Is it time for Ubuntu Office?

[troyDoogle7]

Here is your exam question.... With the success of Feisty, Ubuntu's barriers to mass adoption are lying less on the side of the operating system and more on the application sides. Is it time that we used ubuntu methodology to projects such as open office??

If yes.... how?

If no... .give us a good explanations besides saying I suck, the idea sucks, etc

[Adamant1988]

Here is your exam question.... With the success of Feisty, Ubuntu's barriers to mass adoption are lying less on the side of the operating system and more on the application sides. Is it time that we used ubuntu methodology to projects such as open office??

If yes.... how?

If no... .give us a good explanations besides saying I suck, the idea sucks, etc

Unfortunately, the developers of Ubuntu are stretched thin enough without having to try developing complete application forks on the side. Although I do agree with you on the point that the application selection is what makes or breaks a distribution for me. You can hand me the most amazing operating system ever, but if I can't get what I want/need, I'll go somewhere else to get it.

[Solicitous]

He wasn't actually asking should we get ubuntu developers to work on a fork of openoffice, just should we apply the ubuntu methodology.

I do agree to some extent, yes, alot of Linux adoption now comes down to apps. I can't really comment on applying the ubuntu way to applications as I don't really have an opinion on it with the exception of (and this might be a bad comparison but I need something) the entire look and feel of the desktop and applications. Whilst the desktop looks nice and alot of applications look nice when viewed individually, but put them side by side and there is no consistency. An example, look at OSX, every application has a very very similar feel to it (icons, title/menu bar etc etc) yet with Linux desktops (probably not so much with a kde desktop) you can really recongnise a difference between applications.

So I think one aspect if the community is going to direct resources into applications to try and encourage linux adoption is to create a common feel between applications.

Now I don't want to start an argument about how some projects start and how each project uses different tool and are working in different directions and "thats open source for you", purely my opinion an issue that may need addressing if work on applications was a direction the linux community is going to take to increase adoption rather that use the resources on creating the OS.

[VorDesigns]

The last time I used ooo I thought it had made it. While Base needs some refinement for the average user, it's ability to connect to Access databases at least allows for use of the legacy MSAccess format.
It's the lack of VPN support on the provider side that hinders me.
That and inconsistencies in RDP for the systems I must connect to.

[kragen]

Before I make a complete tit of myself I want to point out that I don't actually know that much about software development, and I'm really just guessing but...

It strikes me that although the distros are the things that mesh all the other projects together into a well maintained OS, the bit that's hardest to do, and is the most work, is developing all the projects, and in fact meshing it all together is relatively easy to do when you consider the total amount of work that goes into all of the projects that make up the OS.

I certainly don't mean to devalue the fantastic work that all the Ubuntu dev's have put in, it's just that I get the impression that you don't fully appreciate quite how much work goes into each of the projects like open office, and in fact how many projects it takes to build an entire OS :P

I'm afraid that at least for me you are going to have to be more specific on what you mean by "Ubuntu methodology", in terms of how it might benefit projects such as open office. As far as I can tell, the reason why Ubuntu development has been so rapid has been down to financial backing from canonical and a strong community, which means more volunteer developers, and I'm not sure how reliably either of those "methodologies" can be applied to sub-projects like open office.

(I realise I'm probably going to unintentionally upset someone by this post, but I cant think of a better way to word it, so instead I apologise in advance :P)