I try periodically to switch over to using Ubuntu Linux instead of Windows. The attraction is a low purchase cost (linux is “free”) and a desire to learn the technical skills it requires.
But as longtime readers know, I keep bouncing back to Windows because it “just works” better. Once again, boiing! I abandon the free-and-new for the tried-and-true. At least for desktop applications like web browsing and office work.
Linux may be good for server applications, and I will continue learning to use it for that. But too many things just don’t quite work right in the open source software world. Here is an example.
The “OpenOffice.org” (“OOo”) software package is a pretty good substitute for Microsoft Office—up to a point. For basic word processing and spreadsheets you really can’t tell the difference between OOoWriter and Microsoft Word, or OOoSpreadsheet and Excel. I am basing this comparison on OOo 3 and Office 2007. Unfortunately, the presentation and database components of OOo lack considerably compared to PowerPoint and Access. The comparison deteriorates even more rapidly from there if you want to write “macros”.
Microsoft Office provides extensive support for macros via its built-in Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), which I find fairly straightforward and easy to use. The built-in “Object Browser” makes all the moving parts accessible in a consistent and straightforward way. By contrast, OOo’s macro-writing language is much more difficult for a non-professional programmer to grasp. There is extensive documentation for it, and I can understand what it says. However, OOo’s own documentation acknowledges that getting the needed level of detail to actually make a workable macro is not possible without the aid of certain “helper programs”.
Because VBA helps me know what I need to do and OOo does not, I Word and Excel anytime I need to incorporate macros into my work. For that reason, Windows wins with me.
Plus, Microsoft supports its products better than the Linux world does, at least in ways that are important to me. Microsoft updates and service packs often actually upgrade the functionality of existing software installations, as when the older Office 2003 programs were upgraded to work with the new Office 2007 file formats. With Linux, the developers tend to put the improvements into the next version of the software. It forces a user to uninstall a program—or an entire operating system—and reinstall the new one in order to get a minor improvement. People will argue with me over what “minor” and “improvement” mean, of course.
One thing that previously drew me to favor Linux over Windows was the availability of programming languages and development environments. I like to write short programs for problem-solving exercise the way some people work crosswords or sudoku. Linux is a software developer’s playground. I always disliked that Microsoft charged big bucks for its programming tools, whereas Linux made them available for free. Then I learned about Visual Studio Express.
Free versions of Microsoft’s core development tools are available for downloading from Microsoft’s web site. These include Visual Basic , Visual C#, Visual C++, and SQL Server. You want to look for the “Express” edition. It’s incredibly easy to write short programs for Windows. It takes me all the way back in memory to my Apple ][ days, but with a modern look.
After a lot of years of displeasure with Microsoft products, I have to say that things have gotten much better. Based on how well they work and Microsoft’s ongoing support through online updates, the price for their operating system and Office software is worth paying, in my opinion. Never thought I would say that.