Putin Orders Russian Government to Switch to Free Software

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Moog
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27 Dec 2010, 11:48 pm

http://mashable.com/2010/12/27/vladimir ... e-by-2015/

Quite interesting.


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Polgara
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28 Dec 2010, 1:27 am

I am very impressed.



Brianm
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28 Dec 2010, 3:50 am

It's interesting, but I disagree with the decission. I had a problem with the Open Office graphics design application and that's this. I couldn't find a way to change the size of the page. I have to be able to disign graphics of all sizes including very small sizes for buttons for the software I build. PowerPoint is better than that it's a presentation program. The problem with PowerPoint is that the page size is in Inches. Graphics design software like Photoshop and Illustrator is measured in Pixels. There's a huge difference. I'll say this again. Most open source lacks essential features. For example what would happen if a program stopped responded in Linux? I believe I'd have to turn the computer all the way off. In windows I just bring up the task manager and shut the process down. I've found that most open source just doesn't work properly.



Fuzzy
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28 Dec 2010, 7:27 am

Brianm wrote:
It's interesting, but I disagree with the decission. I had a problem with the Open Office graphics design application and that's this. I couldn't find a way to change the size of the page. I have to be able to disign graphics of all sizes including very small sizes for buttons for the software I build. PowerPoint is better than that it's a presentation program. The problem with PowerPoint is that the page size is in Inches. Graphics design software like Photoshop and Illustrator is measured in Pixels. There's a huge difference. I'll say this again. Most open source lacks essential features. For example what would happen if a program stopped responded in Linux? I believe I'd have to turn the computer all the way off. In windows I just bring up the task manager and shut the process down. I've found that most open source just doesn't work properly.


What? You think linux lacks a task manager? Of course it has one. Why wouldnt it?

Most apps will not seize a linux system because control is top down, whereas in windows its bottom up. In windows the application is responsible for killing its own process, while in linux, the window manager does that work. You almost NEVER have to turn a linux machine off. Some people let theirs run for years.

If you are using gnome, your task manager is probably called system monitor. You can also just press alt-f2(which is just like windows run dialog) and type xkill which changes the cursor to an X or skull. then click the naughty app and it will close instantly. You can also add xkill to your task bar so you dont have to type at all. If you are working in the terminal you can use something like "killall firefox".

So you have a problem with open office doing not something but apparently powerpoint wont do for you either? Try scribus, inkscape, xara xl, skencil or the app from the koffice suite. Or bust out your text editor and adjust the svg by hand. You can even design svg graphics in gimp. Use the spline tool, convert to path, and then export the path as svg. My friend is a professional artist, and while he likes windows, he says inkscape kicks ass on illustrator.

Here is a hand generated svg. All the interesting stuff happens starting at d="
You can do it in notepad. All I used was a text editor. Save it as fuzzy.svg and open it in your image viewer.
Code:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
<!-- Created by Fuzzy by hand -->

<svg
   xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
   xmlns:cc="http://creativecommons.org/ns#"
   xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
   xmlns:svg="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"
   xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"
   version="1.1"
   width="1024.0"
   height="1024.0"
   id="svg2">
  <defs
     id="defs4" />
  <g
     id="layer1">
    <path
       d="M 125.000,125.000 475.000,125.000 475.000,225.000 225.000,225.000 225.000,325.000 375.000,325.000 375.000,425.000 225.000,425 225.000,725.000 125.000, 725.000 z"
       id="path1"
       style="fill:#000000;stroke:#ff0000;stroke-width:5px;stroke-linecap:butt;stroke-linejoin:miter;stroke-opacity:1" />
  </g>
</svg>


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shibashaba
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29 Dec 2010, 2:19 am

OpenOffice Draw a desktop publishing program meant for casual use. You can create images that go beyond the page boundries if all you need to do is bring it into another application. Furthermore, in vector graphics the size is irrelevent as they can be resized as you need. You can also adjust the size of the page from the format menu, it took me 10 seconds to load it up and find it. The reason the image is "measured" in inches is because it's a desktop publishing program. The Gimp and Photoshop measure in pixels, because they are a raster image editor. Before you knock it you should learn the absolute basics of CAD.

There are several full featured vector drawing and desktop publishing programs for linux, ranging from Scribus and Inkscape to professional ones like Pagestream.

Openoffice does have a separate Presentation program too, btw, which has been capable of exporting to Flash for years, long before microsoft office(if it's even capable now).

Linux has several task managers available. Linux is also more advanced in that it allows you to pause applications temporarily. Most of the time on the modern systems, when you choose to close an app, if it doesn't respond in a few seconds it will pop up with a message that says so and asks if you want to kill it(possibly losing data). You can also always switch to a virtual console and kill it from the command line.

I find open source apps to be more flexible, polished and more efficient. I can convert an avi I download of the net into a dvd in less than an hour on a P4 3.0 GHz system. Most other programs take several hours to do this. I'm typing this from a ten year old laptop running Gnome with all the bells and whistles with only 256 megs of ram and a P3 running at 700mhz. And theres even modern Desktop Enviroments designed to run on much less hardware. I doubt I'd even be able to run XP, much less Vista on this system.


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Brianm
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29 Dec 2010, 7:06 pm

I'm not talking about the size of the image I'm talking about the size of the page. I've had to use PowerPoint to resize images. I found I had to open it up in paint and resize the canvas because the canvas was the same size as the page. I also had to place the image int he upper left hand corner. Auto Cad is for drawing plans and isn't for graphics design.



Fuzzy
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29 Dec 2010, 10:09 pm

Brianm wrote:
I'm not talking about the size of the image I'm talking about the size of the page. I've had to use PowerPoint to resize images. I found I had to open it up in paint and resize the canvas because the canvas was the same size as the page. I also had to place the image int he upper left hand corner. Auto Cad is for drawing plans and isn't for graphics design.


shibashaba wrote:
You can also adjust the size of the page from the format menu, it took me 10 seconds to load it up and find it.


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shibashaba
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29 Dec 2010, 11:20 pm

CAD = Computer Aided Drawing

It covers everything, vector, raster, 3d modeling, architectural, mechanical and engineering.


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Orwell
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30 Dec 2010, 1:40 am

Brianm wrote:
It's interesting, but I disagree with the decission. I had a problem with the Open Office graphics design application and that's this. I couldn't find a way to change the size of the page. I have to be able to disign graphics of all sizes including very small sizes for buttons for the software I build. PowerPoint is better than that it's a presentation program. The problem with PowerPoint is that the page size is in Inches. Graphics design software like Photoshop and Illustrator is measured in Pixels. There's a huge difference.

I don't know about graphics programs (most Linux users would probably fire up Gimp for those things), but I agree OOo Impress is vastly inferior to Powerpoint. Both are garbage though. Real men use LaTeX Beamer for presentations, if you're forced to give slideshow presentations at all.

Quote:
I'll say this again. Most open source lacks essential features.

No it doesn't. Firefox, Chrome, R, Python, Java, Thunderbird, Pidgin, Scilab, Octave, Vim, Emacs, Transmission, Maxima, mplayer, vlc, Gnumeric, and any number of other open-source software packages are known for being very full-featured.

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For example what would happen if a program stopped responded in Linux? I believe I'd have to turn the computer all the way off. In windows I just bring up the task manager and shut the process down.

It doesn't happen frequently. Linux is more stable than Windows and not set up in such a way that one program is going to screw up your whole system. But there are several ways to kill a program that's not responding if you need to.

Quote:
I've found that most open source just doesn't work properly.

Based on the above clueless comment, my guess is that PEBCAK.


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JoeR43
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31 Dec 2010, 1:59 am

I'd still have R, Perl, PHP, Python, so I'd be okay.

Of course, I HATE Open Office Calc. I'm sure I could figure it out after awhile, but Excel is so 2nd-nature at this stage of my existence that it'd be an adjustment to use other spreadsheet software.



Brianm
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31 Dec 2010, 4:32 pm

I do use PHP and live it very much. There's plenty of good Open Source out there, but it's a matter of testing them and finding out which ones are good which ones aren't. I'm tired ot doing that very thing. The Open Office Writer had all the major word processing features as far as I could tell. Try typing three column news letter with out column fromating in a world processor and you'll see what I mean. I'd recogmend Open Office to anyone who doesn't want to pay for Microsoft Office.



Brianm
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31 Dec 2010, 6:08 pm

I need to correct something in my post before anybody reads it. Open office does have an object command, but it doesn't offer as many files as Microsoft to insert into the document. Over all though Open Office is well made.



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31 Dec 2010, 8:58 pm

JoeR43 wrote:
Of course, I HATE Open Office Calc. I'm sure I could figure it out after awhile, but Excel is so 2nd-nature at this stage of my existence that it'd be an adjustment to use other spreadsheet software.

Excel cannot be trusted if you do any statistical work at all. I have watched it generate negative r^2 values, and it has a number of other known failings that would be trivially easy to fix, and yet have remained in there since the 90s.

I also hate OOo Calc though. It's slow, has trouble reading other programs' file formats, often screws up dates, and is only extensible using a garbage BASIC dialect. I prefer Gnumeric. It is very full-featured, fast, and known for a high emphasis on mathematical correctness of their statistical functions. Also, it offers user-definable functions coded in either Perl or Python.


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Fuzzy
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31 Dec 2010, 9:30 pm

Orwell wrote:
Also, it offers user-definable functions coded in ****** **** ** Python.


That seals it!


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LordoftheMonkeys
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03 Jan 2011, 5:32 pm

Brianm wrote:
It's interesting, but I disagree with the decission. I had a problem with the Open Office graphics design application and that's this. I couldn't find a way to change the size of the page. I have to be able to disign graphics of all sizes including very small sizes for buttons for the software I build. PowerPoint is better than that it's a presentation program. The problem with PowerPoint is that the page size is in Inches. Graphics design software like Photoshop and Illustrator is measured in Pixels. There's a huge difference. I'll say this again.


I suppose by "Open Office graphics design application" you mean OpenOffice.org Draw. Yeah, that's not used for creating buttons and the like. Use GIMP, Inkscape, or some other raster or vector graphics editor.

Brianm wrote:
Most open source lacks essential features. For example what would happen if a program stopped responded in Linux? I believe I'd have to turn the computer all the way off. In windows I just bring up the task manager and shut the process down. I've found that most open source just doesn't work properly.


Linux has a "Task Manager" as well, only it's called System Monitor. You can kill unresponsive programs from there.


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LordoftheMonkeys
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03 Jan 2011, 5:39 pm

Orwell wrote:
Quote:
I've found that most open source just doesn't work properly.

Based on the above clueless comment, my guess is that PEBCAK.


I would say that as well. If everyone else can get open-source software to work, but you can't, then you are the common denominator, not the software. My guess is that Brianm is either technologically challenged or a Microsoft fanboy who refuses to believe that open source is a competitor to MS.


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