October 5th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
Here comes another office suite supporting the ISO-standard ODF file format!
Corel announces its current beta of WordPerfect Office X3 can open ODF files (not sure if it can save them, but I hope so).
Corel hasn’t committed solely to ODF, but I think over time they’ll find MSOOXML to be a difficult beast (and who knows if it will finally survive at all):
“The move toward more open standards is an exciting and positive development for our industry—but the impending shift in file formats will also create challenges…
Corel has been involved in ODF from its very beginning and possesses a solid reputation for compatibility with Microsoft Office—giving us an unparalleled expertise in file formats which we are dedicated to using in supporting our customers as they address these and other emerging file formats in a risk-free fashion.”
This represents another collection of people to whom you can send ODF files, so go ahead and start attaching them to your emails and websites!
Posted in ODF | Comments Off on WordPerfect Supports ODF
October 4th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
As I learned at the OpenOffice.org Barcelona Conference, and mentioned a few weeks back, PC maker Everex endorses OpenOffice.org in a video released online.
John Lin, General Manager of Everex, appears in the interview. He informs us that traffic to Everex’s website tripled after the announcement it would include OOo on its computers, and that Wal-Mart itself has now requested OpenOffice.org be installed on every model of Everex PC it sells.
Posted in OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on Everex’s OpenOffice.org Video
October 3rd, 2007 Benjamin Horst
A thorough review of the upcoming Ubuntu 7.10 “Gutsy Gibbon” release shows just how polished this distro is. Tolero has written the very popular “Review of Ubuntu 7.10 (gutsy) new features and changes” on his blog to cover the new features and other improvements it includes.
See Ubuntu.com for a countdown clock to its final release (15 days from today).
Posted in GNU/Linux, Open Source | Comments Off on Ubuntu 7.10 Review
October 2nd, 2007 Benjamin Horst
Vietnam will migrate 20,000 of its government office computers to OpenOffice.org, abandoning Microsoft Office in the migration.
“The change from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice.org is set as a mission in the scheme to computerize operations of Party organs in the 2006-2010 period… Cost savings is only one of the reasons for this change. The major target of the replacement is to improve the ability of the Vietnamese IT circle because the use of open source products like OpenOffice will create a new market for Vietnamese IT companies, according to Mr. Loi.”
Migrations to OpenOffice.org are ever increasing in pace and geographic distribution!
Posted in Open Source, OpenOffice.org | 2 Comments »
October 1st, 2007 Benjamin Horst
DesktopLinux.com writes “All Macedonian students to use Linux desktops”
“All together Macedonia will deploy 180,000 NComputing-enabled workstation seats, enough to provide virtually every elementary and secondary school student in the nation with his or her own classroom computing device.”
This suddenly becomes one of the largest open source implementations yet undertaken anywhere.
“Besides Ubuntu 7.04, each NComputing server/PC comes with NComputing’s Terminal Server software and OpenOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird, Evolution, and Wine.”
What a great stack of powerful, free and open source applications. Top shelf quality at a bargain price.
“NComputing claims that the Macedonia project is at the same time, the largest known thin client and desktop Linux deployment ever undertaken. “This project would not have been possible 5 years ago,” said Ivanovski. “Today’s least expensive desktop PCs are so powerful we use less than 10% of their capacity and NComputing’s technology puts this wasted power to work.”
Smart policies like this will help Macedonia and other developing countries leap to the technological forefront quickly, and will result in hundreds of thousands of open source-savvy adults in the coming years. All while saving huge sums of money over the alternative, proprietary software route. This is sure to pay dividends to the country’s economy for decades.
Posted in GNU/Linux, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on All Macedonian students to use Linux desktops