What do we do when we have a substandard free software product that we could use, but would be more productive with a proprietary competitor? What sacrifices should we make in order to use a free software program? Originally the GNU Project was intended to provide a free (as in rights) replacement for proprietary Unix — the dominant industrial operating system at the time. This project was initiated with the understanding that proprietary software would have to be used until free alternatives were made available. Today we have many free replacements for proprietary programs, but are they truly equivalents? Because GNU Project and Free Software Foundation founder Richard Stallman’s computing needs are met with BASH, GCC, GDB, and Emacs does not mean that the rest of us can safely cast off rights-restrictive software. Suggesting that we all switch to free software-only systems seems a bit pretentious and narrow-minded, considering the average user’s desktop computing needs.
No matter how you feel about The GIMP, it can’t be unilaterally proclaimed an equivalent to Photoshop for the above-mentioned reasons. It may be a free replacement, but it does not offer identical or superior functionality in the eyes of the users linked to above. It can of course be made to work in place of Photoshop, depending on your needs and budget. But if you have paying work to do, how much of a hassle are you willing to go through to use free software?
The sacrifices we make
Giving up a degree of convenience for heightened security and greater reliability is a proposition reasonable people generally accept, assuming the threat of insecurity and poor reliability is real to them. For that reason it seems likely that GNU/Linux will continue to creep into the desktop computing market, considering the alternative.
Giving up function or convenience in trade for other more important benefits is a reasonable sacrifice, but what of the user’s rights? Should we give up everything for freedom?
The freedom that the Free Software Foundation speaks of is not the traditional freedom ideal established by the U.S. constitution, but the freedom to modify, use, share, and study software — the “four freedoms” as outlined by the FSF. If these freedoms are not important to the user, there is no disadvantage to using proprietary software and no clear advantage to using free software. In other words, we’re talking about how we use software, not the freedom of the press or the right to bear arms, and convincing people that software rights and basic constitutional rights are on the same level is an exercise in futility.
Richard Stallman’s essay on the matter makes an excellent case for using free software, but it depends on the bold and idealistic assumption that people are inherently honest when it comes to obeying license terms. It also assumes that people care how the software works and are willing and able to modify it.
The majority of proprietary software licenses restrict the user’s ability to use, share, modify, and study the software, but there is virtually no enforcement of these terms in the non-business portion of the software world. If I give my (fictional) copy of Microsoft Office to my friend, the FBI will not show up at my door to arrest me — or at least I can find no evidence to suggest that this has happened to anyone. In fact, I would put forth a guess that the FBI would not bother with me even if I confessed and turned myself in for this criminal act. If I gave this software to five friends, I’m still reasonably assured that I won’t be apprehended. If I put it up for free download or offer copies for sale, then I know I can expect the BSA and/or the FBI to do their best to destroy my life. Sharing among small groups is one thing; sharing with the whole world is entirely different. So despite the license agreement’s prohibitions on use and sharing, there is no real threat to someone’s freedom by ignoring proprietary restrictions on sharing with family and friends.
Most software users are not programmers, or at least do not have the skills, knowledge, or connections to modify the software they are using at the source code level. A motivated user could find a programmer or company that would accept payment to modify the software, but that would probably cost a lot of money. Similarly, users generally do not wonder or care how a program operates and have no desire to study its source code. These freedoms matter only to users who need significant modifications that cannot be found in other, similar software. Commercial desktop software is diverse and mature enough in this day and age that there are few or no missing features that are critically important, or at least important enough that a non-programming desktop user would pay money to have them added. This is evidenced by the fact that, over the past few years, proprietary software publishers have offered meager additions and enhancements to their products. Microsoft, for instance, added virtually nothing of substance to Office System 2003 compared to Office XP, and you have to dig deep to find any functional difference between Macromedia’s Studio MX and Studio MX 2004. Sagging upgrade sales support these assertions.
The caveat here is, if all proprietary software users are totally honest, they wouldn’t agree to a license that forced them to promise not to share the software with friends and family, and programmers would not agree to give up the right to study and modify the software. Somehow, though, disregarding a proprietary license’s restrictive terms, while technically dishonest, doesn’t seem on the same level as cheating on a test or lying to a spouse. It’s hard to think of disobeying licensing terms as being dishonest or dishonorable, and the moral need to help your friends and family is a far more powerful force than the least degree of honesty toward a proprietary software corporation. How do you convince someone that they are giving up freedom when in reality they take those freedoms anyway, whether they are granted or not?
Excuses, excuses
Previously we said that sacrificing a small degree of convenience or functionality can reasonably be justified if more valuable qualities (reliability and security) are gained. But what happens when you have to give up more than that, with the only reward being the four freedoms we’ve been discussing? For instance, Web designers who depend on Macromedia’s suite of Web creation tools will find themselves lost and alone in the GNU/Linux world because, aside from Nvu in place of Dreamweaver (and if you’re using Dreamweaver for anything beyond HTML and CSS development, Nvu is not truly a replacement), there are no reasonably competent replacements for their tools of choice. Fireworks users won’t be able to automatically generate rats-nest HTML files to control giant graphical pages; Flash users will have to switch to Java to achieve a similar (yet equally garish and annoying) rich media Web experience; Freehand users will have to do drawing with The GIMP and coding by hand or with Nvu. Without a drastic change in design philosophy and practice, it would be impossible to switch someone who depends on Macromedia tools to free software replacements. If you’re making money as a Web designer, it would make more sense to sacrifice freedom for function and continue using Macromedia’s proprietary tools. If your friends and family wanted to copy your software, you could always just direct them to GNU/Linux, The GIMP, and Nvu if you feared violating the Macromedia license agreement.
I did not ask him specifically, but from a previous response to a similar issue, I would guess that Stallman’s answer to this would involve encouraging people not to develop with Flash. That’s a good suggestion for many reasons, but when someone is paying you to develop in Flash, explaining to them that you will not do it because of RMS’s suggestion will only merit a lost contract or job.
The in-betweens
It is this author’s observation that most users fall in between these honest and dishonest extremes. Most of us would like to use free software where we are able, but we’re not willing to make sacrifices that add up to a net loss of value in our software. Many believe in the cause and ideals of the free software movement, but few are willing to sacrifice the tools that they need to achieve optimal productivity. This is not because we do not value our freedoms; it is because we unabashedly take those freedoms whether they are granted or not, and if it means disregarding license restrictions in order to help our friends and family while getting the job done efficiently, then so be it.
The free software movement does not appear to be losing ground despite the flaw in its reasoning. Arguably, however, it may be gaining in popularity and use not because of the freedom it offers, but because free software is starting to achieve true replacement status — it’s becoming competitive with proprietary software. It is now possible for people to use only free software and be productive in some fields, but there are times when proprietary software is necessary and no free replacement can even come close to doing the job.
As a case in point, recently I needed to get tire specifications for my motorcycle from the Suzuki Web site. Since the site is all done in Flash, and since I did not have the Flash plug-in installed because it is proprietary, I could not get the information I needed. While some sites offer non-Flash versions in an introductory page, the Suzuki site didn’t display anything in my browser but blank white space. Yes, I could find and order the service manual from a parts Web site or simply call up a local dealership and ask, but I have a computer to help me find this sort of information. My computer’s functionality and its ability to find information that I need has been hindered because I refused to install proprietary software. That’s when I cast off the notion that I had to use only free software. Why should I reduce the functionality of my computer and inconvenience myself, when in actuality I sacrifice nothing by using necessary proprietary software?
Perhaps it is time to let go of some of the high-moral ideals and remember why we started using computers in the first place. This is not to discredit or minimalize the work of the Free Software Foundation or deny the genius of Richard Stallman, but none of us should ever be asked to make unfavorable sacrifices when it comes to turning our computer time into work or money. I prefer to use as much free software as possible, but I still need the Flash and Java browser plug-ins, a proprietary word processor that I find superior to the free replacements, and I thoroughly enjoy a certain proprietary game. I am not willing to give these things up, and I do not feel dishonorable in using them. Specifically, the word processor is an absolute must — I cannot sacrifice the tools that help me maximize my creativity and productivity. From my frame of reference, the only thing that matters is the story, and I am not willing to give up the tool that is most effective for me. What sacrifices are you willing to make?
The future
There may indeed come a time when proprietary license enforcement extends to the individual desktop user, complete with BSA or FBI raids in private homes. As proprietary software companies continue to lose customers to free alternatives of increasing quality, this scenario may come to pass. As suggested in Stallman’s short story, The Right to Read, we could someday face prison time for sharing things like books and computers.
The sad reality of free software is that it may take drastic measures such as these to make the four freedoms important enough to value.
Copyright 2005 Jem Matzan. Verbatim copying and redistribution of this entire article are permitted without royalty in any medium provided this notice is preserved.
Games Knoppix is an entertainment-oriented version of the popular Debian-based LiveCD known as Knoppix. The idea behind Games Knoppix is excellent — a LiveCD that you can give to your friends to show them some of the more frivolous aspects of GNU/Linux. Disappointingly, however, many of the games on the CD do not work, many more are duplicates of the same game, everything is in German, and there are driver problems with both the 2.4 and 2.6 kernel options.
Games Knoppix offers over 100 entries in its games menu, all of them being free software. There are no proprietary games such as Unreal Tournament 2004, Quake 3 Arena, NeverWinter Nights, or any other GNU/Linux-compatible commercial entertainment programs. This is quite a disappointment, as these are some of the best games available for GNU/Linux, although they would probably have a great deal of trouble running from the CD.
Many of the games are duplicates. There are, for instance, 4 different varieties of Nethack, and some games offer separate server, configuration, and client programs. I didn’t test every entry in the games menu, but I did find a significant number of programs that didn’t work at all on three test systems — FreeSCI (a free replacement for the old Sierra On-Line DOS interpreter), the ZSNES emulator, Hack, and bzflag all refused to start or operate properly.
How fast the games will run from the CD is dependent on several factors:
The speed of your optical drive
The DMA mode the drive is using
The amount of RAM in your computer
The availability and size of hard drive swap space
Click to enlarge
If you have less than 1GB of RAM you’re going to experience some pauses and slowdown in the general operation of the OS, and you’ll need at least 256MB of RAM to use the system meaningfully. Usually once something is loaded into memory it runs quite nicely, but on systems that have no predefined Linux swap partition and a small amount of RAM, operation can be pretty choppy. This is one instance where a faster CPU will not significantly impact performance, although, as with any graphical environment, anything below a Pentium 3 or Athlon Thunderbird could be somewhat sluggish.
A big mess
Nvidia drivers (version 1.0.6111 — a little old) are provided and if you’re using an Nvidia-based graphics card, the startup procedure asks you if you’d like to use it. The alternative is the VESA driver, which does not offer hardware 3D acceleration. With the default 2.4.27 kernel, the Nvidia driver consistently interfered with my network card driver. So if I wanted 3D acceleration, I had to do without networking. I tried the 2.6.9 kernel, but the Nvidia driver failed to load with it. ATI drivers are also included, but were not tested for this review.
The boot screen uses dark grey lettering on a black background, which is nearly illegible. If you want to try nonstandard boot options, you’ll have to traverse help menus written exclusively in German. The default language setting is German, so at very least, English-speaking users will have to use the lang=us boot option.
The fonts are improperly configured in X.org, so the font rendering is jagged and painful to read. Further visual annoyance is added by the xsnow program, which makes it look like it’s snowing in your desktop background. It looks cool at first, until you realize that this superfluity is taking up limited resources while causing your desktop icons to slowly disappear (see screen shot). It would be nice if there were an intuitive way to turn this off.
The operating system failed to pull the date from the BIOS, so I was not only in the wrong time zone, but the wrong month as well.
A different kind of Knoppix
Later versions of standard Knoppix don’t seem to be as buggy on my test systems; I’m not really sure why Games Knoppix did so poorly. Aside from the technical difficulties listed above, you’ll find that Games Knoppix is not all that far from its more versatile parent.
The knx2hd installation program is provided with the distribution, but it is not listed in the KDE menu. This utility installs Games Knoppix to your hard drive, should you decide that you like it enough to keep it as a permanent operating system. Also provided on the CD (and in the KDE menu) is a LiveCD program installation script, which attempts to install new programs through APT. It is listed as experimental, only offers a dozen or so programs, and the two I tried to install ended up failing. It’s a good idea, but it’s not properly fleshed out at this point.
You won’t find OpenOffice.org or The GIMP, or some of the other behemoths that you’re accustomed to getting with standard Knoppix. Games Knoppix is focused not just on games, but multimedia as well: XMMS, Xine, K3b, KsCD, and Audacity are included with the distribution. The standard system utilities and a handful of text editors are also provided, and you’ll have Konqueror; Mozilla 1.7.3 with the Java and Acroread plug-ins; Gaim; and Xchat2 for Internet connectivity. Although ZSNES didn’t work properly for me, the DOSbox emulator is included and seems to work quite well. KDE is the only desktop environment included with the distribution, and it’s at version 3.3.1.
Other than the trouble with the network card and the Nvidia driver, Games Knoppix didn’t have much trouble with my hardware. The sound didn’t work on my Intel D915GUX motherboard, but there is little in the free software operating system world that will properly support that board’s peripherals. My MSI K8T Neo2 is a newer motherboard, but Games Knoppix loaded drivers for the sound and LAN. On my old Dell Inspiron 3800 laptop system, the only driver I had to do without was for the Linksys wireless card, but there is no native driver for it in Linux yet. It is supported through ndiswrapper, but I did not test that for this review.
Try, try again
The first release of Games Knoppix is, to be quite frank, not very good — it doesn’t work as well as standard Knoppix, the video driver has problems, and many of the games fail to start or run properly.
The next release is slated for January 6, 2005 (a month after the initial release) and will include songs created by volunteer contributors as a way to increase the multimedia aspect of Games Knoppix. I hope to see this splinter project turn into something exciting and useful in the next few releases. For now, skip Games Knoppix and save your CD-R disc for standard Knoppix.
Copyright 2005 Jem Matzan. Verbatim copying and redistribution of this entire article are permitted without royalty in any medium provided this notice is preserved.
There are several word processors in GNU/Linux, each with
different goals and features. Some are free software, some are based on
free software, some are proprietary. What do you, as an amateur or
professional writer, need to consider in such programs when moving to
GNU/Linux? If you’re not entirely satisfied with your current word
processor or if you’re wondering what’s available on the GNU/Linux
platform in terms of word processors, this article’s for you.
Word processors need to cover more than just the basics. Certain
requirements are in order to provide a stable and productive work
environment. There is a list of necessities itemized below, but perhaps the most underrated feature of a word processor is its ability to
find errors in your document. Such functions are commonly known as
proofing or writing tools. The reason why good writing and proofing
tools are a necessary feature for professional writers is because many
of us don’t have an editorial staff to look over our work, and even if
we do, even the best human editors make mistakes from time to time. A
good electronic proofing tool does not make any mistakes and it misses
nothing if it is properly configured. Likewise, a bad proofing
tool will screw up your style and give you erroneous suggestions.
The best aspect of a good proofing tool is on-the-fly scanning.
If the program is checking your spelling and grammar as you work, you
can catch errors immediately and edit as you go. Some writers prefer to
ignore editing and revision until the first draft is done, but if you’re
working on a large project it’s impossible to keep track of continuity
and maintain consistency if you leave all of your corrections for later.
If you are using a tool — or if you have a powerful tool available to
you — the tool should be doing most of the work, leaving the writer to
concentrate on the quality of the content.
There are only two word processors that have grammar checkers
worth mentioning — Microsoft Word and Corel WordPerfect — and neither of them are presently available for GNU/Linux. The grammar modules in these programs are not flawless, but
they’ll always show you when you’re making a mistake that you may not
even know you’re making. How many people absent-mindedly use the passive
voice in narrative, or split infinitives like they’re going out of
style, or use “compliment” when they should be using “complement?” All
of these errors will make it past a spell checker, as will typos that
leave out letters by accident (such as “or” instead of “for” or “to”
instead of “too”), but a grammar checker will find them. There are a
great many writers in this world who are very good at expressing
themselves through the written word but are sloppy typists or don’t know
all of the rules for standardizing their work and making it readable to
others. Members of this silent majority need a good set of proofing and
writing tools to help them create an excellent story or other
professional writing project.
Aside from good proofing tools, some other features that make
word processors valuable are:
The ability to accurately read from and write to a variety of
file formats, especially Microsoft Word .DOC format
Export functions that allow good-quality PostScript, PDF, and
HTML output
A wide selection of useful styles for implementing standard text
formatting
The ability to accurately count pages and words, and perform
other analytical functions
General program stability, especially when working with large or
multiple documents
An eclectic array of anti-aliased fonts to choose from
Internationalization support
Customization of the interface
Programmability through a macro language of some sort
The ability to insert objects such as spreadsheet charts and
graphic files into documents
Functions to add and manage tables, text boxes, lines, and
watermarks
The Programs
For this review I obtained legal, up-to-date copies of the
following programs:
Bimonthly updates are free and they fix bugs, add
features and increase functionality. Complete version upgrades are
typically a third of the full version price.
Proprietary, restrictive but not as bad as
Microsoft, IBM or Corel
Windows 95/85/ME/NT/2K/XP, Windows CE and CE.NET,
Zaurus OS, GNU/Linux, and FreeBSD
Licensed under
href="http://www.openoffice.org/license.html" target="_blank">a dual
licensing scheme, which includes the
href="http://www.openoffice.org/licenses/gpl_license.html"
target="_blank">GNU GPL and the
href="http://www.openoffice.org/licenses/sissl_license.html"
target="_blank">Sun Industry Standards Source License.
OpenOffice.org is Free Software according to the
href="http://www.fsf.org" target="_blank">Free Software
Foundation.
Windows 98/ME/NT/2000/XP, GNU/Linux, Solaris,
FreeBSD, OS X
Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP, GNU/Linux, Solaris,
FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, OS X, QNX, may work on AIX, IRIX, and SCO UNIX
as well, if compiled from source
GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, OS X, may work
on other UNIX systems if compiled from source
Now let’s take a look at how they compare:
TextMaker
In a nutshell: it’s fast, inexpensive, and works with Word
documents quite well (except of course for “protected” Word 2003
documents, which only Microsoft Word 2003 can view or edit). The font
rendering in TextMaker is a thing of beauty, and is noticeably superior
to the other programs in this review. The menus aren’t clogged with a
lot of groupware and specialized functions, which means they’re easy to
customize and navigate. TextMaker seems like it was designed
specifically for writing documents, stories, distributable print media
(flyers, brochures, etc.), and books; it’s not the “jack of all trades”
that OpenOffice.org Writer and StarOffice Writer are.
The integrated proofing tools are average, being unable to
recognize some alternative spellings. The built-in thesaurus is quite
capable, however, and is on par with StarOffice Writer 7.
Click to enlarge
There is no native macro support presently, but SoftMaker is
working on programmability for their next release, TextMaker 2005. The
Find/Replace function is above average, allowing some out of the
ordinary search criteria such as tabs, line breaks, and styles. Speaking
of styles, TextMaker includes only four predefined paragraph styles, but
there are some nice premade templates — 22 of them, to be exact —
covering faxes, memos, business cards, letters, and even a phone list.
The Word converter in TextMaker is the best of all of the
programs in this review; it was able to maintain formatting for embedded
graphics and tables in a complex test document created in Word XP.
Unfortunately, TextMaker does not have conversion functions for
WordPerfect’s .WPD or OpenOffice.org’s .SXW file formats, so if you were
hoping to switch from OpenOffice.org, StarOffice, or WordPerfect,
TextMaker won’t be able to import your old documents. There is no export function for PDF, but you can save as formatted HTML, and can save to PS by printing to a file. You can insert up to 14 different types of graphic
formats into a document; there is also a basic solver for inserting
mathematical equations, and a symbol map containing special characters.
You can insert fields, text boxes, tables, headers, footers, and
footnotes, but like all of the other programs we tested, there is no
watermark feature.
Also absent is the “word art” feature of Microsoft Word, which allows
you to do strange and unusual things with text orientation. The
analytics are extensive, offering not only counts of characters, lines,
words, pages, and all manner of related literary delineations, but it
also tallies averages for sentence length and other interesting statistics.
As far as internationalization is concerned, TextMaker is
available in English and German, and can accommodate “old” German
spellings of some words. The next version of TextMaker will include
support for the Spanish, Russian, and Portuguese languages.
OpenOffice.org Writer
OpenOffice.org is part of a large office suite, and as such, its
primary advantage is its flawless integration with other parts of the
suite. Aside from the ability to add spreadsheets to documents and other
suite-related features intrinsic to nearly every comprehensive office
package, OpenOffice.org Writer is a highly competent word processor with
a diverse array of features.
If you haven’t used OpenOffice.org in a while, you’ll be
pleasantly surprised by the new features and greater level of ability
that it now possesses. Since the release of version 1.1, OpenOffice.org
has grown up, enhancing its filters, increasing its stability, and
cleaning up its code so that it works faster and looks better. The
button bars are highly customizable (the screen shot you see here uses a
customized interface), and you can write macros in OOo’s own special
API, OpenOffice.org Basic.
Click to enlarge
The fonts don’t render as nicely as they do in TextMaker, even
with the anti-aliasing setting turned on. The Find/Replace feature is
the most extensive of any program in this article (along with StarOffice
Writer), being able to search for text styles, special characters, text
attributes, and similar words. There are dozens of predefined paragraph
styles to choose from — more than are offered by TextMaker, AbiWord,
and KWord.
The proofing tools are average; you’ll have to make the
dictionary learn a good two dozen words in your first few documents. The
thesaurus is substandard, offering little advantage for professional
writers. The analytics are average, counting the parts of the document
without providing statistics. You can draw vector graphics, insert 26
different types of graphics files, frames, tables, indexes, and all
manner of other types of objects, including formulas (using
OpenOffice.org Math).
The internationalization support is immense in OpenOffice.org
Writer: 35 languages are supported, with more in testing and
development.
OpenOffice.org can export to HTML and PDF without trouble, but
there is no PostScript export function. It can also open and save to
Word .DOC format, but the more complex the formatting, the more likely
you are to have some kind of problem with the conversion filters. For
the vast majority of standard documents, there is little or no trouble
in converting to and from Word .DOC format. WordPerfect’s file format is
not supported in OpenOffice.org. Interestingly, the upcoming version 2.0
will use a new standard file format known as OpenDocument (
href="http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/office/200411/msg00147.html">previously
this was called the OASIS Open Office XML format), which
href="http://europa.eu.int/ida/en/document/3439">the European Union has
committed to adopting. The next edition of OpenOffice.org,
StarOffice, and KOffice (of which KWord is a part) will all use this
same standard file format.
Sun StarOffice Writer
At a glance there doesn’t appear to be much difference between
StarOffice Writer and OpenOffice.org Writer, but what lies beneath the
surface of StarOffice Writer are third-party components that provide
better proofing tools, proprietary fonts, and enhanced conversion
filters. These additions can add up to a significant advantage over
OOo Writer for some users. There is also a slight cosmetic difference
between the menu fonts and the colors of the buttons and such, but for
the most part you’ll find that the two programs appear to be visually
and operationally identical.
Click to enlarge
The dictionary recognizes alternate spellings and somewhat
obscure words and the comprehensive thesaurus is much more thorough than
the one in OpenOffice.org, providing definitions and expanded
possibilities for synonyms.
Sun claims that StarOffice Writer has “WordPerfect filters.” We
took this to mean conversion filters for WordPerfect documents, but the
copy of StarOffice Writer that Sun provided us refused to open any of
our WordPerfect 10 test files. After trying out five test documents, the
MS Word filter seems to be the same as it is in OpenOffice.org Writer,
with the one exception being Windows font support. StarOffice Writer
comes with proprietary fonts that offer metric equivalents to common
Windows fonts, which means it’s easier to keep the look and style of a
Word document when importing into StarOffice Writer. Another advantage
that StarOffice Writer has over OpenOffice.org Writer is document
templates: OOo has only a handful included by default, whereas StarOffice has about 300
sample documents and document templates for a wide variety of purposes.
AbiWord
AbiWord is the only word processor in this review that uses the
GTK toolkit for its interface. It’s also the most extensible of any word
processor available for GNU/Linux. The base program is little more than
an advanced text editor, but add in some of the 50+
href="http://www.abisource.com/twiki/bin/view/Abiword/PluginMatrix">plug-ins,
and you have a word processor worth using. In effect, all of AbiWord’s
power is in its extensibility. While this means that the program has
almost no limit to its potential, it also means that you’re trusting
your program stability to third-party modules of varying degrees of
quality. Only eight of the 51 listed plug-ins have the highest rating
for stability as of this writing. The plug-ins are
href="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=15518&package_id=32698">only
available in Red Hat’s RPM package format, not as source code; this
presents a problem for those who have to compile the base package from
source.
Click to enlarge
The find and replace function is is very basic, offering only
word and character replacement. The interface is not customizable at
all, so you’re stuck with the standard layout. You can insert text boxes
and fields, but if you want to insert a graphic file you’ll be limited
to the PNG format. AbiWord comes with a native Word .DOC converter, but
oddly it does not have the ability to read OpenOffice.org’s .SXW
documents. Document format support is limited to rich text format, plain
text, HTML and multi-part HTML, and Word .DOC format. The spell checker
is average, failing to recognize older English spellings of some words.
Font rendering is better than OpenOffice.org and StarOffice, but
not as nice as TextMaker. The analysis tools are average, calculating
words, characters, lines, paragraphs, and pages. Natively, AbiWord lacks
the ability to export to PostScript, PDF, and HTML. AbiWord contains
more than 80 paragraph styles and 12 document templates, and is
available in over 30 languages.
Many of these shortcomings can be solved by installing some or
all of the plug-ins. However, we’re reviewing the functionality of the
program as it is compiled from source, as that was the only option
available on our test platform. The previous edition of the program was
available to us as an all-inclusive package, and we found it to be
horrifyingly unstable when importing documents of any kind.
KWord
KWord is more of a desktop publishing program than a word
processor. Its tool set and layout are geared toward making media-rich,
highly formatted print media, although it is also equipped to handle
writing projects in general.
The conversion filters are nothing short of horrible, wreaking
havoc on styles and formatting in OOo .SXW and Microsoft .DOC
documents. KWord is, however, the only word processor in this review
that can natively import and export WordPerfect .WPD files. The
WordPerfect filter isn’t as bad as the Word or OOo filters, but in
our test documents it had a tendency to run words together at random.
While KWord can save documents in an eclectic variety of formats
(including some unusual ones, like TeX, Lotus AmiPro, and SGML), it
cannot export to PDF or PostScript. Interestingly, KWord can import PDFs
even though it cannot export to them.
Click to enlarge
KWord has 12 document templates and 30 predefined styles, with
the option to import or create other kinds of styles. Font rendering is
average — about on par with OpenOffice.org and StarOffice. The
analytics are excellent, providing statistics for the usual document
delineations plus various types of objects and formatting elements, and
it even offers a syllable count along with a
href="http://www.measurementexperts.org/term_pop.asp?ID=112">Flesch
reading ease rating.
The proofing tools show promise, but are otherwise unimpressive.
The built-in thesaurus is well designed, offering suggestions for
synonyms, more specific words, and more general words. Unfortunately,
the English version doesn’t seem to know very many words, so it isn’t
much of a help. The dictionary is average, being unable to recognize
alternate or older spellings of some words.
KWord does not have macro support, but it does have scripting
capabilities through the DCOP interface, which allows you to control
KWord with a variety of programming languages. KWord is available in 9
languages, with another 15 languages more than 90% translated and a
href="http://i18n.kde.org/stats/gui/KOFFICE_1_3_BRANCH/toplist.php">long
list of others in various stages of completion.
The interface is suitably customizable, but it doesn’t offer
anything out of the ordinary in terms of features.
The one area where KWord excels in is its handling of objects and
formatting elements. You can choose from up to 18 types of graphics to
insert. Text frames, formulas (including matrices), tables, and nine
different types of object frames are available.
Click to enlarge
WordPerfect for Linux
Corel has been offering downloads of WordPerfect for Linux on
and off for the past year, making little adjustments to it, and then
taking it off of their Web site. The last version we tested was based on
WordPerfect 8 for Linux. Although that was a strong word processor for
its day, it doesn’t quite measure up to OpenOffice.org Writer or
StarOffice Writer. It’s dated, in other words. It still uses the Motif
toolkit, the proofing tools are competent but primitive, the font
rendering stinks, and it employs an annoying multi-window interface
similar to The Gimp.
We’d really like to see a GNU/Linux port of the amazing
WordPerfect 12 product that Corel is currently shipping for the Windows
platform, but Corel has not yet fully committed to the GNU/Linux word
processor market as of this writing and has no public plans to port its
flagship product to other platforms.
Summary
Think of TextMaker as a sort of “Word Lite” — it’s got many of
the same features and functions as Microsoft Word XP without the bloat,
but it isn’t truly a drop-in replacement for Word XP or 2003. A new
version is currently being beta tested.
OpenOffice.org Writer is a jack of all trades, and is surpassed
in its functionality only by StarOffice Writer. It’s a bit of a behemoth
– the codebase for OpenOffice.org is larger than the entire 2.6 Linux
kernel — but despite its size, it has improved greatly in the past few
releases. It’s stable, supports Word documents tolerably, and it’s free
as in rights and in price.
StarOffice Writer is probably the most stable and reliable of
the bunch. It’s compatible with more file formats and has more fonts,
but it doesn’t work with Word files as well as TextMaker does. Although
it costs money and is licensed restrictively, StarOffice 7 has better
fonts and a slightly more appealing interface than OpenOffice.org.
Like OpenOffice.org, AbiWord has also come a long way in a short
time, but the basic functionality is a little too slim and the program
relies too heavily on potentially unstable modules to enhance its
feature set. The previous release had severe stability issues when
employing some of the conversion filters. If nothing else, AbiWord is
fast, looks nice with the GTK toolkit, and renders anti-aliased fonts
better than everything we tested except TextMaker.
KWord is not as useful of a word processor as it is a DTP
application. Still, it has some interesting yet not fully fleshed-out
features that could make future releases highly competitive. Its
conversion filters are substandard, but it’s the only GNU/Linux word
processor that comes with a WordPerfect filter, even if it isn’t…
well, perfect.
Conclusions
Much like the operating system distributions, GNU/Linux word
processors have advanced quickly in a short period of time, but have not
yet reached the home stretch. Depending on the nature of your work, some
or all of these programs may be more than suitable for you. For highly
discriminating writers, some sacrifices are going to have to be made if
you’re moving from Word XP or 2003, or from any version of WordPerfect
after 10 (also referred to as the 2002 edition).
We’d like to see more powerful and more easily accessible writing
tools, a tabbed document view (much like Mozilla has for browser
windows), more export formats, and better conversion tools.
Specifically, WordPerfect 12 is an excellent example to follow. It has
tabbed document views, can open or export to almost any format (except
.SXW), and the proofing tools are unmatched. WP12’s dictionary and
thesaurus should be a model for all word processors; you can get not
only alternate spellings of many words, but the thesaurus is highly
verbose and intelligent and the dictionary offers Oxford definitions for
known words. The grammar checker and analysis tools in WP12 are
phenomenal; ideally we’d like to see this kind of functionality in the
GNU/Linux word processors reviewed above.
If you’re working in a professional environment, StarOffice and
TextMaker both offer some degree of commercial support, should you
require it. TextMaker is not very expensive at all, and is well worth
the purchase price if you need superior Word compatibility and an
interface that’s easy on the eyes. If you’re a starving writer,
OpenOffice.org will probably provide you with the most stable and
versatile environment for your work. This is not to imply that KWord and
AbiWord are not worth investigating, but they do not offer the same
power, stability, and flexibility that OpenOffice.org does. Secondly,
open source programs are constantly and rapidly evolving, and thus can
invalidate this review’s findings in a matter of weeks. Here’s hoping
that the next few rounds of updates elicits one or more GNU/Linux word
processors that can put Word and WordPerfect to shame.
Copyright 2005 Jem Matzan. Verbatim copying and redistribution of this entire article are permitted without royalty in any medium provided this notice is preserved.
Since the introduction of the FreeBSD-5 branch, FreeBSD enthusiasts have been eagerly awaiting the day when the new codebase would stabilize. After much development and four previous releases, FreeBSD-5 has finally gone stable with version 5.3. But don’t mistake a stable codebase with stable software. While the development team will no longer accept major changes to the base system, FreeBSD 5.3 still has bugs and problems.
FreeBSD is a complete Unix-like operating system entirely developed by a single large team of programmers. This is in stark contrast to GNU/Linux which, as a complete operating system, has no central, cohesive developer base and is packaged in myriad different ways by myriad different distribution projects and companies; and proprietary Unixes, which are closed-source, restrictively licensed, and work on a comparatively small number of usually proprietary hardware architectures. FreeBSD has historically been clean, fast, reliable, and scalable. It’s easy to use, learn, set up, and navigate from the command line, has more than 10,000 software programs in the Ports system, runs on a wide variety of hardware, and can easily be used for either a desktop or a server.
The transition to 5.x
Until the release of 5.3, the most recent “production release” was the FreeBSD-4 series, which is presently at version 4.10 and has been deemed the “Legacy” release in the wake of the 5.x branch going to STABLE. FreeBSD-5 was supposed to be a grand introduction of new technology — a revolutionary improvement to the tried and true 4.x branch — but soon after it left the gate, it got caught up in developer politics and failed implementations of too-ambitious theories among other questionable design decisions, causing some developers to fork the FreeBSD-4 project into a separate and more focused operating system.
The ULE (which is not an acronym; its full name is SCHED_ULE as opposed to the older SCHED_4BSD) scheduler continues to have stability and performance problems and was totally disabled instead of being made the default process scheduler in 5.3 as planned. The mix of threading subsystems still yields problems with efficiency and stability. Also, the networking subsystem may now be multithreaded and therefore faster on SMP systems, but users with some implementations of the 3Com (SysKonnect/Yukon) gigabit LAN chip are now unable to access their network at all because of new bugs that have popped up in the driver; other SysKonnect/Yukon users have problems under heavy network traffic, along with those using Intel Pro/1000 chips. Unfortunately all of our test systems use these network chips for onboard LAN; coincidentally they are two of the most popular gigabit LAN chipsets used on modern motherboards from major manufacturers. We also experienced lockups during boot if a custom-compiled kernel did not have SMP enabled on a Hyper-Threaded computer. A list of these and other errata can be found here.
Considering the long list of significant problems in FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE, it would seem irrational to recommend that anyone switch a production server from 4.x or any previous known-working 5.x release to 5.3. Just the same, the FreeBSD project maintains a migration guide for this purpose.
A lost lead
FreeBSD 5.x enjoyed an excellent head start in the fully 64-bit AMD64 operating system arena, but now trails the pack, with only Windows XP 64-bit behind it in speed and completeness. While 64-bit GNU/Linux in the form of SUSE, Red Hat, and Gentoo have all achieved a reasonable level of accomplishment (and Debian is on its way), FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE did not add any long-awaited features, such as full 32-bit FreeBSD binary compatibility and 64-bit Linux binary compatibility. Linux 32-bit compatibility is also not natively available, but as usual there is an unofficial, not-yet-committed hack to get it to work. In addition, there is a severe reliability problem with systems that have more than 4GB of system memory, which is a limit meant to be broken by the AMD64 architecture. After having used FreeBSD 5.2.1-RELEASE for AMD64 on an Asus K8V Deluxe AMD64 workstation for several months, we’ve found 5.3-RELEASE to be unusable on the same machine. Due to the driver problems with the onboard network adapter as mentioned above, this test machine cannot even be properly used with the i386 edition, essentially forcing a downgrade to 5.2.1-RELEASE.
Improvements since 5.2.1
So far we’ve only focused on the negative parts of FreeBSD 5.3, but there are a few significant improvements over the previous version:
Windows NDIS binary drivers are now natively supported in the kernel; this means better wireless NIC compatibility
GCC is now at 3.4.2, Binutils at 2.15, and GDB at 6.1. Also, X.org has been upgraded to 6.7, GNOME to 2.6.2 and KDE to 3.3.0
While the FreeBSD team seems to have accomplished some of its goals for 5-STABLE, they have also introduced a number of critical bugs. Where FreeBSD used to be a highly usable, reliable, and scalable operating system, the last three releases have been increasingly substandard, culminating in a hardly usable operating system on our test machines. The FreeBSD development team has a tradition of writing good code and maintaining a high-quality operating system. Unfortunately, FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE lends little credence to that reputation.
Project leader Scott Long’s release announcement claims that the team focused especially on bug squashing and testing, but considering all of the problems we encountered on our systems (and the fact that we reported one of these serious problems on the mailing lists during the release candidate testing), Long’s assertion seems optimistic at best. Here’s hoping that the FreeBSD team gets its act together politically and technically, and reclaims its reputation for excellence in operating system design and development.
Copyright 2005 Jem Matzan. Verbatim copying and redistribution of this entire article are permitted without royalty in any medium provided this notice is preserved.
Many computer gamers weren’t even born yet when the original Tron hit movie theaters in 1982, followed a short time later by a hit video game that offered a glimpse of an oddly prophetic computer-dominated future. On the other hand, maybe you’re old enough to remember but at the time couldn’t understand the high tech concepts used in the movie to fully appreciate the imagination of the creators.Now, twenty-two years later, Tron 2.0 gives us a second opportunity to immerse ourselves in a brand new adventure in a world that exists inside of a computer.
The Story
Your character’s name is Jet Bradley, a talented but rebellious young programmer and son of the creator of the original Tron program, Alan Bradley.
One day you receive a call that your father has disappeared, and while investigating his disappearance you get digitized and sucked inside of your computer, and that’s where the real fun starts.
Once inside you are greeted by Byte, a small tri-dimensional star shaped helper that will guide you through the first steps inside the computer, thanks to him and some email you find lying around, you learn that your father was able to reproduce the original Tron code and the Correction algorithms necessary to restore a User to the real world.
The emails you find at different stages during the game help you understand the problems that the company faces as well as the estrangement between Jet and his father.
Other than Byte you have some other allies inside the computer, the most important being an AI program named Ma3a (who is voiced by the actress who played Lora/Yori in the original Tron movie, Cindy Morgan). Essential for the Tron project, Ma3a is able to hold the complete genetic makeup of a digitized user, and in this case she has all of Jet’s information. Without her, Jet is not able to go back to the real world.
The plot unfolds in two worlds; outside, the Fcon company is trying to take over your fathers company as well as the Tron code, with evil intentions. Inside of the computer you are aware of all of these problems thanks to email and video captures from the security cameras, but you have your hands full with the ICPs (Intrusion Countermeasure Programs) and a virus spreading through the system.
The ICP Kernel (which the game refers to in a Colonel-like way) believes that you are the reason for the spreading virus, and thus attempts to eliminate you. The real virus is a bunch of slimy programs that are determined to destroy everything in their path.
Ma3a guides you through each level — and this is where the game really shines — taking you to complex worlds with spectacular graphics where you must escape a complete system format due to the virus and get a transport to other devices like a laptop, an Internet hub, and an old computer with old but friendly software.
The guys at Buena Vista Entertainment (a Disney division) really combined their computer knowledge with a high degree of imagination to make this story work. Tron 2.0’s game engine is excellent, the action is intense, the graphics are stunning and the dialogue between the programs is a lot of fun.
Game play
This is primarily a first person shooter, so you use the normal WASD keyboard controls in combination with your mouse. The in-game menu seems strange at first, but is really easy to use after a little practice.
You have the capabilities of doing three functions that will help you during the game:
Defrag Procedural
Disinfect Procedural
Port Procedural
The defrag will prepare spaces for you to place weapons, armor or functions that you acquire during the game. If the function you get is not compatible with your system you will need to place it in your Port Procedural to make it work. The Disinfect Procedural is needed after fighting against the virus, and if you don’t use it you will become infected as well.
On the other hand, there are certain levels that you must choose to improve on, according to what is important to you, they are:
Health: Increases your Max health level, so you can download even more from the globes (see the section below on globes for more information).
Energy: Increases your Max Energy level, also allows you to download more from the globes.
Weapon efficiency: Makes the weapons you use draw less energy and become more efficient.
Transfer rate: You need to download everything in this game, from Health to email to permissions; with this option you will do it faster.
Processor: All three basic functions (Defrag, Disinfect and Port) get done faster.
You will need to collect build notes in order to improve your level, and you must choose wisely how you want to spend it, because you don’t get enough to improve on everything at the same time.
There are two main factors that you’ll need to take care of during the game: your health (the red status bar), which you can download using the beautifully designed red globes; and your energy level (the green status bar). You can acquire energy by downloading it from blue globes.
The functions or weapons you choose to use will consume energy. Some weapons are more powerful and they will, of course, require more energy which sometimes is not easy to come by.
All of the functions, weapons and armor you collect can be found at one of three build state levels: Alpha, Beta and Gold. The differences between each level are the energy efficiency, space occupied in your inventory (Alpha requires 3 spaces, Beta 2 and Gold only 1 space) and the amount of protection that your armor provides. Because they need less space you can carry more Gold functions, weapons, armor and it will give you a lot more options during combat. Some programs can help you upgrade from one build state to the next.
Your main weapon is the disc, but with the correct functions you can have different flavors of it and make it faster or more powerful. You will need to aim it correctly before you let it go, and sometimes it takes a while to come back and you’ll need to start running.
The ICPs also use the disc as their main weapon. You can block an attack with your own disc by right clicking the mouse, but it’s quite tricky and you have to be fast to block properly.
Some of the funniest dialogs come from the ICPs, specially when they come after you. I found it particularly funny when one asked me to “stop executing the escape command.”
It’s all of the details and oddities that make Tron 2.0 enjoyable, and the game designers took great care in adding a wealth of little things that add up to a lot of fun.
After you destroy one of the ICPs they normally leave behind energy you can use. In some instances a small pyramid appears, representing a weapon or a permission you have to download. Permissions are needed at all levels; they allow you to open doors, remove or activate force fields and other things of that nature.
Highlights
Stunning, beautiful graphics: You’ll wish you had more time to stop and admire the graphics; some scenes are so well done that you just want to get close to them and admire the work. It’s hard to compare Tron 2.0 with other FPS games like Deus Ex : Invisible War or even Max Payne 2 because Tron is not trying to show you the real world. The neon colors against the black background is different from any other game I’ve seen, and the strange tones of color and “data rivers” with geometric figures flowing in them are truly an amazing sight.
In-game menu: The fact that you have to defrag or disinfect your inventory helps the gameplay experience and immerses you in the plot. When you are in combat against the virus you have to already be trying to disinfect your weapons to have everything clean for the next battle.
For the nostalgic ones: In case you do remember the original Tron, you will be happy to know that the light cycles are back, and part of the plot of the game. The red square tanks are also in the combat arena in a way that makes them part of the game rather than just scenery.
Great fun: But the real factor in this game is that you have fun playing it and simply being amused by the imagination of the creators stretching the computer concepts that we all now are familiar with.
Good music: Disney went out and got Wendy Carlos (the original composer for the Tron movie score) to create all of the music for this game. It really sets the tone of the game to have Tron-like music in the background while you play.
Great bargain: Tron 2.0 is only US$19.99 — a very reasonable price for an FPS these days.
Negative Points
Linear story: I had to look hard at this game to find something I didn’t like, but in this day and age of open-ended games, Tron 2.0 seems a little to linear. There is only one way of doing things and I felt I needed a little more freedom to find other more creative solutions.
Copyright 2005 Sergio Magdeleno. Verbatim copying and redistribution of this entire article are permitted without royalty in any medium provided this notice is preserved.
