h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I just found the UG and am interested in being added to the list. I've been using Linux since kernel 2.0.29, and will willingly answer any questions that I can. TIA.

Hello! Welcome!

That was quite a while ago really, wasn't it? I can remember things were a bit different then. I think I moved to 2.2 when it first came out... can't remember if I had any 2.0 kernels other than 2.0.36 though, which is what I remember having. Bet it was before I worked up the courage to upgrade them...

It occurs to me that I'm now, technically, a linux user. In my astrolab, anyway...

Excellent! And how do you find it?

* suspects a less than optimal answer *

Its tolerable. To be honest I feel like I have one hand tied behind my back at all times... but you can do some cool things. And not do some other cool things.

The major problem is that there's no common desktop experience with Linux. I have a joyful one, because I use GNOME (which thinks like I do) customised to work more or less exactly how I want it to. I don't get on well with KDE, or FVWM, or anything else much for that matter, although I can use them if I have to.

I understand the feeling. Linux is a difficult thing to get right, as people tend to develop highly personalised desktops over the years of using them, which become incomprehensible even to other Linux users sometimes! I know mine confuses one of my friends, but that's okay because his confuses me...

I'm using KDE at the moment. its okay, and for the most part the whole gui thing doesn't bother me because I'm mainly using the command lin
Here's to my first try at StarOffice I'm gonna try to spreadsheet..

Okay, star office is a bad thing because it runs under linux but uses windows rules. like not using button 2 for paste. grr

Koffice is a great alternative to Star Office, it has all the normal office applications and the new version fixes some major bugs which you may have encountered in the past.

Alas I don't have control over the computers, so I can't get it or install it. I'll take you're word for it, though!

I'm keeping an eye on the various GNOME Office applications. They're less well-integrated than KOffice, but they're coming along very well... AbiWord is looking pretty good, The GIMP is used by even the hard-core KDE fanatics (but then technically it isn't a GNOME app anyway, just the one they wrote the toolkit for!), and Dia is a very nice-looking Visio equivalent. Sodipodi is a great little vector drawing app that's coming along very nicely indeed, but the star in the sky for GNOME Office at the moment is Gnumeric, a spreadsheet that knocks KSpread into a cocked hat

hey maw, you say that the main problem with linux is thatthere is no common desktop experience, but that is one of it's strengths, not it's weaknesses.

If you come from windows, there is a skin that thinks mostly like you do.

if you come from the archimedes, there is a skin that works like you think.

if you like command line, but occasionally need gui programs, you can use a tiny window manager and terminal on old hardware, with no problems at all.

Surely this is much better than the microsoft practice of not only forcing you to think as they wish, but forcing you to change this way of thinking every few years, while at the same time stopping you from doing things that were quite easy last year?

By all means let's have common methods underneath it all, but user interfaces need to be open, so that if you can't use the default gui, you have an alternative that might think like you do.

Xyroth, I wasn't trying to imply that I find it a problem, but rather that it is often a problem for people switching to Linux, and when comparing one's Linux experience, because if you end up using a desktop you hate, you'll hate Linux, which would be a shame, because you might have loved it if you'd used GNOME, or KDE, or GNUstep or whatever it was you didn't use the first time.

There does need to be more interoperability between the major desktops, to allow a more mix-and-match approach to choosing suitable applications (despite my opinion that currently GNOME has about the best set, certainly for the internet - Galeon for web browsing, Evolution (which knocks KMail right over), X-Chat for IRC... the only thing it's missing is a decent newsreader, although I believe there's a Nautilus view that does nntp). Although we are seeing moves in this direction at the moment, so who knows?