[Nottingham] [Talk] Thursday 19/06/2008 - What is there on Linux?What can it do?

[Camilo Mesias]

> Have you *ever* seen a copy of 'S-Plus' (the package that 'R' is a
> clone of) in a shop?

Well no, but there are other mathsy type packages for sale which would
probably do the job.

> Users like yourself would probabally find out about 'R' it from the
> community, either a physical community (at a university perhaps) or by
>  asking in a virtual one.

Sure, but my point is that there isn't a tool on the desktop where you
can ask it for a maths package and it recommends 'R', similarly if you
want an application to help you manage music and your Creative Zen
there isn't a clear link between your keywords and 'gnomad'...  or an
iPod and 'floola'... etc. While it's possible to find software with
some effort, we don't really surpass what other OSs manage. It's an
area where we could do better than the commercial OSs

It's all very well saying 'raise bugs on the documentation' but TBH
I'd rather see the code finished first. And if I'm not ready to
redesign the UI of, say UFRaw, who am I to criticise the authors?

While there's a lot of good software for Linux, I feel that the
majority is only really working good enough to scratch that
open-source itch. Of the stuff that's polished, much of it is
'inspired by' something pre-existing from the commercial world.

-Cam