Quoting Andrew Price <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Peter Scargill wrote: >> I look forward to hearing from your colleague - I hope however that his >> communication is more reasoned and less insulting. > > Charlie, > > I'm not aware of what was in your e-mail to Mr. Scargill (although I'd > like to see it) but it seems you touched a nerve. > > Please could we make sure we represent the Ubuntu and Linux communities > in a diplomatic and friendly way. We're not going to boost the > popularity of either by being insulting or otherwise unpleasant, > especially to those who hold some influence over others. > > We need to take a more educational and informative stance towards people > who don't "get it". The more welcoming we are as a community, the more > people will be interested in becoming part of it.
I've just sent the following: ======================================================= Dear Mr Scargill, I read your article on "Linux - v - Windows" with great interest. I have been using Linux on my home desktop for the last seven years. Before that, I used Dos, Windows (all versions up to XP) and I also dabbled with Mac OS pre OSX. I am in a fairly unusual position with regard to choice of operating system as I run my own servers at home, however I work on a daily basis supporting Microsoft Windows XP and Microsoft Office along side many other applications. The main point in your article that really challenged me was your comment that "you simply cannot even BEGIN to compare the functionality of Open Office with Office 2007". I believe that this is not the case, the change in interface in Office 2007 is enough, in my considered and experienced opinion, to put most people off using it. People have used Office in its various incarnations for several years now, Open Office has a similar interface to Office 2003 and all previous versions and is therefore more "user friendly" as it does not require a shift in work-flow practices or knowledge within the workplace. I am also interested to know which functionality Open Office is missing. I have recently suggested to a number of charity organisations and small businesses that they switch to Open Office and the ones that have done so have not found any issues with reading, writing or formatting any of the documents that they had previously saved in Microsoft Office. The only issue I have encountered is with custom animations in PowerPoint presentations. As I am fairly confident that at least 90% of PowerPoint users do not use this custom animations, I am at a loss to find this lack of functionality. There are a number of businesses that have adopted Open Source technologies in all market sectors at both the server and desktop level, so I fail to see how your article can imply that Linux is not ready for the desktop. With regard to support, one of the amazing things about Open Source software is that not only is the software free, so is the support. Frequently I find that if I post a request for support onto the user forums on the website for the software that I am experiencing an issue with, not only do I get a reply from the community, but quite often I get a reply from the developers themselves. I would be very interested in your comments on the above and I look forward to hearing from you. =============================== Let's see what he says... Cheers, Matt. -- Matthew Macdonald-Wallace Group Co-Ordinator Thanet Linux User Group http://www.thanet.lug.org.uk/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] GPG KEY: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xFEA1BC16 -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.kubuntu.org/UKTeam/
