* 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

wbh wrote:

Hiya, Hamish and me had fun last Sunday getting Debian PPC on a PowerMac 7200/90. Very nice, if a little slow. Loadsa fun with the bootloader (miboot). However, now I'm running into trouble. In X, just how the *@$% do I right click? And if I want to run it headless, how do I turn it on??? Macs, still macs even without macos %-> Bill

Hi,

I've got SuSE7.0 on my PowerBook, and use the F11 and F12 keys for left and middle mouse buttons. You do it with the kernel argument adb_buttons. It's adb_buttons=1,103,111 for those keys.

I've not used miboot, but with bootX you could put that in a text box in the bootX window. Now I'm using yaboot and I think it may have been automatic, but it lives in yaboot.conf, anyway. I guess miboot has something similar?

This may help you some more: http://lists.yellowdoglinux.com/yellowdog-general/may99/0149.html http://cloud13.com/ppc/mouse.html

Jo

You rcould try the Koffice suite, I've just downloaded the Kword and Ksheet had a quick look and they look pretty good. The beauty is that they both read M$ format docs..

Simon

----- Original Message ----- From: Chris Allen chris@cjx.com To: alug@stu.uea.ac.uk Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2001 6:06 PM Subject: [Alug] Linux is not for desktops?

Hi to everyone at ALUG,

I'm a Linux user from Leiston in Suffolk. I work from home designing databases for web sites. I have a large number of Linux machines here, all of which make superb web and database servers. However, what I have never been able to get used to is trying to use Linux on my main 'office' desktop machine. This machine is used mainly

for:

Browsing the web (IE5) Email (Eudora) Usenet News (Agent) Word processing (MS Word) Spreadsheets (MS Excel)

I have had many, many attempts to switch to Linux - indeed I have a fully configured Linux box sitting next to this one - but I always end up back on the Win98 machine. I have

tried:

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..

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)

Usenet news:

PAN - not as polished as Agent but no real complaints here

Office Apps:

Star Office? - So slow even on a 500Mhz PIII that it makes windows look

fast.

What do you all use for your main desktop machine? And are you productive with it? I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that while Linux is the best O/S in the world for server apps, I am far less productive on a Linux desktop machine because I am for ever hacking, updating and fixing things instead of getting on with my work!

Any thoughts?

p.s. Anyone else from around Leiston here?

---

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