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> What is your favourite software to use for e-mail, usenet and > web-browsing?
If you're talking gui,
email: spruce, because it has the best support for gpg/pgp that I have found. I haven't tried anything else for a LOOOONG time, so there may be a better selection by now.
usenet: pan
browser: opera. I really wish I could say mozilla, but I have never been able to get it to work properly. It has always had a nasty habit of not wanting to leave a server when clicking links, bookmarks, etc., and instead looks for the target file on the current server, resulting in errors. If I find that this ever gets fixed, I'll switch.
> What is your favourite productivity software for things like > documentation, spreadsheets, presentations?
Documentation? Too vague. If you're talking word proccessing, I like LaTeX, but its not a GUI, although LyX sorta is.
spreadsheets: don't work with them much, but gnumeric has worked just fine for me.
presentations: I hate to say this, but PowerPoint via VMware. Presentations that I do must be portable (ie they must work on a windoze only system) and I am unaware of a linux presentation application that will write self contained presentations that will run on a windoze box. I hear that PowerPoint can be run with Wine. I tried not too long ago and failed. Didn't work at it too hard though since I already purchased VMware.
> What is your favourite productivity software for things like documentation, > spreadsheets, presentations?
I use Applixware-5.00. It is better than Microsoft Office 97 Professional, or whatever it is that I have on my Windows machine. I never tried StarOffice.
I use Lyx or LaTex sometimes instead of a word-processor. It depends if it is just for me, or if I must share it with someone with only a brain-damaged word-processor program.
> And finally, how about database software, what are your favourite servers > and front ends?
I use IBM DB2 UDB V6.1. I guess you would say I use that as a server. I tend to write my own clients, although IBM provide a few general-purpose clients that allow you to manage a database with SQL commands to a CLI.
I tried postgreSQL in about 1998 and it was lousy then. I infer from what I read that it is somewhat better now.
I never tried MySQL: when I looked at it, I did not dare use it because it did not handle transactions.
I switched to Informix-SE for a while, but it would not upgrade from Red Hat Linux 5.0 to RHL 6.0 (I did not even need to upgrade the database, since it would be a simple matter (though time-consuming) to repopulate the database), and Informix would not help me.
That was when I switched to IBM DB2 6.1. It works just fine, but their customer support is non-existant unless you are willing to pay them $210/hour to even answer the telephone or answer e-mails. I refused to do that.
Jean-David Beyer
>What is your favourite productivity software for things like documentation, >spreadsheets, presentations?
StarOffice, Applixware (all categories) and Xess (spreadsheets). If you need a serious spreadsheet that won't waste resources, use Xess. NExS may be comparable to Xess, but I haven't used it. I have WordPerfect Office for Linux on my system too, but it runs through wine so sluggish.
Recurring theme: I've mentioned StarOffice a few times. It offers the best MS Office compatibility, and if it's already running you're better off 'doing everything in one place' because if you try to load anything else your system will crawl.
If I had to recommend one suite, it'd be Applixware if MS Office compatibility isn't an issue; otherwise, StarOffice is the only real option. A la carte, Xess is a very good spreadsheet, WordPerfect is very full-featured, and I don't use presentation software often enough to have an opinion.
> What is your favourite software to use for e-mail, usenet and > web-browsing?
Simple enough:
News: Pan (what I'm writing this reply with) - passable interface, reminds me a bit of Agent which I used for years on some other platform.
Mail: Sylpheed (GTK+ app, doesn't require Gnome). Fast. Lightning fast, with a good feature set. Doesn't do HTML mail directly. Oh, and did I mention FAST?
Browsing: Galeon, unless I need to print (Galeon .9p3 doesn't print yet). If I need to print, Mozilla.
> What is your favourite productivity software for things like > documentation, spreadsheets, presentations?
I use Applixware, because I bought it a while back and it works nicely. I'd use Star Office too, but I haven't tried downloading it over my 56K modem connection - for obvious reasons. Oh, and I use the Gimp for images (who doesn't?) - interfaces nicely with sane for working with scanned images.
Charles E. Taylor,
documented on: 2001.03.03
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