Who here uses OSS for serious work?

[TheMonkey]

I've made a small fortune with OSS, particularly Linux, PHP and MySQL.

It generally works best for people who aren't technologically oriented as everyone else wants you to do Microsoft stuff. The end result is the same, so I don't see what the problem is.

[Cowboy Bob]

How does OpenOffice deal with MS Office documents these days, or are you lucky enough to not have to deal with the evil that is.....

I never have a problem personally. Though I don't have any documents that have large amounts of VBA macros or stuff like that in them.

[Xenophon]

I've made a small fortune with OSS, particularly Linux, PHP and MySQL.

It generally works best for people who aren't technologically oriented as everyone else wants you to do Microsoft stuff. The end result is the same, so I don't see what the problem is.

I've made a huge fortune.

threaded

[Ardesco]

It was word douments that had lots of tables and index pages and such that always seemed to get thier formatting screwed up for me, or excel spreadsheets that had lots of drop down lists and stuff like that.

The basic stuff always worked fine. I have always blamed MS personally

[Nipple Clamp]

i like fireworks for quick web graphics

OSS has never been my bag.. too many pipe smoking virgins hating windows and giving tulip info for my liking....hard to get anywhere with it.

Yup, that's been my experience on the whole. The geeks who develop this stuff tend to assume that everyone who uses it will have as much commitment to it as the authors, not to mention a train-spotter memory and liking for a vast assortment of fussy details, and in many cases the patience and dedication to study code in lieu of non-existent manuals and struggle with obscure Unix admin and setup issues which they assume everyone must find as effortless to deal with as them. If these guys sold cars, they'd deliver them in about ten pieces with a few missing or the wrong size.

Recently I've found the same even with Java: Tried to install the Java Run-Time on Windows XP, to run an open-source (and admittedly quite snazzy and useful looking) SVG editor. But guess what - the install bombs out half way through with some meaningless message. It may have something to do with scripts being disabled on my PC; but if they can't be bothered to test even that, then I'll give Java a miss.

[_V_]

MS is all you'll ever need, and if you follow the Chinese way of doing things, just a free as OSS.