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Subject: Re: linux issues

Author: Daniel Clausen

Date: 00:35:15 05/27/02

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On May 26, 2002 at 19:41:30, Christophe Theron wrote:

[snip]

>Yes and in the case of Linux it can be achieved by making the GUI as close as
>possible to Windows. KDE is doing approximately that, but they should stick
>even more to the "Windows-like" idea.
>
>But it's not enough and I believe that even some more technical aspects should
>be made more Windows-like. It would attract people like me, and we are many.
>And we are opinion leader, somehow. At least to some modest extend.

While I agree that making Linux Windows-like in some ways is a good (the only?)
way to attract more users, please keep in mind that when a potential user is not
ready to sacrifice something (it's more exchanging some things with other/more
things, but she won't realize that until later) she will never really switch.

I'm sure that Linux (or at least certain distros) will become more
'Windows-like', but as long as this the main criterion of people, they will not
switch to another OS. Afterall Windows is the OS which comes closest to
Windows..

The Apple OS never tried to look like / behave like Windows. Yeah, they don't
have that much market share, but at least "they're different", which also
attracts people. (hint: Steve Jobs is quite happy with his market share, he's
not really trying to get 50% or something, believe me ;) And I'm positive that
they will still exist in 5 years - of course with similar market share. *smiles*

If Linux would look/behave exactly like Windows, many people would probably also
think "Gah, Linux is almost like Windows, I can as well use Windows itself!"


[big snip]

>Finally I have the universal problem to be able to use Word and Excel
>documents. It would be possible to convert all my existing documents one by
>one to the Koffice applications, maybe, but I find these applications to be
>in an early state of developpement at that time. And naturally I would have
>a problem every time someone sends me an MSOffice document by email.

I'm using the suice from OpenOffice.org and it works quite nice. I can read the
Word documents I get pretty well. One of my co-workers went back to using M$
Office because one table in a document looked different than under Word2000...
See what I mean?

Note: I've only used the Writer app. (Word like) No experience in the rest of
the suice.


Sargon



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