Oops!

Blogilo posted here on the old blog by accident! Forgot to reconfigure it.

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Transferring zee blog!

Some time today (if all goes well) we shall be being transferred to a new location (2buntu.com!)

Now we won’t go into full details yet, but yeah… it should be happening soon :)!

Day 3: Can Windows, and Open Source Software Co-exist? Can I?

Day three really didn’t bring any new or unexpected challenges, so as an Office 2010 user, I thought I would give LibreOffice a go for its money. Remember this is not meant to be a full-out review, just my first thoughts and reaction to replacing Office 2010 with FOSS alternative.

First I would like to explain my history with LibreOffice. Its starts a bit like this… OpenOffice.org was released in 2002, the year after I graduated from high school, I soon went off to college and like most college kids I was starving, I could not afford to plop down $200 dollars on Microsoft Office so, the search started… Not only for an office suite, but I started to play around with Linux as well, but that is another story for another day.

OpenOffice.org worked, and had to work, even though I preferred office much more as it was more refined, and was much more compatible with the school computers… So I reluctantly used it.. Though through some good fortune (or maybe it was misfortune, you can decide), I finally got my hands back on MS Office, and only used OpenOffice.org when they released new releases, just to find that they still hadn’t worked on my chief complaint, the lousy user interface.

As fate would have it though, eventually one company buys another and OpenOffice.org is forked to LibreOffice (I won’t go through the boring details here, as it has been covered by millions of bloggers before me). I have never used LibreOffice more than typing random paragraphs, other than today, So I thought I would give it go, and type this post in it.

The first thing I noticed is that they have not touched the user interface at all. Yeah they updated some of the icons and buttons, but it is still as crowded and as ugly as OpenOffice.org ever was. One thing I did notice about it though, is it seems to be faster and more responsive than OpenOffice.org ever was, so that is somewhat exciting.

So keeping that in mind, I am pleasantly surprised with the speed increases, and I hope the Document Foundation will continue their hard work making LibreOffice the best alternative to Microsoft, so starving students like I was don’t have to continue to starve, or starve less, and please Document Foundation, for the sake of all humanity, dump the old user interface of ten years ago, and rework it from scratch, please???

Once again your comments are always welcome.

P.S. 2buntu now has a .com, read all about it here

OpenOffice.org to become a community project… Who cares?

Great News!

According to The H, OpenOffice.org, the source of the LibreOffice suite’s reason for living, is about to become a community project, at last. Oracle, the draconian owners of the current product, have seen the light, and repented from their unbelieving ways. No longer will the infidels trample upon the spirit of the community, by selling a closed, commercial Oracle OpenOffice.

Now while this epiphany should normally garner the praise of the community, I’m quite frankly left asking… who cares? Currently LibreOffice is improving at a rapid clip, and unlike what I expected to happen (as often does with rage-forks), the LibreOffice community has not left it high and dry, and it’s development pace has not ground to halt. Much to the contrary, LibreOffice is advancing at a rocket pace, especially for such a huge project. Plus, LibreOffice has the backing, not only of it’s own Document Foundation, but of Canonical, Novell, Red Hat, me, you, and aunty Sue, to name a few (slick, I know!). So that really begs us to ask yet again, if OpenOffice.org is aping LibreOffice, doing a back flip, and becoming a community project… who cares?

Do I Care?

Personally, I care. It’s great news of course! However, it’s a bit long in coming, and I think that past dealings by both Oracle and Sun may have taken the steam out of this engine. What will the wider community do? How will the crowd react?

I guess we shall have to wait to see.
For now, here’s a poll:

P.S. – Read the official blog announcement: http://blogs.oracle.com/trond/2011/04/openofficeorg_to_become_a_pure.html

2buntu now has a .com

Thanks to our other admin (TheX), and our good friends from askubuntu.com (namely Jacob and George Edison), we now have a “.com” too!

We may possibly add more there, but for now, it redirects here.
So, when you wanna share the blog, just tell your friends: check out 2buntu.com – it’s more awesome than your face! (it really is – unless that’s your gf/bf/husband/wife :P)

Update:

Screenshot. I guess it happened!

P.S. Thanks to Jrgifford for the idea!

Browser showdown teaser – several broswers running on Kubuntu

Yesterday, in a lead up to actually reviewing (writing about it really) – I ran several (not all) of the browsers together at once.

Here is a screenshot:

All the browsers with the default page open (ignore my gajim chat :P)

LibreOffice 3.4 Beta 1 Spotted as UFO Decal!

LibreOffice 3.4 Beta 1 available.

Yes. You read right! It just (well I’m not sure if just just just, but just) landed! And it said to take it to our leader, not sure how we will do that…

As for what has changed, I have no clue, but I will update when I get more info.

If I’m not mistaken, users of the libreoffice ppa should be getting this release soon, however if you are running Natty without the ppa, you probably will be stuck with 3.3.2 (which is good, cause that would of course be more stable).