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Dan Gilmor on moving to Linux

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dr_andus:
Word vs Writer is largely a tempest in a teapot. If you need full MS Office integration (and in a corporate job environment you very likely might) then Office is your oyster. If you don't Writer will do you just fine. If you do a lot of writing, or do it professionally, you probably have already changed your work flow and use a so-called distraction-free writing environment to do your early drafts anyway. That trick works so well that Microsoft eventually incorporated its own "full screen viewing" with a minimal toolbar setting starting with Word 2010/2011. So for straight ahead wordsmithing, either app should work equally well for you. If you want full suite integration (i.e. pulling charts and tables in from other apps in the suite, data sharing, etc.) MS Office holds the edge. And for the price being charged for it, it damn well better AFAIC.
-40hz (January 10, 2016, 02:37 PM)
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Indeed. I do my writing in distraction-free software (WriteMonkey, SmartDown), but it's others that are forcing me to use Word, such as university administrators who design terrible forms and templates in Word for others to fill in and email around, and publishing companies that demand that manuscripts are uploaded as Word documents.

In both cases there is no logical need for MS Word, in fact it's the wrong tool for the job, but that is what those people learnt how to use (often quite badly), and then those 'skills' and tools are enforced upon everyone else in the organisation, especially as higher management don't have to use those tools on a daily basis and so they don't understand how these legacy software might be constraining productivity.

Innuendo:
40hz, that's a very well-written response to the topic & very logical. Unfortunately, people are not logical creatures. Once you take away all the people who are actually interested in technology for technology's sake, a person's tendency towards using an OS is going to really boil down to inertia. The only questions they really ask themselves are "What do we use at work?", "What do my friends use?", and "Which choice will yield me the most people I can ask when I can't figure something out?"

What they need and what's usable really doesn't factor into the decision process. Articles like the one in the OP with the theme of person with small amount of notoriety made the switch to <product/OS> and here's what happened either falls on ears (eyes?) that don't care either do to reasons I've listed above or they don't care because they are actually tech-savvy enough to do their own research rather than spend time listening to a talking head who is getting paid for his words and therefore his level of objectivity is unknown.

40hz:
40hz, that's a very well-written response to the topic & very logical. Unfortunately, people are not logical creatures. Once you take away all the people who are actually interested in technology for technology's sake, a person's tendency towards using an OS is going to really boil down to inertia.
-Innuendo (February 27, 2016, 09:55 AM)
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I will certainly agree with you on those points. Probably the only reason I did my earlier brain-dump is because I'm so tired of all the faux controversy surrounding the whole "I use Windows"/"I use Linux" argument. But I take comfort in the fact that most of the bickering has mercifully dropped off a great deal in the last few years. Mainly because it's now obvious it's pointless. They've both attained parity by any reasonable measure you'd care to apply. So to a very real extent it doesn't much matter at all what bloody OS or app suite you use. The only difficulty comes in when you're discussing standards. And as one person pointed out (I forget who) the one really good thing about 'standards' is we get so many to choose from.

IMO, about the only real dividing issue for what OS you choose is which games you want to play.

Beyond that, I think it's pretty much moot from a functional and practical viewpoint. All that's left is the political considerations. That, and the inexorable gravity well of user inertia you spoke of previously.

Innuendo:
I will certainly agree with you on those points. Probably the only reason I did my earlier brain-dump is because I'm so tired of all the faux controversy surrounding the whole "I use Windows"/"I use Linux" argument. But I take comfort in the fact that most of the bickering has mercifully dropped off a great deal in the last few years.-40hz (February 27, 2016, 04:38 PM)
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As a Windows user, I'm very uncomfortable saying this, but I feel that most of the animosity that has existed between Windows & Linux users has been that ultra-vocal, extremist faction of Linux users who beat the drum for decades saying that only idiots would use closed-source software because open-source software would never have back-doors, vulnerabilities, etc.

The whole OS flame-war went quiet when it came out that Heartbleed, etc. affected Linux just as much as it affected Windows. Thankfully, that news sent that group back under the rocks from whence they came. A group is often judged by the behavior of its most visible and vocal members so the Linux community is better off without them anyway.

IMO, about the only real dividing issue for what OS you choose is which games you want to play.
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Loving Fallout 4 right now...not sure if that's playable on Linux or not. I haven't kept up on Gabe Newell's crusade to bring Steam to Linux. I hope he succeeds. It'll be one less thing for people to b!tch about.

rgdot:
Well the delivery of malware is by and large a Linux issue, now of course the user executes it on his/her local Windows machine but still.

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