[svlug] Why do you guys _like_ Linux so much ?

[Edward Cherlin]

IFYP

On 10/18/07, Kristian Erik Hermansen <kristian.hermansen at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/19/07, Richard Sharpe <rsharpe at richardsharpe.com> wrote:
> > with running out of memory. However, it has a slick integration of Asian
> > Languages, and since I am studying Chinese, it is very easy to write
> > documents in Chinese. I am told that Mac OS X has the same. Linux does
> > not.

I have been using SCIM (Smart Common Input Method) for years on
various Linux distributions. It supports Simplified and Traditional
Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Ethiopian, and other writing systems where
one-character-per-key keyboard layouts aren't adequate. There are both
Red Hat RPM and Debian packages for SCIM and for the dozens of
specific IMEs that you can use with it.

http://www.scim-im.org/

Linux supports more writing systems and more languages than Mac or
Windows, and offers more IMEs than either for Chinese, Japanese, and
Korean. Windows Chinese handwriting recognition is pretty slick, but I
don't need or want it.

> Many of the apps on Linux are no where near as slick as they are on
>
> Ubuntu has excellent foreign language support!

I gave a presentation on this topic at the recent Unicode conference.
This sort of development is but one of many reasons why I consider
Linux better than sliced bread and almost as neat as General
Relativity and the First and Second Theorems of Welfare Economics
(which are much, much easier than GR, and more important to human
progress).

Language Support on the Children's Computer
This presentation will examine the impact of the One Laptop Per Child
project on Unicode and Linux localization, present and future. OLPC
is, among other things, the largest education, economic development,
health, human rights, and Free Software project in the world, with a
target of hundreds of millions of children and their communities. It
will also be the engine for the biggest localization effort ever
mounted, as OLPC XO laptops move into dozens, then hundreds and
potentially thousands of language communities.

> --
> Kristian Erik Hermansen

-- 
Edward Cherlin
Earth Treasury: End Poverty at a Profit
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Earth_Treasury
Sustainable MBA student
Presidio School of Management