Re: choosing software applications

[Herman Robak <herman@skolelinux.no>]

On Thu, 2005-03-03 at 12:02, Gavin McCullagh wrote:

> [...] On top of that, they need to be guaranteed file
> interoperability which KWord and OOo Writer don't make obvious (by
> defaulting to different formats).
> 
> In a skolelinux school, I think that means skolelinux making the choice.
> That means making a choice of application for each task and disappearing
> the others.  There are at least two means to achieve this: 
> 
>   - remove the other applications.
>   - don't put them in the menus or toolbars.
> 
> I favour the former because:
> 
>   - it saves cdrom and disk space and speeds up the installer
>   - if a school admin chooses to use an alternative, it should get
>     installed and linked into the menus automatically

 Good points.

> Now the hard part.  We would need to choose the applications, drop the
> others and configure the desktop environment to advertise the choices.  I
> see no reason to have KOffice *and* ooWriter.  In fact I have seen this
> cause confusion.

 Indeed it can.  However, OpenOffice is not appropriate everywhere.

* OpenOffice is heavy
* Koffice has a leaner GUI and feature set, making it more suitable
 for the younger kids (this comes from a teacher)
* OpenOffice is not translated to the same languages as Koffice
 (Koffice is partially translated to Sami, OpenOffice is not)

 This _may_ be solvable at install time.  The translation issue can
be resolved without any extra user input: If the chosen locale does
not have an OpenOffice translation, but a Koffice translation, then
trigger the Koffice installation.


 I think Ubuntulinux, as a commercial entity, can impose a "one size
fits all" policy.  Debian-edu work by consensus, so there will be
more redundancy here.

-- 
 Herman Robak