[ Thanks to Darren for this link.
]
Darren writes:
In his Current Mail page, Jerry justifies his shop being a
Microsoft shop while taking great pains to explain that NONE of the
office suites on GNU/Linux works very well.
Of course, in his usual inimitable style, Mr. Pournelle
offers NO supporting evidence to back his conclusions. He simply
writes: “Unfortunately all the various office suites for Linux
DON’T work very well. And I have tried them all.” Please remember
that the last thing that Mr. Pournelle tried (and failed) with
GNU/Linux was installing Applixware on a RedHat 5.2
distribution.
This torqued me off to the point that I have e-mailed
O’Reilly to let them know that Pournelle’s upcoming book they are
publishing will only tarnish their image for their core market of
gearheads. (‘proposals@oreilly.com’ and
‘booktech@oreilly.com’)
In Jerry’s words:
“But your main point about this being a Microsoft House has some
merit. That’s not entirely by choice; and indeed the CITRIX
article, and my interest in CITRIX and Terminal Server has been to
come to practical uses for my readership of alternatives to
Microsoft, if only to stimulate competition — but the recent
demonstrations of vulnerability to intrusion make it even more
important.”
“The problem is that Microsoft Applications work. They work
well. They’re not all I would like them to be — Outlook
periodically goes off on it’s own to do things I don’t understand,
as we’ll see in an upcoming letter from Dr. Hume — but they do
work. Unfortunately all the various office suites for Linux DON’T
work very well. And I have tried them all. I have written about
them in great excitement when I got them. Then I didn’t write any
more. It’s not because I didn’t try them, it is because I will not
recommend something I won’t use, and frankly I cannot do my work
with any of those. I only wish I could. Corel’s Word Perfect as a
word processor isn’t bad, but the entire office suite just doesn’t
do it for me, and I don’t think it will for most readers. Office
2000 has its faults but it does the job.”