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

[arxaaron]

On 2011/03/14, at 15:16 , Ron Frazier wrote:

> 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.
>>
>
> 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.
>
>>  This was a repeat of your 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.

I realized I need to expand the Mac analogy to read:
"Mac is an expensive, overly polished Apple with a very solid and
FreeBSD core."  :-)

>>
> 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.

You obviously know nothing of computer history.

Mafia$oft  didn't have a viable (stable, functional) GUI offering until
windisease 3.1 was released in 1992.  Versions prior to the 3.0 1990
release, were clumsy layers on top of Me$$yDOS. As always, the
criminal computer corporation played the assimilator, not the innovator.

Mac and Amiga, with fully integrated GUI systems, the later also being
the first complete, multi-media, multi-processor desktop system running
a priority preemptive multi-tasking operating environment, were  
available
in 1984 and 1985 respectively.  Amiga, of course, became the template
for every personal computer design since.

The rest of your arguments a moot as they are based an entirely flawed
premise.

[snip moot points]

>> Still, while your platform comparisons are invalid, your observations
>> about
>> Linux software installation needing simplification have merit.
>>
>
> Wow!  Does that mean I'm no longer the black sheep of the family?  8-)

No, it means that even a broken clock is right twice a day.  :-)

>
>> Not 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.

I'm still finding Linux Format magazine worth the investment.   
Definitely
the most broadly informative of the Linux mags I know of, at least for
those of us outside the sysadmin and development domains.

All of the issues are available to subscribers for viewing and download
in pdf format - I cut and pasted the text from that - but I don't know  
if they
allow non-subscriber access to older issues.

Check out  LinuxFormat.com and see.  They also maintain TuxRadar.com,
which has lots of reviews and podcasts and such.

peace
aaron


>
>> 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