November 16th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
InformationWeek writes “Why Linux Will Succeed on the Desktop,” outlining its strategic position and anticipating its future market domination.
Nicholas Petreley begins:
“I believe Linux will become the de-facto standard desktop operating system. Though it’ll take a while for many users to break free from ties to Windows, there is good reason to believe that this day will come… The global community is already beginning to rally behind standard document formats.”
Petreley is surprisingly anti-GNOME, which I personally think is an excellent desktop environment. Aside from my disagreement with him there, I think he raises a number of important points and I certainly agree with his overall conclusion that Linux use will grow until it displaces Windows as the default desktop operating system for most users.
Posted in GNU/Linux, Open Source | 4 Comments »
November 15th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
Bob Sutor rounds up several links on IBM Lotus Symphony this week.
Highlights: Symphony has surpassed 250,000 downloads, IBM is doubling the number of developers working on ODF-related products including Symphony to 70 people, a second beta became available for download on Nov 13, and interest in Symphony, ODF and the entire related ecosystem keeps growing at a fast pace.
Posted in ODF | Comments Off on A Week of IBM Lotus Symphony Links
November 14th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
Miro 1.0 has been released!
Miro is the internet video player and feed reader, bittorrent sharing, HD-capable open source king of the hill of media applications. Of course it’s available for the three major platforms, has a strong developer and user community, and is beloved by Boing Boing.
See the official release announcement in the Miro blog.
Posted in Free Culture, Open Source | Comments Off on Miro 1.0!
November 13th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
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.
Posted in GNU/Linux, ODF, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on Wired on the $200 Everex PC
November 12th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
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.
Posted in Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on Sun Report Builder
November 9th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
Heise Online reports “German Foreign Office comes out in favor of Open Document Format.”
In fact, the German Foreign Office hosted an international workshop for users of ODF, and it seems this will become an annual event.
“At the first international workshop of users of the OpenDocument Format (ODF) in Berlin to which the Foreign Office of the Federal Republic had invited about 150 users and political observers, Brazil and India, in addition to German cities such as Munich, emerged as leading proponents of open standards in the office area.”
Across Brazil, India, Germany and other nations, ODF adoption is proceeding at an accelerating pace. The article provides several concrete examples in each of these countries, to which I am sure many more will be added in the coming year.
Posted in ODF | Comments Off on Heise on ODF in the German Federal Government
November 8th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
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.
Posted in GNU/Linux, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | 1 Comment »
November 7th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
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.
Posted in ODF, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on OpenOffice.org on SlideShare
November 6th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
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.
Posted in How-to, ODF, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on View ODFs in Firefox
November 5th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
Rupert Goodwins blogs for ZDNet UK “Vista versus the Gutsy Gibbon…”
Goodwins is clearly a hardcore computer user going back decades, and currently has seven functional machines with a mix of operating systems. However, he is becoming more and more focused on using Linux as his primary platform.
“How come I’m so much more at home with Ubuntu than Vista? It boils down to one abiding impression: Ubuntu goes out of its way to get out of your way, even if it doesn’t succeed all the time. Vista goes out of its way to be Vista and enforce the Vista way. You must conform regardless of the implications.”
Call me curmudgeonly, call me prejudiced, call me atypical, but isn’t computing all about doing what users want?”
Posted in GNU/Linux, Open Source | 1 Comment »