[NBLUG/talk] Use of Linux w/o an Office Suite?

[E Frank Ball]

On Thu, May 15, 2003 at 08:18:36PM -0700, Edward Mendoza wrote:
} 
} What are the uses of Linux if it doesn't have business applications or an
} office suite?

Your right Linux doesn't have an office suite - it has a bunch of
different ones.  We have just been talking about openoffice and
staroffice.  KDE has koffice, which I know almost nothing about.  Gnome
has some pieces like gnumeric for spreadsheets, and other stuff I'm not
familiar with.  There is also applixware, abisuite, wordperfect, ...
Codeweavers has a package that runs the official Microsoft viewer
programs for word, powerpoint, and excel (via wine, read only).  All but
a couple of them are free.  Pick one.

That said I hardly ever use any of these at home.  I use web browsers
for shopping, researching, news, and general surfing.  I send and
receive email (mutt), make webpages (vim), run my own web server
(thttpd) and email server (postfix), copy my music CDs (I only keep
copies in the car), and read usenet news (tin).  That's the bulk of of
my usage at home that I can think of at the moment.

Why would I want an office suite at home?  I'm frequently amazed by
people who can't make a list of three items without using excel, or
can't write a 4 line memo without using msword (those are not
exaggerations).  Office suites do have their purposes, but they are
grossly over used.  There are people at work who insist on doing all
documentation in msword.  What happens next time Microsoft changes the
format?  I do all my documentation with web pages so anybody can read
them with anything, and they don't have to wait for some bloated
software package to load.

Even at work I do 99% of my work without an office suite.  It's not like
I'm going to write and edit test code with msword.  I generally only use
spreadsheets when I have numerical calculations to do so I can change
one line and have everything recalculate and everything is readable and
documented (things like test measurement uncertainty analysis).

The test stations at work have traditionally run HP-UX.  I've been
working on migrating things to Linux.  The Linux boxes are a fraction of
the price of HP-UX, and the old software is largely reusable.  We have
special user environments we have created (highly customized window
managers) that automatically login at boot time and allow the
technicians to run the instrument test software and look at
documentation simply by clicking on some icons.  If they want to use
email or web browse outside the company, or anything else with the
potential for abuse they have to login with their personal login (which
is done from within the customized login, it does not require that they
fully logout and login - so tests are not disrupted).  

Windows machines require much more code re-writing, they are huge
security holes, and they seem to require several times more support than
the HP-UX or Linux machines (the ratio of support personal to machines
is several times higher for Windows than for Linux or HP-UX).

Agilent, the company I work for, recently introduced an instrument for
sale using Linux as an embeded operating system.  It is a combination
spectrum analyzer, network analyzer (electrical networks, not computer
networks), power meter, etc in a single hand held package.  It's used by
cell phone companies for doing maintenance on cell phone cell sites
(base stations).

http://we.home.agilent.com/cgi-bin/bvpub/agilent/Product/cp_Product.jsp?NAV_ID=-536885654.536883226.00&LANGUAGE_CODE=eng&COUNTRY_CODE=ZZ

More products are on the way.

--

   E Frank Ball                frankb at efball.com