Re: IE bundling

["Kendall G. Clark" <kclark@computek.net>]

  On Thu, 13 Nov 1997, Jeff Wasel wrote:
  
  >Also, I've picked up a copy of Red Hat Linux, and I'm wondering what
  >productivity apps are availabl. Unfortunately, I still work in an MS
  >Office env., so compatibility is an issue. I've seen a lot of Linux
  >advocates out there, so how do I get things cranked up? I know I can use
  >Netscape, but what else? Also, Any special system config I should know
  >about? I was thinking of running a 486/133 with 64Mb RAM (these are very
  >reliable motherboards I get locally-(too many probs with the hacker 586
  >stuff)) and a 2.0 GB HD, along with the usual PCI stuff.
  
  Jeff,
  
  Red Hat sells an suite of apps (ssheet, wp, presentation, html ed, scripting
  language, etc) called Applixware. I have it here and my wife digs it. She
  likes it better than Office because it crashes a lot less.
  
  I use LaTeX and SGML-Tools for all text processing, so I don't mess much with
  WPs. 
  
  There is another suite of apps that runs on Linux (as well as Windows, I
  think) called StarOffice by a German company called Star Division. I've heard
  it's very good but kind of a memory pig, as these kinds of integrated apps
  tend to be.
  
  If you just have to run a Windows app, you can always buy Wabi (windows
  application binary interface, I think), a product that Sun developed to run
  Win16 apps on Sun desktops. It's been ported to Linux, runs great, and is sold
  by Caldera. It doesn't let you use win32s apps, though. The MS api is such a
  moving target, it's a wonder it gets emulated at all. There is also a effort
  called WINE to make the Win api available to Unix boxes, especially Intel
  Unixes like Linux. It is an all-volunteer effort, gets no funding, and no help
  from MS (obviously). Many people run a lot of Windows apps under WINE,
  including some older versions of Quicken, Word, etc. I've never used it. I
  dislike Windows apps as much as Windows itself. Last, really, there is a
  really good DOS emulator, called DOSEMU, that lets you run almost any Dos app
  under Linux: word perfect, 123, and even things like Duke Nukem and Quake. 
  Again, I don't have any Dos apps I want to run, but DOSEMU works really well. 
  
  That hardware sounds fine. Linux with 64 meg is a pure pleasure. Very fast.
  
  Netscape is available but that's the only big, commercial browser. MS isn't
  likely to port IE to Linux (which is fine by me). Lynx is a good text only
  browser. Also there is a free browser being developed called Mnemonic. It has
  a lot of promise, but isn't ready for daily use yet.
  
  Last if you need a Photoshop-like tool, the GIMP is a free graphics program
  (http://www.gimp.org/). It may be the best free app to be developed in the
  last few years. It does some stuff that Photoshop can't touch. Very, very good
  app.
  
  Last, if you want an integrated all-in-one kind of GUI environment, I should
  mention KDE (http://www.kde.org/). 
  
  Best,
  
  	Kendall Clark
  
  PS--if you need URLs for anything above, reply to me off-list, and I'll
  forward them.