Monday, June 2, 2008

A New Hope for me and Linux

Well this year is shaping up like I could fully return to the Fedora, maybe Ubuntu, on my home PC. I had switched back after software incompatibilities and all the issues with Java on open source plat forms. Additionally OpenOffice still didn't meet the grade and the net is still an IE friendly place which meant not having IE available, short of a VM, was also a problem. The final problem is a real alternative to outlook because at work we use an exchange server and when in Rome, it is wise to do as the Romans.

Now this year IE8 and Firefox3 are on the way and IE8 promises to adhere to web standards so essentially IE and FF are taking their next step together which means I won't be missing out when using FF3.

OpenOffice 3.0 seems to go a long way in terms of bridging the gap between itself and office, added to the fact I don't like Office 2007 where as with 2003 it was fine but I just wanted an alternative.

The OpenJDK solution that Sun is putting forward and is now integrated into the release of Fedora 9 and Ubuntu 8.04 means the Java headaches (while not completely gone) are practically a bad a memory.

Finally the Thunderbird email client now supports a calendar plug-in and the office email supports IMAP4 now. I still prefer Outlook since it is a more tightly integrated and functional email client/organizer however there are still things like Scalix and HP Openmail that have promise to them.

So basically by year end I could have a satisfactory Office, Browser and Email combination on an open platform for me to make a switch.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

As a web developer who has had the displeasure of writing CSS and HTML workarounds for Microsoft's FANTASTIC interpretation of standards in IE, I'd be very, very wary about them promising to deliver a fully standards-compliant version of IE.

There's compliance with standards, and then there's compliance with an interpretation of the standards. Microsoft tends to favor the latter as opposed to the former. Ah well, I'll be beta testing IE 8 intently for sure!

Majatt said...

Oh yes after the OOXML fiasco I realize they aren't showing any signs of changing their ways.

I still try to give the benefit of the doubt sometimes.