Re: Replacement for Abiword: LyX? Openoffice?

On Saturday 25 October 2003 07:37 am, adam wrote:
> On Tue, 21 Oct 2003 18:16:35 +0100 (BST)
> My suggestion is that we push forward a text editor for
> the basic editing functions and then move the children
> on to OpenOffice.org for presentation. If they are
> already using Linux for desktop, chances are they will
> already have a version of it installed. 
> 
> As an aside, including it within the distribution for
> children will act as method of advocacy, with children
> telling their peers about OO.o. I doubt if they will be
> advocating about text editors. 

I've heard people advocate OpenOffice.org a lot, but
every time I've ever tried to use it, the sheer bloat of 
the thing has made it impossible.  Yes, it will run. Yes, I 
can load a document or two with it occasionally.

But every time I've ever tried to make a real document (as 
opposed to a trivial test case), the program has crashed 
and locked up my computer (or at least my login session).

When I moved up to 512 MB RAM and 1.5+ GHz machines, I 
thought "Great, now I can finally see what people are 
talking about".  But no.  It *still* crashes left and 
right.  This is pretty much the Hacker Lexicon's definition 
of "Flakey" in the US sense -- it works just well enough to 
tempt you into using it, and then it crashes on you.  ;-)

What am I missing here?  Does anyone who advocates this 
program actually USE it?  If so, what kind of hardware are 
you running?!   Not a rhetorical question -- I've loaded 
this program up to evaluate it several times, with 
gradually increasing hardware caps, but each time I get the 
same results.  I'm starting to get a complex about it. ;-)

I expect a program like a word processor to pretty much 
work without special effort on a Debian system, once you 
run "apt-get install" on it.  I'm running Debian Woody, but 
that shouldn't make any difference anyway, should it?

I think this is particularly relevant to Debian Jr, since 
typically, kids will be using hand-me-down computers, not 
the latest bleeding edge stuff.

Cheers,
Terry

--
Terry Hancock ( hancock at anansispaceworks.com )
Anansi Spaceworks  http://www.anansispaceworks.com