LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Alan Kennington <akenning@dog.topology.org>
  To  : robynman@dove.net.au
  Date: Wed, 1 Sep 1999 22:25:09 +0930

Re: Star Office

Robyn,

Star Office is almost unusably slow on a Pentium 133 with
32 MB of RAM. It takes 3-5 minutes to start up,
and is slow at everything.
Most linux distributions have SO now, and you can download it
from the net easily. (Only about 60 MB!)

The trouble is that SO loads the _entire_ office suite
even if you just wnat use a tiny part of it.
It's actually an entire MS windows environment, complete
with icons and things.
It may be faster on bigger machines, and it may get
more efficient over time, but it also does not do things
in a very nice way.

The reason people like SO is because it is free, and because
it can read/write MS format documents to a limited extent.
It is not fully compatible at all.

The alternatives are Applixware, Word Perfect, and one or two
other things which are underway.
See for instance:

http://www.topology.org/linux.html#office

By the way, I've tried applixware briefly from the 
SuSE disstribution, and I am stunned.
I believe Matthew Tippett uses applixware for his powerpoint
substitute for giving talks.
Other people have told me that Word Perfect 8 is really good.
Nearly everyone seems to say that SO is sluggish and
not that good -- but at least it's free and not MS.

Cheerio,
Alan Kennington.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
   name: Dr. Alan Kennington
 e-mail: akenning@dog.topology.org
website: http://topology.org/
   city: Adelaide, South Australia
 coords: 34.89744 S, 138.58970 E
pgp-key: http://topology.org/key_ak1.asc
saying1: `The Internet is the parliament of the people.' ak 28/5/1999.
saying2: `Seek truth from facts.' mao or deng, 1970s?
saying3: `Let a 1000 flowers bloom, let a 1000 voices contend.' mao, 1970s?
saying4: `Cut down the tall poppies.' mao, a few months later.

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