Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2006 14:57:04 -0500 From: "James B. Van Bokkelen" <jbvb@sandstorm.net> To: ports@freebsd.org Subject: 6.0-RELEASE as an office desktop? Message-ID: <43DE6F90.7090206@sandstorm.net>
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I am using a Dell D610 laptop as a dual-purpose machine. The current release of the product I'm working on uses FreeBSD 6.0-RELEASE, and I am building kernels and applications using it. With this machine, I am trying to get away from using WinXP for mail and office documents. I installed the distributed Gnome 2-2.10.2 and generally like it. Because Gnome's mail tools don't do IMAP with local mail storage for off-line use, I installed the thunderbird-1.0.6 package. It is usable, but has problems fixed in 1.0.7 or 1.5. I attempted to build 1.5 from ports, and while the result worked, shared library changes apparently broke Gnome, so I reinstalled 6.0-RELEASE and went back to 1.0.6. Finally, it appears that no Open Office package is available for 6.0-RELEASE (1.0.3_6 wants much older ORBit and glib). I started to build OO from ports, but the makefile warned me it needed 9GB free, which would require another cycle of re-installation to obtain. So, it appears that I'm stalled. Building from ports introduces library skew issues which compromise the machine as a development environment. But obtaining Open Office for 6.0-RELEASE appears to raise the bar beyond what I can justify to get shut of Windows. I know the volunteer nature of this - the first software I released under a "copyleft" was for DECUS in the early 1980s. But I would like to suggest that future RELEASE distributions have a goal that a usable office desktop environment be obtainable in a straightforward way, either from the distribution CDs, or via the net using 'pkg_add -r'. The 6.0-RELEASE Gnome comes close, but the lack of a canned Open Office should, IMO, be remedied. And in the mean time, if anyone wanted to supply me a clue or two, or point me at a package built for 6.0-RELEASE for either Open Office 2.x or Thunderbird 1.5, I would be quite pleased. James Van Bokkelen Sandstorm Enterprises Inc.
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