly dependable, and literally 10-20x faster than Win8. With a modern Debian-based distro, the entire operating system is one big “InstallShield.”
“The second would be a file manager which gives a new user 1) some idea where is an appropriate location to save user files, and 2) some system that shows users what is an executable file, a config file, a library, etc. as easily as a user can tell from the Windows file extensions.”
Done. Also a long time ago. Grab a live iso image from mint’s website, and boot from that image on a USB stick. Documents, music, videos, pictures, downloads are immediately visible in a simple file manager, organized in a simple folder by username. Of course, you can change the file explorer view to “/home/joebob/Documents” instead of “Home>Documents” but the default is the simple view. It’s far simpler than the alias/link mess that is Windows’ “Explorer>Desktop>Libraries>Documents>MyDocuments” and “Explorer>JoeBob>MyDocuments” and “Explorer>Computer>C:\>Users>JoeBob>MyDocuments” all pointing to the same place while visible at the same time (augh!). It is *far* simpler and more usable than Windows 7 or 8.
“The idea of repositories is nice, but having to figure out what to do with the tarball, rpm, whathaveyou, file, wandering about”
You haven’t had to do any of this for years, or someone gave you ancient distributions to try out. Here’s the deal: The point of a Debian repository is to avoid all the “wandering” and automate the entire process you describe. A typical usage scenario is this: You click on “Software Catalog” or “Synaptic” in the start menu. You browse to the “Graphics” software category and click on “GIMP” (Or type “Photoshop” in the search bar, and it links to GIMP with a short blurb about it’s comparison to Photoshop.) When you click “Install” the Synaptic program on your computer looks up the program on its list of online code-signed repositories, finds an up-to-date precompiled version of the software, checks compatibility, downloads it, autoselects and downloads dependent “dll” libraries, places all the files in standard directories, and adds the appropriate menu item on the start menu. And you’re done. You can click the icon on the menu, and run your program.
Now if you’re a hardcore masochist, you CAN manually browse a repository as if it were a web directory, download code, muck about endlessly, and end up with a mess, but you have to work hard to make that mess.
In this regard, I’m much like you. I use Mint because it just works, and I don’t have time to mess around with weird unsigned drivers from vendors that have compatibility issues with various versions of windows The thing that tipped it over for me about 5 years ago was dealing with a document scanner. After many hours of hassle with Windows drivers to a modern supposedly-twain-compliant scanner, I tried it on Ubuntu (now Mint), and was amazed to have a Matrix-like “there is no spoon” moment. I plugged the USB cable in and it just worked. Seriously, it was a no-click install. SimpleScan and SANE and everything else said “oh, you have scanner available now, what would you like to do” Give it a try.
To the systems programmer, users and applications serve only to provide a test load.
