That’s a figure of speech, of course, because Open Office is the FREE alternative to Microsoft Office.  I’ve been toying with it in Ubuntu on my XO laptop, and then installed it on my Mac G5 once I realized that X11 (the interface for Linux apps) came pre-installed on OSX 10.5.  I like that O.O. opens .doc and excel files, so I’ve been trying to migrate all my office tasks onto Open Office.

But two factors that I discovered today sold me ultimately on it, despite some conversion troubles.*

One is the little tools at the bottom of a document window, that allow you to switch between selection modes and text-insertion modes.  That means your cursor can select a word here, then a word there, and either cut, copy, or format them all at once. There’s a few other options as well.

The other big factor is the Canadian dictionary plug-in, which I’ve been unable to get happening in Word.  Game over.  Open Office wins.  Word accepts Canadian spellings, but refuses to correct U.S. spelling.  I.e. it will accept labour, but refuses to reject labor.  I notice WordPress is doing the Canadian thing on this blog, which I must have activated somewhere…

So – the score is:

Video editing – apple all the way

Video convert – mpegstreamclip (open source)

DVD burning – toast (mac only)

Office  – Open Office (open source)

Internet – Firefox (open source)

Mail – Mac Mail and Thunderbird (tie between mac and open source)

Music – Itunes (mac) – with Audacious (open source) in the starting gate for testing.

Open source is gaining fast.

*My novel, for instance, will remain in Word indefinitely, because the chapter-numbering fields and a few other complicado dinge are refusing to translate correctly, but new projects are O.O. all the way.  At least until someone is paying me to edit my novel, at which point I might have a swing through it on O.O.

Instructions that I followed are right HERE. I used the XO itself as the Linux box to create the SD card / format / partition it etc. I used my Mac G5 to download the torrent of the Hardy tarball and put it on a Fat32 USB drive.

So far, nothing I’ve found has solved the problem of time, network etc settings being locked. I click the “unlock” button in the dialogues, it blinks, waits, and then says, “Cannot authenticate” or words to that effect. Tried purging policykit through cli and had a bugger of a time getting the desktop re-installed – went with a whole new clean install (ugh) and it still doesn’t work. Oh well. At least this is all faster than in the old Commodore 64 days.

It’s awesome to move to a new Linux world – after Atari, C64, Amiga, Windows and Mac, it’s not that big of a change (I’m still on Firefox, yo) but it’s a whole other paradigm of install / update / configuration procedures. Hopefully I will soon just be using the machine naturally without creeping terror that I’ll blank my SD card and be back on (shudder) Sugar. Sugar is truly a terrible system for grown-ups: THERE’S NO DESKTOP or FINDER equivalent. You have to find files in the Journal or copy them text-wise through Terminal – and most of the applications (sorry, activities) don’t even let you control the save location. Yeesh!

I wanted to upgrade to build 711, the latest stable release, but I didn’t want all the kiddie / programming activities that come with the activity packs. I had some problems installing activities one at a time, and finally made Web 86 work after installing Firefox and Browse, both of which failed to start and seemed to prevent me from installing Web at first.

I updated the build using the simple online instructions. Then I downloaded all the activity .xo files using downthemall and put them on a USB key. Then, in the Journal, I clicked on them one at a time to install. I tried to choose Firefox, Browse, Terminal, Chat, Playgo, Newsreader, Record, Chat, and Write. (Hello! Can we have an Abiword install, without Write, PLEASE!)

After installing Firefox-4 and Browse-95, I saw that each one started up, flashed their icons on the Home View and then died. I suppose they are incompatible with build 711 or whatever.

I tried to install Web-86, which is the Activity that comes with the current G1G1 activity pack. It did nothing; in the Journal, it wouldn’t “resume.” It would simply open the full-page Journal article about itself when I clicked it, and the Resume button did nothing.

So – clever me – I restarted by holding the O on the game pad, to reboot in build 653. Tried both applications there – no luck. It was surprising, however, that they were still present in the old build – along with all my old Activities.

So I used terminal to navigate to root -> home/olpc/Activities and rm’ed both Firefox.Activity and Browse.Activity or whatever it was called. Then I restarted back into 711 and both offending progs were missing from the Activities bar. Awesome! Then I used journal to find Web-86 on my USB key, clicked it – and it installed!

Now it works fine!

PS – I have no idea if booting into the old OS helped anything, but it was interesting to see new-build Activities in the old build toolbar, but NOT vice versa. Anyone know why that happens?

Pandora.com web music station was behaving erratically on my girlfriend’s 800Mhz ibook g4, OS 10.3.9 (osx) with firefox 1.5 .

The flash interface kept disappearing. Moving the mouse around would cause bits of it to appear temporarily but it was annoying.

The problem lay in Adblock plus. I tried upgrading to Firefox 2, re-installed flash, updated adblock, etc but that didn’t work. When I disabled Adblock Plus completely, it worked, but that was unacceptable – all those ads!

So I had to click the little “adblock plus” stop sign on the navigation bar at the top of the window, and click “show blockable elements.” It lists these in a little sidebar or maybe its own window.

The one you want is called

https://www.pandora.com/radio/tuner_7_4_0_1_pandora.swf

You have to right-click it in the sidebar list, then click “create exception.”

It will call up another window, you’ll notice it creates an exception with @@ in front of it. Hit “OK” or “APPLY” and there you have it, it should work now!

I did the same thing with the object called

http://www.pandora.com/Secretary.swf

But I don’t know if that’s necessary.

If you have regular adblock and you’re getting the same problem, you may have to use “whitelist this page.”

I tried PandoraBoy for OSX, which solved the adblocking problem, but it can’t open a new window so it is kind of useless – you can’t see the artist / song / album information that Pandora calls up in a new window.

Let me know if this is useful!

(the Pandora FAQ had this not-satisfactory answer, since it is a “nuclear option” of allowing ads for a whole class of materials)

Q: Why doesn’t the Pandora player show up in Firefox?

This can happen when the “Adblock” Firefox is installed. In the Adblock preferences, you’ll need to switch off the “Obj-tabs” option for the Pandora Player to show up. To do this, select “Preferences” in the Adblock sub-menu in Tools, then hit the “Adblock Options” button to get a drop-down. “Obj-tabs” is the first check box.

- flick harrison