* Adam Bower (abower@zeus.com) wrote :
Hi Chris,
We have plenty of people at work who use a Linux desktop (you can actually chose any free OS that you like although we sys-admins won't support it if it breaks), the only reason that someone gets a Windowz box is if they need to run apps that aren't available for Linux, unfortunatly the proliferation of M$ office documents from clients means that people have to run M$ doze and office.
Anyway I have given some thoughts on your points below.
Chris Allen wrote:
Browsing the web:
Opera - lots of bugs, the most annoying of which is that the toolbars won't stay put between sessions
Netscape - Soooo slow..
If netscape is configured right - read, like what debian or freebsd do - then it is plenty fast enough.
I find netscape is plenty fast enough, except when a page has Java in it (then netscape will either crash or slow right down)
Mozilla, Galeon, Encompass, Konqueror, Express, BrowseX, W3M, Lynx ;)... all of these (except Express, which is very early) are fast, light and have a rocking renderer. Moz and galeon will even do java too.
Email:
Sylpheed is the only program I have found that comes close to Eudora in functionality - and this doesn't display HTML emails (which I get heaps of from clients)
Netscape mail should be OK with html, although I use pine and that displays html mail properly and does lots of other things i need.
Evolution (does HTML), Mutt(does HTML - in a way :) ), Gnus(dunno bout html), Balsa, etc
Usenet news:
PAN - not as polished as Agent but no real complaints here
I use netscape for this, although there are many good command line packages.
slrn. mozilla. fetchnews and mutt. gnus.
Office Apps:
Star Office? - So slow even on a 500Mhz PIII that it makes windows look fast.
How much memory does the machine have? as we have 30 people using Star Office OK in 128Mb but if you give your machine 256Mb it should run loads better as it is a bit of a memory hog (as should netscape)
Abiword, Gnumeric. KOffice. Fast, featureful. Rock solid. Can read M$ shite. I am 1000% _less_ productive on a windows box - I don't have a choice of software, it's so much less configurable, and it crashes like brett trying to drive. um. maybe I shouldn't say that ;) (My PCs at work and home are both 100% DFSGfree - it's a nice place to be.) -Thom