Re: More Political Stuff

[Paul Warren <pdw ex-parrot com>]

On Fri, Aug 25, 2000 at 08:58:28PM +0500, Sean Middleditch wrote:
> > I think this is hardware dependant.  I know a lot of desktops running
> > XFree86 that have no stability problems, and only a few that do.  Is
> > this noticably worse than other UNIXes' X offerings?
> > 
> 
> There are a few apps that somehow bring X down a lot... Netscape being
> the fore-most, but a few other older X apps do it.  

Ah yes.  Netscape.  Put you hand up if you love Netscape.  Come on,
don't all speak at once.  I don't find that Netscape brings X down.  It
crashes itself very often ("killall -9 netscape-communicator" is the
item just below "netscape" on my menu :-)  Not bring X down may just be
a result of throwing sufficient RAM at the problem.

I don't think that anyone would argue that Netscape is a stable, well
written program least of all in its Linux incarnation.  Important,
possibly but not stable.

> > Different people use it for different reasons.  I use Linux over Windows
> > because I have experienced the same frustration with using unstable,
> > dumbed-down software that I'm sure many others have.  I use Gnome over
> > Xlib/KDE because I like having a consistent, decent-looking, easy-to-use
> > desktop.  
> 
> Hmm, how is KDE not consistant, decent-looking, and easy-to-use
> (considering the lastest devel KDE)?  I'm just wondering...

That was aimed mainly at a justification for using Gnome OR KDE over
random-collection-of-other-toolkits.  I prefer the look and feel of
Gnome, but that's just choice.  KDE is consistent and easy-to-use.

> > I don't see that anyone is rushing it.  The few times that I have used
> > StarOffice I have found that it sucks like the biggest hoover ever
> > invented.  I find AbiWord development isn't going to stop just because
> > StarOffice is GPLed.  It already has advantages over StarOffice,
> > including the fact that I can be writing a document within 3 seconds of
> > hitting the icon to load it.  On the contrary, AbiWord development
> > stands to be boosted by the availability of some of the StarOffice code,
> > most notably the Word importer.
> > 
> 
> True.  I'm just scared that StarOffice will be the "Official" GNOME
> Office Suite, so it is what the average user will see, not realizing
> there are alternatives until they've already decided they liked
> Windows+MSOffice better.

Fair point.  A repeat of the Enlightenment ordeal would be bad.
IMHO Gnome lost a lot by plugging E as the "default" WM (OK, maybe this
was a RedHat feature but the point stands).  E may be a good WM, but it
was never suitable as a default choice for Gnome.  We now have Sawfish,
a much more suitable program.

The best app will always be available.  It is in the interests of the
distribution makers to ship the best apps around and I'm sure that
the best office apps will be readily available to end users.  With Free
Software, people soon discover which are the best apps and develop
alternatives where there is nothing suitable.  Lock-in to a particular
"product" is much harder to achieve with Free software and people can
and do switch easily to the best app.

Paul