OpenOffice data access

[Alexandru Ungur]

I just found this little article about accessing various data sources from OO and I found it quite interesting. Maybe it will be useful for some of you too

newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=04/12/22/2123223

 

[temi]

Alex,
Do you know if open office is making a significant in road on to the desktop? I know at my daughter's school they have recently migrated from MS Office to Open office

 

[Alexandru Ungur]

Alex,
Do you know if open office is making a significant in road on to the desktop? I know at my daughter's school they have recently migrated from MS Office to Open office

Define significant

Now seriously, the answer is definitely YES!
Quoting IDC "Linux is no longer a niche phenomen. Linux is the mainstream". Linux is everywhere, and not because it is cheap! but because it is stable, secure, flexible. You'll find it in schools, in banks, in government agencies, at NASA, etc. you name it.

And yes, the situation on the desktop side has improved tremendously over the past couple of years. Just watch these stories
newsforge.com/search.pl?tid=2&query=desktop&author=&sort=1&op=stories
and I think you'll have a much better ideea of wht Linux desktop means novadays...

 

[temi]

More strenght to Linux

 

[Alexandru Ungur]

Wow you're a fast reader!

Indeed, in a perfect or wannabe-perfect world that is were we're heading.
Unfortunately it's not our world's case... Technically Linux is superior that's why it survived and that's why it moved from a niche phenomen to mainstream. But... there's a lot of money that think Linux shouldn't succeed. The sad part is that those money, instead of moving into improving their own technology to become techically superior, are moving into killing it from rather different areas: deceiveful adds (like the ones we see all over the net these day with Linux costs more money than windows & co. which is rather hillarious, since price is the last argument, other more important come in mind when one thinks of Linux. Funny I never saw - yet - ads that say windows is technically a better choice ), into enforcing patents which in turn would kill every bit of free software since, beeing free, it will not be able to pay for patent fees, etc. etc.

Bottom line: Linux is getting stronger, but the competition is getting tougher and tougher, and not last dirtier... and the dirt definitely does not come from Linux. Let's hope this wonder baby of IT has gathered enough strenght for what is to come...