beware of the updates you install

Yes, because it's running natively under Windows.

The bit on the desk (Keyboard, monitor, mouse) that most computer users interact with. Although that's changing with the increase in tablet and smartphone usage.

If it is running "natively" why does it need a compatibility mode?

I have always kept the box on the floor (earthquake country). It is my limited observation that the desktop has virtually disappeared in favor of dumb terminals and powerful servers, in situations where a traditional architecture is required. I have 3 cases which I use for computer building. I have a 7300 Dual Core running Puppy Linux 5.7.1 that I use for digital ham radio. It also has a dual boot Mint 15 Xfce, and a live CD of Andy's Ham Radio Ububtu Remix. It has a way better than

My regular surf machine is my friend's obsolete (for gaming) Asus P5 MB, fast video, blah blah. That's this one on which I type. I loved computers until the late 1990s, when they started making us pay for everything. It was quite the wilderness for a few years, then came Puppy Linux! I once again enjoy "playing" with computers. No hour long calls to MSFT demanding they transfer my ancient Authorization to a new motherboard because the old one "broke". No begging insiders for employee discounts. Etc.

Fun is the main reason I like Linux,

Is Ventura Publisher still actually made? I haven't heard of that in years.

I think these days the big kings are Quark (which seems to be on the way out) and the Adobe Creative Suite. A lot of folks still seem to want Quark files.

That said, pretty much all my experience with this stuff is with CD booklets and LP covers, which may not be typical of the rest of the industry.

--scott

This _is_ pretty much true. Now, admittedly Linux isn't just one OS, it's a whole family of different distributions, so calling it the most popular OS on the planet is kind of stretching things.

This was true a few years ago, in that the majority of people surfing websites from end-user desktops were using Windows systems. End-user desktops are not the only computers out there, though. And these days, if you look at your server logs, you'll find the majority of people surfing websites are doing it from tablets and cellphones and other mobile devices.

Could well be. Could also be there were a lot of people on Macs who had set their user agent in the browser to identify themselves as using IE on a Windows machine because that's the only way they could get a lot of websites to work. A few years ago that was a common activity, but thankfully the need for that has disappeared.

--scott

It's not really running natively, it only looks that way until something goes wrong.

--scott

I guess it depends on how you define "natively". It's still running under the installed version of Windows, with appropriate adjustments.

It's still available, and there is a good group of die-hard users, like William and Me. Corel refuses to update it and also refuses to give it up, but there are a few of us that provide help to each other to maintain its on-going viability.

Those programs are not for technical writing or publishing. Even Adobe keeps FrameMaker alive and well because it is the only surviving alternative to Ventura for that purpose. For my active clients, I only use FrameMaker because it has kept abreast of the rather significant changes to the publishing industry since the last update of Ventura.

Yawn. Do you feel better now for making fun of the disabled?

The logs showed the operating system separate from the browser in use. Some were even using Sun workstations with Solaris.

Are you always like this?

Variations of Unix perhaps, not necessarily Linux however.

Very doubtful. Of course you would need to define "popular" to have any meaning at all. IME Apple OS is the most "popular" (largest number of fanbois) but definitely not the most widely used. Do you count it as "Linux" though? (it's not by any normal definition)

More unsupported speculation.

Agreed, unfortunately they are often rather poor for consumer applications, and drivers for a lot of hardware in current use by consumers is often lacking also. For server use Linux is king, for consumer applications, definitely not. I've been hoping for a decade or two that will change, still waiting unfortunately. No one is stopping you using whatever you like though, but your fear of Windows is not shared by everyone.

Trevor.

I don't fear Windows, I refuse to pay for an operating system, without which a computer is not really a computer. Microsoft has all the charm of an East German policeman in 1979. I have an XP netbook. I am going to get a refurb Win7 box when XP support goes away in March. Just to program my iPod, if nothing else. It would be way too sluggish for my social routine, however.

The Kernel has thousands of drivers already installed. Please name a consumer device (other than Apple) that you would like to use with Linux that had a driver issue. I have found Linux to be way more plug-and-play than Windows, and this has been getting moreso in the past few years. Usually you need to boot a CD to install something to Windows; virtually unheard of in Linux.

On 27/11/2013 13:50, dave wrote: The Kernel has thousands of drivers already installed. Please name a

Normally, I download drivers for Windows from the web. A bit like "sudo apt-get install $drivername" but without having to remember the syntax or recompilimg the kernel to get the driver to work as a module. The Windows driver doesn't have to be in the repository, either, I can just download it from the maufacturer's website.

It's been a *long* time since I had to boot up a CD or floppy to install anything under Windows. I often have to load a setup file from a CD or DVD to install software and a few drivers for hardware that didn't exist when the OS was written. This facility does not, by and large, exist for Linux

As for Linux being more plug and play than Windows, that's not been true since XP was released, as most hardware now complies with the Windows Driver Model, which, I believe, may have been hacked for use in Linux as well. I do know that a fair amount of hardware that I need to use which works fully under Winodws is either totally or partially unusable under Linux, which is why I keep trying Linux and uninstalling it fairly quickly.

Hardware with driver problems under Linux on my desk:- A smartcard reader.

A camera with an unsupported RAW file format.

A Nokia Smartphone.

An HTC ditto.

The Zoom mixer/ recorder that I use for sound recording, although it does show up as an extra drive. Under Windows, with the right DAW software, it acts as a control surface.

A handy little DJ mixing console for mixing MP3 and WAV files together.

A Huawei 3G dongle, which can, I believe, be made to work by using the correct spell, installing a third party driver and sacrificing a goat or similar creature to the God of the airwaves. I've not succeeded yet, although it "just works" under Windows.

None of the above are made by Apple. I've just tried and rapidly uninstalled Ubuntu 13, as it made this computer do a very good inpression of a sloth on valium. It's been a *long* time since I had a network connection time out waiting for a mouse click to be processed,

snips

Hi Neil -

Wow! Someone who has heard of FM!! I've been using it in my other day jobs of technical writer and plug-in writer since FM 2.1 in late 80s/early 90s. I was on Frame Technology's Customer Advisory Board (pre-Adobe) when it was active in the early 1990s. (Cisco Systems actually gave me their board seat -- that's another long story best told some other time.)

Adobe moved FM development to India a few years back. They've been doing a pretty good job, though there have been some missteps. Generally, though, things are better, with regular releases coming along for the foreseeable future. And, the new guys have been reasonably responsive with fixes.

Frank Mobile Audio

FrameMaker (not to be confused with PageMaker) was originally created for some OS other than Windows. I used it for a while about 15 years ago, in its first Windows incarnation. It had the most-poorly designed dialog boxes for any piece of software I have ever used.

I hope it's gotten better.

This morning's has been a Trident Cyber 9525 graphics card. VESA driver under Centos 6.3 sort of works but locks up when gdm _exits_. I forced a panic and I'm looking at it right now to see what's going on.

--scott

I just met with a client this morning whose tech documents are done in FM!

IIRC, my first copy of FM was 3, prior to Adobe's acquisition of Frame, Inc. At that point, it was no match for VP technically, but its cross-platform abilities were a big plus. Then, Corel acquired VP and managed to screw it up for a few years, during which time Adobe improved FM's ability to handle type and color properly, among other things. Today, FM is the most viable app for technical documents, IMO, largely because Corel dropped the ball. Although some folks complain about FM's UI (it isn't anywhere near as flexible as VP's), it has not been a problem for me, and I appreciate that fact that it has remained "familiar" for decades. That's rather atypical for Adobe apps, which shuffle their UI with regularity.