On Wed, 2011-06-08 at 17:12 +0100, Gordon Burgess-Parker wrote: > On 08/06/2011 16:24, Grant Sewell wrote: > > On Wed, Jun 8, 2011 at 1:10 PM, J Fernyhough<j.fernyho...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> On 8 June 2011 11:00, Jon Reynolds<maill...@jcrdevelopments.com> wrote: > >>> My dad uses Windows and recently it completely crashed and the local > >>> computer shop said it needed reinstalling. So he lost all his programs. > >>> > >> <snip? > >>> Just maddened me a bit because he was willing to try free software... just > >>> didn't have enough willingness to learn a little bit more. > >>> > >>> Ho hum. > >>> > >> I reformatted my parents' laptops, made Ubuntu the single OS on one, > >> and made it the default boot in a dual-boot with Windows on the other > >> (they needed software that wouldn't run under WINE). They had no > >> option but to learn how to use it. > >> > >> I feel I should throw in a "muahaha!" > >> > >> Jonathon > > My advice to (some) who are willing to try Linux systems is to keep > > Windows installed, but don't make it an option in the boot menu - > > making it unnecessarily hard to boot into Windows has meant that some > > of them have been more inclined to figure out how to do XYZ in Linux > > rather than "just boot into Windows coz I now how to do it there". > > > I think that's a bit simplistic. > The major problem (IMHO) in using Linux instead of Windows for ordinary > users, is the difficulty with Office 2007 and 2010 documents, which are > becoming more and more > Email and web browsing is dead easy - it's the incompatibilities of > OOXML format documents with the Office suites available on Linux (Open > Office, Libre Office and all the others) that would seem to be the > problem, particularly as a) prior versions of Office are now being > replaced by 2007 and 2010 in which OOXML is the default and b) it would > seem to be the norm that Windows hides extensions of known file types by > default now such that the average user doesn't even KNOW they are saving > and opening OOXML files... > For example I've just opened a docx document designed as a tri-fold > brochure, in Libre Office. Because of the way Word is used, this > document makes use of tables with invisible borders. On opening this > even in Libre Office 3.4, the latest version, the formatting is all OVER > the place. It was actually easier to re-create the document from scratch > rather than to try to sort the formatting out... > That to me is the main obstacle in the take up of Linux - most of the > popular distros just "work out of the box" for most things now a days. > There's not a lot of figuring out to do. The other functions that the > average user uses in Windows, burning music CDs, sorting pictures etc > etc are very similar and very easy to use. It's this that is the problem... >
It might be worth mentioning at this point that MS fonts cause a lot of the format compatibility problems. (Assuming that) if you have a legal version of Ms installed or just hold a legal licence to use it you can copy the fonts from Windows to /yourhomedir/.fonts In my case, I had horrendous problems with works docs that "must not" have fonts changed from company standards. Thanks to Ms closed source fonts - they were all over the place when opened in OOO [Libre Office wasn't around at that time]. I followed advice and checked the legality stated on [I think] on the forums and copied the whole lot. A practical solution is to compress the whole system/fonts folder from windows, store it in your Ubuntu system somewhere convenient, & when an Ms doc has a different font from the freely available downloads... open the compressed file, select font required & click 'install' [trust me - it's obvios when you do it]. You'll be surprised. I do not offer this as a panacea to all compatibility problems, merely as a soloution to some of them - learned and proved from own experience. Cheers, SuprEngr. ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/ -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
