Tired of supporting friends' computers? Migrate them to GNU/Linux

[Kier]

Jim wrote:

Rebecca wrote:

Douglas O'Neal wrote:


Jim wrote:


What annoys me is that our local education authority, since
moving to PCs from Archimedes networks, have time and again
stated that they'll be embracing open sourse platforms and
applications. YET my son's teachers ALL INSIST that any work
typed up or otherwise done on a PC be formatted in native
Microsoft Office. I've had a go at the teachers and the board of
governors about this, stating for the record that I will
deliberately NOT allow my children to use Microsoft Office, that
any work they do WILL NOT TOUCH Microsoft Office, that any work
they do will be saved in open formats such as [X]HTML, rich
text, png graphics, SHN or FLAC audio, and divx+AC3 video. No
way in hell my boys are suffering the same as me at school; that
is, locked into a single proprietery format that nobody in the
Real World[TM] uses (in my case it was Acorn). Open formats last
forever, proprietery formats last the lifetime of the company
who hold the patent.

So save your work-processing files in rich text with a .doc
extension. Best bet is that the teacher will never know you're
not working in a microsoft environment.


You know why he didn't think of that?

linux made him ****ing stupid.



no, actually, Windows made me ****ing stupid. Linux is allowing me
to discover functionality I never knew existed.



Not likely:

groups Results 1 - 10 of 6,040 for "linux makes you stupid".

groups Results 1 - 10 of 154 for "windows makes you stupid".

Equally irrelevant.

But you're too thick to earn anything.

There's no assumption, linux makes you ****ing stupid. Fact. It makes you
gay too.

Care to pony up with some real evidence for that dumb assertion, liar?
Thought not.

 

[Rebecca]

Rebecca wrote:
Jim wrote:

Rebecca wrote:

Douglas O'Neal wrote:


Jim wrote:


What annoys me is that our local education authority, since
moving to PCs from Archimedes networks, have time and again
stated that they'll be embracing open sourse platforms and
applications. YET my son's teachers ALL INSIST that any work
typed up or otherwise done on a PC be formatted in native
Microsoft Office. I've had a go at the teachers and the board
of governors about this, stating for the record that I will
deliberately NOT allow my children to use Microsoft Office,
that any work they do WILL NOT TOUCH Microsoft Office, that
any work they do will be saved in open formats such as
[X]HTML, rich text, png graphics, SHN or FLAC audio, and
divx+AC3 video. No way in hell my boys are suffering the same
as me at school; that is, locked into a single proprietery
format that nobody in the Real World[TM] uses (in my case it
was Acorn). Open formats last forever, proprietery formats
last the lifetime of the company who hold the patent.

So save your work-processing files in rich text with a .doc
extension. Best bet is that the teacher will never know you're
not working in a microsoft environment.


You know why he didn't think of that?

linux made him ****ing stupid.



no, actually, Windows made me ****ing stupid. Linux is allowing me
to discover functionality I never knew existed.



Not likely:

groups Results 1 - 10 of 6,040 for "linux makes you
stupid".

groups Results 1 - 10 of 154 for "windows makes you
stupid".

Equally irrelevant.

But you're too thick to earn anything.

There's no assumption, linux makes you ****ing stupid. Fact. It
makes you gay too.

Care to pony up with some real evidence for that dumb assertion, liar?

No need, it's well know by everyone.

Thought not.

You _thought_ ?? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!! Not ****ing likely.

 

[Kier]

Jim wrote:
Rebecca wrote:
Jim wrote:

Rebecca wrote:

Douglas O'Neal wrote:


Jim wrote:


What annoys me is that our local education authority, since
moving to PCs from Archimedes networks, have time and again
stated that they'll be embracing open sourse platforms and
applications. YET my son's teachers ALL INSIST that any work
typed up or otherwise done on a PC be formatted in native
Microsoft Office. I've had a go at the teachers and the board
of governors about this, stating for the record that I will
deliberately NOT allow my children to use Microsoft Office,
that any work they do WILL NOT TOUCH Microsoft Office, that
any work they do will be saved in open formats such as
[X]HTML, rich text, png graphics, SHN or FLAC audio, and
divx+AC3 video. No way in hell my boys are suffering the same
as me at school; that is, locked into a single proprietery
format that nobody in the Real World[TM] uses (in my case it
was Acorn). Open formats last forever, proprietery formats
last the lifetime of the company who hold the patent.

So save your work-processing files in rich text with a .doc
extension. Best bet is that the teacher will never know you're
not working in a microsoft environment.


You know why he didn't think of that?

linux made him ****ing stupid.



no, actually, Windows made me ****ing stupid. Linux is allowing me
to discover functionality I never knew existed.



Not likely:

groups Results 1 - 10 of 6,040 for "linux makes you
stupid".

groups Results 1 - 10 of 154 for "windows makes you
stupid".

Equally irrelevant.

More likely, linux made you so ****ing stupid that you think
everything you encounter is 'new' and you learned something.

But you're too thick to earn anything.

shows what /you/ know about /me/. Zero. Nothing. Nada. Bupkiss. Stop
making baseless assumptions.

There's no assumption, linux makes you ****ing stupid. Fact. It
makes you gay too.

Care to pony up with some real evidence for that dumb assertion, liar?

No need, it's well know by everyone.

Just as I thought. No evidence.

You _thought_ ?? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!! Not ****ing likely.

Obviously it *is* likely, indeed, absolutely certain, that I can and do
think. Unlike you. Crawl back under that stone you call a home.

 

[Damian]

On Mon, 02 May 2005 08:50:26 -0700, Rebecca wrote:

Jim wrote:
Rebecca wrote:
Jim wrote:

Rebecca wrote:

Douglas O'Neal wrote:


Jim wrote:


What annoys me is that our local education authority, since
moving to PCs from Archimedes networks, have time and again
stated that they'll be embracing open sourse platforms and
applications. YET my son's teachers ALL INSIST that any work
typed up or otherwise done on a PC be formatted in native
Microsoft Office. I've had a go at the teachers and the board
of governors about this, stating for the record that I will
deliberately NOT allow my children to use Microsoft Office,
that any work they do WILL NOT TOUCH Microsoft Office, that
any work they do will be saved in open formats such as
[X]HTML, rich text, png graphics, SHN or FLAC audio, and
divx+AC3 video. No way in hell my boys are suffering the same
as me at school; that is, locked into a single proprietery
format that nobody in the Real World[TM] uses (in my case it
was Acorn). Open formats last forever, proprietery formats
last the lifetime of the company who hold the patent.

So save your work-processing files in rich text with a .doc
extension. Best bet is that the teacher will never know
you're not working in a microsoft environment.


You know why he didn't think of that?

linux made him ****ing stupid.



no, actually, Windows made me ****ing stupid. Linux is allowing
me to discover functionality I never knew existed.



Not likely:

groups Results 1 - 10 of 6,040 for "linux makes you
stupid".

groups Results 1 - 10 of 154 for "windows makes you
stupid".

Equally irrelevant.



More likely, linux made you so ****ing stupid that you think
everything you encounter is 'new' and you learned something.

But you're too thick to earn anything.



shows what /you/ know about /me/. Zero. Nothing. Nada. Bupkiss.
Stop making baseless assumptions.

There's no assumption, linux makes you ****ing stupid. Fact. It
makes you gay too.

Care to pony up with some real evidence for that dumb assertion,
liar?

No need, it's well know by everyone.

Just as I thought. No evidence.

How about proof?

Here's proof:

From: Kier <[email protected]>
User-Agent: Pan/0.14.2.91

YOU use linux.

 

[Rick]

For starters, there is absolutely no reason to require MSOFFICE .doc
format. I can see requiring a document that can be read by MSOFFICE - but
that is as far as it should ever go.

I wonder how the professors would know an OO.o .doc from a M$ .doc?

 

[Roy Culley]

begin risky.vbs

I wonder how the professors would know an OO.o .doc from a M$ .doc?

The OO.o one will be smaller. I've noticed this many times. Opened a
word or excel file in OO.o, made changes and then saved back in MS
format. Everytime the OO.o generated MS format file is smaller, often
50% or more. The OO.o generated files always load with no problems in
word and excel. My daughter does this with her school work as well.

I've only had a single word document that caused a problem with OO.o.
It was a very large report and actually crashed OO.o. One out of
hundreds ain't too bad IMHO.

 

[Roy Culley]

begin risky.vbs

[huge snip]

Why do you keep feeding inane trolls Kier? They are just dragging you
down to their level of stupidity. If you can't stop yourself then at
least snip the reply to the bits you are replying to.

 

[David Candy]

But MS does make and sell a personal OS, it's called Windows CE. But they want to keep selling inappropiate products to the mugs for cost control reasons.

 

[Rebecca]

[huge snip]

Why do you keep feeding inane trolls Kier? They are just dragging you
down to their level of stupidity. If you can't stop yourself then at
least snip the reply to the bits you are replying to.

....drag a linuxfuck "down"? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!

linux makes you ****ing stupid.

 

[cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)]

Joe wrote:

j/k... I have a veritable museum of hardware I've been collecting for
the past 24 years. Everything from BBC Model A, Commodore 16+, Sinclair
Spectrum 128+, +2, +3, 48K, C64, Amiga 500+...

not that any of it was cheap...

Spectrun 48k was cheap, as was the ZX81 before it

Why not use Open Office set to save in MS Office formats? That's the
easiest way around the Office blues, and it looks much the same
whether you run it on Linux or Windows, as does Firefox.

I wish I didn't have to set "Inches no, Centimeters please" in about
10 different places in Open Office's Tools, Options, though. It
should default to the units the OS uses, and./or set them in one place
throughout Open Office with optional settings for each app as
overrides (as you might want drawings in kilometers, for example)

---------- ----- ---- --- -- - - - -

Gone to bloggery: http://cquirke.blogspot.com

 

[Frank Peelo]

For starters, there is absolutely no reason to require MSOFFICE .doc
format. I can see requiring a document that can be read by MSOFFICE - but
that is as far as it should ever go.

This is true, but unfortunately there are some who do so insist. I have
been sending my CV to recruitment agencies recently, and those that
operate around here insist on .doc as well. Files that do not end in
..doc simply cannot be uploaded. I think they insist on .doc so that they
can edit the CVs before sending them to clients. I can save .doc files
from OOo, of course, but I have tried opening them on a Windows machine
using Office, and some of the formatting is lost.

Frank

 

[Walker Moore]

This is true, but unfortunately there are some who do so insist. I have
been sending my CV to recruitment agencies recently, and those that
operate around here insist on .doc as well. Files that do not end in
.doc simply cannot be uploaded. I think they insist on .doc so that they
can edit the CVs before sending them to clients. I can save .doc files
from OOo, of course, but I have tried opening them on a Windows machine
using Office, and some of the formatting is lost.

This is very easy to demonstrate with some standard Word templates.
Create a letter with Word's contemporary template for example (available
in MS Office from at least 97 to 2003), then open it in OO and watch it
screw up.

 

[The Ghost In The Machine]

In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Frank Peelo
<[email protected]>
wrote

This is true, but unfortunately there are some who do so insist. I have
been sending my CV to recruitment agencies recently, and those that
operate around here insist on .doc as well. Files that do not end in
.doc simply cannot be uploaded. I think they insist on .doc so that they
can edit the CVs before sending them to clients. I can save .doc files
from OOo, of course, but I have tried opening them on a Windows machine
using Office, and some of the formatting is lost.

Frank

[1] Create a HTML page using vi. (No pictures.)
[2] Rename it to .doc.
[3] Watch MS Word actually load it correctly.

Presumably this could get past naive personnell departments.

 

[cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)]

On Tue, 03 May 2005 09:41:11 +0100, Frank Peelo

This is true, but unfortunately there are some who do so insist. I have
been sending my CV to recruitment agencies recently, and those that
operate around here insist on .doc as well.

Oh, *that's* smart. "Please send us unsolicited documents in a form
that may contain auto-running macros".

When I was looking for a tech apprentice, I downpointed submissions in
..DOC ("duh, doesn't everyone use MS Office?") format. I'd be more
forgiving in non-geek placements, though if the applicant claimed
significant PC literacy skills, I'd ask "ever heard of RTF?"

---------- ----- ---- --- -- - - - -

Gone to bloggery: http://cquirke.blogspot.com

 

[Leythos]

On Tue, 03 May 2005 09:41:11 +0100, Frank Peelo


Oh, *that's* smart. "Please send us unsolicited documents in a form
that may contain auto-running macros".

When I was looking for a tech apprentice, I downpointed submissions in
.DOC ("duh, doesn't everyone use MS Office?") format. I'd be more
forgiving in non-geek placements, though if the applicant claimed
significant PC literacy skills, I'd ask "ever heard of RTF?"

I understand the DOC aversion, but if the email server is properly
scanning attachments, it will block documents that contain macro's and
malicious contents.

I would much rather get a PDF, but there are many companies that take DOC
so that their automated systems can read the contents and enter it into a
database without a human having to do anything.

 

[The Ghost In The Machine]

In comp.os.linux.advocacy, cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)
<[email protected]>
wrote

On Tue, 03 May 2005 09:41:11 +0100, Frank Peelo


Oh, *that's* smart. "Please send us unsolicited documents in a form
that may contain auto-running macros".

When I was looking for a tech apprentice, I downpointed submissions in
.DOC ("duh, doesn't everyone use MS Office?") format. I'd be more
forgiving in non-geek placements, though if the applicant claimed
significant PC literacy skills, I'd ask "ever heard of RTF?"

I had an SGML-formatted variant of my resume at one point.

There's also the possibility of fooling MS Word:

[1] Create MyFile.html file. I use vi but one can use various
methods here: vi, emacs, bluefish, gedit, Netscape Composer
(if it's still around), ...
[2] Rename MyFile.html to MyFile.doc.
[3] Load it into MSWord, or simply double-click.
[4] No one will know the difference. (Of course, saving it
might render it into native format, but that's not a big
issue once it gets into the resume house's input hopper,
presumably. The main problem is that one can't include
pictures -- but why would a resume include pictures?)

 

[Matt Buxton]

Or, use BartPE and get the same thing, but then you can run your Windows
compatible virus checker and other utilities too.
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

 

[Jim Richardson]

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Or, use BartPE and get the same thing, but then you can run your Windows
compatible virus checker and other utilities too.
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

That has much more limited hardware support, plus, Knoppix has a much better
hardware detection, and comes with a bunch of apps that I don't think
you can fit on a BartPE CD with XP.

Additionally, there are numerous LiveCDs for many uses, Like security,
education, multimedia, games, with differing target audiences, from
primary school students, to bioresearch scientists.

That's a flexibility that the MS-Windows LiveCD can't match.

With Knoppix, you get a CD that you can freely copy, and hand out to
anyone, with the MS-Windows way, you can't. Additionally, with Knoppix,
you get Open Office, and other applications, it's not just a bare OS.

As for virus checks and other utils, we have good virus checkers,
admittadly, they are used to check for MS-Windows viruses, but that's
ok, and wine runs most utilities just fine. Heck, it runs MS-Office and
IE too, if you have a need for that sort of thing.


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[CS]

On Sun, 15 May 2005 12:52:40 GMT,

That has much more limited hardware support, plus, Knoppix has a much better
hardware detection, and comes with a bunch of apps that I don't think
you can fit on a BartPE CD with XP.

Knoppix is great, but remember - Knoppix can only READ from an ntfs
system whereas the BartPE can read, write, and modify ntfs files
including the registry. I wouldn't be without my BartPE CD, it's a
major tool for repairing a broken XP installation that is formatted to
ntfs. You can't repair a broken XP installation with Knoppix other
than to copy files by burning them to a CD with K3B.

(remainder of post deleted)

 

[Jim Richardson]

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Knoppix is great, but remember - Knoppix can only READ from an ntfs
system whereas the BartPE can read, write, and modify ntfs files
including the registry. I wouldn't be without my BartPE CD, it's a
major tool for repairing a broken XP installation that is formatted to
ntfs. You can't repair a broken XP installation with Knoppix other
than to copy files by burning them to a CD with K3B.

(remainder of post deleted)

ntfs write support has been available in Knoppix since v3.4, and others
like <http://sysresccd.org/> via the captive ntfs driver.
<http://www.jankratochvil.net/project/captive/> for info.

Of course, if BartPE fits the bill for you, that's great. For me, it's
more than a tad limited, in fact, it's mostly a curiousity, but horses
for courses. My usual responce to a borked MS-Windows machine, is to
copy any needed data off it using Knoppix et al, and reinstall whatever.
Overall, it's teh fastest way to deal with the bitrot.


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