2011/1/19 Les Mikesell lesmikesell@gmail.com
On 1/19/2011 10:43 AM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
The difference is that open source server software has been 'feature complete' for ages and the standards processes that change client/server interactions are very, very slow - so outdated versions of server software is not a problem as long as bug/security fixes are made. That's not true for desktop applications and environments. If you don't have something current you are missing the improvements that many thousands of man-hours of work have made. Personally, I use Windows at
<snip> I'll disagree here: I've seen hardly any "improvements" in any of the (admittedly not a lot) of software I run. As a definition of this, let me note that in '95, PC Mag ran a review of word processors, and noted that 90% of the users (then) used only 10% of the features, and the other 10% of users who *did* use those features only used them about 10% of the time.
You are biased by having learned to live with the restrictions of old cruft. At the very least you have to be able to exchange data files and view all common media files on a desktop. What do you do when someone gives you a docx or xlsx file?
The last "oh, I like this" feature I can remember was when firefox introduced tabs. On the other hand, a *lot* of "improvements" I find more and more objectionable, such as thunderbird trying *very* hard to look
and
act more and more like Lookout, er, Outlook, and I *LOATHE* the latest versions of Outlook.
Sorry, but Outlook 2003 and 2007 are huge improvements over earlier versions - and lacking tight integration between messaging and calendar/scheduling has been one of the places where free software really missed the boat.
And remember that firefox/openoffice are rare exceptions in RHEL/Centos in that they have had major-version updates since the distro release, even though they still are far behind 'current' now. The rest of the distro is much older and doesn't do much of what people do with desktops today (subscribing to podcasts, media playing, serving media to other devices, etc.).
so, in the end, i believe we all agree that the distro choice depends on the user needs .