LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Alan Kennington <Alan.Kennington@dsto.defence.gov.au>
  To  : ara@newave.net.au
  Date: Sat, 7 Nov 1998 16:07:00 +1030 (CST)

Re: more derived articles about halloween article

Topics:
-   linux in Australian schools
-   weaning MS users onto linux
-   whether anti-trust suits against MS can win

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> I'm surprised by this... didn't I read somewhere that LINUX is already
> in the French schools?  (Compare to SA Gov't's big all-of-gov't con-
> tract to EMBRACE *Microsoft* operating systems & applications...)
>
> Viva la France!
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This starts to make me think --- is there anything being done in SA
and Australia generally to promote linux in schools and universities
etc., e.g. by offering to do mass installations of linux, and train
teachers, and help set up their networks etc. etc.?
Then 5-10 years later, you get masses of linux-literate people coming out
into the workforce.

My pet country at the moment is Vietnam (Hanoi in particular). I'm starting to
think it would be great to proselytize for linux there too.
[A year ago in Saigon I saw that the price of MS Office was US$13 --
_before_ haggling. If people used linux, then they could us it without
opening themselves to persecution by the "cong an" (police).]

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> > But taking over the PC world requires linux to provide initially
> > the ability to _exchange_ at least all of the formats in MS office.
>
> You don't seem to be asking for much here...  BTW, are the MS Word
> and Excel formats available?
>
> > I realise that there is some such software out there.
>
> I'm too new to "applied LINUX" know which they are...
> 'anybody help here?
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This also starts me thinking.
What is needed, to win converts, is a single web page that tells
people how they can detox themselves off MS wind+office.

This page would contain list of substitute software
to do everything in the MS world.

It should just be an HTML table with the MS feature/application on
the left, and the linux substitute on the right.
I realise linux should be thought of within its own conceptual
framework, and should not be thought of as just a substitute for
something else. But the detox/weaning process requires
an individual to be told how they're going to keep getting
their work done.

I remember we used to have a document at Adel Uni in the 70s which showed
the Unix equivalents for everything in VMS.
That was well used: e.g. "ls" instead of "dir", etc. etc.
I'd like to be able to point MS users to a page
that has:

MS world            Linux world

netscape            netscape, arena etc.
MS word             applixware, word perfect, "words" ? etc. etc.
MS Excel            applixware? etc.
outlook mail        ??
outlook calendar    ??

Question:
Is there such a table already?
If yes, could we have a pointer to it from the linuxsa host or something.
If not, could we write one and put it there?

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> > (They've failed on other anti-trust things, like against IBM, I think.)
>
> Don't you know the story of the AT&T break-up...?
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What I heard is that after about 10years, AT&T worked out that it
would be in their self-interest to break up, so that they could
get into the computing business, which was barred to them
because they already had the phone monopoly.
That's why Unix was essentially free for so long -- that was during
the phone monopoly era. So it was actaully the phone monopoly
which made it possible for the unis to get the unix source and
make it ultimately into linux etc. It could have been a purely
proprietary system otherwise.

But when AT&T did get into computers, they couldn't make big money
out of it after all. So they pretty much gambled and lost.

The case against AT&T was much stronger than the anti-trust case against
IBM (which failed after 10 years), or against MS, which I predict
will also fail, because it's actually user gullibility which makes
people buy MS software (mostly administrators looking for a blameless
life [nobody every lost their pay increment for buying microsoft]),
not so much MS immorality.

To tell you the truth, as long as I am out of the MS environemnt,
and can get all my work done, I really don't care that much about
the suffering of the millions of others.
Similarly, I no longer care about VMS users, cobol writers,
novell netware users, or macintosh users.
As long as the linux world is okay, it's only "noblesse oblige"
which can motivate one to help rescue others out of a mire of ignorance.
[I realise this is going over the top a bit.]
Therefore I see a[n] "MS-to-linux conversion table"
web page as a "noblesse oblige" thing, rather than a
"destroy one's enemies" thing.

Cheers,
Alan Kennington.

PS. Did you notice the very high grammar-to-spelling-error ratio in the
halloween articles. No spelling errors, but lots of grammar erros.
This is a symptom of spelling checker use, which tends to add credibility
to the origins of the documents.

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