The second part of the series on saving money using open source technology looks at OpenOffice, a complete Office software suite comprising word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation package, among other tools.
From the intro:
On the desktop, the operating system and environment are less important than the applications that support the main operating functions for your office. Your business drives your application requirements, but most businesses will also use an office suite, such as OpenOffice, to support their core operations.
The OpenOffice suite is open source, freely available, and completely compatible with a wide range of different office suites, including Microsoft Office. It’s a compatible product, both in terms of file readability and usage, and you can try out OpenOffice with no barriers.
We have lots of things on the go right now (over and above the normal process of keeping things up to date), and one of the main projects for me is to do a complete rebuild of the installation chapter (Installing and Upgrading MySQL). I’ll be starting with the 5.1 manual, then the 5.4 manual. Any future manuals should be based on these so we should be up to date for future generations.
What I’m doing:
Re-structuring the chapter to make it easier to follow on a platform basis. The old structure mixed content for different binary and source types, and different platforms, across a number of sections, making it very difficult to follow the instructions for your chosen platform.
Make some things generic. There are sections which are generic and apply to all (or at least many) different installation types.
Make some things more specific. Equally, there are some things that need to be spelled out more uniquely.
Remove some old, old, advice. We have notes in there going back 10 years or more. Among the favorite examples I’ve found is a piece of advice that says ‘If your machine has more than 16MB of RAM…’. These things are not helpful in the manual, and may just serve to confuse some people.
Remove some older platforms. Some of the platforms and advice go back and predate MySQL 5.1, and even MySQL 5.0 and 4.1. In many cases the OS information is for a system either no longer actively developed or supported (FreeBSD 3.x, or Solaris 2.5, for example). Again, we want to remove some ambiguous and potentially confusing information and advice here for platforms which we simply can no longer monitor.
Make it easier to keep up to date. The problem with the old organic structure is that knowing where to add new content, improvements, extensions, etc. becomes harder and harder. by merging and unifying the structure we will improve this, and in turn, improve the ability to find information.
In practice that means for at least the next month or so you will see a number of improvements and restructuring in the installation chapter for 5.1 and later manuals.
I already have a list of about 35 items that need to be addressed, over and above the list above, but feel free to provide any additional suggestions and I’ll see what I can do to fit them in.
I completed a series earlier this year on using various tools within the open source world that can save you money in place of spending money on commercial products and licenses.
The first article looks at the Ubuntu Linux distribution. From the intro:
Part 1 discusses Ubuntu, a community developed Linux-based operating system for laptops, desktops, and servers. Ubuntu contains many applications: a Web browser; presentation, document, and spreadsheet software; instant messaging; and much more. This article explores Ubuntu’s: