From WinXP to Ubuntu

[otolith]

I like the language, I don't much like Oracle's practice of bundling crapware with the runtime, nor the things desire to be runnable in the browser.

[0000]

Not sure what crapware, is that just on Windows? I don't think anyone involved wants it running in the browser with all the security issues it throws up that then tarnish Java as a whole, but ditching a feature like that isn't really an option and certainly wasn't before they started working towards Project Jigsaw. Jigsaw should make Java 9, having slipped a release or two, allowing for applet support to not be bundled with the standard VM.

[otolith]

0000 said:

Not sure what crapware, is that just on Windows?

Possibly. I've only come across it on Windows.

http://www.zdnet.com/a-close-look-at-how-oracle-in...

0000 said:

I don't think anyone involved wants it running in the browser with all the security issues it throws up that then tarnish Java as a whole, but ditching a feature like that isn't really an option and certainly wasn't before they started working towards Project Jigsaw. Jigsaw should make Java 9, having slipped a release or two, allowing for applet support to not be bundled with the standard VM.

That would be an improvement.

[TheRealFingers99]

0000 said:

I've been using Ubuntu for 9 years now. Pretty certain I haven't had one upgrade issue with it across any of my machines.

Unlike Gentoo, Slackware, LFS, RedHat, etc. that I was using before it which were eye opening but more fragile. I still find anything RPM based fragile today. Unity's a crying shame though.

Enjoy. FWIW I'd start with python, but I'm a big JVM fanboy.

Ubuntu uses pretty much the old Debian .deb format. As a distro, I've always got along better with Debian -- no splitting, no attempts to obfusicate its roots, no commercial who hah. Might have swapped a few years ago if Ubuntu's live CDs were readeable by my CD reader (strangely, Knoppix's Debian for the masses ones always were!).

[0000]

otolith said:

0000 said:

Not sure what crapware, is that just on Windows?

Possibly. I've only come across it on Windows.

http://www.zdnet.com/a-close-look-at-how-oracle-in...

Yuck. That's Windows only, thankfully.

[LC2]

ash73 said:

Apparently 14.04 LTS will be released next Thursday, I found a video preview here. They've made a lot of enhancements to the dash menu, it looks fantastic. I like the minimise from launcher feature, been missing that.

Perfect timing!

LOL, I chucked 12.04LTS on my ancient eeepc 900 2 days ago. Just in time to wipe it and start again then.
I was pleasantly suprised that everything 'just worked' on the old epc, as the wifi card used to be an issue (hence why I'd been left with XP until now).
It's a bit annoying that ubunutu hide all the configuration stuff that comes with Deborah & Ian's distro, but I'm sure I might get around to tweaking it (but then again, I might just use it, it works!).

[JonRB]

I'm running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS at work and, unlike the permies, don't have a Win7 virtual machine included with that which means I have to do everything at work on Linux as my only OS. I have to say I am finding it far less of a culture shock than I expected and am finding it pretty usable. Even the Unity desktop isn't so bad really - you get used to it very quickly indeed.

Just before I started this contract, I thought I'd mess around with Ubuntu a bit in the time before accepting the contract and starting on site (a period of a week) and I have found that some things are a PITA. Mainly drivers and the like - for example you can't (easily) watch Amazon Prime Video on a Linux box because Adobe haven't kep Flash under Linux up to date so it doesn't have the requisite DRM stuff that Amazon requires. Things like that. Essentially everything is less polished.

Likewise, LibreOffice is "good enough" to replace Office for most things (although there are little quirks like Calc and Excel using different formats to reference cells on other worksheets or in other files, making them incompatible with each other)

Likewise, Eclipse and GCC are "good enough" to replace Visual Studio / Visual C++ which I am more used to but I'm coping pretty well. Obviously nowhere near as polished and integrated, but good enough for me to be productive.

Edited by JonRB on Tuesday 15th April 13:50

[JonRB]

ash73 said:

Yes, 4oD has the same DRM issue; the following fixed it for me:

rm ~/.adobe -rf
sudo apt-get install hal hal-info
sudo apt-get install flashplugin-installer --reinstall

Yes, I know about that. Have tried it on both 13.10 and 12.04 and it didn't do it for me unfortunately. But I was aware that it has worked for some, so looks like you are one of the 'some'.

Incidentally for 13.x onwards, it's more difficult than that as hal is no longer in the repository and you have to go to an unofficial one that is being maintained for this very purpose.
It all stems from Adobe essentially abandoning Flash on Linux, I understand.

[JonRB]

ash73 said:

Are you using Firefox or Chrome? It fixed Firefox for me, but I think Chrome has a built-in flash thingy.

It was Firefox. I never did get to the bottom of it, but I did research it extensively at the time. Maybe I'll revisit it sometime.

What I'd really like is for Amazon to release to the wider Android community whatever they have done to the fork of Android that the Kindle Fire runs and which allows it to play Amazon Prime Video. Like *that's* going to happen.

[Blown2CV]

Libre office is fine as long as everyone else uses it too. They've always said it inter operates fine with MS office docs, but I've seen enough messed up formatting over the years to know it's horse st.

[JonRB]

Blown2CV said:

Libre office is fine as long as everyone else uses it too. They've always said it inter operates fine with MS office docs, but I've seen enough messed up formatting over the years to know it's horse st.

Yeah, that's my experience too. I've taken to saving stuff in native LibreOffice formats at work and running both Office and LibreOffice at home.

LibreOffice will have a fair stab at importing Office files but they invariably need tweaking afterwards to work properly, after which is the point at which I do a "Save As..." into the LibreOffice native file format.

[Blown2CV]

JonRB said:

Blown2CV said:

Libre office is fine as long as everyone else uses it too. They've always said it inter operates fine with MS office docs, but I've seen enough messed up formatting over the years to know it's horse st.

Yeah, that's my experience too. I've taken to saving stuff in native LibreOffice formats at work and running both Office and LibreOffice at home.

LibreOffice will have a fair stab at importing Office files but they invariably need tweaking afterwards to work properly, after which is the point at which I do a "Save As..." into the LibreOffice native file format.

It will work fine with 9 out of 10 docs, but then the tenth is the one that the MD needs you to add a few paragraphs to, by CoP when it's already 4pm. Then it starts playing silly fkers!

[0000]

MS have spent a lot of money to try and ensure that happens, that it works as well as it does is impressive.

Glad to see that recently the government made some noises about mandating ODF or HTML5 for sharing documents with the public. Little by little open formats seem to be making ground.

[JonRB]

Blown2CV said:

It will work fine with 9 out of 10 docs, but then the tenth is the one that the MD needs you to add a few paragraphs to, by CoP when it's already 4pm. Then it starts playing silly fs!

That's pretty much what I meant by "good enough".

[Blown2CV]

0000 said:

MS have spent a lot of money to try and ensure that happens, that it works as well as it does is impressive.

Glad to see that recently the government made some noises about mandating ODF or HTML5 for sharing documents with the public. Little by little open formats seem to be making ground.

Well an open standard is long overdue, otherwise companies control history.

[Blown2CV]

JonRB said:

Blown2CV said:

It will work fine with 9 out of 10 docs, but then the tenth is the one that the MD needs you to add a few paragraphs to, by CoP when it's already 4pm. Then it starts playing silly fs!

That's pretty much what I meant by "good enough".

If you were being sarcastic then yea ok!

[JonRB]

Blown2CV said:

If you were being sarcastic then yea ok!

What I meant (and probably didn't express very well) is that it manages kind of ok for a lot of documents (as you say), and on the ones where it doesn't then it requires some tweakage. On those, I tend to "save as" into the native LibreOffice format so that the tweakage is permanent. So, in other words, effectively import the document into the LibreOffice world rather than trying to use it to edit MS Office documents.

I'm probably still not explaining myself very well.

Anyway, point is that it works well enough that I will probably gradually migrate to LibreOffice rather than upgrading to the latest version of MS Office. All my docs are in 2003 formats rather than the newer ones anyway.

[otolith]

I can't believe that anyone pays for MS office with their own money. And for many (by no means all) home users it is now getting to the point where they are mugs for paying for Windows.

[Corso Marche]

I posted it on another thread here recently, but it's easy to use LibreOffice in conjunction with the OneDrive App from the Chrome store to avoid any Office docs compatibility issues.

Visit the Chrome store, install the OneDrive app (from Microsoft), and hey presto you've got Word and Excel in the browser (so long as you're online and use a Microsoft / Live account).

I pretty much use LibreOffice solely, but if I get a document which I suspect isn't importing/displaying/formatted correctly then I open it in the OneDrive app to check if it's displaying correctly. It's basically Word and Excel running in a browser window rather than a normal app window.

Here's a link to the app;
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/onedrive...

If Microsoft can't open, display, edit, and save their own document formats then it's all a matter really...

Edited by Corso Marche on Thursday 17th April 05:29

[ZesPak]

otolith said:

I can't believe that anyone pays for MS office with their own money. And for many (by no means all) home users it is now getting to the point where they are mugs for paying for Windows.

I agree to an extent, but MS Office is actually a great package that works well. People learn it in school, they use it at work and then they buy it at home because it's what they know. It's changing though, for school work I've seen a lot of them using Google Docs or equivalents.

As for Windows, I'd argue that very few buy it. It's included in almost all new systems. And the few that offer no-OS or Linux pre-installed (dell?), hardly go cheaper without it so you'd be almost stupid not to get it with windows and then just install Linux yourself.
There are also some "killer apps", amongst others there's iTunes for example, a lot of iPhones and iPods still going round, there's workarounds but they're just not there yet. As for other often installed home applications I fully agree that Linux makes sense and I'd love to see it on more devices out of the box.

Big fan of the chromebooks, again, the lack of some apps like Skype and iTunes make it a no-go for some people, but for 9/10 out of home users it's actually all they need and more.