Windows 10 - Day 1

On 5/28/2016 9:56 AM, Mayayana wrote:
| Personally I'm not thrilled with LO. It's buggy
| and bloated. But it's free and does most of what
| I need.
|
| I've read that on some of the forum's, but I haven't seen the "buggy"
part.

So you assume I'm wrong.

| As for "bloated", it has a lot of features! Most of my use has been the
| word processor and spreadsheet.
|

You seem to be a Libre Office booster. I don't
need anything but Writer and perhaps occasionally
Impress, in case I get a powerpoint file. It's crazy
that I have to install the rest. They claim the
whole mess is needed by each program. That means
I have a DOC editor that's 400+ MB! There's just no
excuse for things being that big. It indicates sloppy
housekeeping. And it takes several seconds to load
on my 8-core 3.31 GHz computer. Have you not
noticed that splashscreens became unnecessary years
ago, due to improvements with CPUs, but that they're
now making a comeback due to poorly designed and
bloated software? My machine has 8 cores that can
handle over 3 billion calculations per second, yet LO
Writer requires trillions of operations to get on its feet.

| I've seen a few forum posts regarding bugs in older versions that
| supposedly were fixed in recent versions. You don't mention what version
| you are using- maybe you want to check for a more recent one? My writer
| is Linux Version: 4.2.8.2 .
|

I'm using the latest on Windows -- 5.1. For awhile, with
v. 4, I had to deal with distorted images when saving as
PDF. I write up contracts, estimates, receipts as DOCs
and then often save them as PDF to send via email. My
logo was getting stretched. I had to go through a
convoluted process with a PDF program to get the PDF
right. That's now fixed in v. 5, but it never should have
happened. No release should go out with such glaring bugs
as the inability to have images in a DOC saved to PDF --
especially given that it worked fine in earlier versions.

Another bug that someone pointed out to me is the
color of lines. It defaults to something like federal blue.
Why doesn't it default to black? Since when is federal
blue high fashion for business documents? That aside,
the real problem is that I can't find any way to make the
choice of black stick.
Also, LO can only handle docx in a very basic way. They
claim to handle docx, but if it contains much beyond plain
text LO corrupts the layout. So when getting files from
MS Office users it's important to ask them to save as DOC
before sending. (Which is not always easy. Most of them
have no idea what doc or docx means.)

I only use LO in a limited way and already have templates
for my most-used DOCs, so these are bugs found by an
occasional user. I don't care about drawing lines. I do care
about printing business cards. I hope I'll never have to adjust
that template. Every time I do the whole layout goes batty.

In my experience bugginess is an important caveat with
a lot of OSS, especially the big projects done by committee.
They tend to be a social club project as much as they're
software. It's always under construction. I appreciate that LO
is free and allows me to deal with MS Office formats. So,
gift horse and all that. Still, there just isn't any excuse for
such sloppiness. And while I can often find workarounds,
the average person is helpless with such problems. It can be
very confusing for people used to polished, commercial software.



Why spend time futzing when you have a business need. WordPerfect
Does all that seamlessly Even the older versions.

--
PeterN

| Why spend time futzing when you have a business need. WordPerfect
| Does all that seamlessly Even the older versions.
|

I didn't know that still existed. LO has been
good enough for me. I use it for business, but
I don't need to use it very much. I just fill in
the blanks of my templates. It's a lot of work
to set up the templates, but that's a one-time
thing.

I checked at Corel but couldn't find any prices.
At buycheapsoftware.com it's about $150 for the
full standard version 17; $315 for pro. And that's
not the latest. Pretty expensive. And it may require
activation.

The latest version, 18, which I can't even find a
price for, doesn't run on XP. LO does.
I also have LO on 2 machines here. One is for my
use. The other computer has Office 2000 and LO
is used for handling docx. If there's no activation
I could put it on 2 machines. IF. (Though I find
Corel to be pretty fair. They allow PSP to go on
3 machines in the same house, and there's no
activation required, anyway.)

I suppose that if I needed to use office software
daily then I'd research it and train myself in the one
I chose. But for my needs LO serves.

The changes in licensing over the past few years
make these things very unattractive. There's possible
activation and locking to one computer. There's lack
of support for older systems. There's the nonsense
about versions, with crazy claims like that I can't legally
create a doc for business using a "home and student"
version. The result is software that can be crippled in
multiple ways, and it's often not easy to figure out
ahead of time exactly how it's crippled.

On 05/28/2016 04:41 AM, David Taylor wrote:
On 27/05/2016 23:35, Ken Hart wrote:
snip


Since I have several computers, networking is critical. A mix of Windows
and Linux boxes was difficult. Once the last Windows box was converted,
networking became simple.

I don't foresee a return to MS in my future.

I've used SAMBA to to Linux == Windows networking without problems.
Surprised it didn't work for you. Yes, Linux is useful on out-dated
hardware, although I still have one system here running Windows-2000.
The XP systems (mostly Dell) were starting to fail in any case.


I used SAMBA when I had a mix. I edited the .conf file, and put the same
file on each Linux machine. But one machine might see the entire
network, another "identical" machine only saw certain machines. I fought
with it until I converted the last Win box, then went to SSH.

SSH has worked very well, except when I have to "cross networks". I have
two ISP's (DSL & PPoE) and two LANs here, with one box on both LANs. I
can SSH within a LAN by computer name: "ssh ken@dell###", but if I cross
the LAN box, I have to use the IP: "ssh ##"

--
Ken Hart

On 05/28/2016 09:56 AM, Mayayana wrote:
| Personally I'm not thrilled with LO. It's buggy
| and bloated. But it's free and does most of what
| I need.
|
| I've read that on some of the forum's, but I haven't seen the "buggy"
part.

So you assume I'm wrong.

Quite the contrary, and I apologize if I gave that impression! Let me
try again: In my use of LO, I haven't experienced bugs lately. Your
mileage may vary.


| As for "bloated", it has a lot of features! Most of my use has been the
| word processor and spreadsheet.
|

You seem to be a Libre Office booster. I don't
need anything but Writer and perhaps occasionally
Impress, in case I get a powerpoint file. It's crazy
that I have to install the rest. They claim the
whole mess is needed by each program. That means
I have a DOC editor that's 400+ MB! There's just no
excuse for things being that big. It indicates sloppy
housekeeping. And it takes several seconds to load
on my 8-core 3.31 GHz computer. Have you not
noticed that splashscreens became unnecessary years
ago, due to improvements with CPUs, but that they're
now making a comeback due to poorly designed and
bloated software? My machine has 8 cores that can
handle over 3 billion calculations per second, yet LO
Writer requires trillions of operations to get on its feet.

"Booster"? Don't know about that, but it does what _I_ want, and the
price is right.

Ubunutu-wiki says you can install just the section of LO that you want:
Write, Calc, Impress, etc. But that's Linux, not MS.

This computer is 2x Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E6550 @ 2.33GHz with
2037MB (1294MB used) RAM, Operating System: Ubuntu 14.04.4 LTS. I
opened my Task Manager: it said the computer CPU usage was about 60%,
Memory about 50% (I've got a couple Firefox windows open!). I clicked on
LO (the suite, not an application), CPU went to 100% momentarily, Memory
to about 90% momentarily. Both came back down to near previous levels.
The screen took about two seconds to display buttons for each LO app,
plus icons for the most recently used documents. I clicked on a 300+
page text document (with simple formatting), and it loaded in about two
seconds. It could be faster, but I'm not complaining.


| I've seen a few forum posts regarding bugs in older versions that
| supposedly were fixed in recent versions. You don't mention what version
| you are using- maybe you want to check for a more recent one? My writer
| is Linux Version: 4.2.8.2 .
|

I'm using the latest on Windows -- 5.1. For awhile, with
v. 4, I had to deal with distorted images when saving as
PDF. I write up contracts, estimates, receipts as DOCs
and then often save them as PDF to send via email. My
logo was getting stretched. I had to go through a
convoluted process with a PDF program to get the PDF
right. That's now fixed in v. 5, but it never should have
happened. No release should go out with such glaring bugs
as the inability to have images in a DOC saved to PDF --
especially given that it worked fine in earlier versions.

I've created and exported some documents (with images) as PDF with no
problem. But I never worked them as DOC files, only ODT. I wonder what
would happen if you imported a DOC file, saved it as ODT, then exported
it as a PDF?

Another bug that someone pointed out to me is the
color of lines. It defaults to something like federal blue.
Why doesn't it default to black? Since when is federal
blue high fashion for business documents? That aside,
the real problem is that I can't find any way to make the
choice of black stick.

That is an odd thing! Actually on mine it's "Tango: Sky Blue 1", but
that could be your federal blue. I tried going to Tools- Options-
LibreOffice- Colors and changing it, but I couldn't find a way to make
black the default. At least the default isn't "Ubuntu Dark Aubergine" or
"Canonical Aubergine"! I saw several posts asking to how to change the
default, but no real answers.

Also, LO can only handle docx in a very basic way. They
claim to handle docx, but if it contains much beyond plain
text LO corrupts the layout. So when getting files from
MS Office users it's important to ask them to save as DOC
before sending. (Which is not always easy. Most of them
have no idea what doc or docx means.)

This is a case of your mileage DOES vary. My documents get into LO Write
either by me typing, or by cut'n'paste from a website. Then they get
saved as ODT or sometimes PDF. So I can't comment on difficulties with docx.

I only use LO in a limited way and already have templates
for my most-used DOCs, so these are bugs found by an
occasional user. I don't care about drawing lines. I do care
about printing business cards. I hope I'll never have to adjust
that template. Every time I do the whole layout goes batty.

Preachin' to the choir! I've printed sheets of labels, and layout is a
pain unless you have an exact match to a manufacturer's label or
business card: "File"- "New"- "Label" or "Business Card", then select
the brand and type of label or card. (Example: Avery J400SL, label for
35mm slide.)

In my experience bugginess is an important caveat with
a lot of OSS, especially the big projects done by committee.
They tend to be a social club project as much as they're
software. It's always under construction. I appreciate that LO
is free and allows me to deal with MS Office formats. So,
gift horse and all that. Still, there just isn't any excuse for
such sloppiness. And while I can often find workarounds,
the average person is helpless with such problems. It can be
very confusing for people used to polished, commercial software.

I feel a social-apathy-things-were-better-in-the-old-days rant coming
on! My first computer ran PCDOS 3.? loaded from two 5" floppies. Then
when MSDOS 6.? came out, it was on six floppies. But we weren't happy
with Bulletin boards and FTP downloading; we had to have clicktoids and
dancing babies. Finally someone discovered that there was financial info
on computers, and that info could be grabbed and used nefariously.

So your word processor software has bugs in it? Well, there's an old
Royal manual typewriter over there in the closet!




--
Ken Hart

| Ubunutu-wiki says you can install just the section of LO that you want:
| Write, Calc, Impress, etc. But that's Linux, not MS.
|
There used to be options in Windows, but
according to their site there was no point
because the whole thing has to install anyway
and skipping a part only skips the shortcuts
for it!

https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/quest...#post-id-30485

On 28/05/2016 20:31, Ken Hart wrote:
[]
I used SAMBA when I had a mix. I edited the .conf file, and put the same
file on each Linux machine. But one machine might see the entire
network, another "identical" machine only saw certain machines. I fought
with it until I converted the last Win box, then went to SSH.

SSH has worked very well, except when I have to "cross networks". I have
two ISP's (DSL & PPoE) and two LANs here, with one box on both LANs. I
can SSH within a LAN by computer name: "ssh ken@dell###", but if I cross
the LAN box, I have to use the IP: "ssh ##"

A shame that you had problems with SAMBA, but perhaps your needs were
more complex than mine. On a daily basis I pull NTP statistics files
off the Raspberry Pi cards and trim them back if needed, and
occasionally upload a revised leapseconds file to the same cards.

For SSH I use PuTTY on the PC and that works very well, and I've even
done X from the RPi displaying on the PC, but most of my work is purely
command-line.
--
Cheers,
David
Web: http://www.satsignal.eu

On 5/28/2016 11:45 AM, Mayayana wrote:
| Why spend time futzing when you have a business need. WordPerfect
| Does all that seamlessly Even the older versions.
|

I didn't know that still existed. LO has been
good enough for me. I use it for business, but
I don't need to use it very much. I just fill in
the blanks of my templates. It's a lot of work
to set up the templates, but that's a one-time
thing.

I checked at Corel but couldn't find any prices.
At buycheapsoftware.com it's about $150 for the
full standard version 17; $315 for pro. And that's
not the latest. Pretty expensive. And it may require
activation.

Yes, WordPerfect has required activation for quite some time now.


The latest version, 18, which I can't even find a
price for, doesn't run on XP. LO does.
I also have LO on 2 machines here. One is for my
use. The other computer has Office 2000 and LO
is used for handling docx. If there's no activation
I could put it on 2 machines. IF. (Though I find
Corel to be pretty fair. They allow PSP to go on
3 machines in the same house, and there's no
activation required, anyway.)

I suppose that if I needed to use office software
daily then I'd research it and train myself in the one
I chose. But for my needs LO serves.

The changes in licensing over the past few years
make these things very unattractive. There's possible
activation and locking to one computer. There's lack
of support for older systems. There's the nonsense
about versions, with crazy claims like that I can't legally
create a doc for business using a "home and student"
version. The result is software that can be crippled in
multiple ways, and it's often not easy to figure out
ahead of time exactly how it's crippled.