Windows out the window

[BeePee]

Hello friends,

Have just registered as soon to be regular Kubuntu user.

Quickly about me: first hit computing back in 1975 on a 11-70 with punch cards, core memory and 80mb hard drives as big as a washing machine programming Fortran. My first 'PC' was an Apple II was 48kb! RAM and a Tape recorder as 'floppy' and an old TV as 'monitor'...

Got my first Mac in '84 and made Apple rich over many years. Back in those early days, still been young and stupid, participating in the 'religious war' between Mac (in favor of) and Windows (against) I successfully managed to ignore the most important rule of choice of platform: productivity. Finally bailed out of the Mac just b4 OS X and moved to Windows. Guess now it's time to move on again.

This definition of productivity is a very personal matter for each user and/or company. In our case it means that Linux has grown up enough to make the difference. Hence some time back I started Linux 'shopping' and tested a number of Distros to find out which way computing life could/should turn.

Most Distros didn't fit, Suse for example was gone after 20 mins. Breezy was interesting but pure Debian caught most of my attention at that time. Additionally, I started to prefer KDE over Gnome. But then I needed that spare PC in production again...

Now I had a spare PC again and resumed my testing: Edgy was love on first sight! I installed it in no time on an old Asus M6800 laptop and got it to work well. Thus I couldn't resist to shrink my Windows partitions on my VX1 and install a dual boot. Didn't get everything to work yet but making fine progress.

Thus it was time to join this fine forum. We intent to bring some 20 PCs to the Kubuntu world soon. Will continue my testing on the laptop for a while trying to match all the Windows soft we currently use. The biggest problem as far as I can see right now will be a solution to get the Bloomberg financial soft working somehow. Once that is solved we will move

Thus even so I know my way around 'puters, I'm still a Linux & Kubuntu newbie and will likely being bombarding you experts out there with a bundle of Qs...

[Cyrus Jones]

Re: Windows out the window

Welcome to the open-source world.

The biggest problem as far as I can see right now will be a solution to get the Bloomberg financial soft working somehow.

Sorry as I am not very familiar with Bloomberg financial software. What kind of application is it and what does it do?

I am not sure of how much you are familiar with the K/X/Ubuntu community so I give you my apologies if I make you seem ignorant.
Read the Kubuntu Official Documentation at http://www.kubuntu.org/documentation.php
Kubuntu Wiki: https://wiki.kubuntu.org/Kubuntu
Community documentation for Ubuntu: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/
Ubuntu Forums: http://www.ubuntuforums.org/
Read this prior to posting: http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=232059

If you have a question, try Google (keywords of question + ubuntu) and searches on kubuntu and ubuntu forums first
If you can't find your answer, post a question on Ubuntu forums if it has to do with the common base of K/X/Ubuntu or on Kubuntu forums if it has to do with KDE on the "common Ubuntu core."

[BeePee]

Re: Windows out the window

@ Cyrus Jones,

thanks for your welcome.

Bloomberg software is a financial software connecting professional traders to the real time Bloomberg (stock, etc.) markets. In addition to its desktop it has an Excel add-on to import market info directly into open spreadsheets. It is very secific software and there are only 2 makers of such information and software: Bloomberg and Reuters, both for Windows

I think I'll have to talk to Bloomberg directly, since all my internet research came up blank so far. Maybe we can get it to work under wine but not sure if the add-on will work with OpenOffice.

Will keep you posted...

[Fintan]

Re: Windows out the window

Welcome BeePee and maybe I can help you answer a few quetions.
I am familiar with the bloomberg software and it would deffinately be a good idea talking with bloomberg directly, if only for them to see the benifits of porting their software to Linux. Of course the more of your freinds talk to them the merrier. What I don't see (unless they have a non-MS solution for you) is them pointing you in a open source direction.

I have read that gnucash can read stock indexes in realtime:
http://www.gnucash.org/ but I am not sure if that meets your needs.

A friend of mine uses bloomberg on kubuntu with winXP running under vmware server and "played" by vmware player. Vmware is a virtualisation technology and you can find out more about vmware at http://www.vmware.com. There are also various posts on installing and using vmware here in this forum.
If you don't need usb support (comining with vmware workstation 6.0 shortly) this is a very elegant way of dealing with MS orientated software under Linux.

I hope this helps a little bit and good luck
Cheers
Fintan

[penguin.ch]

Re: Windows out the window

The biggest problem as far as I can see right now will be a solution to get the Bloomberg financial soft working somehow.

Bill In The Box 8)

[Fintan]

Re: Windows out the window

Sorry unicornrider I should have thought of that link.

Good to see you back, you would have been missed.