Re: Software bloat

Daniel C. von Asmuth wrote:

>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.
>
imo, OpenOffice 1.1 is a bit faster than OO1.0 so one could always hope 
that it would improve. for me, speed is really not that much of a 
problem because once it loads, it works fast enough to be comfortable. 
and i'm on 500Mhz box with 128 MB ram. for me as a design engineer who 
needs to create documents with interface diagrams, tables etc, the 
biggest annoyance is not having a decent enough drawing tool. what is 
present is just not good enough, and it is worse if i want to edit my 
diagrams later and make changes to it. i really am not bothered about 
compatibility with M$ formats. if i can create, edit, print a document 
that has text, figures tables etc and still look presentable to 
management, it is good enough. i can always convert the final document 
to ps or pdf to ensure compatibility to the end user.

AbiWord is pretty decent, as is gnumeric.

as far as desktops go, i would rather use 
enlightenment/windowmaker/icewm. enlightenment menus are so easy to 
configure that it's the best thing to give a newbie.

mario