LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Alan Kennington <Alan.Kennington@dsto.defence.gov.au>
  To  : LinuxSA <linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au>
  Date: Sun, 8 Nov 1998 17:49:06 +1030 (CST)

linux simulation systems found

Topics:
-   simulation software for linux found
-   summary of linux office software found
-   why linux office software availability is not just a
    religious zealotry thing

--------
Now finally I've found a competitor to my AKSL simulation
environment. It's remarkably similar in style nad
specs. But it's not quite free linux software.

It's in Hungary at

    http://www.hit.bme.hu/phd/vargaa/omnetpp.htm

which I found via a listing of linux scientific software
[scientific applications on linux]:

    http://SAL.KachinaTech.COM/cgi-bin/AT-SALsearch.cgi

and

    http://sal.rising.com.au/index.shtml

I haven't evaluated omnet++ yet, but it does look
very similar to my own discrete event simulation approach.

--------
But even more interesting for general office applications is the
existence of pages which address exactly the issues I was asking about:

spreadsheets:
    http://SAL.KachinaTech.COM/G/4/index.shtml
    http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/spreadsheets.html

word processors:
    http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/wp.html

office software in general:
    http://linas.org/linux/web-project.html

--------
I'm just amazed at how much has been done already.
But I still think it is a good idea to tie all of this together into
a "MS to linux conversion" page, because otherwise it's just too exhausting
to have to explain it to sceptics, point by point.
I'd much rather have a single page for this.

This is not a case of "religious" zealotry. There's a practical
problem in any research establishment that there is a tendency for
administrators to decree that there shall be a single operating system
for everybody, and the serious researchers (who tend to dislike MS)
end up having to go along with the non-PhD admin staff, who
can only use MS software on PCs.
I.e. many people who would prefer to work with Unix end up
having a PC plopped on their desk so that they can communicate
via MS doc files, which is what admin people use even to send a
2-sentence ascii message sometimes.

It's now clear to me that linux provides sufficient software to
allow the scientific/engineering staff to use linux -- and
still communicate with admin people, due to document
compatibility.

Cheers,
Alan Kennington.

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