This is the kind of garbage published about Linux (and other technology issues) that makes me nuts.
On CNN.com there's yet another article (via Reuters) about how the various Linux desktops aren't quite ready for prime time. While some of the points made are based on facts, others are complete junk:
- As never before, corporate customers are turning to Linux software instead of Microsoft Windows to run big business operations.
Now, if only they could get the word processor's basic "cut and paste" feature to work.
What the hey?!! Nowhere else in the article is this supposed word processing program mentioned. They go on further to quote a developer (who spoke at the Linuxworld trade show) completely out of context:
- "It works 98 percent of the time. But it's the 2 percent of the time it doesn't that kills you," Jeremy White, a leading developer of Linux applications, told an audience of network administrators.
Stuff like this, as an old friend of mine used to say, chaps my ass. Linux is made to sound like it's back at the old Windows 3.1 stability level.
The issues of interoperability with Office products are true problems that are being worked out, but propaganda like this is shameful.
(First posted on Mark Is Cranky)
Article comments
1 - Bob Johnson
The funny thing is, I just read an article in the February PC World magazine, The Linux Experiment, where the executive editor, Edward N. Albro used Linux for a month. As far as word processing and the like go...
"The solution was easy and free: OpenOffice.org, a suite with word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, and drawing programs. The OpenOffice apps were rock-solid, easy to use, and filled with a wide variety of features. OpenOffice allowed me to save files as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents, so my colleagues using Microsoft Office had no problem opening and editing them."
He ended up keeping it on his desktop machine after the experiment was over.
"Computing in Linux somtimes requires more work, but it also imposes fewer annoyances. And so far, that's a trade-off I'm willing to make."
Great article.
2 - Mac Diva
Mark, I would be more pro-Linux if the advocates of Linux, in the forums and sometimes in person, were not often smug, sneering bastards. I believe they are harming interest in the platform as much as naysayers in the tech press.
OpenOffice, or something like it, also works fine on the Mac platform.
3 - Mark Saleski
oh, i have no doubt of that smugness.
i just get tired of the lame excuses for 'journalism' we see about technology issues.