Re: Replacement for Abiword: LyX? Openoffice?
On Saturday 25 October 2003 07:37 am, adam wrote:
> On Tue, 21 Oct 2003 18:16:35 +0100 (BST)
> My suggestion is that we push forward a text editor for
> the basic editing functions and then move the children
> on to OpenOffice.org for presentation. If they are
> already using Linux for desktop, chances are they will
> already have a version of it installed.
>
> As an aside, including it within the distribution for
> children will act as method of advocacy, with children
> telling their peers about OO.o. I doubt if they will be
> advocating about text editors.
I've heard people advocate OpenOffice.org a lot, but
every time I've ever tried to use it, the sheer bloat of
the thing has made it impossible. Yes, it will run. Yes, I
can load a document or two with it occasionally.
But every time I've ever tried to make a real document (as
opposed to a trivial test case), the program has crashed
and locked up my computer (or at least my login session).
When I moved up to 512 MB RAM and 1.5+ GHz machines, I
thought "Great, now I can finally see what people are
talking about". But no. It *still* crashes left and
right. This is pretty much the Hacker Lexicon's definition
of "Flakey" in the US sense -- it works just well enough to
tempt you into using it, and then it crashes on you. ;-)
What am I missing here? Does anyone who advocates this
program actually USE it? If so, what kind of hardware are
you running?! Not a rhetorical question -- I've loaded
this program up to evaluate it several times, with
gradually increasing hardware caps, but each time I get the
same results. I'm starting to get a complex about it. ;-)
I expect a program like a word processor to pretty much
work without special effort on a Debian system, once you
run "apt-get install" on it. I'm running Debian Woody, but
that shouldn't make any difference anyway, should it?
I think this is particularly relevant to Debian Jr, since
typically, kids will be using hand-me-down computers, not
the latest bleeding edge stuff.
Cheers,
Terry
--
Terry Hancock ( hancock at anansispaceworks.com )
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.anansispaceworks.com
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