Software bloat

Thus quoth Pablo Vieira on Wed, Dec 10, 2003 at 12:47:50AM +0100:
> [PV] Of course there are plenty of standards. I'll try to rephrase my
> argument.
> 
> I expect some of us agree that .doc and .xls are what every office suite is
> after in terms of compatibility. I'll also assume for practical reasons that

Some may. IMHO a little compatibility is a good thing, but too much
will be detrimental. Windows NT would be a world-class Operating System 
if they hadn't done their damnedest to make it compatible with Windows 3.1
and MS-DOS and OS-2 and Posix and Novell...

> some of us also agree that the only way of not having "surprises" surfing
> the net and especially using web apps is by running Internet Explorer.

Internet Explorer causes nasty surprises.... 
One site I've recently worked for uses Linux on some desktop and Windows 2000
on others. They use Mozilla and AbiWord on both platforms giving acceptable
compatibility.

> I'm not implying by any means these formats are good (or bad). I'm only
> meaning there are ways to undermine Microsoft's power and I'm suggesting one
> would be fighting them in their own field. In a way, that's how Microsoft

That's the worst military strategy in existence. Instead we conquer where
Microsoft isn't yet, we attack them in areas where we are stronger, and
only when they have been sufficiently weakened we go for their main bastion.
(by which time we may find they have starved)

Once Microsoft loses control over the desktop, compatibility with the worst
of their products will not longer be very important. Or better, Intel PCs 
will no longer be the dominant form of digital device.  

> I believe we're talking here about what keeps Linux from being massively
> adopted in consumer desktops. I've given a humble opinion. I'm sure there's
> a way to win Microsoft in its own domain. And I'm convinced we need to do
> that before we set the standards on the internet, on office suites file
> formats, etc.

OK, recently we tried to do some Linux on desktop promotion. We had rigged
up some PCs (1000 MHz, 128 MB) with Fedora 1, KDE 3.1, Mozilla 1.5 or so, 
OpenOffice 1.1, Gimp something. This is about as Windowsish as it gets. 
I especially tried some writing with OpenOffice. While this may be a nearly
perfect clone of MS Word (but apperently not good enough for some folks),
the general impression is not good, and its so slow as to border on the
unusable (and thas was the fastest computer I've ever used). I've been
using StarOffice since version 3.1 and every new version was slower than
its predecessor. KDE and Gnome take forever and a day to start, etc.
So when I had to advise one visitor (with a rather slower box than that)
if he should switch to Linux, the answer was yes, but you should use
only light-weight apps and in the end Bill got to keep that customer until
he buys a shiny new Pentium V. 

Kind regards,



Daniel von Asmuth


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