Re: [LI] RE: StarOffice and a thought

[Atul Chitnis <achitnis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 15 Oct 1999, Rahul  Kumar wrote:

> I did (finally) manage to download SO from the sun sunsite ! altho' I doubt
> that it'll run on RH6.0. I wonder why Sun is being so restrictive about SO,
> how Linux can make a hit on the desktop without an Office suite. (And when
> will SO run on glibc2.1 ??)

StarOffice 5.0a (the CHIP version was 5.0 - no "a") onwards works happily
with glibc2.1, i.e. RH6 and others. I use SO 5.1 under RHL 6.0 and 6.1
without a problem. In fact RHL 6.0 (the official pack) shipped with
StarOffice 5.0a.

> The other thing is that for Linux to be viable on the server end, we need to
> have a well-known database that is cheaper than SQL Server on NT. I mean:
> - Oracle is more expensive than SQL (I am not comparing the OS Costs for the
> moment since NT Is often a given) (Darn! some customers say they already
> have SQL with BackOffice)

The days when one could get away with "Linux is free, why should Oracle
cost so much under Linux" are long gone. Oracle is a commercial product,
and costs exactly the same irrespective of what platform it runs on -
which I think is fair (naturally I just fed the "liberty or death" crowd
their daily dose of flame bait ;-).

I also think it is fair that SGI/IBM/Compaq charge the same for their
machines irrespective of what OS you plan to run on them (provided that
due adjustments are made for the actual cost of the OS installed).

The point is that it is the quality/scope of the product/service that
decides the price, not the underlying OS. 

Atul


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