I’m constantly reading that Linux is not ready for the desktop, yet today I’m being forced to use WindowsXP on my desktop and I’m spending most of my time running Firefox, Thunderbird, SQL*Plus and OpenOffice. Now I’m thinking to myself, “Aren’t those the same applications I use on my Linux boxes?” Now all I need to do is invent a Bluecurve theme for XP and I’ll feel perfectly at home. So does all this mean that WindowsXP is not ready for the desktop?
I’m currently downloading Fedora Core 4 and it’s killing me. I foolishly left my disks at work and I don’t think they will appreciate me pulling the ISOs across the VPN. I’ve been using the FC4 Test 3 version of Fedora at home so I’m not expecting anything that different with the full version, but it will allow me to check that my Oracle 10g install guide still works OK.
Whilst I remember, I noticed a few interesting things about Thunderbird including:
- You can use Thunderbird with your Hotmail, Yahoo and Lycos webmail accounts by using the extensions from this site http://webmail.mozdev.org/
- It allows you to subscribe to RSS and blog feeds.
- It’s got a built in spam filter that seems to work OK.
The first point is pretty handy. It beats paying Microsoft for the privilege of using Outlook Express to read your hotmail accounts. I installed it for one of my friends who uses dialup. He can now use his Hotmail account without having to make cups of tea between every button click.
Cheers
Tim…
