(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

I've just given 1.05 a test drive. Gosh this is a polished piece of work. Congratulations Barry for this acheivement. Less than a tenth of the download size of say Vector 5.0 and seems to do more and is faster as well. You must be spending 24hrs a day at this job.

Microsoft has a lot to think about here. I wonder if they have to get on board the open-source bandwagon eventually. I hear they have already been using some open-source stuff and not telling anybody! I wonder what strategy they will end up using. Will they use their cash to buy into an open-source outfit? Is this possible?

You could end up with a dumper truck loaded with a ton of money outside your ranch sent by Microsoft to try to get you to give up doing Puppy Linux. I'll bet you wouldn't accept it though.

Best regards

tronkel

You could end up with a dumper truck loaded with a ton of money outside your ranch sent by Microsoft to try to get you to give up doing Puppy Linux. I'll bet you wouldn't accept it though.

Shoot, for a dumptruck of cash, I'd do/not-do just about anything, assuming it's moral. Barry, if Gates sends you a dumptruck, just take it. 1.0.5 is good, and we'll carry on for you

Yeah did you read about the State of Massuchusets adopting the OpenDocument standard? I'm surprised that Microsoft wasn't able to buy enough officials or spread enough misinformation -- but the game isn't over I bet.
(the above statement may be construed as defamatory, and MS could quite easily take legal action, so let me qualify it by saying that the above statement is a light-hearted joke, not to be taken as a factual comment about how MS operates).

I even logged out before posting!

Yeah, I read about that business with Massachusetts and the open document standards compliance etc. This might be the first of many cases where public insititutions will no longer be prepared contribute to Microsoft's cash pile -interesting too that this is taking place in the USA, a place where Microsoft seems to have managed to evade all attempts at curbing its monopoly - actually with the collusion of a lot of public opinion there that in fact often supports Microsoft's approach to business. That Massachusetts problem must have really give them pause for thought -the thin end of the wedge for other States to follow.

In Germany, the State of Bavaria and the University of Munich I hear have already given Microsoft the old heave-ho. Apparently Microsoft had a panic attack about it when this emerged, but did not manage to talk them (Bavaria) out of taking this step.

Anyway there is a real choice available these days to software consumers large and small. No need now to fork out for Windows and other stuff when buying say a new computer system(s). Linux/GNU and Puppy etc. has made that possible. Hopefully not too late to put a spoke in Microsoft's wheel. Sheer competence in competing with them in a software engineering sense will in the end be far more effective in curbing their ambitions than any misguided legal action. Thanks to Barry for a substantive contribution to this endeavour.

Well, the OO file format isn't perfect, either. Ever try to get you text out of the file without OO? You can't.

In a stroke of marketing genius, OO decided that being the better format required smaller file sizes. Did they use more a effecient tagging system? Possibly. But they went one step further and compressed the text, too.

Word might not be perfect, but you can at least open a DOC in any editor and pull the bulk of the text out. OO just gives line after line of compressed gibberish.

Thankfully some folk have released java based OpenOffice viewers.
https://oooview.dev.java.net/
Any chance this can be dotpupped?

In a stroke of marketing genius, OO decided that being the better format required smaller file sizes.

What makes it open is not that the final file is human readable, it is that the format specification is open so anyone can write a viewer. In word the text may be human readable but the formatting and images and other 'inserts' are also giberish, the difference is that it's gibberish that only MS tools understand.

Isn't the .sxw format just xml that has been zipped? I think you can retrieve your text from it. Also, of course, oo will save in .txt ascii or .doc word format if you choose. These choices seem, to me, more accessible than Microsoft Word's.

I think OpenOffice version 2 is going over to OASIS OpenDocument standard more so then 1.x.

here in Australia, various Federal govt agencies, in particular the Australian National Archive, have gone over to OpenDocument.
-- reason is, basically, they want to archive documents that can be opened and edited in perpertuity, by any program, not just some specific version of MS Office.

In the U.S., the state of Massachusetts is doing the same thing for the same reason. I just hope that everyone is specifying the same standard -- there are so many to choose from.

Open Office is more standards based which is true of Linux in general. Tried, tested and future proof. It is this long term viability - rather than change for the sake of it that motivates my switch to Linux.

I believe Open Office 2 is far better looking (and that database) and very stable already. Puppy has made learning Linux a pleasure. It is great to see how our band of early arrivers is developing skills and knowledge. How many forum users now - over 700? (I remember when there was 2 of us - just me and John Murga). In a few years we will look back and say I remember them early Puppy days . . . we were frisky then . . .
[Lobster wanders off . . . mumbling]

On the subject of why governments should specify open standards, as if it weren't obvious, here's a story I once read:

Someone working on an advanced degree, I think it was his Masters, borrowed some NASA telemetry tapes from a '60s mission to Mars. First he discovered there were no longer any tape drives for that particular tape. Somehow he managed to cobble something together which could read the data off the tapes.

Then he discovered that the data was stored on the tapes in a format he couldn't figure out, and the engineers who knew the format were all dead!

He gave up on his project and sent the tapes back to NASA.

I don't know if this story is true, but it certainly could be.

(I remember when there was 2 of us - just me and John Murga)

Don't forget danleff and GuestToo.
Those two have been around for ages.
I don't recall who came on the scene first.
There are some other guys to, that go way back, but we only
"see" them occasionally.

danleff was here before i was

Sorry I meant on this forum - no I am very new compared to Danleff and G2 . . .

In fact it was Simple forum that really attracted me to Puppy - I liked the interaction - the simplicity of the forum and the great answers (some of which went right over my head) for new users.
I dunno how many registered users we had - now we have over 700 and the forum is very busy - but Klh should capture the important posts with his news page on the wiki . . .

http://www.goosee.com/puppy/wikka/LatestNews