Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2000 07:50:35 -0500 From: Jim Durham <durham@w2xo.pgh.pa.us> To: dave <dmehler22@earthlink.net> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: question on staroffice? Message-ID: <38DE079B.21FEB9FF@w2xo.pgh.pa.us> References: <000501bf96d0$d8693240$0400a8c0@davemehler.tzo.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
dave wrote: > > Hello, > Is anyone using staroffice 5.1? I was wondering if it is worth the > download time, and if it requires any additional configuration? Does it run > in x or console mode? > Thanks. > Dave. I'm using it with 3.4 . It has it's good and bad points. On the plus side, the word processor, spreadsheet and database seem to work well and interface nicely with the M$ world. The built-in browser is much more stable on my system than the later Netscapes. On the other hand, it tries to replace your GUI desktop with its own desktop, which I don't like. It is also a huge binary (soffice.bin) that loads a separate instance for every function (mail, spreadsheet, etc) and takes up a huge amount of memory, violating the unix tradition of small programs that do one job, this is a big, huge program that does many jobs. Also, StarMail works well, but it saves mail in some proprietary format, which makes it hard to deal with things like telnetting in to your system from the 'net and runing a text-based mailer on your mail folders. All that said, it's far more functional for real work than anything else I've tried, at least where you have to deal with M$ files at work on a regular basis or as attachments in e-mail. As to configuration, you answer a bunch of questions when you complete the initial installation and then it installs itself in /usr/local/Office51. Then, each user must run the setup stuff, which creates an Office51 directory in his/her home directory where are placed the desktop and folders and all that jazz. I would much rather that it used the home directory itself as its "desktop" folder, so that you didn't have to continually paw your way up a couple layers of directory tree to get to the stuff in your home directory. One of the nice things about unix for day to day work is that the environment moves with you as far as knowing where you are on the system. Staroffice has its own ideas in this regard. -- Jim Durham To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?38DE079B.21FEB9FF>