lubuntu-desktop team mailing list archive

[John Webster <civil@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Phill

I wasn't arguing against the current Lubuntu defaults - they are fine,
and entirely appropriate for the mission statement. In fact, I think
that the Lubuntu team are doing a great job, which is why I'm here.

I use Lubuntu to escape the horrors of Windows XP on older machines, and
Ubuntu or Kubuntu to avoid the slightly lesser, but still considerable,
frustrations associated with Windows 7 on more capable hardware. In my
experience, any machine that does a reasonable job of running XP-SP2 or
later will have been equipped with at least 256MB of RAM, and more
commonly 384MB or 512MB. Such a machine will fly with Lubuntu. 

However, IF a particular user decides that they MUST install OpenOffice
Impress from the repos, they will pull in a lot of dependencies that are
common to other OpenOffice components. Hence my comment that, if you are
going to install Impress, you might be just as well to replace Abiword
and Gnumeric with the corresponding OpenOffice components.

Softmaker Office for Linux is neither free nor open source, but it is
lighter and more agile than OpenOffice and delivers better compatibility
with MS Office. It installs and runs well in Lubuntu. 

I certainly don't mean to appear to criticise OpenOffice, which I use
whenever I don't absolutely need 100% MS Office compatibility. The core
aim of the OpenOffice development team seems to have been to produce a
comprehensive and competent office suite, while maintaining a decent
level of compatibility with MS Office. Indeed, the compatibility that
they have achieved is perfectly adequate for all but serious business
users forced to operate in a generally Windows/Mac environment. 

By contrast, the Softmaker Office team has clearly had the narrower goal
of providing three key components that are as close as possible to 100%
compatible with MS Office, and selling them for a much lower price than
MS charges That Softmaker has taken the trouble to create a version for
Linux means that business users wanting to use Linux on the desktop can
do so with virtually no hassle, which must surely be a Good Thing.

Incidentally, my personal view is that the most elegant presentation
application out there, by a country mile, is Keynote. It doesn't make
all that great a fist of maintaining compatibility with PowerPoint, no
doubt because the Apple development team pursued the same philosophy as
the OpenOffice team. In any case, while I'm sure that porting Keynote to
Linux would be relatively straightforward, I can't see Apple releasing
the source code under the GPL or even making a paid version available.

Regards

John

On Mon, 2010-08-16 at 04:41 +0100, Phillip Whiteside wrote:
> Hi John,
> 
> 
> Which is why I suggested just installing presenter. For Lubuntu  the
> mission statement is:
> 
> 
>         Lubuntu is targeted at "normal" PC users running on low-spec
>         hardware. Such users may not know how to use command line
>         tools, and in most cases they just don't have enough resources
>         for all the bells and whistles of the "full-featured"
>         mainstream distributions.
> 
>         A Pentium II or Celeron system with 128 Mb RAM is probably a
>         bottom-line configuration that may yield slow yet usable
>         system with Lubuntu. It should be possible to install and run
>         Lubuntu with less memory, but the result will likely not be
>         suitable for practical use. If you have less than 160 Mb RAM,
>         you will need to use the Minimal installation instructions.
>         Please note that especially on lower powered machines (older
>         CPU's) or low RAM systems, that the installation may seem to
>         'hang' at about 95%, don't worry, it has not; it can just take
>         some time (possibly over an hour).
> By that deffintion, power point is not going to happen. 
> The second reason is that all our software is free :-)
> 
> 
> Installation of sections of OOo are quite easy. What people 'do' to
> lubuntu is entirely up to them (What some of us have been up
> to http://forum.phillw.net/viewforum.php?f=18). If you have look
> at http://forum.phillw.net/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=52 you will get an idea
> of the differences within the family. Do not forget, as *buntu is
> Debian based, you can put on any programme easily.
> 
> 
> Lubuntu <> Mint
> 
> 
> Regards,
> 
> 
> Phill.
> Lubuntu == https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Lubuntu