Offtopic Note (Score 1)

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On an off topic note. What has Linux done that windows hasn't? So far the desktops are somewhat differnet looking, but neither has done anything that is noticably better than Windows. Sure some may say it is more stable, but then so are Solaris and the BSD's. They are almost equal on the game playing field. They are near equal in the application field (although some may argue one way or another that one is better). But what has Linux or UNIX in general done lately that Windows hasn't. (And don't give me that lame security argument as you can secure a windows box [put it behing a UNIX firewall]).

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I write as a newbie to linux. Though I have used linux since RH5.0, I got a net connection just a few months ago. I depend entirely on the local computer magazine CD for the linux goodies. I had a project to write, a sort of book, and I felt miserable trying it with MSWord. I tried StarOffice on linux and it was worse. Trying wordperfect 8.0 trial on linux was another miserable failure. The last time I downloaded KDE2 pre (Korner) took me a whole night and a fat telephone bill (it was not free), and Kword was better but unstable. Then I tried Lyx. Lyx (+LaTeX) in concept was way different. It does not have an interface to boast about, but I easily managed to get a 63 pg report ready in a few hours, complete with TOC and index. Now this is a killer app I could never dream of on Windows. (I know windows ports do exist, but they either require an X server or Cygwin)

I am waiting for the KDE2 version of Lyx (Klyx) though. If Klyx integrates with Koffice so that , for example, I can embed a Kspread part in my document, edit the object using Kspread part in klyx, then in final output translate the spreadsheet into a Lyx (or Tex) table and get a printout, in less than half the time it would take in a conventional Wordprocessor; this could be something unique to linux/Unix, and KDE, which Windows does not have.