Re: Linux

[Emery Snyder emery.snyder@xxxxxxxx]

You've identified the main problem with Linux. Other distributions --
I use SuSE -- come with more software, including WINE and DosEMU. But
getting the plethora of little Windows apps one has bought over the
years, especially things like dictionaries and references works, which
seem to almost always come with their own interface, and which almost
never even come in Mac versions, to work under WINE will take a fair
amount of work. WINE can do some amazing things -- a colleague of mine
at work even got it to run LotusNotes. But getting it to work right
takes some tweaking.

On my system right now, I have the Encyclopedia Britannica, an Oxford
UP English-French-German-Spanish dictionary, the Duden German
dictionary, the Real Academia Spanish dictionary, and an interface for
using various CD-ROMS containing the Luther Bible, a huge chunk of
German literature, the Brockhaus encyclopedia from 1912, etc. Not to
mention bibliography software, a really good web bookmark database
software (Powermarks), Adobe Acrobat for making pdf files (that can be
done under Linux using other tools, though), and various programs I
don't really want but which clients and publishers insist on my using,
like MS Word, Visio, and Excel. And utilities that just don't exist in
Linux, like Quicken and TurboTax. You can find other programs to store
documents in Word format, either for Windows or for Linux; but you
have to hope that they always work with files other people send you.

Nor are even the friendlier Linux distributions, like SuSE or Red Hat,
really ready for the average user. My SuSE system does lots of cool
things, but I haven't yet been able to get it to record sound files
from the line-in input, and judging by the posts on the various user
groups, I'm not the only one with this problem.

A few months ago, I was really hoping that this computer would be the
last one I ever buy with a Microsoft OS on it. But I'm beginning to
think that was very premature.

Part of me thinks the solution is the Macintosh -- OS X at least has a
Unix underneath it, so you could run many Unix/Linux programs. But
there, too, although you can get things like Word and Quicken, much
software is missing.


On 11.2.2003, Paul Breeze wrote:
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> I installed a copy of Mandrake Linux version 9.0 last week. The installation was very simple and I
> was provided with a plethora of software. Sadly most of it was of little use to me. On the
> question of ease of use, it took me half a day to find my other partitions and disks within the
> Linux file system (a good book explaining the Linux philosophy and structure helps). The
> installation contained no DOSEMU -- the dos emulator -- and though I was able to download and
> install this, it would not work. I spent most of the rest of the day trying without success to
> install the Linux version of WP8. My conclusion was that while a working knowledge of DOS helps,
> it is going to take a considerable investment of time to master Linux.

> It seems to me, however, that software it going to be the Achilles Heel. When I am working in XY4,
> I want OED available, I sometimes use Encyclopedia Britannica, and I have a number of other small
> utilities which I use infrequently but would miss if they were not at hand. Unless I can recreate
> this environment under Linux, using the OS will be a step backwards. If WINE can provide a stable
> and easy-to-use environment for running Windows software, that would solve the problem. That is
> two or three years away, I would guess. For the moment, I've put Linux back in its box.

> Paul Breeze

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