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My dad unexpectedly uses my Linux laptop to get real work done

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Re: My dad unexpectedly uses my Linux laptop to get real work done

#131

Post by ezequiel-garzon »

davexunit wrote: post #40
nmridul wrote: post #3

The same experience here. My parents also use Ubuntu now (firefox, Libre office). The main issue with Linux is, some one needs to install and setup everything for them. Finding and installing that missing wifi driver is not something that they can do. Windows installation is breeze, just pop-in the disk and it will install everything for you. Hope pre-installed ubuntu systems get common.

>Finding and installing that missing wifi driver That "missing" wifi driver is not there because it's proprietary. It doesn't make sense to blame a free operating system for faulty hardware. In any case, I know that in Ubuntu, the user is informed of nonfree drivers being available and it's trivial to install the drivers from that point.

But doesn't Ubuntu give you the option of installing third-party software? Why doesn't this take care of such issues?

Re: My dad unexpectedly uses my Linux laptop to get real work done

#132

Post by sandGorgon »

pavs wrote: post #123
sandGorgon wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the real reason. Excel. There is simply no replacement for it. If there was, the usage of Linux would double within days.

I don't use excel in professional level so I don't know much about it. Is there a vast difference between MS Excel and Linux (OSS) equivalent, or something like Google docs?

severely so. Again, it's not about the technical merits and demerits - but I would daresay its around the VBS + XLSX compatibility issue.

In fact, my personal opinion is that Libreoffice should abandon PPT and Word - both with adequate online equivalents - and go all out only on Excel.

There is simply no equivalent for Excel on Linux or Mac.

Photoshop + Excel on Linux would be it's killer applications.

Re: My dad unexpectedly uses my Linux laptop to get real work done

#133

Post by [deleted] »

sandGorgon wrote: post #132
pavs wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't use excel in professional level so I don't know much about it. Is there a vast difference between MS Excel and Linux (OSS) equivalent, or something like Google docs?

severely so. Again, it's not about the technical merits and demerits - but I would daresay its around the VBS + XLSX compatibility issue. In fact, my personal opinion is that Libreoffice should abandon PPT and Word - both with adequate online equivalents - and go all out only on Excel. There is simply no equivalent for Excel on Linux or Mac. Photoshop + Excel on Linux would be it's killer applications.

[deleted]

Re: My dad unexpectedly uses my Linux laptop to get real work done

#134

Post by ekimekim »

asveikau wrote: post #103
stormbrew wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely still true. Every windows install from a non-OEM copy in the last few years has required me to sneakernet my network drivers before I could do anything (including get other drivers). Linux has actually been much better for this since the release cycles are shorter and the barrier to getting a driver officially included seems lower (requires WHQL certification on windows, which presumably is not only w…

I guess one thing Windows does well is pulling drivers from Windows Update. So if your network card is supported there is a good chance you'll get things working. Unfortunately not every network card you can throw at it will work out of the box.

Pretty much every time I install windows (only for the games) the first step is to boot into linux, download a windows driver for my network card, then boot into windows to install it so I can start downloading other drivers.

Re: My dad unexpectedly uses my Linux laptop to get real work done

#135

Post by shuzchen »

thefreeman wrote: post #100
shuzchen wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should keep an eye on Mozilla's Shumway ( https://github.com/mozilla/shumway ). I recently installed it as an add-on to the firefox browser on my Android Tablet (Galaxy Tab 2 7) and have had luck with a few flash sites.

Why would you need to do that? Android tablets run flash?

Adobe has officially stopped supporting flash on Android. The last version you can still install flash on is 4.0, and while you can still sideload the apks in higher versions they get extremely buggy (as they do on my Galaxy Tab).

Re: My dad unexpectedly uses my Linux laptop to get real work done

#136

Post by ma2rten »

lucb1e wrote: post #50

This thread is awesome. It always feels like I'm the only person on the planet using linux in school; school requires us to use Windows and teaches several other proprietary vendor lock-ins; and very, very few friends actually use Linux, even though most are programmers. Tomorrow I'm going to an open source event, mostly to show support for foss in general. Ironically the event will be in school: the very thing most…

What kind of Dutch school is that? High school? I studied Computer Science at University of Amsterdam. I think I was the only one who was using windows. (I would ssh into a university computer to do most programming).

Re: My dad unexpectedly uses my Linux laptop to get real work done

#137

Post by Ecio78 »

pavs wrote: post #123
sandGorgon wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the real reason. Excel. There is simply no replacement for it. If there was, the usage of Linux would double within days.

I don't use excel in professional level so I don't know much about it. Is there a vast difference between MS Excel and Linux (OSS) equivalent, or something like Google docs?

Definitively. Especially if you work in finance there are many products that integrate with Excel (i.e. Bloomberg apps), modules, pre-created formulas, books teaching financial "programming" with Excel etc.. Then I don't know if macros/programming in Calc can be seen as equivalent to VBA (and relevant integrations) in Excel.

BUT, having said that,I think there are tons of users that could use Calc for their basic calculations (I worked in a couple of banks and I think probably just 5-10% of users used it as "powerusers" and I suspect less than half of them used functions/code that have no equivalent in Calc)

Re: My dad unexpectedly uses my Linux laptop to get real work done

#138

Post by Ecio78 »

ams6110 wrote: post #46
chimeracoder wrote: post #18

Linux Mint is actually a very easy and natural transition from Windows. A few years ago, I installed Linux on my parents' desktop (dual-boot)[0] and told them that they were "forbidden" to use any other computer for web browsing, document editing, etc. I told them that this would be more secure, and that's all it took to convince them. I figured that, this way, at least I could fix any of their computer problems remo…

The thing is Windows XP, with all its warts, will still run comfortably on a 6 or 8 year PC that was low-end when it was new. A few weeks ago, when my wife's old XP computer finally wouldn't boot anymore I got a new hard drive and tried to run Ubuntu on it. Couldn't even get through the installer without it freezing up. Lubuntu installed but wasn't stable. OpenBSD with KDE was pretty good, and I would have stayed wit…

I'm running the latest Linux Mint on an old Dell XPS M1330 (Centrino Duo and 2GB Ram, end of 2007) and it runs quite well. Ubuntu is too heavy for an old machine like the one you're talking about, try Mint

Re: My dad unexpectedly uses my Linux laptop to get real work done

#140

Post by [deleted] »

pavs wrote: post #123
sandGorgon wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the real reason. Excel. There is simply no replacement for it. If there was, the usage of Linux would double within days.

I don't use excel in professional level so I don't know much about it. Is there a vast difference between MS Excel and Linux (OSS) equivalent, or something like Google docs?

[deleted]
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