gnome

Why I don’t like Gnome Evolution

I really wanted to title this “Why Gnome Evolution sucks” but thought that was a little harsh since the application itself doesnt suck. Why don’t I like Gnome Evolution? In a word printing. In more words when trying to print a decent looking calendar Gnome Evolution simply sucks and does not do this well.

Yes I am irritated with this. I spent a couple of hours last night trying to get this sorted out. That’s 1 hour and 55 minutes longer than it should have taken for me to print a calendar.

You see here’s the deal: Gnome Evolution will not print in landscape mode. I needed to print in landscape because in portrait all of the words were jammed together. In landscape mode they overlapped each other but it did not look nearly as bad as portrait mode. Still, neither was sufficient for business purposes.

When you set the calendar to print in landscape mode and look at print preview all seems fine. However when you go to actually print the calendar it jumps back to portrait. I noticed that the preview mode created a pdf under /tmp so I thought that I would go ahead an use that. After printing that is when I discovered that the words for the appointment reason were overlapping.

After a couple of hours of digging around on the web I found this bug. Specifically look at comments 12 and 13. Are you kidding me? This has been going on for over a year and still isn’t fixed. The only difference in the writer’s comments and what I experienced was that I did not have a print button in print preview.

And before you ask, no I am not using something old. The OS is CentOS 5.2 with all updates applied. The Gnome Evolution version is 2.12.3 which is the shipped version with CentOS 5.2.

So how did I fix my problem? I made the entries that I needed in Yahoo calendar. After making the entries I put it into printable view. Since this had the Yahoo logo on it that I can’t use (long story) I copied just the calendar and pasted it into OpenOffice as HTML. After that I right clicked on the calendar and clicked tables. Here is where I set the column widths and table grid for the calendar. Voila! I now had a decent looking printed calendar that I could use for business purposes.

So if you know of a good calendar application, hopefully for GNOME but KDE is ok as well, please let me know.

-j

My Comments on 5 Things I Wish Linux Had

I ran across this post from Ken Hess today. I usually hesitate to openly question what other people write and believe but I felt compelled to respond to this one.

Ken says (paraphrased)

1. Built-in Paravirtualization - I want a distribution that is paravirtualized–that is to say, a distribution that comes out of the box ready to give you the virtualization you need as a hypervisor OS

What’s wrong with CentOS or Red Hat. They both come ready with paravirtualization. I am running on the laptop where I am writing this. And I firmly believe that they are considered a major distribution.

2. Applications on Demand - Instead of installing all the applications I want, or think I want, up front, I’d like to have the opportunity to install applications on demand. I want the icons already there as options but when I click the icon for the first time, the application installs, with all its damn dependencies and I have my application.

It is my opinion that Open Source Developers are some of the best in the world. I am sure that they could satisfy Ken’s desire for this. Just one small problem-not everyone is going to want the same applications that Ken wants. The developers are good..but they are not mind readers.

3. Microsoft Office - No, I’m not selling out here and I know about OpenOffice.org but come on, think of the user base that would come from that port. Linux users are typically anti-Microsoft but how many would still use Microsoft Office? And, how many companies might convert to Linux if MS Office were available for it? I don’t know, maybe it’s just me.

Ken, I think it is just you. People are moving away from Microsoft Office for two reasons: licensing cost and open document format. Remember all of the hullabaloo a few months ago over open document format because Microsoft did not want to adhere to any standard that would allow people to translate their documents into another format? Besides if you really wanted it Crossover Office at less than $50 should fit your meager budget and allow you to use Microsoft Office-that is if the license cost did not drive it over your budget.

4. A Non-Windows-Looking-Acting-Emulating Window Manager - Every Window Manager with the exception of maybe XFCE (which looks like MacOS X) looks like, and tries to emulate, Windows. Can’t someone come up with a different schema? Do we have to wait for Microsoft to come up with something so that we can copy it? Come on, get creative.

For the life of me I cannot get my Gnome desktop to look like a Windows desktop let alone act like it.

Plug in a peripheral and nothing happens–nothing visible at least. Why should I have to open a Terminal Window and mount a flash drive disk that I just stuck in my computer? Why can’t Linux mount it and open it to show me the contents?

Are you using a recent version of Linux? My digital camera and thumb drives all open a window when they are plugged in.

As I said, Linux is fine for hackabee like me but we want regular people to want to use it too, right?

Using Linux, except in very rare situations is no different than using a new version of Windows. There is a learning curve about where things are placed, how to use the applications and so on. It bugs me a little that I don’t use the command line as much as I used to. As an administrator it is definitely a skill that I do not want to lose.

You can edit photos, create documents and spreadsheets, listen to music, browse the web, get email and so on with Linux. And it takes no more work to do it than it does with Windows. All without the command line. This is more than suitable for most users, grandma and grandpa included.

-j