12 April 2011

No torrents needed

him: hi... i bother you again:)
him: you think you can send me the app which you are using for vector graphics, the one from your tutorials :)
him: i can't use torrents to get it
me: no need for file transfers or torrents... is free software, you can get it directly from http://inkscape.org/
me: take care to download the windows version
him: thanks:)
me: my pleasure

10 comments:

  1. once I downloaded open office for windows, how it was ? through torrents.
    Downloaded ubuntu ? through torrents.
    So some people use torrents.

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  2. you know very well what "torrents" was about...


    and openoffice.org from torrents? why? is a mere 100 MB downoad

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  3. if something is free, people expect it to not work very well.

    do you remember when the text tool in inkscape was unusable? at some point i found a fix (i tink i had to install a missing font) but it took the developers many months to sort things out (in version 0.47).

    using free software should be easier than downloading proprietary and installing a crack.

    so far openoffice (libre actually but the new name sucks) is the only one i used that works almost perfectly.

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  4. in my experience LO/OOo is very crappy and unfriendly, but i get my work done every day with GIMP and Inkscape.

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  5. what do you mean by very crappy? i've been using it for a few years and it only crashed once, document recovery works well (sometimes windows crashed) and it does most things i expect from an office suite (let alone a free one).

    i like the interface better than ms office (which i also use but only for some spreadsheets). the equation editor is easier to use than the one in ms office because you can type everything and don't need to use both keyboard and mouse (i'm not sure about this but i haven't found a way to use keyboard alone in ms).

    the interface is a matter of preference. some people like it one way, some another. some people like LaTeX (for text editing). is that unfriendly?

    i use inkscape every day as well that's how i know about the bug and when it got fixed.

    https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/273961

    i'm not trying to argue which software is good and witch is bad, that is a matter of choice. i was talking about public perception of free software and how major bugs influence that perception. people tend to quit something when it doesn't work the way they expect, instead of trying to find a solution (except when there is a hype about it; then they keep using it no matter what).

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  6. @Anonymous: for a few years I was an active contributor to OOo, founder the Native Language community in my country, speaker at events, documentation writing and translation, so I have good knowledge about it. i also use it as my main office suite (but trying to use office suites as little as possible) and put it on other people's computer... still, I acknowledge its main feature is the freedom.

    Want examples of horrible UI in OOo/LO? just have an objective look at Tools > Options or Edit > Find & Replace. Want examples of awful usability? Try to change the default template from letter to A4. Performance? just try to open a very large spreadsheet into Calc (count the time and compare with MSO).

    The users I put on OOo have as a major complaint the start-up time, I got so many calls about it, with requests to fix the computer because "word" is starting so slow.

    Believe me, I could go on and on about how crappy the suite is.

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  7. please talk me through that horrible Find & Replace issue. maybe i'm missing something.

    i don't use templates so i can't say anything about that (but you can say more).

    the same for calc. didn't use it for anything very large.

    the startup is slow. the quickstart thing (don't know the actual name) may help. i removed it at some point and didn't bother to reverse the process.

    you don't have to go on and on, just pick one thing (or a few) and talk about it in depth. "crappy" is one of the least descriptive terms one could find. "very crappy", even more so.

    should you find the time, i suggest a full post about the Find & Replace thing or about the templates. link to them if they exist already.

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  8. Well Anonymous, if you don't use it for any serious work, you are not the right person to talk about its quality.

    Regarding the Find & Replace dialog... just compare it with the one in Abiword.

    Is not about templates but the default template... I have my fedora configured with US locales and OOo is defaulting to letter for paper size, while all the printers around are A4... to change the default in OOo I have to create a template and set it as default.

    Yes, the guickstarter is speeding a bit, with a cost on system memory, but still not enough.

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  9. it's still me.

    i find the new gnome difficult to use. any suggestions?
    fallback settings, distros that implement gnome3 in a different way, etc.

    things i miss most are the bottom panel/taskbar, the application menu and (don't really need it, just miss it) the daylight map in the clock applet.

    i have ubuntu and fedora installed. updated ubuntu and had a small shock.

    kde was an option before plasma. not anymore.

    thanks.

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  10. if kde is not an option, then xfce

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