It's not a fork, it's a swiss knife

Following rumors of an OpenOffice fork initiated by Novell, this interesting article will be interesting to read :

http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS2133220131.html

Of course, full Microsoft compatibility in Ooo is a very good thing, particularly for Excel macros.

I can see the interest of the Ooo users, but I'm surprised that MS would let die what prevents their milkcow Office Suite to fall from 400$ to 20$. They can maintain high prices only because they own the document standard of Office.

So, where is the bug ? Is Novell going to deliver the compatibility layers to the public under the GPL (or the LGPL) ? It is not clear. "Open Source" does not mean free software. I don't believe in miracles.

Stall-Man comments on the Novell-MS deal

Stall-Man says : I'll get my revenge with my secret weapon : the GPL-v3.

My comment : don't mess with super-heros.

http://www.businessreviewonline.com/os/archives/2006/11/stallman_finall.html

Flash special

Our friends in Mandriva are offering a new product on their website : the Mandriva Flash, which is a USB-bootable flash memory. Provided your PC can boot from USB (recent models can do that), you have access to the Mandriva 3D desktop without installation, and with 1GB of free space available for your documents. This means you can carry on one single key the OS and 1GB of user data.

http://www.mandriva.com/en/individuals/products/flash

For what usage ?

- Separate the OS from the PC and transform any available (recent) PC into your familiar environment. Nice for the mail passwords etc.
- Try the Mandriva 3D environment without installation, and with a quicker response than on CD, with USB2.

This product belongs to the same family as "the Globetrotter", a USB hard drive sold by Mandriva. But now we have more features in a smaller form factor.

My experience with Kubuntu

Managing two desktop PC's with Gentoo is a nightmare. Last summer, after a gcc upgrade, I've had to recompile all the packages, with all the problems coming together. Fox never compiled. So, I've got a powerful PC with a dual core amd64, 4Gb of RAM and a nvidia 7900GT graphics card for Gentoo, and my Sony laptop is now running Kubuntu. I used to have Windows XP + Mandriva, but finally I found I have no need for Microsoft at all, even for ripping DVD's. So I formatted the hard drive, reinstalled, and gave Kubuntu a try.
Kubuntu is N°1 on Distrowatch. Maybe because they seem to call home everytime somebody installs Ubuntu. But it is certainly worth trying to understand the popularity of Ubuntu.

And I am fed up with Ubuntu.

Here are several remarks :

- I hate this sudo thing. What do you do when you plug a ext3 external hard-drive and you want to browse it ? The only reasonable thing is to run kdesu konqueror in a normal distro. I know, the ultras will say it is not safe. But you have to strike a deal between security and usability on the desktop. With Mandriva, just type alt-F2 and kdesu konqueror. Or start from a konsole.
- The Adept updater is not finished and buggy. I got several frezzes that could only be fixed by digging in the system and suppressing by hand a .lock file. Fantastic for a distro which is supposed to facilitate the desktop ! From my tray icon, I can launch several sessions of Adept. This is not practical.
- The software offer is poor. There is no Kuickshow. I could not find "Transcode".
- There is no such thing as the PLF (Penguin Liberation Front). "Attention, novembre 2006 : The PLF Ubuntu project is shutting down, due to lack of time of its maintainers." (http://doc.ubuntu-fr.org/depots/plf/plf-fr). Availibility of PLF packages is important for my freedom ! Resistance to software patents is a part of foss story !
- The distribution is not up-to-date. Why should I wait more for the 3D office ?

My conclusion is : I am going to ditch this distro and come back to my good old Mandriva. I have the same feeling when I give a regular try to Gnome. I rapidly come back to KDE, which is way more advanced. Mandriva is not perfect, but much better. Except the PR, I cannot see the point with Unbuntu.

Mark - The Space Cuckoo

"Female parasitic-cuckoos seem to specialize and lay eggs that closely resemble the eggs of their chosen host. Parasitic cuckoos are grouped into gentes, with each gente specializing in a particular host. There is some evidence that the gentes are genetically different from one another. "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuckoo

First, I parasite the Debian distribution and I try to attract some of its developpers. Then I inject my cheap dollars into Ubuntu and distribute CDROMS almost for free. This creates havoc on the ecosystem. People like Mandriva, who have to earn each dollar with their sweat suffer from that. The Suse distribution, which has all my respect because they contributed so much to my preferred desktop, KDE, suffers from Novell attitude. What do I do ? This is another opportunity for me to parasite the ecosystem.

For me, this is not the spirit of FOSS. FOSS main objective is to free the people from closed standards and closed systems. With FOSS, building blocks can be added to create bigger achievements. There are still plenty of areas where GNU/Linux can be improved. Mark, why didn't you inject your space trip ticket + all your Ubuntu uneeded expenses for that purpose ? Why a new distribution when there are already too many ?

This is a short list of subjects where you could have been more useful in the area of Desktop Linux :

- Work on hal / ivman / dbus to improve the peripherals management
- Work on KDE, not Gnome, to improve the user experience. I can't believe you support this Gnome thing so much.
- Work on the startup time
- Lobby ATI and Nvidia to have open source drivers
- Lobby the printer manufacturers to improve printing support
- Lobby to push Linux PC availability

FOSS needs Linus, Richard, Alan and others. A FOSS-friendly businessman voice would have been interesting to listen.

Here is a nice summary to read :
http://blog.madduck.net/debian/2006.05.24-ubuntu-and-debian

Interoperability - A vast subject

Inter-operability is not a new subject. Crimosoft seems to discover this word because they were until now in such a dominant position that their products were based on a "de-facto" standard - their own standard. As long as IE was the only one browser, no need to follow the W3C recommendations. Same for the Oasis standard for XML documents. This time is over, Billy boy.

Wikipedia on "de-facto" standards : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-facto_standard

Your GSM phone and my GSM phone will work say - in India or in Hong Kong. Why ? Because the French and the German telecom authorities started the GSM standard, which became a worldwide ETSI standard. Was there a need for patent coverage ?

Mmmm ... It happens that a US mobile phone company which name starts by a "M" was bribing a northern Europe operator to fax them all the internal discussions and was patenting everything underground. The funny story is that the guy faxing documents during the night had no sleep and fell on the ground during a meeting. I will never buy a GSM phone from "M".

It looks like a US tradition to try to f*** everybody with silly patents. The ETSI had to create a truce between the big players, but the Japanese players had to pay ...

But, anyway, my point is that companies can sit around the table and more or less agree on standards to garantee inter-operability, and this through standardisation bodies. Royalties agreements can exist, but the rules should be the same for eveybody. This is the normal way.

Doing bi-lateral agreements such as the MS-Novell deal is hijacking and unfair. MS playing unfair games ? No ? I cannot believe that ;-).

Here is an interesting comment on Red Hat reaction to the MS-Novel deal.
And here is a very nice article on Crimosoft dragging their feet to comply with the European requests on interoperability.