Best Linux distro.. "best"..

[heatlesssun]

I own a Samsung Chromebook. I do not work in education. I have seen people using Chromebooks in Starbucks. Still haven't seen a single Surface Book or Surface Pro at Starbucks. Chromebooks would be great for parents with children, those who need a secure environment to access the internet, and possibly those concerned about using their laptop in an environment not under their control.

I'm sure more Chromebooks than Surface devices are sold. I've seen each in the wild but no where near MacBooks. But Chromebooks start at under $200. If Surface Pros did I doubt many would by Chromebooks.

 

[heatlesssun]

It feels like Microsoft is inching towards a goal of wresting control and choice previously given of Windows from the users hands.

Some of this is true but if granular control of the OS is what consumers were looking for then desktop Linux should have routed Windows by now.

 

[ccman]

I see Surface Pros all the time, although admittedly most devices I see at Starbucks are Macbooks or iPads.

Chromebooks occupy a weird mental space for me... not as useful as a laptop, but with the same form factor. Cheaper, I guess. OK for kids, as long as they have no interest in playing any computer games. I can't think of any time I'd use a Chromebook instead of either a laptop or a tablet.

In my part of the country, I see mostly laptops from other manufacturers - Lenovo, Dell, HP, mostly. Windows prevails. I've seen different versions, including 7, 8, 8.1, and 10. I occasionally see Macbooks. I didn't see any Surface devices on my vacation to Portland, OR either.

I purchased the Chromebook to see what it was like and to install Linux on ARM. Right now, my other laptops and desktop are Windows. As I said, I could see giving Chrome to a kid and not having to worry about them wrecking the laptop or someone who only browses the internet that I was concerned about downloading something bad. I was thinking of traveling overseas with it. I wouldn't be too upset if I lost it. I could imagine travelers not wanting to take their main Windows laptop to China or Russia.

 

[ccman]

Some of this is true but if granular control of the OS is what consumers were looking for then desktop Linux should have routed Windows by now.

I am not talking about consumers. I am talking about me. I am talking about what originally drew me to computers with DOS and Windows.

If you want to have your decisions made for you by what other consumers are looking for, you can go right ahead and do that. I prefer making my own decisions based on what I want and am skeptical of mobs and the intelligence of the faceless masses (educated consumers are a different story).

It seems like Microsoft is on board with making decisions for their consumers based on what they think most consumers want in the future with their answer to skeptics being telemetry.

 

[kumquat]

Sorry, I misunderstood and made that assumption. It just seemed like ganging up on Linux because certain companies aren't releasing their software on it.

No, it's ganging up on the assertion that there's nothing keeping most people from switching to Linux with no issues.

 

[kumquat]

Another thing I just thought of.... software for guitar amps.

Fender, Line 6, and Peavey all make extremely popular guitar amps that have "modeling" features (that is, electronics to make them sound like almost any other amplifier). All three companies have software for these amps to let you create, edit, and download custom profiles. Want to sound like Slash? Adrian Smith? Satch? Angus? No problem, just download this preset. Edit all the attributes if you want. Create a custom layout with virtual pedals for your own sound.

Guess what OSes these companies support.

The point of talking about Fender Fuse, OneNote, Lightroom, Outlook, iTunes, etc., is to impress upon people that their one use case is not universal. These programs are extremely popular and common. Millions of people in the US alone use every one of these.

 

[ccman]

No, it's ganging up on the assertion that there's nothing keeping most people from switching to Linux with no issues.

Issues as you have defined them, yes those exist (and would exist for me trying to use Linux exclusively. In my experience, issues with supporting hardware have gone down significantly. They've decreased even since Linus gave nVidia the bird (with Phoronix recommending nVidia over AMD). My goal isn't to eliminate Windows from my world, just to become proficient enough in it to use it where it's best suited. I think it would be cool to relegate Windows to a VM or a dual boot partition except for work or gaming. I'm starting to think along the lines that Apole doesn't only use Mac OS X, Google gives their employees choice in OS, and even Microsoft uses Linux in production.

 

[KarsusTG]

And that's symbolic the problem. I saw you post over there and I have used a good deal of that list on Windows. It's great that these things exist and are mostly cross platform, I've donated to a couple in the past.

Ya, but for whatever reason since a few years into the Windows 8 cycle Linux has for whatever reason come more alive. I have received more Linux questions and inquiries in the last year than I have the last 5-7 years in total and I am not alone.

What I think will happen is you will start to see more Linux around you. We already do and don't realize it. Those smart refrigerators and smart tvs are linux... Another great irony is those smart BD players run linux even though desktop linux does not support BD!

AMD/ATI is starting to develop towards better supporting Linux (ffs finally) and Valve has been pushing many devs to do the same (successfully I might add.) The best thing is they are not alone. Nvidia has supported Linux for a long time and so has Intel. We are even starting to see blockbuster games come out with native Linux clients right away.

We have a long way to go but I am still pretty happy.

 

[kumquat]

Linux is making no significant inroads into the desktop. It's been looking on the verge of blowing up for about 15+ years now. It's not happening. There's zero impetus for it, and with mobile exploding the way it has been the window for Linux has closed.

 

[ccman]

Another thing I just thought of.... software for guitar amps.

Fender, Line 6, and Peavey all make extremely popular guitar amps that have "modeling" features (that is, electronics to make them sound like almost any other amplifier). All three companies have software for these amps to let you create, edit, and download custom profiles. Want to sound like Slash? Adrian Smith? Satch? Angus? No problem, just download this preset. Edit all the attributes if you want. Create a custom layout with virtual pedals for your own sound.

Guess what OSes these companies support.

The point of talking about Fender Fuse, OneNote, Lightroom, Outlook, iTunes, etc., is to impress upon people that their one use case is not universal. These programs are extremely popular and common. Millions of people in the US alone use every one of these.

Who is making the claim that there is one-to-one software function parity between Windows and Linux, let alone one-to-one software title parity between the two?

I might as well start bringing up all the devices and architectures Linux is actually running on now compared to Windows or the fact that Azure runs Linux software firewalls. Let me know when you get your Windows based smart thermostat.

 

[jwcalla]

Exactly.

These pieces of software are brought up because they mean you can enjoy a superior operating system, and still do the work you need to do.

The operating system itself is the draw. These software packages make it livable, as otherwise you'd have to constantly dual boot in order to get your stuff done.

Somebody on the storage forum mentioned that his disk was 40% fragmented and he had to run a defrag. Man I don't miss those days lol.

 

[heatlesssun]

I am not talking about consumers. I am talking about me. I am talking about what originally drew me to computers with DOS and Windows.

And this is perfectly reasonable.

If you want to have your decisions made for you by what other consumers are looking for, you can go right ahead and do that. I prefer making my own decisions based on what I want and am skeptical of mobs and the intelligence of the faceless masses (educated consumers are a different story).

That's an interesting comment to make considering how the strong Linux advocates have been arguing how no one uses things like Office or OneNote or Photoshop. You said yourself how you've seen Chromebooks in the wild but not a Surface device.

It seems like Microsoft is on board with making decisions for their consumers based on what they think most consumers want in the future with their answer to skeptics being telemetry.

The popularity of Windows has never been fine grained control of the OS, Linux has always been all about that sort of thing and that's what it's great at. The point of Windows, like all other market leading OSes, is the ecosystem. That's it and little else. I use Windows because besides fine grained control of the OS it provides by far the best options for just about everything else. It's that simple. Nothing else.

I understand the debate about privacy issues, telemetry and personal data leverage and sure there are issues there. But this isn't exactly a new issue for Windows. People have for a long time accused Windows of privacy issues and Microsoft uploading people data surreptitiously. In this day and age though there is more reason to be concerned. If one thinks there is a problem and just thinks anything data sharing is unacceptable then Windows is probably not for you outside of the enterprise. But so much of the consumer market is driven by this stuff.

While you and I don't make choices based on consumer patterns someone that sells to them has to make those choices. Windows has to do the things that are common with computing devices of this era because as many have pointed out, the PC market is shrinking, the new PC market is anyway. A voice assistant, cloud and services integration, facial recognition login, I don't see who those things are just ignored by Windows and it remain something that consumers would use.

Again, I just talking about markets, not everyone's person choices. Windows has to pretty much do everything average people expect because of the large user base. Desktop Linux doesn't have that burden. I'm not saying that Microsoft has done the best job with integrating the old and the new. Windows 8.x failed because of execution failure on Microsoft's part with that on the UI side. Windows 10 faces challenges these same challenges with services integration now that people are thinking so much about the UI. But it's not Windows could not stop supporting touch. Nor it stop supporting OneDrive. But I won't argue that there should be better tools to just turn all that off. But on the consumer side that's not exactly a big selling point these days. The OS that doesn't connect to services and the cloud! Yeay!

 

[heatlesssun]

Who is making the claim that there is one-to-one software function parity between Windows and Linux, let alone one-to-one software title parity between the two?

I might as well start bringing up all the devices and architectures Linux is actually running on now compared to Windows or the fact that Azure runs Linux software firewalls. Let me know when you get your Windows based smart thermostat.

But does that thermostat run Crysis? We're talking about the desktop here. Obviously outside of the desktop Linux and Linux kernels are very popular because of the control and flexibility one gets that you don't get with closed source. I've never argued against Linux's abilities here and it's a good thing.

 

[ccman]

My recollection of Windows start with MS DOS, which was inextricably tied to Windows in some form or fashion starting with Windows 1.0 through Windows 95, to a lesser extent 98, and even lesser extent ME. I remember creating MS-DOS boot disks to either be able to play games at all or to get the best performance out of games. On these disks, I would get to specify which memory manager I wanted to run, which programs I wanted to run, whether I wanted to load support for drivers, what things I wanted to run in high memory or low memory, if I wanted to use virtual memory (smartdrv), which video, sound, and mouse drivers to load, you know, that sort of fine grained control Microsoft was never known for. In Windows 3.1, I have fond memories of getting the OS to run programs that weren't supported out of the box using things like Win32s, VFW, and WinG. I liked tweaking Windows 3.1 to support my soundcard, display at higher resolution with my video card and editing the registry, and getting my Gravis pad working. I can go through most versions of Windows in a similar fashion, either adding things, changing the registry, settings, or boot options, or choosing to allow things to run or not to run, but needless to say, remember the good old days of Windows where you could actually choose which driver you wanted to install and if/when you wanted updates to run? I never thought I would reminisce about Windows 8.1.

And the privacy, telemetry, and personal data issues are most certainly only recent. I was never worried about these things with DOS, Windows 1 - 3.11, Windows 9x, or Windows 2000 (or earlier Windows NT for those who used them). With Windows XP, the debate centered around Windows Error Reporting (click Don't Send) and activation (not privacy telemetry, and personal data). With Windows Vista, it was DRM. I don't remember it coming up in Windows 7. Maybe the fringe has been discussing it since Windows XP, but it has only made big news with Windows 10.

You want to talk about being able to see into what an operating system is doing? It's called the Microsoft Sysinternals tools, and fortunately, Microsoft hasn't banned those yet. Like has been said before, Linux has the ability to get you this information, but I don't know of Linux's peer to Process Monitor, Process Explorer, or Autoruns, to name the ones I use most frequently.

I don't agree with the rest of your reply (except maybe that you found one part of one thing I said reasonable in one post), but I'm going to end it here. You have already said these things ad nauseum elsewhere on the HardForums. You have already hashed these things out with me in other places. I have already said I disagree and realize I cannot convince you otherwise.

 

[heatlesssun]

I don't agree with the rest of your reply (except maybe that you found one part of one thing I said reasonable in one post), but I'm going to end it here. You have already said these things ad nauseum elsewhere on the HardForums. You have already hashed these things out with me in other places. I have already said I disagree and realize I cannot convince you otherwise.

And I'll leave it at the only reason to use desktop Windows is because of its ecosystem. They only true disagreements I've had with you and others in this thread is that desktop Linux is nowhere close to that ecosystem and that it it's not easily replaced. Of course if one doesn't use that ecosystem much then that's not a problem.

 

[flu!d]

And I'll leave it at the only reason to use desktop Windows is because of its ecosystem. They only true disagreements I've had with you and others in this thread is that desktop Linux is nowhere close to that ecosystem and that it it's not easily replaced. Of course if one doesn't use that ecosystem much then that's not a problem.

And that's comping from someone who is making a vast number of generalizations that doesn't even use a modern distro of Linux!

Fact is, the vast majority of people out there would not miss the Windows ecosystem (Are we talking about Apple or Microsoft here? Mind you, these days they're not too dissimilar - Coming from a user of both Linux and Windows, although I hate using Windows or Linux desktops on a damn tablet of all things, such things are better left to Android).

I seem to have no issue substituting LibreOffice 5.0.2.2 for MS Office whatsoever and compatibility doesn't seem to be an issue in my case, I'm swapping files between LibreOffice and MS Office all the time without problem.

All I'm reading is argument based on biased and incorrect discussion regurgitated from the interwebz - In the Linux subforum of all things!

Linux is making no significant inroads into the desktop. It's been looking on the verge of blowing up for about 15+ years now. It's not happening. There's zero impetus for it, and with mobile exploding the way it has been the window for Linux has closed.

I don't accept that at all. In the time I've been using Linux I've never witnessed such an obvious surge in interest and therefore popularity in relation to the operating system. As stated earlier, usage of a free operating system is literally impossible to determine compared to an OS that is sold over the counter and pre installed on boxed systems - And webcounters are notoriously unreliable.

 

[heatlesssun]

Fact is, the vast majority of people out there would not miss the Windows ecosystem (Are we talking about Apple or Microsoft here?

Now this is a generalization. If it were as easy as you make it out to be logic would suggest that desktop Linux should have more inroads into the mainstream market considering it's free and Windows generally isn't.

 

[flu!d]

Now this is a generalization. If it were as easy as you make it out to be logic would suggest that desktop Linux should have more inroads into the mainstream market considering it's free and Windows generally isn't.

It's well known the only reason people use Windows is because it is supplied on literally every boxed PC and laptop sold today - Which is no opportune turn of events.

As we discussed earlier, people don't care what OS they use. As long as they can navigate the file manager, type up a document, read emails and use a browser most people wouldn't even know what an operating system was.

Don't assume that monopolization in any way means better. And Windows monopolization is due to the reason mentioned above. Very few people would be 100% tied into the Windows ecosystem.

And lets not underestimate the power of marketing.

 

[heatlesssun]

This is how you get into problems with generalizations especially when it comes to software. I've Libre Office 5.0.2.2 installed on my Surface Book. I've done this in the past on several other devices as well even opening the document in Ubuntu with Libre Writer installed with the same result. In this case I open a simple word document in Word, highlight a sentence with the pen, save and close the document and then open it in Writer. Document is identical in both Word and Writer except the highlight doesn't show up.

Say what you will about no one would ever do that but the fact is that there millions of devices that can do it with the iPad Pro on the way and I think this is already or coming to Android. And when something this simple doesn't work regardless of how common it is the next thing that's going to come to a lot of people's minds is what else is like that.

 

[flu!d]

I think you'll find the issue is the fact that you are using a Surface device, they're not exactly renowned for Linux compatibility. It's like a laptop, except it's not, but it doesn't make a good tablet without the use of a stylus as navigating Windows with your finger downright sucks unless you use that horrible 'tablet/tile mode'. The other issue that you seem to be ignoring is the fact that Microsoft are not going to allow their application to play nicely with Writer - That's hardly a fault of Libre Writer.

Come to think of it, I have no idea why you would even want to do what you are describing. Why on earth would you want to copy/paste from one form of word processing software to another using the exact same document? Seems like an outrageously pointless example! I was going to test what you are describing on my Windows machine, but I just can't see the point! [Edit] In fact what you are describing makes no sense whatsoever, you highlight a line....Then what? Save? Why?

Why would you even have Libre Office installed on a Microsoft based system when you paid top dollar for MS Office in the first place?!

 

[flu!d]

I just made a simple document in Libre Writer on my Linux PC, I saved the document in an Office compatible format and transferred the file to USB stick for use on my Windows PC.

On my Windows PC I opened the document, it opened fine. I then started a new document and copied/pasted the text in the new document to my simple document and saved in Word.

I then opened the edited document in Libre Writer on my Linux PC and found that the edit had saved just fine. Once this was confirmed I deleted the text I had previously added to my simple document and hit save.

I then transferred the USB stick back to my Windows PC and opened the document in Word and found that the edit whereby I deleted the text saved just fine.

I even highlighted a line in Writer, changed it to bold/italic and saved, transferred to my Windows PC under Office and the change saved fine...?

Then I simply highlighted a line in Word and while the line was highlighted hit save. I then opened the same document in Word once again and the line did not stay highlighted? I tried to highlight the line in Libre and hit save except Libre was waiting for me to actually perform an action on the text I had highlighted and would not allow me to save the file until I had actually done something productive with my selected text.

I'm confused, what's the issue here?

 

[kumquat]

I don't accept that at all. In the time I've been using Linux I've never witnessed such an obvious surge in interest and therefore popularity in relation to the operating system. As stated earlier, usage of a free operating system is literally impossible to determine compared to an OS that is sold over the counter and pre installed on boxed systems - And webcounters are notoriously unreliable.

I don't see this surge of interest that you're talking about. And I wasn't talking about sales.

 

[auntjemima]

I think you'll find the issue is the fact that you are using a Surface device, they're not exactly renowned for Linux compatibility. It's like a laptop, except it's not, but it doesn't make a good tablet without the use of a stylus as navigating Windows with your finger downright sucks unless you use that horrible 'tablet/tile mode'. The other issue that you seem to be ignoring is the fact that Microsoft are not going to allow their application to play nicely with Writer - That's hardly a fault of Libre Writer.

Come to think of it, I have no idea why you would even want to do what you are describing. Why on earth would you want to copy/paste from one form of word processing software to another using the exact same document? Seems like an outrageously pointless example! I was going to test what you are describing on my Windows machine, but I just can't see the point! [Edit] In fact what you are describing makes no sense whatsoever, you highlight a line....Then what? Save? Why?

Why would you even have Libre Office installed on a Microsoft based system when you paid top dollar for MS Office in the first place?!

I think his concern is that most of the world uses Office. If he made a document, with specific formatting, in Libre Office and then sent that document to a potential employer, who 100% of the time is using MS Office, it may not display properly and cause them to look upon you unfondly.

Atleast that seems to be my take from the previous posts regarding office specifically.

 

[B00nie]

I think his concern is that most of the world uses Office. If he made a document, with specific formatting, in Libre Office and then sent that document to a potential employer, who 100% of the time is using MS Office, it may not display properly and cause them to look upon you unfondly.

Atleast that seems to be my take from the previous posts regarding office specifically.

Most people I know are under the false impression that you need office to do what office does. They're usually surprised when they see a free alternative do the job the same or (in my opinion) better as it's not borked with the god-awful ribbon interface.

What heatlessun said about highlighting may be true, highlights and comments made on word do not always show correctly in libreoffice. This is one of the rare cases where writer can't fully process word files: http://zolnaitamas.blogspot.fi/2015/03/word-compatible-text-highlighting-in.html

This is hardly a show stopper though and will probably be fixed (for free) later on.

 

[auntjemima]

Dont get me wrong here, I am not one to stick to Microsoft no matter what. I run Open Office at home on my windows PC because I feel it does everything MS Office does and its free.

Doesnt negate the fact that people do things in MS Office that may NOT be transferable though. But for me Libre, MS and OO all work just as well as each other. I would say I am a casual user at best.

 

[heatlesssun]

I just made a simple document in Libre Writer on my Linux PC, I saved the document in an Office compatible format and transferred the file to USB stick for use on my Windows PC.

On my Windows PC I opened the document, it opened fine. I then started a new document and copied/pasted the text in the new document to my simple document and saved in Word.

I then opened the edited document in Libre Writer on my Linux PC and found that the edit had saved just fine. Once this was confirmed I deleted the text I had previously added to my simple document and hit save.

I then transferred the USB stick back to my Windows PC and opened the document in Word and found that the edit whereby I deleted the text saved just fine.

I even highlighted a line in Writer, changed it to bold/italic and saved, transferred to my Windows PC under Office and the change saved fine...?

Then I simply highlighted a line in Word and while the line was highlighted hit save. I then opened the same document in Word once again and the line did not stay highlighted? I tried to highlight the line in Libre and hit save except Libre was waiting for me to actually perform an action on the text I had highlighted and would not allow me to save the file until I had actually done something productive with my selected text.

I'm confused, what's the issue here?

I highlighted using ink which has nothing specifically with a Surface device, it's a feature of Office across multiple platforms.

It's death by a thousand pin pricks. The devil is always in the details. I'm not saying this one thing is a big deal. But there are millions of devices that have the ability to do it. Again it's not just Surface devices but any Windows touch or pen enabled device coming soon even some iPads. Then there this thing, that thing and at some point what was the point in switching from something that was already working?

 

[kumquat]

This is one of the rare cases where writer can't fully process word files: http://zolnaitamas.blogspot.fi/2015/03/word-compatible-text-highlighting-in.html

"Rare" lol. Unless something has changed dramatically in the past year, the compatibility problems are much more extensive than that. I opened a simple lab report with a few charts and graphs, and every single one of the 17 pages, including the bibliography, had massive formatting problems. I tried opening some basic letterhead from my employer and text was spread all over the page.

LibreOffice or OpenOffice compatibility with MSO is mostly useless.

 

[kumquat]

I just installed the latest version of LibreOffice to see if anything had changed. Opened a random smattering of Word and Excel documents. My resume, a lab report, an invoice, a client wifi proposal, a grade tracker/calculator, and a few others.

Every single one had major formatting problems.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

I just installed the latest version of LibreOffice to see if anything had changed. Opened a random smattering of Word and Excel documents. My resume, a lab report, an invoice, a client wifi proposal, a grade tracker/calculator, and a few others.

Every single one had major formatting problems.

Yeah, this tends to happen with anything but basic documents authored in Ms Office and opened in Libre office.

I find Libre office works perfectly if you transition entirely over to it, and use open document formats. If you are going to collaborate with people who use Ms Office there will likely be frequent but minor formatting issues.

Depending on what you do, this can be either completely irrelevant (if formatting doesn't matter, but content does) or absolutely crippling (if you are doing anything where formatting is of importance, but the. You should be using proper DTP software, not office anyway )

I use Libre Office entirely for my home needs, buy I have found that the compatibility is not yet good enough for work, where I frequently need to collaborate with Ms Office users.


Libre Office is a great REPLACEMENT for Ms Office, but it isn't Ms. office, and you should expect formatting issues when opening Ms. office documents, just like you should expect formatting issues when opening WordPerfect or Lotus documents in Office...

 

[flu!d]

The issue here is that MS Office should not be a standard. It is software, but it should not be benchmarked as a standard.

And sadly, because of the monopolizing tactics of the company in question it has become a standard.

Formatting issues between Office and Libre can usually be rectified by changing font. Having said that, the documents I use are usually fairly simple so formatting is not an issue, I can switch all my documents between systems without issue.

And complaining about an issue specific to Microsoft's Surface, more importantly the necessity and usage of it's stylus is fairly pointless.

I don't see this surge of interest that you're talking about. And I wasn't talking about sales.

Of course you haven't, and how can you relate sales to a free operating system. More importantly, how can you not relate sales to an operating system's popularity.

What distro are you running?

 

[kumquat]

Of course you haven't, and how can you relate sales to a free operating system. More importantly, how can you not relate sales to an operating system's popularity.

I never said a thing about sales. I talked about marketshare. Sales have nothing to do with Linux marketshare.

One of the best ways to evaluate desktop OS marketshare is to look at overall web client numbers. There are other ways, of course. All of them produce more or less the same results: Linux, as a PC operating system, has been single-digit, usually under 3%, forever. There is no indication that this is changing.

What distro are you running?

I have Ubuntu running at two business clients as desktop OSes, I support Mint for two of my friends, I run OpenBSD personally for a server, and support Solaris and Red Hat at work.

Yes, I know BSD and Solaris are not Linux.

 

[heatlesssun]

And complaining about an issue specific to Microsoft's Surface, more importantly the necessity and usage of it's stylus is fairly pointless.

Nope. It's not a feature specific to the Surface, ink is a feature of Office be will supported on the iPad Pro by Office. Is there a version of Libre Office for the iPad or Android?

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

I have Ubuntu running at two business clients as desktop OSes, I support Mint for two of my friends, I run OpenBSD personally for a server, and support Solaris and Red Hat at work.

Yes, I know BSD and Solaris are not Linux.

Close enough.

I've got two desktops in the house with Linux Mint Cinnamon edition, three HTPC's with a basic Ubuntu 15.04 install, over which I have installed Kodi with no window manager.

Then I have my ESXi server, on which I have 6 Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTS installs dedicated to various tasks (so the dependencies don't conflict with eachother (APCUPSd, Crashplan Client, SFTP Server, TeamSpeak3 server, General Ubuntu server for messing around and Unifi Controller)

I also have an install of MythBuntu which I use as a backend DVR for my Kodi Frontends with the MythTV plugin.

And then there are two BSD based appliances on the ESXi server as well. pfSense router/firewall (Based on FreeBSD 10) and FreeNAS (Based on FreeBSD 9.3)

 

[jwcalla]

I just installed the latest version of LibreOffice to see if anything had changed. Opened a random smattering of Word and Excel documents. My resume, a lab report, an invoice, a client wifi proposal, a grade tracker/calculator, and a few others.

Every single one had major formatting problems.

Reminds me of the days when people were making web pages in MS Frontpage and then they'd only display correctly in IE. Then you'd view the source code and there was a metric asston of unnecessary proprietary cruft and crap.

Good times.

 

[kumquat]

Reminds me of the days when people were making web pages in MS Frontpage and then they'd only display correctly in IE. Then you'd view the source code and there was a metric asston of unnecessary proprietary cruft and crap.

Good times.

Out of curiosity, I generated 30,000 characters of lorem ipsum and pasted the text into both Writer and Word, then saved it using the default file format.

ODF: 30.4 KB
DOCX: 20.3 KB

 

[jwcalla]

Out of curiosity, I generated 30,000 characters of lorem ipsum and pasted the text into both Writer and Word, then saved it using the default file format.

ODF: 30.4 KB
DOCX: 20.3 KB

I see my point went over your head; but good experiment nonetheless.

 

[kumquat]

I see my point went over your head; but good experiment nonetheless.

No, I got you. As I said, it just made me curious.

 

[ccman]

People who do things in Microsoft Office may not find them completely transferable to the same version of Microsoft Office even. My employer is on Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus (Office 2013 version). We are all on the same version. We do not use Linux for any of our desktops or servers, except where devices, appliances, or server software run Linux in at the base (firewall, switches, one of our VPNs, and VMware ESXi). We find from time to time Excel workbooks becoming corrupt. Excel will attempt to repair the workbook. At best, it will result in a "drawing object" being removed with no visible affect to the workbook as far as the user can tell. Other times, the result will be that some or all workbook formatting will be removed. In the worst case, the workbook is unable to be repaired and will open as a blank workbook or won't open at all. In the data loss cases, I have been able to open the file in OpenOffice.org and recover the contents, the contents and some of the formatting, or the content and all formatting as far as I can tell. I'll resave the workbook as XLS/XLSX, run the XLCleanerDotNET4.0 tool for good measure, and send it back, becoming a minor hero. At work, I'm running OpenOffice.org on Windows to do this.

I'm going to go off track but will relate it back to this problem. I really enjoy the work of Mark Russinovich and watching his talks. One of the things he says when troubleshooting Windows errors, particularly blue screens but also crash dumps in general, assume the problem is not Microsoft's fault. There are a couple of practical reasons for this. Microsoft does extensive testing, has improved software from previous crash dumps, and is only directly responsible for a small number of crashes statistically. Also, if the problem seems to point to ntdll.dll for example, it could take you down a fruitless path, and, even if was a Windows problem, there likely isn't much to be done but wait for a patch. That being said, my guess is the cause of these issues is either our users are working on a workbook received from a client or copied data from a client workbook. The client workbook was either generated from their ERP system or includes data from one of these workbooks. In other words, the workbook wasn't created by Excel or contains data that came from such a file. I ran across an Excel file from a client that had style names from lines of a system.ini file, like a style might have been called [386Enh].

I'm not really sure what my point is though. I could tell a similar story about Adobe Acrobat with Adobe PDF files and NitroPDF, exporting ranges of pages except for bad ones, or re-printing to Adobe PDF. I guess my point is nothing is perfect (yet?) in computing. Oh yeah, and #Markets, #Ecosystem, #ModernUIDesign, #AgileProgramming, #DesktopDeath, #PostPC , #3rdPartySupport, #HybridLaptops, #ConvertibleLaptops, #DigitalPens, #Voice, #MainstreamMarket, #TouchOrPenEnabled, #Ink, #NeverStylusButPencil

 

[heatlesssun]

Oh yeah, and #Markets, #Ecosystem, #ModernUIDesign, #AgileProgramming, #DesktopDeath, #PostPC , #3rdPartySupport, #HybridLaptops, #ConvertibleLaptops, #DigitalPens, #Voice, #MainstreamMarket, #TouchOrPenEnabled, #Ink, #NeverStylusButPencil

LOL! As I write the post on a convertible/hybrid laptop using a pen, not a pencil or stylus!

As to your first point, I can't recall the last time I've seen a corrupt OOXML format document, and I deal with a ton of them daily. The old binary format files were a much different story.

 

[kumquat]

LOL! As I write the post on a convertible/hybrid laptop using a pen, not a pencil or stylus!

As to your first point, I can't recall the last time I've seen a corrupt OOXML format document, and I deal with a ton of them daily. The old binary format files were a much different story.

Yeah, same here. We used to have occasional problems with binary formats, but the only time we had any issues recently was a couple of years ago when a virus managed to get in and bork a few folders on the file server.