[geeks] Desktops

[Brian Hechinger]

On Thu, May 09, 2002 at 08:00:00PM -0500, Jonathan C. Patschke wrote:
> 
> > What are folks using for free office suites. Star Office, Open Office or
> > something else?

i was lucky enough to get myself out of that game before it started.  i ran
win3.1 for a month until i descided i was FAR better off using BSD.  that was,
uhm, ahhhhhh, 10 years ago?  no, had to be more than that.  or was it?  hell,
it was so long ago, i can't even rememebr anymore. :)

> I'd like to use OpenOffice, but it flat doesn't work on IRIX.  They're
> planning to get it there someday, though.  I used StarOffice on Solaris
> back when a SPARCplug was my primary workstation.  It was slow as hell,
> but they've supposedly fixed that in OpenOffice.

haven't used OpenOffice yet, but 6.0 Beta ran like lighting on my U2 at work.
from the little that i used 5.2 and 6.0 Beta, i would have to say that 6.0 was
a GIANT step in the right direction.

> So, currently, I use LaTeX for document processing, and a weird
> combination of DrScheme and LaTeX's tabular environment for a pseudo-
> spreadsheet[1].  For a database program, I've got PostgreSQL, which beats
> Access to crumbs--if you happen to know SQL.  For presentation graphics, I

learn SQL and you will go far.  learn Access and you will drown in your own
feces.

> I use either vi or XEmacs, depending on my mood.  PINE handles email, but
> I'd gladly use GNUmail if I could get GNUstep to build.  I browse the web
> with Nutscrape 4.79 and read netnews with gnus.

web browsers suck on ALL operating systems, so we can mostly leave them out of
the equation.  i lack flash, which i don't care much about anyway. so it's ok.

you have a HUGE choice of editors on unix.  and they *ALL* kick the shit out
of any editor you can find for winders.

> full-featured spreadsheet and a symbolic/numerical computation environment
> that isn't as much "fun" to work with as DrScheme[2].  Excel and
> Mathematica are the only "work" applications that I still use Windows for.  
> OpenOffice would/will replace the need for Excel.  I keep hearing good
> things about Maxima as a replacement for Mathematica, but I haven't gotten
> it up-and-running as most of the LISP dependencies expect IRIX 5.x instead
> of 6.x, and, sadly, a lot has changed between the two.

ok, so there are definitely options out there.   as long as you avoid IRIX. :)

> FYI: under Windows, I used LaTeX, Excel, MySQL, PowerPoint, GIMP,
> gvim/XEmacs, Eudora, IE, and XNews, respectively--I guess I wasn't a
> typical Windows user.

no, i would guess not.  ;)

> [2] Which leaves me doing the calculus by hand, anyway.

good sigmonster.

-brian
--
Don't get too bent out of shape, for half the world, Calculus is
incomprehensible until they learn the epsilon-delta proof.  After learning
the epsilon-delta proof, it's incomprehensible for most of the other half.
                                                       -- George Adkins --