*BSD News Article 66483


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From: rhys@vortex.cc.missouri.edu (Justin "Rhys Thuryn" McNutt)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.development.system,comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.os.linux.advocacy
Subject: Re: Historic Opportunity facing Free Unix (was Re: The Lai/Baker paper, benchmarks, and the world of free UNIX)
Followup-To: comp.os.linux.development.system,comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.os.linux.advocacy
Date: 18 Apr 1996 19:45:01 GMT
Organization: University of Missouri - Columbia
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John S. Dyson (root@dyson.iquest.net) wrote:

: >There are commercial spreadsheets for Linux, check out WingZ and XQuad (the
: >latter can read Excel 4 sheets). And there is WordPerfect from Caldera
: >coming soon. The makers of XQuad also have a DTP program called Xclamation.
: >They cost money, but a little startup like X4U has to make a living somehow.
: >Check out ftp://ftp.x.org/contrib/office/X4u for a demo.
: >

: In the real commercial world however, the above are non-starters where you
: almost need Word-6 and now Word-7 compatibility.  The file format is
: complex and not public.  Again, the vast majority of desktop
: workstations in business are going to stay Windows->Win95->WinNT, sadly.  Any
: statement that says Linux might be 50% faster than NT on networking isn't
: going to convince the business community that Linux is the way to go, esp.
: if they cannot run the applications that they WANT to run.  The businesses
: have already trained their staff on Windows applications.

On the other hand, I was reading just the other day that MicroSoft says 
that people who were expecting to use Win95 as a stepping stone to WinNT 
are going to be disappointed.  The article said that users using Win95 
are going to have to completely erase their hard drives, install NT, and 
then install all their apps over the top.

Now given that incredible hassle, plus all the other given advantages of 
Linux (price being first and foremost), don't you think that some 
businesses, particularly those who want to save $$$ might consider some 
alternatives to NT?

: BTW, the above applications run nicely and quickly on FreeBSD (I have used Linux
: WingZ on FreeBSD myself), and they are great for isolated individuals
: or groups of individuals.  Bottom line, even standards bodies are using
: Microsoft Word file distributions for prelim documents :-(.  When I want
: to see the latest ATA spec, I have to run NT (I run NT & FreeBSD) to
: print it out.

Then complain to the standards bodies that you want a plain-text 
version.  Also, I know that there are plenty of organizations out there 
that still use WordPerfect over MS Word, partly because they're used to 
it, partly because MS Word involves MS Windows, and lots and lots of 
training issues.  If Caldera can get WordPerfect for Linux going, I just 
might clean Win* off my machine altogether (except maybe a simple 
installation for games), shrink my FAT partitions to *just* enough room 
for games, and go total Linux.

--------
If you can lead it to water and force it to drink, it isn't a horse.

Got a Linux problem?  Or can you help others solve them?  Visit the Linux 
Common Problems page at http://vortex.cc.missouri.edu/~rhys/linux.html

rhys@vortex.cc.missouri.edu