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Ximian

Ximian to Bundle StarOffice 6.0 210

Posted by timothy from the like-bamboo dept.
rainmanjag writes "A Ximian press release is reporting that Ximian will be bundling StarOffice 6.0 for Linux with the packaged version of Ximian Desktop Professional, Red Carpet Express, and Red Carpet CorporateConnect." This means that both Ximian and Mandrakesoft are offering comprehensive software bundles which happen to include StarOffice 6.0, a package which would otherwise cost more by itself than either of the bundles.
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Ximian to Bundle StarOffice 6.0 More

Ximian to Bundle StarOffice 6.0

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  • ... but open office works just fine... personally i use mandrake 8.2 with open office and it works great
    • StarOffice includes templates, fonts and clipart that OOo doesn't.

      ....sooo....you just take the template fonts and clipart from your StarOffice 6.0 beta (which was free for all takers) and put them into your OpenOffice 1.0 setup. :)

      Seriously, someone ought to put together an Open Sourced set of templates, fonts, clipart, etc. And no I did NOT just volunteer! Stop looking at me like that! :P

      • Indeed, templates and clipart are really what most people are looking for. There are a jillion office suites on the market, but the ones that sell best are the ones with the most comprehensive collections of templates. Countless times I've heard that people prefer Microsoft Works to Office, because of the templates. Publisher has always been a big seller too. People don't want design flexibility. They want the computer to design their documents for them.
  • Red Carpet Express, and Red Carpet CorporateConnect

    How about Red Carpet Muncher? Sorry, just had to say that, people keep calling me "Carpet muncher" in GTA3, and you know what? I am! :-)

  • Is Star Office that much better than open office.org? Or is it just the name/image thing?

    • Re:Diffrence (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Differences are listed here [openoffice.org]

    • Re:Diffrence (Score:3, Informative)

      by Tony-A ( 29931 )
      Is Star Office that much better than open office.org? Or is it just the name/image thing?
      Better, maybe. But that's not the fundamental difference. If there's a problem with Star Office, it's Sun's problem. If there's a problem with Open Office, it's the user's problem. This doesn't mean that Sun can or will fix any problems faster than Open Office. It's just where the ultimate responsibility lies. If I'm a PHB, I will buy Star Office. If I'm a crafty PHB, I will buy Star Office, download Open Office, and use whatever seems to work best.

    • Re:Diffrence (Score:5, Informative)

      by SteelX ( 32194 ) on Sunday May 26, 2002 @03:36AM (#3586377)
      Ah, the eternal question about StarOffice/OpenOffice.org differences. According to OpenOffice.org's FAQ [openoffice.org], the differences are as follows:

      The source code available at OpenOffice.org does not consist of all of the StarOffice code. Usually, the reason for this is that Sun pays to license third party code to include in StarOffice that which it does not have permission to make available in OpenOffice.org. Those things which are or will be present in StarOffice but are not available on OpenOffice.org include:
      • Certain fonts (including, especially, Asian language fonts)
      • The database component (Adabas D)
      • Some templates
      • Extensive Clip Art Gallery
      • Some sorting functionality (Asian versions)
      • Certain file filters

      In addition, Sun also has a FAQ [sun.com] that says:

      StarOffice 6.0 softwre is a commercial product aimed at organizations and consumers while OpenOffice.org 1.0 is aimed at users of free software, independent developers and the open source community. StarOffice includes licensed-in, third-party technology such as:
      • Spellchecker and thesaurus
      • Database component (Software AG Adabas D).
      • Select fonts including Windows metrically equivalent fonts and Asian language fonts
      • Select filters, including WordPerfect filters and Asian word processor filters
      • Integration of additional templates and extensive clipart gallery

      In addition to product differences, StarOffice offers:
      • Updates/upgrades on CD
      • Sun installation and user documentation
      • 24x7 Web based support for enterprises and consumers
      • Help desk support
      • Warranties and indemnification guarantee
      • Training
      • Professional services for migration and deployment


      Hope it helps!

  • What's Ximian? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    rpm -q -a | grep ximian

    on a default Red Hat installation returns nothing. So whatever Ximian is, it looks like some knowledgeable people think it's useless.

    • Re:What's Ximian? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Alan Cox ( 27532 )
      Poor little troll.

      Red Hat ship a whole ton of Ximian code. Some of it like Evolution in 7.3 is really rather good too.
      • Sorry Alan, but he is right, I know Evolution is in 7.3 (OT: I use it and think it is great), but his example does produce no results.
      • Ok this is actually off topic but... who the hell mods ALAN COX as anything but +5 ??? I mean.... oh nevermind.
    • Well, if you haven't heard about Ximian, you can't be much of a judge. Redhat doesn't do everything right, but Ximian isn't much good. Redhat should package their own gnome, and Ximian is more of a cutting edge, easy to use system. Redhat wants stable, slow and old (no offence).
      • dude!!!?

        What planet are u from go check oput the list of ximiam coderes 1/2 of them work at Red Hat and the gnome that come with Red hat is just a tweaked version of Ximian wich is just pre packeged and marketed GNOME. Its free software remember, All these guys have to have jobs somewhere a.k.a... Red hat Ximian, Sun , etc etc. They all contribute to GNOME.org. Then theay aklll tweak it how they want.

        You really got to take a closer look at how this shit works Buddy.

  • On a related note... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Platinum Dragon ( 34829 ) on Saturday May 25, 2002 @10:21PM (#3585785) Journal
    OpenOffice 1.0 is available through Red Carpet.
  • I think it would be a good idea that this version of Ximian contains non-free software, much like Debian letting you force no non-free stuff.

    Many Linux newbies get into the "sport" for various political reasons, and through buying Ximian, they are no longer using a "pure" open-source desktop.

    Buyer beware.

    • Buyer beware (Score:3, Insightful)

      by mgkimsal2 ( 200677 )
      Beware that if you want to be productive in an 'office suite' sense (exchanging documents with others, etc), not in a 'I write C code all day' sense, you might need to offend some GPL/FSF zealot's idea of how you should operate your computer.
      • Yeah, I'm not saying that it's right for everyone...
        Heck, I'm typing this message on OS X.
        • I wasn't suggesting that you were in particular, but I've known a couple debian people who've gone off on that 'only free stuff' mindset. One debian guy (wasn't *quite* that stringent) works in my office. It took awhile in the 'real world' of computer use (something more than C development) for him to realize that you simply can't survive like that. He's using an XP laptop now. :)

          I realized after I sent the last one that it may have looked like I accused you of saying something you weren't saying. Sorry.

      • Re:Buyer beware (Score:4, Insightful)

        by _Sprocket_ ( 42527 ) on Sunday May 26, 2002 @01:40AM (#3586183)


        ...you might need to offend some GPL/FSF zealot's idea of how you should operate your computer.

        Its a good point. In today's environment, one often has to make trade offs with what technology works the best. However, the concern for Freedom shouldn't be only the concern of zealots.


        The IT industry is full of examples; proprietary, closed technology best bennifits the producers of that technology. And sometimes that bennifit comes at the expense of their customers - those who are using / implementing that technology. Which... oddly enough... affects the cost of that infrastructure.


        Freedom is not simply about cost. It is about end users and businesses being able to choose solutions that best fit their needs. And the ability to change and shift that infrastructure as needed. This task is only complicated when a vendor's business-plan-driven incompatability has to be accounted for.


        It is still pretty common to find that one's infrastructure will consist of Free and proprietary solutions. But it is still a very good idea to be aware of which are which and what limitations are involved with each.

  • List of differences between OO and SO (Score:4, Informative)

    by mgkimsal2 ( 200677 ) on Saturday May 25, 2002 @10:35PM (#3585811) Homepage
    This seems to happen everytime there's a story about openoffice.org or staroffice. Here's a list of the major points:

    1. StarOffice 6 is released and costs $75.95/seat.
    2. StarOffice 6 and OpenOffice.org are built from the same codebase
    3. StarOffice 6 includes niceties and extras that OpenOffice.org doesn't include (many templates, nice clipart, a manual, and a database component)

    If you need to do basic stuff, OpenOffice.org will be just fine. If you want to a database tool to go along with your office suite, you'd need StarOffice 6.
    • Anyone have any experience with the database components?

      (This is the first I've heard of the database part...)

      That part, if it's done well, would be worth the money to me - my office has people using Access databases that I would love to convert over to to StarOffice (connected to MySQL or Postgres) if I could.

      Also, if I 'upgrade' people to StarOffice, how tough/legal is it to sell off the MS Office licenses? Assuming we have a bunch of individually-purchased copies...)

      Cheers,
      Jim in Tokyo
      • Go read your license. A lot of commercial software has a clause in the license that says it's illegal to resell the software+license to someone else without written consent. I wouldn't be surprised if Office was that way. The license itself should say.
      • Well, if you're in Tokyo, you just take the software you want to sell and put it in a big man purse (assuming they still use those there). Then you walk along the street or down a shoten and jump in front of businessmen and say, "katte kure! This is a pen!", and they will buy your software. Just keep doing this until you've unloaded it all.
      • My understanding is that it's a completely separate database system included - and the name escapes me. It was/is a licensed product, which is part of the reason why it's not 'open' like the rest of the suite. I'm not sure how easy it would be to connect it to use an external database instead of the internal one. I suspect not easy at all, otherwise that may have been an OpenOffice.org project as well.
  • I don't know if any of you guys have the same problem, but I can't seem to copy and paste text (or any objects for that matter) between everything else on the Gnome/KDE desktop and SO/OO. This becomes a pain when trying to C/P URLS and other information to list documentation sources. Hopefully this union between Ximian and SO will clear that up.
    • Yeah I used to get this in SO 6.0 beta, but mine seems to work now with OOo 1.0. Not sure why though. I use KDE. If I find the reason I'll let you know.
    • this is the achilles heel of the whole "linux on the desktop" idea. The most basic operations just don't always work. Cut and paste between apps doesn't always work, printing doesn't always work, fonts don't always work, or totally suck if they do, etc. I can't switch my girlfriend over to a linux desktop because she would hit all of these obstacles within the first 30 seconds of use.

      Sure, if you susbscribe to only one Ideology (kde/gnome) you can get past some of this, but then you can't use the best app for the job. What if you want to use Mozilla and Evolution and Koffice?

      Choice is great, freedom is great, Linux is great, but I'd rather pay for commercialware and get those "little things."
  • <rant>

    Star Office and OOo are bloatware. So is M$ Office for that matter.

    Why do I need everything all combined into one massive tool?

    Why do people complain when I email them a doc I type in emacs text mode?

    I understand the need to create professional documents, but I would fathom a guess that 99% of what word-like apps are used for are the wrong things. An email "memo" doesn't need to be an attached word doc.

    That being said, when SO or OOo can read Word docs consistently, then there will be something to report. But that won't happen because M$ keeps changing their formats.

    This whole office "suite" thing is one massive mistake on everyones part.

    Make small, fast apps that do just what they are supposed to do. Sheesh...

    </rant>
    • That being said, when SO or OOo can read Word docs consistently, then there will be something to report. But that won't happen because M$ keeps changing their formats.

      SO and OOo *can* read Word documents from Office 97, 2000 and XP fiarly consistently and reliably.

      I routinely pull in Word documents that have tables and other 'advanced' formatting features.

      Yes, there are few glitches now and then with certain 'advanced' formatting features. But most of the Word documents I get at the office don't use these features.

      99% of the people who complain about SO/OOo and Word documents are complaining because they have the wrong fonts installed! It might seem like the Times font you used in OOo on your Linux desktop is the same as the Times New Roman font in Windows 9x/NT/2000/XP. Let me assure you, as someone who has done professional graphic design work, it is not. Subtle differences in the sizes, shapes, and kerning tables of the fonts cause things to wrap weird and text to fall into the wrong places, especially when you have columns, tables, or text wrapped around a picture.

      With the right fonts installed, 99.5% of all Word documents will look just fine in OOo. It's that .5% that you need to fix now and then that cause frustration though... :)

      • 99% of the people who complain about SO/OOo and Word documents are complaining because they have the wrong fonts installed!

        I must be in that 1%, then.

        I complain about SO/OO, Abiword, and every other OSS word processor because, quite simply, the spell checking sucks. I rely on it to catch a whole bunch of common spelling errors--and when writing very long documents, they come up.

        I tried one of them recently (I think it was Open Office) and it opened the file just fine. But when I turned on "spell check on the fly", the darn thing drew a squiggly line under every ellipss (sp--it's late) and em-dash that I had. Show me a way to fix those (without coding) in a Win32 OOS word processor, and I'll switch and encourage everyone around me to switch.

      • 99% of the people who complain about SO/OOo and Word documents are complaining because they have the wrong fonts installed!

        Though the fonts may differ, that typically isn't the root of the problem. The real problem is that people don't know how to use word processors!.

        WYSIWYG does not mean that you can ignore the tools that you are using. A document should never have more than 2 adjacent spaces; people should learn the difference between hard- and soft-returns (paragraph breaks vs. line breaks); etc.

        This is the same problem as we see on the Web. HTML "developers" are fighting the system trying to force a particular look to their pages.

        Let the viewer/browser/client do the layout!
        So what if a document repaginates differently in one word processor over another? The document will look good given any font (though radically different sizes may look awkward). If the document is formatted properly, it will Just Work.

        If you care about exact layout, then a word processor is the wrong tool . That's what page layout programs are for.

    • TESTIFY! I have the same problem when I try to send people email written in binary. God, what do people need with all these fancy charachters. 0 and 1 are where it all begin the other 99% of letters are just bloated versions of these....

      Honesty I see your point, but emacs isn't exactly the smallest program in the world either.
    • I understand the need to create professional documents, but I would fathom a guess that 99% of what word-like apps are used for are the wrong things. An email "memo" doesn't need to be an attached word doc.

      As far as professionalism goes, "Office" apps are terrible. For truly crisp results, I can recomment non other than the [supposedly] archaic vi + LaTeX + dvipdf. PDF is so widely supported and accepted that everyone [unless you've been living under a rock] knows how to read them. In addition, the use of LaTeX ensures that your formatting is of high-readability, as apposed to 'fasionable'.


      I for one will not be moving to such Office packages.

      • Re:Um, who cares? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by RevAaron ( 125240 )
        I don't plan on it either. I use LaTeX and I dig it. But that doesn't solve the same problem as these Office suites do. Sure, everyone can read and print a PDF, but what about edit it, and send a revised version back to you? LaTeX savy people can work from your source document, yes, but most normal Office-users wouldn't have the slightest clue what to do with a LaTeX file.

        I have Office v.X installed, because there are times when I need to do just this. You'd be surprised, even among CS profs, how few people know LaTeX enough to feel comfy editing your drafts written in it.

        Also, there's no way to do something like a spreadsheet with LaTeX. However, in lambdaTeX or Scribe (in Scheme) something like this could be done, and for that reason, I plan on moving to Scribe eventually (over LaTeX). It can generate PDF, HTML and PS just like LaTeX, but has a more familiar (s-exp) syntax, and has a much more powerful language behind it, for doing calculations within your document. That said, I'd also welcome a LaTeX preprocessor that could do something similar... For instance:

        \begin{worksheet}{c|c|c|c}
        \hline
        Name & Beer Drunk & Milk Drunk & Total Liquids \\
        Me & 10 L & 12 L & \add{\cell{B2},
        \cell{C2}} \\
        You & 14 L & 2 L & \add{\cell{B3},
        \cell{C3}} \\
        \end{worksheet}

        and so on... ugly as hell in LaTeX, but in something Lisplike, it could be a lot nicer-

        (worksheet "c|c|c|c"
        (hline)
        Name & Beer Drunk & Milk Drunk & Total Liquids \\
        Me & 10 L & 12 L & (+ B2 C2) \\
        You & 14 L & 2 L & (+ B3 C3) \\
        )

        Man, that'd rule.
        • and so on... ugly as hell in LaTeX, but in something Lisplike, it could be a lot nicer-

          Looks like you found yourself a new project ;)

          I agree with what you mentioned in your reply. I should have qualified my area of intention down to things like "Report/Letter/manual production for the purpose of being read-only" (as apposed to ssheets, db's etc).

          It's an unfortunate thing though that people have "forgotten" about the high-quality output tools which already exist within their distributions. Even worse still that in general people are losing the skills to use them. Speaking of which, I believe that LyX 1.2.x is now out, so there's a good compromise.


          Now, if only they'd make a thought-to-file converter :P

          • > Looks like you found yourself a new project ;)

            Actually, it's something I've wanted to work on for a while. I was going to write it in and for Squeak- one of the last tools I need before I can dump primitive systems like Mac OS X and Unix/X11. Like I said, Scribe [inria.fr] can do this, to an extent. I don't know if there's a way to refer to cells within a table though, but it could definitely be added without pulling teeth.

            Yeah, read-only, no prob. But there are times when I'll just use Word because I have to pass it around. Sucks, but what can you do?

            Never used LyX. TeXShop or Emacs was always good enough for me, for what I do, which is pretty simple, mostly tables, \em \bf- very little math.

            I'll wish for a thought-to-MIDI converter while we're at it! :P
      • I for one will not be moving to such Office packages.

        You must not be a manager. Only a manager would find the Incredible Productivity Improvements! you get from buying a suite. Embed a spreadsheet in your presentation! Put a presentation in your spreadsheet! Or stuff a flight simulator in there somewhere....

    • This whole office "suite" thing is one massive mistake on everyones part.

      Dude, you are forgetting the totally awesome synergy you get when you work in a suite. When you're creating text files, you want to bust loose spreadsheeting and creating presentations, and maybe create a database of your activities! Only a suite lets you fulfil such a momentous destiny.

    • Claiming OpenOffice is bloated while EMACS is not is the ultimate irony.


      If you want a decent, compact editor you should try something like Jed - an EMACS clone but about 1/10th the size.

      • Not really.

        I've got emacs running on my Zaurus with 32mb of memory. I'd like to see SO do that.

        The point is that while emacs is configurable (take what you want), these "suites" are basically not.
        • I presume that someone with the inclination and the source code could build a smaller version if they wanted. It is just no one has bothered. Perhaps it could be you who tries?


          As for EMACS, I've used it in the past, but to me it is the epitome of over-engineered bloat. If you just want to edit stuff you're better off going for something like Jed or MicroEMACS that do the same in a fraction of the space.

  • Koffice (Score:5, Informative)

    by DeadBugs ( 546475 ) on Saturday May 25, 2002 @11:07PM (#3585875) Homepage
    Am I the only one who likes KOffice [koffice.org]?
    Try it if you don't want to shell out money for Staroffice or want a great alternative to Openoffice. I have been using it for about a year and although still limited compared to MS Office I like it alot. Here's what it comes with:

    KWord - A frame-based word processor

    KSpread - spreadsheet application.

    KPresenter - full-featured presentation program.

    Kivio - Visio®-style flowcharting application.

    Kontour - vector drawing application.

    Krita - raster-based image manipulation program

    Kugar - tool for generating business quality reports.

    Kchart - ntegrated graph and chart drawing tool. Sorry I am also one of those who thinks "screw diversity". Linux should rally behind a few key projects, instead of several projects trying to re-invent the wheel

    • No you aren't the only one. I like it too. Still lacking some features, but getting there quickly. I'd like to see the inclusion of a safe perl based scripting language which would be able to script all functions of the koffice sweet, but use crypto signing, and other security features to make sure that virii and the like are impossible. Like it wouldn't be able to access files that aren't koffice docs, and would prompt you before doing certain things.

      I think the team need some more programmers to help them, so if please help them.

    • Re:Koffice (Score:3, Informative)

      by bcrowell ( 177657 )
      Well, the good news is that KOffice includes some stuff, like Kontour, that isn't available in open-source form anywhere else. The bad news is that the KOffice developers are spread way too thin. For instance, their link to the Kontour documentation is broken, and an e-mail asking where it had gotten to resulted in no response. I'm not trying to put them down, but they just don't seem to have enough people to keep everything going. Another example: at the address where they used to have KSpell, I recently found a porn site instead. This time I happened to know the developer, and how to get in touch with him. Again, it's not an issue of blame -- he's a great guy -- but it just shows that they might have bitten off more than they can chew. And then there's the issue of the Qt licensing. I hate to dig out this hoary old chestnut, but it really is a problem. I'm not trying to be ideologically purer than anyone else, but it's just not free software.

      • Re:Koffice (Score:4, Informative)

        by 1010011010 ( 53039 ) on Saturday May 25, 2002 @11:43PM (#3585944) Homepage
        Not available anywhere else?

        How about SodiPodi [sourceforge.net]?
        • Looks good, if a bit dated. The last release was in September???
        • I think it's also worth mentioning sketch [sf.net]. It's not gnome or kde specific, but I've found it superior to both sodipodi and kontour. It does gradients correctly unlike sodipodi and allows creating individual line segments instead of "auto-lines" where they create a bunch of segments for you. Plus it runs with fairly low requirements, under python and pygtk.
      • And then there's the issue of the Qt licensing. I hate to dig out this hoary old chestnut, but it really is a problem. I'm not trying to be ideologically purer than anyone else, but it's just not free software.


        Put that hairy old chestnut back in your pocket, and read this:

        [trolltech.com]
        http://www.trolltech.com/developer/download/qt-x 11 . tml

        • Right, but isn't it only the Linux version that's GPL'd? As far as I understand, the Mac and Windows versions are still $1000 licenses.
          • Last I remember, gtk and motif don't even really run on Windows, so these alternative platforms aren't even part of the discussion. If we're going to do a fair comparison, Qt/X11 and gtk are both Free software. Just because Trolltech has a neato proprietary Windows port does not affect the "Free"-ness of Qt/X11.

            Anyhow, all of this is moot anyway since KOffice is for unix/X11, not Windows or Mac.

            • Re:Koffice (Score:2, Informative)

              by Brad Moore ( 11260 )
              /me switches from gimp-for-windows to respond. Yes, gtk+ runs on Windows. That's one of the great things about having a portability library (glib) underneath.

              Peace.

    • Re:Koffice (Score:4, Insightful)

      by SwellJoe ( 100612 ) on Saturday May 25, 2002 @11:39PM (#3585936) Homepage
      Yep, I love KOffice. I don't even use KDE on my desktop, but KWord is simply the bee's knees. I am wholly addicted to the frame-based word processor concept, and now feel lost without it. Whenever I use AbiWord (which is also very nice these days) I feel kind of disoriented without frames and the overall 'feel' of KWord. I have never used a frame-based WP in the past, and so it certainly isn't just "what I'm used to"...I really think it is a better model than the Word/WordPerfect/StarOffice/everybody else except Adobe word processor.

      Anyway, I agree. KOffice is highly underappreciated, and very competent in quite a few areas. It is still flaky in a lot more places than I like, but I do all of my labels, invoices, PDF brochures, and a lot of other stuff in KWord, and it really produces lovely output.

      StarOffice is neat too, but I'm done with the Microsoft Office style of doing things...I just feel sluggish and confused when using those apps, and the popup light-bulb doesn't improve things.

    • So, this is a simple question:

      Why do the menus in KDE/QT apps work so much more quickly than menus in Gnome/GTK apps? Is it a virtual function vs event queue thing? Or what?

      • Re:Koffice (Score:2, Interesting)

        by kerfax ( 463983 )
        Wow
        I find it the opposite. Gnome/gtk is much faster on all my systems then KDS/QT my slowest system is AMD 166 w/128 meg ram. KDE is so slow that its not even worth installing on that box. GNOME how ever is no slower that when I have Winblows 95 on it. My fastest Box is an AMD 550 with 294 Megs and the same as KDE works Fine on it GNOME is still faster.

        Weird
    • Last time I tried KOffice (1.1.1 under KDE 2.2.2) it left some stability to be desired -- I found several ways to crash it.

      However, I hear 1.2 (2.0?) will be MUCH better, so I'm looking forward to trying it w/KDE 3.

      Does KOffice scripting work now? Like, can you write a perl or python script to access spreadsheets, etc? I hear that was the goal but don't know the status. Thanks!

      • Re:Koffice (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        yup, koffice 1.2 is fully scriptable with dcop... which you acn use from the command line (shell scripts), perl, python, ruby, or anything else that has dcopbindings (very, very, very easy to create, a few lines).
    • It has never worked for me. Tables don't format right and they jump all over the page. It also crashed a few times. Printing only printed about 3 words on the page max and got the margins and fonts wrong. And yes I had the printer configured right. I tried to just print to a postscript file and I got the same results.
    • My first experience with KOffice hasn't been great. I tried opening a fairly simple Powerpoint presentation in KPresenter.

      The program just disappeared. Poof you're done!

      A similar crash happened bringing in a Word document to KWord.

      I like the look and feel of the KOffice apps, but I hope that they can improve the MS Office compatability.
    • I've tried koffice every now and again (most recently the version that comes with kde3) and while it looks like it has potential but it just isn't stable. I have never been able to create a document of any reasonable size with kword/kspread/kpresenter because it crashes... every time. The import/export filters are also poor compared to openoffice, and surely i'm not the only one who expects tab to take you to the next column in a table (rather than to a one of the tab stops in the middle of the current table cell).

      I really wanted to like koffice, but without stability it's useless. If i i want light and fast i now use abiword and gnumeric, if i need something abiword can't yet do i use openoffice.
    • The problem is not the availibity of compareable packages, the problem is the quality with which it interfaces with MS Office environments.

      My entire company uses MS Office, and I have severe trouble with KOffice, SOffice and OOffice, and have tried without success to use them in this environment. On their own they function well (barring the hourly crash) but open a word doc with an excel spreadsheet imbedded, and boom. Also try and have KMail interface with a Exchange server? Not possible. Ximian have got this working, and SOffice is better than OOffice. Thus this could mean a better winning combination... until then I'll have to stick with Microsoft Office - which in my opinion is worth the money I paid for it. (This same sentiment does not nessesarily apply to the MS OS, of course...)

      If it was up to me, and I was the Dread Pirate Robberts, I would use KOffice and screw the rest!

      ;)

      Me.

  • As long as they don't make it dependent on Gecko, so it becomes part of the Gnome/Gecko/Galeon/Mozilla/Evolution/Nautilus vortex of doom. (Anyone who has tried to "upgrade" any of these programs likely understands).

    I'm actually quite impressed with OpenOffice, given that it is probably at least twice as complex as Evolution, and it installs almost flawlessly. My guess is that StarOffice is at least as reliable as OpenOffice, or at least it should be.

    The dependency tree for Evolution, OTOH is enough to make a brave man weep.

    OAF BONOBO HOPELESSLY COMPLICATED EMBEDDED COMPONENT REFLECTION OBJECT INSTANTIATION REFERENCING BINARY FUNCTION ERROR!!! E-MAIL AND ADDRESS BOOK DISABLED! FIVE HOURS OF TEETH-GNASHING AND GARMENT-RENDING UPGRADING AWAITS!! PRODUCTIVITY FORFEITED FOR THE DAY AND MOST OF TOMORROW!!!

    Would you like to add a new appointment?

    Ever notice that if a slight breeze ruffles Evolution, the first to go is e-mail and the address book?

    sigh...

    :end rant:
    • Evolution is very stable for me and doesn't depend on Gecko in any case.

      It's certainly true that getting Mozilla, Galeon and Nautilus' web view to all work at the same time hasn't always been the easiest thing if your compiling it yourself, that's one of the reasons that using Ximian is so pleasurable. Everything just works because someone who knows what they are doing has done the hard bits for you.
  • There's already a subscription available for Star Office, and functional packages, it integrates nicely, and I downloaded it today when I went to work. Adds an icon and everything. I'm almost afraid linux will become easy... but then galeon stopped working so no worries, apparently teh mozilla-libs update thrashed everything :) so off I go to fix that
  • As long as Open Office is fairly well maintained, I think that Star Office doesn't stand much of a chance. I rather doubt that Star Office will get any *must have* features that would set it apart from other office suites.
    • As long as Open Office is fairly well maintained, I think that Star Office doesn't stand much of a chance. I rather doubt that Star Office will get any *must have* features that would set it apart from other office suites.
      I agree with you in that StarOffice 6.0 won't have any "must have" features over OpenOffice. But I don't think OpenOffice will "win" just because of this. Actually, I don't think features will be a deciding factor at all. Brand name recognition, however, will be. Because many people - including me - likes products that comes from vendors they know.

      One example: I've been following the Mozilla project for a long time, and has downloaded and used both nigtly and milestone builds. I've even reported bugs, and done all a non-programming user can do. But for reason I don't quite understand myself, I never made Mozilla my main browser.

      But last week Netscape repackaged Mozilla 1.0 RC 1 and released it with some extras as Netscape 7.0 PR 1. Something strange happened: Because of the name (Netscape) and the feeling that Mozilla finally had gotten the "approved" stamp, I downloaded and use Netscape 7.0 PR 1 daily - and as my main browser.

      My father never trusted Mozilla at all - he doesn't relly understand what it is. But Netscape he knows, and he like Netscape products. So now he has also made the switch to Netscape 7.0 (from Netscape 4.7!).

      Maybe the same'll apply to OpenOffice as well: Not many people knows OpenOffice.org or what it is. But more people have heard about Sun and will trust a product from them.

  • I just deleted the StarOffice 6 beta from my system. It doesn't work now anyway, and it was taking up lots of space. I don't get the feeling either OpenOffice or another version of StarOffice will be replacing it, either.

  • Bloatware (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Lucky_Pierre ( 175635 )
    Use Gobe Productive 3 for Linux. It's not bloatware and it kicks SO's fat ass!

    http://www.gobe.com/downloads/gobe_linux_x86_ins ta ll.tgz

  • Dump all "Office" software packages (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I don't know about the rest of you guys, but somewhere around 1992 I made an incredible leap of faith and decided HTML would be my default file format.

    I would abandoned Microsoft Word, which had been my defacto favorite wordprocessor for ages, as well as PLAIN TEXT FORMAT. I converted all my text files to HTML.

    This was an incredible foresight, and has served me very well. Every wordprocessing document I create I use Netscape Composer, which has continued to evolve all the way up to 4.79... and I can rest easy knowning, no matter what, HTML will be a standard forever, and every document I create is already WEB READY.

    That the rest of you guys are still f***ing around with such crappy Office Suites... is mindboggling....

    The number of web documents and websites I personally have now is 50 to 100 times larger than anyone else I know.... my thoughts go instantly to the web about as fast as any blogger...

    (Note that I said Netscape Composer, and not Mozilla... which I personal feel is a piece of bloated slow s**t... open source or not... try running it on a P200 and you'll see what I mean, its unusable)

    Dump propreitary formats, standardize on something even bigger and widespread. Just recently I had to convert MacPaint files to JPEGs. Back in the day, I thought MacPaint would be around forever. Guess what. Its not. Not even supported in the GIMP. Neighter is PICT. So what do you think are the chances of being able to read a .WORD file 20 years from now????
    • (Note that I said Netscape Composer, and not Mozilla... which I personal feel is a piece of bloated slow s**t... open source or not... try running it on a P200 and you'll see what I mean, its unusable)

      ANY full-featured modern browser is slow on a P200.

      Just don't run software on your P200 that wasn't intended for it. I bet WinXP will run slow on your P200, but that doesn't mean it's bad software. Oh wait, bad example :-)

      If you're going windows on a P200 i would recommend win98lite (with all the desktop enhancements turned off) and netscape 4.7x or IE 5.
    • Dump propreitary formats, standardize on something even bigger and widespread.
      What should that standard be that NN4-created "HTML" documents adhere to? I hope you don't talk about HTML, try feeding one of your documents to a HTML validator [w3.org].
  • I've noticed a significant amount of instability in Ximian's GNOME packages, after using them for over a year or so.
    Ximian's Abiword I could never get barely to work and since it's a lightweight wordprocessor replacement to soffice, it's a shame. So what did I do? I used Red Carpet, like Ximian says, to uninstall ximian packages to remove the Ximian desktop and what happened? It rendered my box useless, had to reinstall. I was a subscriber to Red Carpet Express as well. Until Ximian opts for a little more stability, I'll stick with Red Hat's GNOME packages. It seems GNOME that comes with Red Hat 7.3 is pretty up to date and nicely done.

    For anyone who wants to uninstall ximian packages and not do what I did, you can try:

    rpm -ve --nodeps `rpm -vqa | grep ximian`

    and then use apt or something to reinstall the regular GNOME packages.
  • Perhaps it's just me, but I had a few problems when trying to install OpenOffice. For starters, it was a pain in the rear trying to get my Canadian English dictionary to work (I *must* say "realise"... "realize" is just wrong! :) ), though eventually, I got it all figured out. Once it was up and running, everything was peachy, but it just didn't seem... pretty enough. Installing in Linux was, for me, a nightmare (being a bit of a Linux newbie, anyway). I installed it, and then it disappeared! No commands in the console, no ability to create a new document using shortcuts, nothing. And the OpenOffice site didn't have much in the way of documentation/help. *sigh* So I'm back to using my M$ Office suite. Maybe it was just me, being used to my pampered "Click here to install, then click here to run" ways, but in the end i just threw up my hands and quit. If you're a n00b to Linux or Windows, try to get an installation FAQ before installing/using OpenOffice. :)
  • I like bundling, I like integration, I like a package that is tested and I hope that there will be more high quality bundling in the software world (not throwing in two worthless games with a GFX card, but useful software from the start).
    • Who necessarily hates M$? People just like to use a good operating system which doesn't (enter your own personal reasons here). Bundling good free software makes it that much faster and easier to get your new operating system install up to speed and ready to get some work done. Some OSS purists aren't using Mandrake anyways, they're using Debian, Slackware, and other pure free-software distros.
  • Ok.. I use Linux for most servers that I setup at work, and I occasionally use it on the desktop. Now dont get me wrong, I have always loved that Linux was free - and I was always ready to cough up money when they decided that the current business model wasn't working too well...

    But I feel that the costs for this latest product are a bad decision.. "Red Carpet CorporateConnect, which includes a license for StarOffice 6.0 included with each paid seat, priced at $150 per year per seat."

    Ouch! Maybe for smaller businesses this might work, but for larger companies & businesses that might go for a Microsoft volume license (I work for a college, and we use the MS Campus Agreement.. it does work out very cheap), I cannot see this kind of deal being any better than the Microsoft one? Even if this did offer savings, it wouldn't be by an awful lot - I always liked Linux because it took the cost of licenses and laughed about it - they were just no longer anything to worry about.

    I guess that kind of business model just doesn't work?

    • Re:Price?! (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You aren't really buying a Licence with Red Carpet CorporateConnect but a service. Now with StarOffice 6.0 and certain other components like that MS Outlook plugin for Evolution (if they ship it with the product) might have some special licenses, but the rest of the product is free software (well, obviously they also have licenses but...)

      You're just buying the few apps (+ loads of free software in nice packages) and support for all that. And I doubt anyway that Red Carpet CorporateConnect is ment for Campuses, sheez.

  • Good (Score:3, Insightful)

    by theolein ( 316044 ) on Sunday May 26, 2002 @09:57AM (#3586843) Journal
    This is called adding value. It's what MS did to gain it's market dominance (with one or two other tactics which I won't mention here) and it's about time. Good on Ximian, Sun, OpenOffice.org and Mandrake. Good on them all.
  • ...so I'm going to ask. If I were to purchase Ximian Desktop Professional for $59.00 do I get the regular StarOffice, or a custom, only-runs-when-Ximian-is-present version?

    I would be willing to buy Ximian, not install it, and get StarOffice for a $20.00 discount. If it is just a regular version of StarOffice. But if Ximian has pulled a Dell, I'm not interested.

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