:Byte.com: Corel On The Roller Coaster; Distro Madness Management With WhatIfLinux.Com
Byte.com: Corel On The Roller Coaster; Distro Madness Management With WhatIfLinux.Com Jul 31, 2000, 17 :21 UTC (0 Talkback[s]) (2554 reads) (Other stories by Tom Henderson)
"...as long as data interchange remains viable between the
Microsoft Office components and Linux-based office
suites, there's a chance to get the [WordPerfect Office] ball rolling again, in my
estimation. Few people use inter-application code that
links spreadsheets into databases unless those apps
are coded by someone else -- usually a departmental or
organizational deployment of an app."
"Whatiflinux is an application manager for personal and
distributed systems. Ostensibly, it keeps track of over
10,000 applications (!!) and informs administrators of
updates. It's similar to Debian's manic software-update
system in some ways, but with additional sophistication.
This might be very handy. Consider that Linux-Mandrake
7.1 is about to be released with over 1,400 applications.
Grep, like it or not, is an application and counts toward
the 1,400 I found."
"I like Whatiflinux for another reason, one that's more
onerous. With seven high-profile distros for Intel family
CPUs becoming very successful in the bazaar, there are
myriad installation options for both experienced and
newbie installers to deal with. Consider that each of the
seven (not counting other distros yet) have between two
and six editions. Inside each edition are options to
deploy of up to seven (haven't seen more) application
and feature option sets. The geometric possibilities are
shameful; this isn't usefulness, it's entropy and not very
useful entropy at that."
