[Sussex] Linux and the Average User

[Geoff Teale]

On Monday 11 July 2005 21:38, Mark Harrison (Groups) wrote:
> Nik,

Not me, but I'll answer anyway :-)

> - wants to "just get on and open Word documents that my friend has
> sent."

Sure.

> - ditto Excel and Powerpoint

Agreed.

> - wants to surf and get the "web experience", including Flash, and,
> alas, VBScript

VBScript?  You spend too much time in corporate networks, VBScript is the 
domain of the intranet developer whose been sent on an "Interdev" course. - I 
can't think of a single notable web site that uses VBScript, that isn't to 
say that they don't exist, but that as a requirement I don't think it covers 
the "Average" case.

> - wants to be able to print from surfing [personal bugbear - the printer
> handling in whatever the hell it is that handles PDF viewing in Ubuntu,
> rather than being asked "what do you want to handle this - lpr?" - no *%
> &*$ing idea, squire, I just want it to print to the CUPS? printer]
>
> - wants to be able to read email "at a click".
>
> I have to say, Ubuntu is working well for me apart from the Printing
> from PDF defaults. The only thing I _had_ to install was OOo2.0, but
> that was because I use a known Beta app on my Windows machines, and
> therefore have files in its format.

Having switched back to KDE (for no really good reason after 24 months of 
GNOME usage) I find that it is actually much, much better at the whole 
seemless integration thing than GNOME is currently.  On ubuntu you can check 
it out as simply as doing an apt-get install kde. 

-- 
Geoff Teale
Free Software Foundation