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Linux.conf.au
Technology news and Jobs 
The Linux distillery Have a happy GNU Linux year!
The Linux distillery Have a happy GNU Linux year! | Have a happy GNU Linux year! |
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| Written by David M Williams | |
| Wednesday, 12 December 2007 | |
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Page 1 of 4
The point here is that you have a choice which operating system you run on the hardware you have purchased. Although an operating system comes included, you don’t have to use it and you might get a discount from the vendor if you ask them not to provide one. Why you would choose one operating system – or OS – over another comes down to two fundamental things: usability and functionality. The OS sits between your computer hardware and the programs you run – the applications like Microsoft Word or your e-mail client or web browser. It has to be simple and straightforward to use or else you won’t like it, and it will make your daily tasks become burdens. But no matter how easy it might be, unless it has a ready supply of additional software it really isn’t offering you anything. The BeOS operating system was lauded as a highly-aesthetic and elegant environment but that platform ultimately failed because it could not attract the attention of large software companies. Consequently, with a lack of available applications and games, end-users had little reason to consider it. Microsoft’s marketing team have caused confusion over the distinction between an operating system and the applications that sit on top of it, by naming their Windows and Office suites with largely identical titles. Windows 95 and Office 95 were two different packages; so too were Windows 2000 and Office 2000 and Windows XP and Office XP. Yet, it’s far from uncommon to come across people who don’t grasp the difference. I regularly meet people who complain about the new ribbon user interface in “Vista” when they mean Office 2007; I often am asked for assistance by people who have purchased a computer with Windows XP but don’t understand why they don’t have a disk for Word which, to their mind, is “part of XP.” However, the two are very different. Microsoft Windows is the operating system; it’s the eye-candy that brings pop-up menus and windows which minimise and maximise, as well as screen-savers and fonts. Microsoft Office is a suite of productivity programs that are purchased separately, and which give you word processing, spreadsheet and database and other functions. Buying one does not automatically give you the other, but they are both essential: the application suite won’t run without an OS, and the OS has little actual content to offer without applications. With all this in mind, now read on to see where Linux fits in, why you should use it and how you can migrate across. CONTINUED
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