I'm sure my experience with platform-dependent apps as an impediment to moving entirely to Linux is not unique. I have spent plenty of time playing with Linux at home, but have always had to deal with platform-specific needs of employers, etc., so I have never been able to completely immerse myself in Linux. I'd still like to use Linux as my primary platform, but I have to deal with having to run quite specific apps in different environments. So, I'm looking to begin a discussion about how to set-up a home environment that is as much Linux-based as is possible while providing for the realities of platform-specific requirements. Of course, this is as much a discussion of applications as it is about platforms. I have 3 systems and 1 laptop at home, all of which are Pentium IIIs, one as fast as 800MHz (imagine that!), that are available for use in my home network. I must be able to run Internet Explorer 6.x (required for several web-enabled apps I must use on a regular basis), Word, and PowerPoint. My wife has a Pentium III laptop that must run XP because of her work, but it would be nice to have her access a linux file server for backup and such. (She also likes Linux games!) Also, I have a couple of laser printers and an ink jet that I would rather hang off of one print server. With an eye toward a home network that must include Microsoft and access to Macs at work, here are some questions to start this discussion off: Q1 - OpenOffice versus MS Office: I will need to be reading/editing/creating Word and Powerpoint files (as most of the world do). I will be getting files to edit, and be creating others from scratch. I teach, so the results are intended for display on an ActiveBoard with the expectation of touching the board (or clicking from the console) to follow a link embedded in a powerpoint slide yielding a movie clip, or web page, or whatever. I'm told I have control over the department's files, but not to the extent of choosing something other than MS, so I'd like to use OpenOffice as my primary environment and then generate MS files for use at the school. I assume OpenOffice can do what PowerPoint can do (within reason), but I can't afford the time to "fix" generated MS Office files to work in a Mac or XP environment. Are the any OpenOffice users out there that can comment on this? Q2 - Heterogeneous access: I want to be able to access any file created in any of the three environments. I'd like to move files between the Macs at work and one or more of my machines at home without using Email (I want to avoid any constraints like size limitations on attachments). I want to be able to pull and push those files to whatever platform is needed for whatever needs to be done with them. I assume VNC is available on the Mac, and that I would probably need to run SAMBA, but what are the options these days? I suppose I could set up a FTP server... I'd also like to drop the static IP because of cost, and have already moved the web site to a commercial provider... Q3 - Email: Of primary concern is moving existing email from the MS environment (laptop) to Linux. I am trying to find a way to export all of my email from Mozilla 1.6 to a file or files that can then be moved to a Linux box and imported/read by a mail reader there, but I can't seem to find a way to do this... There is no export function in Mozilla 1.6 and the mail files are not consistently ASCII (at least from what I've seen). I have even tried to use other mailers' ability to import from their competitors, in the hopes that one of them can do the export, but I have had no luck with any of them knowing about Mozilla. Does anyone know of a way to get email out of Mozilla into an ASCII file-based structure (or something equally vanilla) that can be read by a standard Linux reader? Beyond that specific issue, what would be the best way to handle email? Right now I limit myself to using one platform and POP only from it. This is because I can travel with the laptop and not all the servers I access allow IMAP. I retrieve mail from 7 different accounts and forwarding is not allowed (nor do I want to have to keep track of that). I don't mind having to do this, but I'm wondering about other options... Thanks for your sage advice! Steve
Stephen C. Daukas wrote:
Q1 - OpenOffice versus MS Office:
What you're going to find is that OO is quite compatible with a few exceptions. I'm a Linux only user making OO work for me in a MS based environment and I've seen some cases where minor things get tweaked or dropped after editing in OO. Page numbers disappeared once. Another case introduced a discrepancy with section numbers. Table of content generation is not always flawless. But overall I have been *very* impressed with the progress OO has made and wholeheartedly recommend it over the other pricey suite. Excel and Powerpoint compatibilty seem even more stable. For sharing content, I use the PDF export engine as much as possible.
Q2 - Heterogeneous access:
I want to be able to access any file created in any of the three environments. I'd like to move files between the Macs at work and one or more of my machines at home without using Email (I want to avoid any constraints like size limitations on attachments). I want to be able to pull and push those files to whatever platform is needed for whatever needs to be done with them.
SAMBA is the best thing going. For UNIX boxes (I can't comment on Macs) I use mostly NFS but SMB works just as well and for multiple OS's. Also, rsync and SSH/SCP and/or a combination of the two work great. I know there's SSH clients for Win (putty) and probably Mac.
I'd also like to drop the static IP because of cost, and have already moved the web site to a commercial provider...
No need for static IP with all of the dynamic DNS providers out there. Check out http://www.dyndns.org/ right here in Worcester. Then use the ddclient daemon (or similar) to keep it up to date.
Q3 - Email:
can do the export, but I have had no luck with any of them knowing about Mozilla. Does anyone know of a way to get email out of Mozilla into an ASCII file-based structure (or something equally vanilla) that can be read by a standard Linux reader?
This is the easiest one yet! Mozilla stores mail in the mbox format, which is pretty much standard UNIX email fare. Any email reader worth its salt can read mbox. Right click on one of your email accounts (top level) and go to properties. The folder listed is where your email is stored. There's an mbox file for each "folder" you have, this can be tar'ed and gzip'ed and imported to another machine easily. You don't need the <folder>.msf files, those are only Mozilla internal tracking stuff. I'd recommend the latest Thunderbird as a mail user agent (MUA). They've got Win and Lin releases.
Beyond that specific issue, what would be the best way to handle email? Right now I limit myself to using one platform and POP only from it. This is because I can travel with the laptop and not all the servers I access allow IMAP. I retrieve mail from 7 different accounts and forwarding is not allowed (nor do I want to have to keep track of that). I don't mind having to do this, but I'm wondering about other options...
Well, if I had the time and motivation, what I want to do is suck all mail onto my home server and export it via IMAP over SSL so I can access it from anywhere and only have 1 copy to worry about. Charter (my ISP) used to allow IMAP to it's mail server, but recently that was turned off and I'm back to POP hell where I have to delete messages multiple times since multiple machines are checking mail all the time. IMAP is superior, if you can use it or provide it to yourself then go that route. HTH. BR
On Thu, Aug 05, 2004 at 10:20:22PM -0400, Brett Russ wrote: <snip>
Well, if I had the time and motivation, what I want to do is suck all mail onto my home server and export it via IMAP over SSL so I can access it from anywhere and only have 1 copy to worry about. Charter (my ISP) used to allow IMAP to it's mail server, but recently that was turned off and I'm back to POP hell where I have to delete messages multiple times since multiple machines are checking mail all the time. IMAP is superior, if you can use it or provide it to yourself then go that route.
HTH. BR
Brett, I just abandoned charter in favor of verizon dsl. I was tired of the expensive package deals, and I gave up cable entirely. I'm saving $80/month and getting better speed. I don't use their email at all -- I have an account at Westhost $8/month, so I'm not dependent on any specific connection provider. Westhost has pop3, but I don't have any difficulty with it. My only complaint is that verizon changes my IP at least once/week, but that doesn't bother me much -- I export my WAN IP to my Westhost account so I can always find my home machine from work. If I wasn't so lazy, I'd use dyndns.org. Bill
Brett Russ wrote:
Stephen C. Daukas wrote:
Q1 - OpenOffice versus MS Office:
What you're going to find is that OO is quite compatible with a few exceptions.
[snip] This is what I hear. In fact, my father-in-law likes to tell of trying to read an older MS Office file using a newer version of MS Office without success, but was able to read it in OO... I hadn't thought about saving MS presentations as rtf, for example... Something to play with I suppose. [snip]
I'd also like to drop the static IP because of cost, and have already moved the web site to a commercial provider...
No need for static IP with all of the dynamic DNS providers out there. Check out http://www.dyndns.org/ right here in Worcester. Then use the ddclient daemon (or similar) to keep it up to date.
Thanks! I hadn't heard about dyndns...$25 per year is a lot less than paying for a static IP!!
Q3 - Email:
This is the easiest one yet! Mozilla stores mail in the mbox format, [snip] You don't need the <folder>.msf files, those are only Mozilla internal tracking stuff.
I'd recommend the latest Thunderbird as a mail user agent (MUA). They've got Win and Lin releases.
Yes, I noticed the file structure but wasn't sure about attachments and how they are treated in Mozilla. Looks like they are just in-line to me.
Beyond that specific issue, what would be the best way to handle email? Right now I limit myself to using one platform and POP only from it. This is because I can travel with the laptop and not all the servers I access allow IMAP. I retrieve mail from 7 different accounts and forwarding is not allowed (nor do I want to have to keep track of that). I don't mind having to do this, but I'm wondering about other options...
Well, if I had the time and motivation, what I want to do is suck all mail onto my home server and export it via IMAP over SSL so I can access it from anywhere and only have 1 copy to worry about. Charter (my ISP) used to allow IMAP to it's mail server, but recently that was turned off and I'm back to POP hell where I have to delete messages multiple times since multiple machines are checking mail all the time. IMAP is superior, if you can use it or provide it to yourself then go that route.
This is exactly where I ended up when I decided that I do not want to have to set-up and run my own services. What about pointing the agent at a file structure that lives on another machine, can that be done with Thunderbird? If so, then all the POPing can be done on one machine... Then again, I have been leaving the messages on the various servers under POP3 except for the one machine at home where the email is actually removed from the server after download. This can be problematic with size limits on some of the mail servers though... Steve
Brett Russ <icycle@charter.net> writes:
I want to be able to access any file created in any of the three environments. I'd like to move files between the Macs at work and one or more of my machines at home without using Email (I want to avoid any constraints like size limitations on attachments). I want to be able to pull and push those files to whatever platform is needed for whatever needs to be done with them.
SAMBA is the best thing going. For UNIX boxes (I can't comment on Macs) I use mostly NFS but SMB works just as well and for multiple OS's. Also, rsync and SSH/SCP and/or a combination of the two work great. I know there's SSH clients for Win (putty) and probably Mac.
If the systems are running Mac OS X, then you're in luck. It comes with an nfs client (i.e., drop to the shell and just use mount), and comes with openssh. I *think* rsync is also there by default, but I could be wrong.
Thats sounds perfect. I will double check, but I do believe the systems are configured with OS X... Josh wrote:
Brett Russ <icycle@charter.net> writes:
I want to be able to access any file created in any of the three environments. I'd like to move files between the Macs at work and one or more of my machines at home without using Email (I want to avoid any constraints like size limitations on attachments). I want to be able to pull and push those files to whatever platform is needed for whatever needs to be done with them.
SAMBA is the best thing going. For UNIX boxes (I can't comment on Macs) I use mostly NFS but SMB works just as well and for multiple OS's. Also, rsync and SSH/SCP and/or a combination of the two work great. I know there's SSH clients for Win (putty) and probably Mac.
If the systems are running Mac OS X, then you're in luck. It comes with an nfs client (i.e., drop to the shell and just use mount), and comes with openssh. I *think* rsync is also there by default, but I could be wrong. _______________________________________________ Wlug mailing list Wlug@mail.wlug.org http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug
-- Stephen C. Daukas - stephen@daukas.com - http://daukas.com/
Stephen C. Daukas wrote:
Brett Russ wrote:
I'd recommend the latest Thunderbird as a mail user agent (MUA). They've got Win and Lin releases.
I like thunderbird... Took in the Mozilla files nicely (as you would expect given it is from the same folks).
Great! Now for my next trick: try Firefox :-) Seriously, I've been running the combo for a long time now and see no reason to run Mozilla anymore, especially considering the future lies with the separates. And in regards to the dynamic DNS issue, you don't actually need to pay $25 a year--they give you 5 free DDNS hosts for free--all you have to do is make sure you update them once a month (automate that with SW of course). BR
Brett Russ wrote:
Great! Now for my next trick: try Firefox :-) Seriously, I've been running the combo for a long time now and see no reason to run Mozilla anymore, especially considering the future lies with the separates.
I agree... I'll give it a try.
And in regards to the dynamic DNS issue, you don't actually need to pay $25 a year--they give you 5 free DDNS hosts for free--all you have to do is make sure you update them once a month (automate that with SW of course).
I got the impression that you had to pay the annual fee if you wanted to use your own domain...
Stephen C. Daukas wrote:
Brett Russ wrote:
And in regards to the dynamic DNS issue, you don't actually need to pay $25 a year--they give you 5 free DDNS hosts for free--all you have to do is make sure you update them once a month (automate that with SW of course).
I got the impression that you had to pay the annual fee if you wanted to use your own domain...
If that's true, just set up a CNAME in your zone records pointing your own domain name to their name. This is what I do and it works fine. -- Dwight A. Ernest, dwight at significant dot com GPG key A6999567 Cell: +1-508-523-1416 FAX: +1-978-405-2504 YIM: dwight_ernest RHCE #803004293310030 http://significant.com/~dwight/ KA2CNN Papa, partner, pilot, net geek, sysadmin, consultant, cohouser.
I've been using Linux in a predominately Microsoft office. I've found that OO works well for most things except when the document is highly dependent on Macro's and such. I have found that spending the money on Star Office did help solve some problems with incompatibilities I found, though I'm not sure why since it's based off OO 1.1.2. Overall, IMHO, getting use to the difference between OO and Word take some time since OO does page layouts differently, however I've found that now that I've learned it, I'm much more productive. I've also found that in the OO Spreadsheet, any check boxes done in MS Excel only seemed to work for me in Star Office. As for power point, I've never really had any problems. Just some of my thoughts, Chuck On Mon, 09 Aug 2004 08:54:03 -0400, Stephen C. Daukas <stephen@daukas.com> wrote:
Brett Russ wrote:
Great! Now for my next trick: try Firefox :-) Seriously, I've been running the combo for a long time now and see no reason to run Mozilla anymore, especially considering the future lies with the separates.
I agree... I'll give it a try.
And in regards to the dynamic DNS issue, you don't actually need to pay $25 a year--they give you 5 free DDNS hosts for free--all you have to do is make sure you update them once a month (automate that with SW of course).
I got the impression that you had to pay the annual fee if you wanted to use your own domain... _______________________________________________ Wlug mailing list Wlug@mail.wlug.org http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug
-- Chuck Haines chaines@gmail.com ------------------------------------------- Tau Kappa Epsilon Fraternity WPI Class of 2005 ------------------------------------------- AIM: CyberGrex YIM: CyberGrex_27 ICQ: 3707881 -------------------------------------------
Might be a side note... if not an answer to your questions: http://migrate2linux.n-ix.com/groups/index.php baris On Thu, 2004-08-05 at 20:53, Stephen C. Daukas wrote:
I'm sure my experience with platform-dependent apps as an impediment to moving entirely to Linux is not unique. <...>
Now that is a useful site! Thanks! Baris Hasdemir wrote:
Might be a side note... if not an answer to your questions: http://migrate2linux.n-ix.com/groups/index.php
baris
On Thu, 2004-08-05 at 20:53, Stephen C. Daukas wrote:
I'm sure my experience with platform-dependent apps as an impediment to moving entirely to Linux is not unique. <...>
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-- Stephen C. Daukas - stephen@daukas.com - http://daukas.com/
participants (7)
-
Baris Hasdemir -
Bill Mills-Curran -
Brett Russ -
Chuck Haines -
Dwight A. Ernest -
Josh -
Stephen C. Daukas