Finally, the long-awaited Ooo office suite, the best and most popular open source office suite sponsored by Sun Microsystems, has released an official beta of Openoffice.org.
Image from the softpedia screenshot archive
Version 3 has got a bunch of new features, these are my favourite improvements:
- Full Mac OS X Cocoa support (no need to install the Neooffice port anymore!), which means Mac users finally got an official Openoffice version! GoodbyMicrosoft Office for Mac!
- OpenOffice.org 3.0 is now able to open files created with Microsoft Office 2007 or Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx, file formats).
- Impress, the PowerPoint alternative, supprots multiple screens
- New, fresh icons
And lots more.
Download it you guys, obey the Internetling!
I am the maintainer of a few public computers in a school library. I didn’t really check, but if I remember correctly, the computers are pretty old 900 MHz Pentiums with 90-128 mb RAM.
Now these computers had XP on them before, but I removed this horrible operating system in order to install Linux. Of course, there is a huge number of distros to choose from, even in the low-end computer niche.
All I needed was a word processor like Abiword, multiple user support with login manager, a basic file manager like PCman, Flash support, a home directory for the user ’student’, a WM, a desktop with a background, and a panel with FOUR icons - Abiword, Net browser, Home and shutdown. Also, I wanted to restrict the user ’student’ not to change the system’s theme, background and configuration files.
The KDE Kiosk Tool is great, though I think you know how fast KDE on 92 mb of RAM runs (if it runs, that is).
The default install of TinyME, a PCFLuxboxOS- based mini distribution using Openbox
You cannot imagine how difficult it was for me to find something even close to this.
Sadly, some of these mini distros have huge flaws which need to be fixed. Others, on the other hand, aren’t really mini distributions.
So, if you have an old computer and you’re looking for a low-requirement Linux distro, don’t choose:
- Xubuntu - too damn slow, changing the desktop environment or the WM actually won’t make Opera or Abiword load much faster. I think it’s the lower levels that cause the lag.
- Fluxbuntu - see Xubuntu
- Vector Linux - not easy to configure, slow installation
If you have an old computer in a public place, don’t choose
- Puppy Linux (no multiuser, isn’t too pretty)
- DSL (constant X server problems)
In reality, the only distro from the aforementioned that I dislike is Fluxbuntu. Puppy and DSL are doing a great job for users with old computers, the only problem is they lack key features for public computers. And they don’t look nice, which I can understand isn’t a priority, but it would certainly be nice.
I’m checking out TinyMe at the moment, a small PCLinuxOS derivative , and it looks promising… by changing the Openbox configuration and a few other things, I think I’ll be able to generate a stripped-down LiveCD for those school computers. It looks alright, too.
SOem of you would probably suggest Debian. Non-base Debian is slow. I love Debian, but it’s way too slow and I’m too lazy to install it from scratch. If I’ll be forced to do this, I’ll rather play with Arch.
What do you think? Do you have any recommendations for a web kiosk computer with low specs? What do you think of TinyME? What is your favourite low-end window manager? I NEED INFORMATION GUYS!
Why is the Dock becoming more and more popular? It’s probably got something to do with clever window management, doesn’t it? Well, in my opinion it’s just the eye candy, though I’m sure that people appreciate the psychological trick; every tried to open 2 instances of a program with a Dock? 
Now here’s a list of 5 different Docks you can use on Linux. They have different system requirements. Rock out!
5. SimDock
I’ll start off with a little low.end dock. Just enough to get you started. While SimDock isn’t extremely advanced, it offers a full-fledged dock, all in one little .deb package and no window compositing effects required, which means you’ll be able t run it on low-end machines without any problems.
4. Ksmoothdock
Smooth zooming, low requirements. I like SimDock, but many users tell me Ksmoothdock looks and works better with their KDE DE.
3. Kiba Dock
Small, nice, free. What more could you ask for? Kiba-dock was originally a project meant to demo the Akamaru physics engine, but it ended up being a separate project.
2. Engage Dock (for Enlightenment)
Ever wondered how the gOS dudes made a smooth little dock for the gPC? Well, here’s your answer. It’s cool even without the Green theme I heard it can run without Enlightenment, too. Dreamlinux uses it with XFCE, for instance.
The big guy. This is the Dock with the bad-ass themes, icons and plugins. Everyone who has compositing turned on uses AWN these days. Why? It’s powerful, customizable and pretty. I use it sometimes, although it affects Ubuntu’s loading time. (it’s Compiz’ fault, really). If you got the power, go for it! Also, check out the AWN wiki.
Update:
0.5 Cairo Dock
Another cool dock, which also requires compositing effects.
It’s been said that FireFox Mobile is due in late 2008. A great surprise, because the Minimo browser really got whooped by Opera Mini and its innovations, even on smaller mobile devices, such as older mobile phones. Besides, I hate Minimo.
The UI design mock-up already exists, for touch-screens. Now this looks like old news, but you have probably noticed that since October 2007 not much has happened: there is a chance for FireFox to win Opera Mini users over to its side. The community will enable you to customize the browser, and we’ll be seeing some speed tweaks, hopefully.
I’m just saying: if Deepfish goes cellular, we’re in for a war. Did you know that Nokia’s S60 browser, which is described by users as whoop-ass, is also open source?
Last but not least, I would like to thank God for not having a war between a crappy browser with 90% percent of market share, but rather between very good browsers, all with their own pros and cons.
You don’t have a lot of time. On the operating system market, there are lots of great products, like Linux. With Linux, you can easily customize the look and feel of your system, tweak every aspect of the desktop to your specific needs. What many people forget to tell you is that this can take hours of work.
So how will you get your favorite daily comics to show up on your grandmother’s old ThinkPad?
If you have a passable Internet connection, there are ways of keeping everything on a server, instead of on your computer. Besides this, there is a growing range of web services, apps and sites available, which allow you to manage your daily lightweight computing and entertainment. Data security is an issue, although if you’re really worried about your documents, you can easily host some web apps on your own.
Web Operating Systems
Why not? Your tasks are performed mainly by the server your Web OS is on. In most cases you get a full desktop which you can tweak to your hearts desire, a basic office suite, and other everyday apps, like mail readers, FTP clients and other useful software. But the best part is, your fully customized desktop is available anywhere, anytime, in any (mainstream) browser, at its web address. I’ll name a few of my personal favorites: EyeOS (it got a Yahoo! tech award just recently, congrats!), Cloudo (still in alpha) and G.ho.st (3 gigs of space).
Of course, as always, Mashable compiled a mammoth list of +46. This guy scares me with his lists.
Mashups or customized jumping-off pages
More famous bloggers put these sites into the same category as Web operating systems, but I disagree, you will se why. Netvibes is one of the best data personalized data sites out there. There’s also iGoogle and Pageflakes. I use Netvibes, though (least kludgy). With an account at sites like these you can create a mashup of all the data you need to start and organize your day. Be it a simple Gmail checker, RSS feed, or a full-fledged to-do list, calendar, calculator, the possibilities are limitless. The community also creates its own widgets, and there are already thousands in the directory to choose from. So, while you don’t get a desktop, you can, theoretically, get a similar functionality.
Online apps
Zoho Office, Google Docs, Buzzword, Conceptshare, ThinkFree Office: all attempt to replace the software you are using now on your desktop. While they may not have all the features you notice in your full Microsoft Office 13, most people don’t even need them and a simple app like Google Docs can satisfy your word-processing hunger. At least the gOS team thinks so…
So there you have it. Even though there are other ways to synchronize your desktop software, you will always have a big advantage if you manage to keep them on the Internet and in your browser window.
And now a question for the readers:
Do you use any of these services? Why?
