<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 TRANSITIONAL//EN">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; CHARSET=UTF-8">
<META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="GtkHTML/0.12.99">
</HEAD>
<BODY>I would like to also add that as we migrate from Windows to Linux, we still have to deal with the companies that we work for that are still running MS software. I for one am a consultant, and the companies I consult to and the company I work for use MS products, which means I still have to use them. Being a consultant, I use my own computers, and laptops, not company owned. So there has to be an understanding out there in the community that we still have to deal with MS software, not nessecarily by choice, but because of the choice of other companies to use it. I hope that in the near future projects like Wine, and VMWare will work out all the bugs, and perfect what they are trying to accomplish, so that we can rid our systems of MS software permanently. But until then some of us are still bound by the chains of MS by the decisions of others to use their software. I hope I did not come across the wrong way with my 2 cents on this, but it is very frustrating trying to m!
igrate from windows to linux. Linux has a lot of good documentation out there, and I personally prefer to use it over windows, but there is still a lot to be desired as far as migrating windows users over to it. I consider myself to be an above average computer user, and still find myself hitting brick walls trying to get things to work in linux. It does not bother me that much, I love a challenge, and hit it head on. But the average computer users see this as a flaw in the OS. They do not understand the things that we on the list do about the OS, and never had to before. I need to stop because I am rambling on, but I hope everyone understands my point. <br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<pre> ,,,,
(O O)
+oOO-------(_)-----------+
| Patrick Parks |
| www.patrickparks.com |
|patrick@patrickparks.com|
+---------------------oOO+
| | |
|__| |__|
|| ||
ooO Ooo</pre>On Thu, 2001-09-13 at 14:33, Aaron Goldblatt wrote:
<blockquote>
<pre><FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I>> would venture to extend the notion of promotion to the migration of users</FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I>> from Windows, which in my opinion, is a tremendous hurdle when you consider</FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I>> it. </FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I></FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I>I would concur. I myself have only recently concluded my migration from </FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I>Windows to Linux. The big hurdle in my migration was (get this) email.</FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I></FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I>I have tens of thousands of emails that previously were stored in Eudora for </FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I>Windows. Eudora uses mbox format, which makes conversion easy.</FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I></FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I>The hurdle wasn't moving the files: The hurdle was finding an MUA that met my </FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I>needs. I wanted:</FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I> - mbox format support, or direct conversion support to the new format</FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I> - Multiple POP3 account support</FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I> - Filtering support of the sort found in Eudora</FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I> - GUI-based was preferable but absolutely not required</FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I> - SMTP or injection into a qmail outbound queue is required</FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I></FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I>I was willing to accept multiple packages to accomplish these tasks -- </FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I>fetchmail and procmail combined with mutt, for example, but this idea still </FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I>had very serious drawbacks.</FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I></FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I>Problems I encountered, some of which I've never been able to resolve:</FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I> - Pine's interface. Yuck.</FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I> - Mutt's configurability is nice, but the documentation is poor (if you're </FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I>new to it)</FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I> - I've never found a regular expression howto or teaching document, so </FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I>things like Procmail (or even grep) are extremely painful for me.</FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I></FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I>I finally settled on Kmail, from KDE. But it took me two years of fiddling. </FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I>I always found myself back in Windows because of the email situation I was </FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I>unwilling to compromise about.</FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I></FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I><rant></FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I></FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I>The migration issue is a Very Big Deal for a lot of people, and I suspect if </FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I>there was more help in overcoming those hurdles on the part of our community, </FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I>we might see more change than we do. Linux is still considered by the </FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I>unwashed masses to be an operating system for wireheads and geeks, and while </FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I>I sort of like that (and I hate the idea of people too stupid to turn on a </FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I>computer using Linux), I also recognize that the significant hurdles we face </FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I>come from Microsoft's dominance. We can't simply ignore Microsoft's </FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I>products, if only because we need to teach people how to get away from them.</FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I></FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I>There was an article on Slashdot (I believe) last week about the biggest </FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I>problem facing open source and free office suite developers: Microsoft </FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I>interoperability. Perfectly working filters that import and export Microsoft </FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I>Office-formatted data. That is a huge issue standing in the way of desktop </FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I>migration, even for me.</FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I></FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I></rant></FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I></FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I>ag</FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3">
<FONT COLOR="#1a1973"><FONT SIZE="3"><I>_______________________________________________</FONT></I></FONT SIZE="3"></pre>
</blockquote>
<A HREF="http://www.ntlug.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss"><FONT SIZE="3"><I>http://www.ntlug.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss</I></FONT SIZE="3"></A><TABLE CELLSPACING="0" CELLPADDING="0" WIDTH="100%">
<TR>
<TD>
<pre>--
Patrick Parks
www.patrickparks.com
patrick@patrickparks.com
972.416.8377 (Home)
972.354.7712 (Fax)
504.723.6460 (PCS)</pre></TD>
</TR>
</TABLE>
</BODY>
</HTML>