You are currently browsing the archives for the OpenOffice.org category.
Erwin points out the new OpenOffice.org project forums recently launched. (Direct link to OOo forums here.)
This was a project discussed at this summer’s OOo Con in Barcelona, and it’s great to see it happen. Time to log in and see what is going on over there…
Slashdot discusses the current state of the ODF-MSOOXML struggle for national government data standards. Many countries have begun to standardize on ODF, while none have yet selected MSOOXML:
“13 nations have announced laws or rules that favor the use ODF over Microsoft’s Office formats. Those nations include Russia, Malaysia, Japan, France, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Germany, and Norway.”
Computerworld started the latest round of discussion, writing “France is still making the strongest move to ODF and its native office suite, OpenOffice.” (Over 500,000 French government employees have adopted ODF by adopting OpenOffice.org as their default office suite.)
They also mention South Africa, the Netherlands, and Korea as additions to the list above.
While I might argue that “the year of the Linux desktop” has been a recurring annual event several years running, lots of people like to predict that each year will be the one.
Linux Magazine makes a strong argument for 2008 in Joe Brockmeier’s “Is 2008 the Year of the Linux Desktop?”
Cheap and popular new hardware options are the key:
“I’m talking about the Asus EEE PC and the Everex Green gPC. Both systems are, by today’s standards, cheap, underpowered, and limited in function. They also play to Linux’s strengths by being cheap, underpowered, and limited in function. Despite limited horsepower, both systems are more than adequate for performing basic desktop functions (email, Web browsing, running OpenOffice.org, etc.) and offer stripped-down interfaces that are less confusing for new users.
“They’re also, as of this writing, both sold out. The gPC has been selling through Wal-Mart, and sold out in just a matter of days. The EEE PC was sold through a number of online retailers, and also sold out in just a few days. I’m sure both systems were in limited supply, but there’s clearly pent-up demand.”
Following the path outlined by Clayton Christensen in The Innovator’s Dilemma, open source will disrupt the market from below and push Windows and Office up the ladder until they are nothing more than niche products. Linux will take the majority share of the market.
Wired seems excited about Everex’s $200 Linux PC–and why not, because it is an interesting little item!
Members of the OpenOffice community had predicted that cost pressures would eventually break Microsoft’s hold on the most price-sensitive part of the PC market, leading to OEMs installing OpenOffice on their machines. Everex did so earlier this year for the models they sell at Wal-Mart, and the last I heard, Wal-Mart was planning to require OOo on all the computer brands it sells.
The newest Everex innovation takes its commitment to open source one step further. A customized version of Ubuntu Linux helps the gPC to break the $200 barrier, the first for a retail personal computer.
After their initial post, Wired got even closer to the gPC with a hands-on review. And they like it!
Edit: Slashdot announces Wal-Mart has already sold out its stock of gPCs!
Our friends at Zareason also sell the gPC at the same price point.
The Sun Report Builder is a relatively new extension for OpenOffice.org that adds code from the Pentaho reporting tool to OOo. It allows you to create “stylish, smart-looking database reports. The flexible report editor can define group and page headers as well as group and page footers and even calculation fields are available to accomplish complex database reports.”
Much of the new functionality coming in future builds of OpenOffice will be delivered in the form of extensions. This will allow the basic application to remain smaller and more efficient, while users who need particular specialty functions will be able to install an extension for their needs.
Sam Hiser writes a follow-up to several high-profile migrations to OpenOffice.org and Linux for the Financial Times. It’s good to check back in on major migration stories to see how things have progressed after a few years, and in his three case studies, the results are good.
All three of these take place in Europe: the French Gendarmerie police force’s installation of OpenOffice.org, Firefox and Thunderbird on 70,000 Windows boxes (70% of its total desktops), Munich, Germany’s migration of 14,000 desktops to Linux with OpenOffice (about 100% of its desktops), and Peugeot Citroën’s migration of 20,000 desktops (40% of its total) to Linux with OpenOffice as well.
It’s a great followup with some very encouraging results. It’s got me excited to see the next major round of migrations, which I expect soon.
SlideShare is a social slide and presentation sharing website. Alexandro Colorado has set up a group for OpenOffice.org slideshows from this year’s OOoCon in Barcelona, as well as other events and presentations. (SlideShare is ODF-capable, too!)
Feel free to join the group and participate with your own presentations, or use those already posted as inspiration for your next OOo talk.
Among the many programs that can display ODF files, you can add Firefox to the list. (Though I’m not sure this is fair, since we’re actually relying on OOo in the background with the following trick.)
Mozilla Links explains how to “view OpenOffice.org documents in Firefox.”
It’s pretty easy, in fact: “you need to activate the plugin. To do so, in OpenOffice.org, select Options… in the Tools menu. Expand the Internet item, select Mozilla Plug-in and check Enable.”
Once you have set this option, you can click on a link to an ODF in your browser (with .odt, .ods, .odg, and .odp or the other extensions) to simply open it within your browser window for viewing.
While it hasn’t been kept secret, to my knowledge the first public mention of Thunderbird inclusion with OpenOffice.org 3.0 was made at this year’s OOoCon. CyberNet News is impressed with OOo’s plans to include Thunderbird and Lightning as its default PIM next year:
“One thing that really caught my attention was their reference to including a Personal Information Manager (PIM). More specifically the presentation mentions bundling Thunderbird with their Office Suite, and refers to it as an “Outlook replacement.”
For savvy users, it’s no effort at all to install OOo and Thunderbird/Evolution/KMail/etc on a computer. But for whatever reason, many users still ask for a PIM to be “included” with OpenOffice. If it helps, why not go for it! (Plus, Sun has standardized its 36,000 users on OOo and Thunderbird already, so might as well roll that out to the world!)
A Slashdot user asks the community if OpenOffice.org users save all their documents in Microsoft formats, as a Quickoffice company executive assumes.
The results are not surprising: OOo users prefer the ODF format and tend to use it for their own documents or within their own companies. They’ll switch to PDF for sharing with outside contacts, and will also use DOC in situations where it is required. Many also use RTF or plain text where possible.
Coupled with new requirements that many governments must store their data in open standard formats (almost always, and exclusively, ODF), Quickoffice is clearly backing the wrong format here. Hopefully for them, they will be able to change course quickly enough to avoid disaster.