On Saturday 04 June 2011 20:43, Steve Hayes ([email protected]) opined: <snip> > I have Linux installed on my computer, after battling for 11 years, it > now seems to be running. But I haven't learnt how to do much with it yet > -- I can't even get it to boot in text mode and load a GUI afterwards. > And I'm still not sure how to install Gramps. But one day I'll get round > to trying WINE. I'm not a great fan of Linux and have limited experience with it - my o/s of choice is FreeBSD and has been for the last 15 or so years. Given there are a round dozen or so linux distros out in the wild, I won't presume to guess what your configuration problem might be. > > But I've noticed something ominous - not the LDS census CD, but something > far newer. > > It's a "magazine I bought (actually as book in magazine format) called > "Essential OpenOffice.org" > > It came with a CD to install OpenOffice 3.3 for Windows or Mac, which is > higher than any version I have. I assume you're trying to install OO on your windows box. What I'd suggest is that you go to the OO web-site and download a fresh copy of the windows package and install from that. The other alternative is to look into the LibreOffice suite that seems to be replacing OO, now that OO is owned by Oracle (they got it and MySQL when they purchased Sun). Larry Ellison is one of the sharks of the computer world, IMO, and is not unlike Bill Gates when it comes to acquisitiveness and "protecting" his money tree. > > But whe n I tried to install it, it said that they installer was corrupt, > and when I tried to install a Java update I got a similar message. It > appears that that is one of the most commonly-reported problem (on teh > Java web site) and I wonder if it is caused by a new weapon in > Microsoft's war against open-source software. > > I wanted to use OpenOffice because it is platform independent, and > therefore one hopes that computers will still be albe to us the data in > 20 or 50 myears time. I'm not sure the open document standard will last that long, even with backward compatibility. M$, as you know, introduced a competing standard that was accepted by the ISO a couple of years back. I don't think it's made much headway, but the move is typical M$. If I were a betting man, I'd bet on postscript/pdf lasting at least 20 more years, if not longer. > > But if Microsoft went bung, therte would be no one to phone for those > numbers you need to make the software work, and what people feared would > happen with Y2K might really happen - many computers would become > unusabe, and the data inaccessible. If M$ were go go bung, there'd be a whole helluva lot of folks cheering in the streets. I've called Windows "Gates Universal Computer Virus" for some time now and with malice aforethought. One would expect a product as pricey as windows to be more than late alpha/early beta quality on release and to be a lot more stable and secure, as well. But M$ has fallen prey to the "shove it out the door, we can fix it later" school of marketing and a lot of folks out there who are willing or gullible enough to shell out big bucks for the privilege of being beta testers. Enough of that, though, nobody's really interested in what I think about Gatesware or the 800 lb gorilla in Redmond, Washington, that is M$. > > > -- > Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa > Web: http://hayesfam.bravehost.com/stevesig.htm > Blog: http://methodius.blogspot.com > E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop > uk -- Robert G. Melson | Rio Grande MicroSolutions | El Paso, Texas ----- The greatest tyrannies are always perpetrated in the name of the noblest causes -- Thomas Paine