Thread: UK Schools advised "Avoid Vista & Office '07 - Consider Linux & OpenOffice"

The microsoft office suite decided to disable itself 1 month after I bought this computer and it was probably the best thing that Vista's ever done for me.

<3 open office.

I installed Ubuntu on this laptop that I got over a year ago for school and I really like using it, except I can't get the internal wireless card to work and I also have a sound issue (it's barely audible). So, alas, I'm still using XP and Office '03, which I know better than OpenOffice anyway, so meh, whatever.

Now, on a desktop I don't see any reason in the world to not have a dual-boot Linux/Windows machine. Linux just runs so much easier/quicker/everything, so much easier. Two desktops in the house with a dual boot setup (and for the record, one dual boot laptop, 2 other laptops with XP and Vista).

Grod loves Vista because it makes everyone else mad because we all hate it and he gets a rush from it.

From what I've seen and heard, Vista seems a lot like Windows ME. It Seems like another attempt by Microsoft to introduce new technology before it is actually ready simply to make money and appease their stock holders.

Very little in Vista is new technology. Most of it is technology that Apple created a long time ago, MS is just having trouble emulating it.

I think Grod is Steve Balmer.

Originally Posted by ninja9578

Very little in Vista is new technology. Most of it is technology that Apple created a long time ago, MS is just having trouble emulating it.

Rofflecakes.

I'm happy with XP

Originally Posted by Seismosaur

Grod loves Vista because it makes everyone else mad because we all hate it and he gets a rush from it.

Originally Posted by ninja9578

I think Grod is Steve Balmer.

You all love to talk about me, don't you.

Hmm. Anyone actually going to talk about linux and oo?
I use both, and I have abiword on my USB stick for use at school. I'm writing a book with an oo user so I save the files as .odt

Oh, and WinXP takes about 2 minutes from to boot up and login, and finish loading apps, Ubuntu with Compiz takes about 20 seconds ^_^

OOo has a lot of java in it so it's fairly slow. I much prefer iWork to OOo, but I'd much rather use OOo than word. Remember that we are technical users though, our word processors work better, but have a steeper learning curve. With word you can just type and it works fine. The really complicated things that are impossible to use in Word don't get used very often.

I've recently started using LaTeX. It's far better than any other word processor, but has a learning curve like that of C.

You can take all the useless crap off of XP and it cuts down the boot time considerably. Even so, it's still much slower than OSX, which is slower than Linux.

So the main advantage in having Linux is booting fast?

No, that's just a perk. The main advantage is stability, no registry, low footprint, synapsis manager, no obsolete files.

What does a registry actually do...?

I thought you were a technical user?

The registry is that thing where Windows stores metadata about most of it's files as well as preferences for each program. It is only accessed by the OS itself or special programs that require you to go into *whatever the Windows equivalent to a -su is* mode.

The problem is that Microsoft can't seem to figure out how to keep it clean. Whenever a file is deleted, the meta data is not removed. The longer you go without paying for a program to clean it, the slower your computer gets.

Program files are deleted on a proper uninstall, but then it leaves gaps. Next time a registry entry is made it's fragmented. There is no way to defragment the registry, it has to be done at boot time and even specialized program have to.

Linux and OSX don't have a registry, they use a Keychain, which is much smaller and easy to keep clean.

I miss tech talk.

I have lots of knowledge on different computer aspects, but seemingly random sections I'll be completely ignorant about.

Thanks.

Originally Posted by ninja9578

Linux and OSX don't have a registry, they use a Keychain, which is much smaller and easy to keep clean.

What?
most *nix apps use config files

Keychains (as far as I know) are just password management apps

I can't speak for Linux because I haven't studied how it works, but OSX's keychain does store passwords and security features, but also configuration data about certain aspects of the program. It's not as in depth as the registry on Windows, most OSX configurations for programs go into the app packages themselves.

The registry is also a single point of failure. It's a single file which, if it gets corrupted, can ruin every piece of software you've installed, as well as your OS in general.