[ale] just installed LibreOffice in Linux, should have been easier

[Ron Frazier]

Hi Aaron,

Comments below.

Sincerely,

Ron

On 03/14/2011 12:21 PM, aaron wrote:
>    
>> On 03/13/2011 08:06 AM, arxaaron wrote:
>>      
>>> I love it when people take the most difficult route to
>>> a destination and then blame the people who provided
>>> the map.
>>>        
>
> On 2011/03/13, at 20:11 , Ron Frazier wrote:
>    
>> I followed the instructions on the LibreOffice website download page.
>> How am I supposed to know there are all these easier methods
>> elsewhere?
>>
>>      
> A fair question.
>
> GNU / Linux and FLOSS are about freedom and choice and informed control,
> so there are always lots of choices and the easiest or best option
> isn't always
> the most obvious.   My snark came from your misguided comparisons to
> Mafia$oft windisease, which you seemed to be praising for allowing you
> NO freedom and NO choice and NO control.  This was a repeat of your
>    

I was praising the fact that I got LibreOffice up and running on Windows 
a heck of a lot faster and easier than I did in Linux by following the 
most obvious method of installation.  Granted, there was an easier 
method I didn't know about at the time.

> lopsided comparison of file transfer speeds where you shackled Linux
> to the
> leaden weights of a closed source, proprietary, alien file system
> before the
> race and then praised the guy that forged and locked those shackles in
> place
> for appearing to be faster.
>    

I guess there is no fair way to do that test.  What I was really 
comparing was user experience on one OS vs the other OS.  I didn't want 
to do the test from the system drive back to the same drive.  The only 
destination drive I had was formatted to NTFS.  So, Linux apparently 
cannot transfer to NTFS as fast as from EXT4, and Windows cannot 
transfer to EXT4 at all.  So there's no real way to do the test that 
isn't apples and oranges.  Even with Windows, I was sort of complaining 
about the fact that I was getting 60 MB / sec across a SATA interface 
that should be capable of 300 MB / sec.  The fact that Linux was doing 
30 MB / sec, which I can do to a USB 2.0 drive, while I was testing on 
SATA, was even more annoying.

> Mac is an expensive Apple. Windisease is a worm ridden, rotten to the
> core
> Apple.  Linux is a vast array of fresh and healthy (but sometimes
> tart...) citrus
> fruits, free for the picking. Without a major effort to account for
> the weight of
> commercial roadblocks and restrictions that are tipping the scales,
> almost
> any level of direct comparison across the proprietary divide is
> inaccurate
> and unfair.
>
>    

So, do you have an opinion about Windows?  Just kidding.

This is probably a flame war for another day, but here's how I see it.  
Let's discount the last 5 years.  For the 20 years prior to that, if you 
wanted a GUI based computer that's relatively functional, stable, 
usable, and affordable, you bought a PC with Windows.  Otherwise, you 
bought a Mac at twice the price.  Linux, in my opinion, during that time 
frame, wasn't even a contender in the marketplace for a GUI desktop for 
the average Joe or Jane.  I think the first Ubuntu, which I think was 
6.01 or something in 2006, was the first major turning point, or at 
least the first one I was aware of, to make Linux a viable contender for 
the desktop for average people.  It was also the first or second Linux I 
ever burned to CD.  Even having burned every Ubuntu since then to CD, 
and tinkered with them more around 2009, Ubuntu 10.04 is the first one 
I've ever been willing to even consider running on my machine all the 
time as my primary OS, and I'm still running it.  The simple reason is 
that, when I installed it, everything just worked, on the hardware I 
had, without jumping through lots of hoops, including the wireless, 
which is the only way my PC's attach to the net.  Actually, I had to 
attach my Dell laptop running Ubuntu to my Windows machine at first, 
share the internet connection from the Windows machine, then download a 
patch for the wireless driver to work.  Except for that minor hiccup, 
the Ubuntu has worked fine on my laptop, and I can do most of what I 
want to do in Linux.

So, in my opinion, the reason that Windows has a billion users and that 
they were willing to pay lots of money to have it was that there was no 
viable alternative combination of functionality and usability and 
price.  Now, fortunately, Linux is coming on the scene as a much more 
viable alternative for the average person.  However, I still wouldn't 
recommend that my sister or my Dad try to install it.  I might recommend 
that they let me install it as a dual boot option and get all set up and 
then they can use it.

I see the OS of the PC as a tool.  It allows the computer to run and 
presents options to the user for applications that they can use to do 
the things they want to do and provides the infrastructure needed for 
those things to run.  If the only tool choice you have is proprietary 
and expensive, then you're going to use that.  If you have one that's 
free, and it does what you want, and the difficulty is similar, and 
performance is similar or better, and it's more secure, then the average 
Joe / Jane will consider moving over.  Even then, many people don't have 
an incentive to climb the learning curve.  Many are oblivious to the 
security risks, and their system does what they want, and it's 
compatible to their coworkers' stuff, so why change it?

I have never had a technological reason to try to convert to Linux.  
Almost anything I want the computer to do, Windows Vista or 7 can do 
quite nicely.  There are a few things I can't do on Linux that I have to 
reboot to Windows to do.  The reasons I'm here, as described in other 
posts, are intellectual curiosity, desire to know about something that's 
up and coming, reducing maintenance somewhat (although maintaining a 
dual boot machine is more of a bear than doing one OS, but I don't deal 
with Windows as often), reducing security concerns substantially, and to 
reduce costs of upgrades, etc.  The first two reasons don't apply to 
most computer users.  The next two may apply, but they probably don't 
want to think about it very much.  They may or may not know about, and 
think about the last one.

So, if the motive for the average Joe / Jane is moderate at best to 
switch, and there are some significant disincentives to doing that, like 
who will support me and my coworkers don't use that and will my printer 
or scanner work, then the barriers to entry need to be as low as 
possible.  That was the thrust of my prior discussion.

> Still, while your platform comparisons are invalid, your observations
> about
> Linux software installation needing simplification have merit.  Not
>    

Wow!  Does that mean I'm no longer the black sheep of the family?  8-)

> surprisingly,
> an answer to your concern from the FLOSS community is in the works:
>
> According to the lead article in the Newsdesk section of the April
> 2011 Linux
> Format magazine, a collaborative developer group that is being
> supported by
> most all the major distros has emerged to work on a unified FLOSS
> software
> repository and installation API.  The Project Bretzn goals are to
> simplify
> software access and installation across all the mainstream Linux distro
> choices.  The article notes that if Canonical is willing to make their
> "Software Centre" available under a different license, the unified
> repository and installation API could be available in as little as 6
> months.
>
>    

Actually, I think that project is really cool.  If they can make it 
work, I think it will be much easier for more people to use Linux.

> “The current package
> managers expose way too much
> complexity to the end user. The normal
> user doesn’t care about dependencies,
> libraries and other internals. They care
> about screenshots, descriptions,
> ratings, tags, comments,
> recommendations from friends and
> other features that current package
> managers don’t provide,”
>
> Video of the meeting is at<http://youtu.be/BHeP2ZBwS_U>
>
>    

Just out of curiosity, how did you get the text?  Do they publish their 
articles on the internet?  I've started reading Linux User and 
Developer, which may be the same publisher.  It would be neat to get 
that online.  That's a neat article you quoted.  Those British magazines 
are beautiful, but SOO expensive.

> FULL ARTICLE TEXT:
> ====
> DESKTOP/COMMUNITY
> One store to rule them all?
> ====
>     Recently, representatives from Red
> Hat, Ubuntu, Mandriva, Debian, Fedora
> and SUSE met to thrash out the issues
> and problems that a unified packaging
> system could resolve. Karlitschek said:
> “After two-and-a-half days, we all
> agreed on an architecture, and we’ll
> work in the next few months to bring
> this to all major distributions.”
>     The resulting system, which should
> allow users to install software from a
> single source on any of the main distros,
> will make life simpler for maintainers,
> developers and – not least – users, who
> will no longer have to worry about
> dependency issues on their computers.
> -- Coming together --
>     The meeting in Germany was the
> culmination of three months’ work, and
> set about a sprint to create a working
> prototype called AppStream. Within a
> few days, a core group of hackers had
> created a client application and solidified
> the process around PackageKit, which
> is available on both KDE and Gnome,
> and the user interface from Ubuntu’s
> Software Centre. Technology from the
> Open Collaboration Services project will
> enable users to review and rate software,
> and distro-specific instructions will be
> housed in a common XML file. One snag
> is that Canonical will have to make the
> Software Centre available under a
> different licence in order to enable the
> package to be included in a standard
> Gnome desktop. Without this change,
> the interface will have to be written
> from scratch – putting the project back
> by as much as 18 months, according to
> some estimates.
>     While this doesn’t mean that users
> of all distros will have a single app store
> from which to get software, it does
> mean that developers can release and
> market their wares to the largest
> audience without having to build for
> every combination of distribution and
> architecture. Reviews and ratings from
> a variety of users will be incorporated
> into each distro’s software centre
> automatically, and the process of
> finding and deploying software should
> be consistent across platforms.
>     While no timescale has been
> announced for integration into the
> main distros, this should lead to a more
> consistent system for Linux users and,
> the planners hope, leave more time for
> innovative coding.
>     It was agreed that the Ubuntu Software
> Centre provided the best model for the
> unified distribution system. App stores
> seem to be proliferating even faster than
> Angry Birds clones, so it’s little
> surprise that developers representing
> world’s biggest distros have started
> knocking together a unified application
> installation API that could make a single
> packaging method a reality.
>     The project is the brainchild of KDE
> developer Frank Karlitschek, who
> wanted to reduce some of the
> complexity involved in distributing
> software to distros. He explained that
> Project Bretzn should simplify the
> process of getting software out (after
> it’s been written) to a 10-minute
> process. “The current package
> managers expose way too much
> complexity to the end user. The normal
> user doesn’t care about dependencies,
> libraries and other internals. They care
> about screenshots, descriptions,
> ratings, tags, comments,
> recommendations from friends and
> other features that current package
> managers don’t provide,” he said.
> 6 LXF143
>
>
>    

-- 

(PS - If you email me and don't get a quick response, you might want to
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Ron Frazier

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