Google plans to hire programmers to improve OpenOffice.org, a demonstration of its affinity for open source initiatives and one the company believes also shows sound practical sense. “We want to hire a couple of folks to help make OpenOffice better.”
Maybe they should work on the Linux kernel instead, after all, that *is* the reason OpenOffice.org is slow, right?
Depending on who you talk to, OpenOffice.org’s sluggish performance can be attributed to:
1. The kernel
2. GCC
3. Glibc
4. TWM
5. Terrorism
6. Phase of the moon
I think we’ll get a whole lot further when they admit it’s just a hulking great sloppy codebase that’s in desperate need of efficiency and cleanups.
The finger-pointing doesn’t really work. If it’s the kernel’s fault, how come MS Office starts up and runs much, much faster under WINE? And if it’s GCC’s fault, how come GCC can be used to build fast programs?
Actually, I did some tests recently and OOo started in about the same time it took to start MS Office in Wind (about 24 seconds, which is too long IMO).
Also, we have to make a difference between the time it takes to start OOo, which is a bit long (but can be solved with preloading, I believe) and the actual performance of OOo while using it, which is fine on modern hardware.
In SUSE 10, ooo 2 starts in about 8 seconds on a amd athlon xp at 1900+. So I guess a bit of OS integration doesn’t hurt after all. SUSE does a lot of preloading.
I think openoffice is faster because it does a lot more under the hood as MS-Office.
I believe (but I’m not sure) that it is slower because of UNO. Please correct me if I’m wrong with that. UNO is a little bit like RMI, or CORBA.
It
* allows external programm to call function from the office suite, locally or via network (not only addons).
* allows scripting languages to access function of openoffice.
* allows to easily bundle plugins for all platform where openoffice is supported
* simplify porting Openoffice to other platform more easily.
This is nice because it makes openoffice more portable. It also allows to write addons in a lot of scripting languages, thats much easier as plain C++.
I programmed an java programm using uno, and I think that you lose always some time then getting UNO objects, and using functions from the suite. Perhabs Microsoft office is faster because of that (and also because some components are already preloaded). But I also believe that UNO is a cool feature.
the kernel and gcc both suck and need major improvements but it works and the loss of performance is minimal and barely noticed at all.
i think darwin has a better kenel than the linux one.
Care to show some proof on why “the kernel and gcc both suck”?
If Darwin is so much better how come it’s threading sucks ass compared to Linux. Want proof? Run MySQL on both Darwin and Linux and see who gets destroyed.
Have you ever seen the infamous AnandTech OS X (darwin) benchmark? Or even this guys? http://sekhon.polisci.berkeley.edu/macosx/
You will find G5 on Linux is way faster than G5 on mac, and his linux kernel is not optimized.
So, they were right all along! Google really is interested in MS Office alternatives, even if they continued to deny it.
Hopefully this should help get OOo moving even faster.
So, they were right all along! Google really is interested in MS Office alternatives, even if they continued to deny it.
More like their continued denials started to look like they didn’t care about the community, so they put some programmers on the project to show that they do. Since they certainly have the programmers, good for them!
Google is a business and DOES NOT CARE ABOUT YOUR COMMUNITY, they are not UNICEF.
What they want is to force Microsoft to battle on as many fronts as possible.
If Open Office got very competitive in terms of feature parity with the current and upcoming MS Office product, it would force Microsoft to allot more engineering time and more marketing resources to that product, pulling those workers away from other work, like Vista, the new IE, the new Media Player, the new Anti Spyware, etc.
It’s actually a VERY SMART thing for Google to do as a competitor to Microsoft, make them spread their resources thin.
Life Unicef did ever care. Funny that you believe the bureaucrats are any better.
didn’t you hear? It’s gotta be one or the other.
That is true. Google doesnt give a damn to open source. Just look at their current support for linux.
Their simple goal is to compete with MS.
I think Googles intrest in OOo has more to do with ODF than MS. If ODF is adopted as an industry standard it would open up a HUGE market that is perfectly aligned with Googles core competencies.
Then why does this story make me feel all warm and fuzzy?
It’s actually a VERY SMART thing for Google to do as a competitor to Microsoft, make them spread their resources thin.
Your argument is recursive. Google throws bodies at OO detracts from their core compentancy as well.
“Your argument is recursive. Google throws bodies at OO detracts from their core compentancy as well.”
Isn’t revenge suppose to be sweet or something? Yeah! Google proably isn’t doing what they’re doing so that the rest of us can feel good. But I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that IBM still hasn’t forgotten what happened with OS/2 and Microsoft.
I first tougth they meant dead people
*Bites apple*
No, seriously, I really think that having Google hackers working on OOo it’s good news. Especially if they can pull a version that takes less than 40mb download and a memory footprint below 10mb. That would be cool.
*Spits apple to trolls*
I’m happy to hear that Google wants to be involved with OOo’s development. Almost everything Google goes into turns out great, so I’m eager to see what they come up with… 🙂
The main focus of 2.0 was to split the office suite into seperate programs; 1.0 was a desktop replacement with built in apps.
The second focus was to seperate the screen control logic from the application logic; with 2.0 we should be to replace the entire GUI without touching the logic. This’ll make keeping the Apple, Windows, & KDE versions in sync easier.
With the application logic seperated from the GUI, it also means that people can now step in and make major changes to appliction layer and not worry about the GUI. Thus the suite should get better faster.
Wow! Maybe Google can go a step further and promote the ODF /OO through their Public Service Ads !
BTW now we know where the double O in gOOgle comes from!!!!
Hopefully they take the accessibility concerns of the Massachusetts government seriously, and put some work into that aspect of the program.
Maybe this is being too anal, but if Google wants to convince that they are noble, they should use open formats on Google Video.
Another nice thing would be recognizing OpenOffice documents on Gmail. When I receive attached MSOffice documents they have nice icons next to them, OOo documents just have a boring plain “unrecognized document” icon
My main hope is the removal of _all_ java dependency. Untick the “use java” option and OOo goes from a 30-second startup time to a 2-second one.
It doesn’t go from 30 seconds to 2 seconds though – that’s just because it’s already cached. There’s a lot of “tips” out there that do very little, but people restart OOo after applying them, and it loads straight from RAM, so it appears to be miles faster.
In my experience, disabling Java improves OOo’s startup by two or three seconds, but that’s out of 15. So yes, it’s welcome, but in no way does it go from 30 to 2 🙂
In my experience, disabling Java improves OOo’s startup by two or three seconds, but that’s out of 15. So yes, it’s welcome, but in no way does it go from 30 to 2 🙂
Yes same experience here.
Making it optional is one thing, removing it altogether is another. I personally know Java, so having Java support in OO.o for writing macros means far more to me than you having a few extra second of start up time. If Java support in OO.o is a problem you can disable it, in fact that’s even an option when you install OO.o.
The problem is that Java is used for more than just macros.
For example: In Ubuntu, OpenOffice’s help system is missing altogether because of its dependency on Java.
Also, I’ve heard that accessibility features in OpenOffice are dependent on Java as well.
It seems to me that drawing a line in the sand between which features in OpenOffice should use Java (such as macros in your example) and which shouldn’t (such as help and accessibility in my example) is a very difficult thing for OpenOffice developers to do. Having support for Java gives developers a crutch that they may start to lean on too frequently.
Java would not be as much of an issue in Star Office or another closed product. However, one of the main features of OpenOffice is the fact that is is under a Free license enabling it to be bundled with distros like Debian and Ubuntu. This point becomes moot when the product depends more and more on a non-free component.
For example: In Ubuntu, OpenOffice’s help system is missing altogether because of its dependency on Java.
No it’s not.
I *wholeheartedly* agree. Non-free components have _NO_ place in a free office suite. Maybe I’m paranoid but I really think that the only reason Sun has supported OpenOffice development all along is to build the Java-using marketshare so that they can twist our arms later with Java (possibly charge for it and/or file lawsuits against open implementations of it forcing us to use their implementation). Furthermore, I have never heard a good technical argument for OpenOffice depending on Java.
Yes, I realize Java is not required to install OpenOffice but keep in mind that OpenOffice sans Java results in less functionality.
For more information about the perils of using Java in Free Software, see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/java-trap.html
On Fedora Core 4, OOo 2.0 uses gcj instead of java.
http://gcc.gnu.org/java/
I *wholeheartedly* agree. Non-free components have _NO_ place in a free office suite. Maybe I’m paranoid but I really think that the only reason Sun has supported OpenOffice development all along is to build the Java-using marketshare so that they can twist our arms later with Java (possibly charge for it and/or file lawsuits against open implementations of it forcing us to use their implementation).
I am surprised you didn’t break your leg jumping to such a ridiculous conclusion
I really hope someone decides to implement better graphing in Calc. One year for physics I had to make full page graphs and the ones made with MS Office looked much more prefessional compared to the hideous result of trying to work around OO.o 1.1.4’s absense of the full page graph feature. I like OO.o, but with 2.0 I still can’t make full page graphs, and to make things worse I can’t even find the option to make the kind of graph I had to in physics which OO.o 1.1.4 could at least do.
Calc may need improvement moreso than any other part of OO.o I’ve ever had to use.
There is an OOo project to create a new chart engine.
http://graphics.openoffice.org/chart/chart.html
I agree with you about the current state of graphing capabilities in OOo, and so do the developers at OOo.
IMO this would be one of the best places to really improve OOo, and I hope that now that 2.0 has been released a lot more can be done. I agree with many of the other posters that startup time and memory usage could certainly be improved, but graphing capabilities and database usability (for the casual user) are areas that would truly enhance the appeal of OOo to a wider audience.
Another bonus to the new chart engine/architecture is that it could be used by Base for reports as well as Calc (a serious leg up over Access).
Sould have used LaTex
[quote]
I really hope someone decides to implement better graphing in Calc. One year for physics I had to make full page graphs and the ones made with MS Office looked much more prefessional compared to the hideous result of trying to work around OO.o 1.1.4’s absense of the full page graph feature. I like OO.o, but with 2.0 I still can’t make full page graphs, and to make things worse I can’t even find the option to make the kind of graph I had to in physics which OO.o 1.1.4 could at least do.
[/quote]
What are you doing even attempting to plot data in either of these platforms?? They both provide hideous results. Sigma Plot, MatLab, R, GNUPlot, DeltaGraph (some free as in beer, some proprietary) are all better alternatives than the pain that visualizing data in Excel or oOo 2.0 are.
Edited 2005-10-31 16:52
And this one, which runs on Linux, OS X, and Windows:
http://soft.proindependent.com/qtiplot.html
Haven’t tried it much yet, since I primarily use Matlab.
And since people are so obsessed with it, your supposed to leave it open and in a bussiness since they do. Who gives a crap if it takes 10-20 seconds for OO.o to open because it’s only done once.
I also wouldn’t buy MSoffice just on the fact that it opens quicker, so open once and save money but Google looks like they are going to help.
I’ve heard that OOo’s code is a mess and that it’s not even 64-bit clean. I think the first step before adding any new features is refactoring the best until it’s well organized.
Chapeau Google!
I would like to hear what Balmer is going to scream now…
🙂
and throw!
Maybe be we get more postponed release shedules from MS instead so called in depth articles.
Great news. Take out the Java, the preloader and the hideous start time, ok maybe shrink the download size a bit…and just make everything zippy as hell…full on rewrite/reorganizing of the codebase and a few more features than MSO and easier times dealing with spreadsheets and charts/graphs and people will flock to OOo. Heck people would even pay a minor fee to get OOo then!
why dosent google have some bottle and support haiku/beos or buy the source code. Develop its own desktop os (open source of course) if it wants to rattle microsoft. The BeFS would be an excellent start for googles new search engine ideas.
flame away…..
Opening OOo 2.0 on my Linux box at home (700MHz Celeron, 128 MB RAM 2.6.7 Kernel, Mandrake 10.1) takes 15 second. About a year ago opening OOo 1.x on the same box but with the 2.4.23 kernel (Mandrake 9.2) took about 60 seconds, a significant improvement. It seems to be mostly due to the kernel as 1.1.3 takes about 5 secs longer than 2.0 to load.
On my Win 2000 box at work (HP ~2GHz 256MB) with the quickstart running it opens nearly instantaneously. With my fast new box on my bench at work (Dell 2.8 GHz P4, 512 MB RAM) loading from a network install without quickstart (doesn’t seem to work with the network install I did) takes about 12 seconds.
It’s not a lie that the kernel DOES have a say in how OO.o performs, preemption, CFQ scheduler even -ck patch help alot. I wonder what distros use Preemption for low latancy which helps OO.o but it’s not the hole reason why it starts up slow, 8 seconds is good going for nothing preloaded and natual start time.
I think Google want to somehow gain from the hole Openoffice Vs MSOffice debate.
“It’s not a lie that the kernel DOES have a say in how OO.o performs, preemption, CFQ scheduler even -ck patch help alot. I wonder what distros use Preemption for low latancy which helps OO.o but it’s not the hole reason why it starts up slow, 8 seconds is good going for nothing preloaded and natual start time.”
You’re correct, there is some negligible impact due to the kernel. But OpenOffice performs slower than MS Office on Windows as well, so it would appear that the kernel has little to do with the gap.
Please do some reading on these Linux kernel technologies. They are fascinating, but only if you understand them. For one thing, kernel preemption has nothing to do with the issue of OO.o performance. In fact, Con Kolivas himself (maintainer of -ck) doesn’t think that full preemption is beneficial on the desktop, even suggesting it might be an overhead. The jury is still out on whether voluntary preemption is worth its space in memory.
CFQ is a priority-based, timeslicing I/O scheduler. You probably meant to reference the staircase process scheduler if you are a -ck fan. But OO.o’s problem is not that it doesn’t get scheduled efficiently.
ghepeu@KazeNoTani ~ $ time oowriter2
real 0m6.003s
user 0m4.636s
sys 0m0.231s
ghepeu@KazeNoTani ~ $ time oowriter2
real 0m5.806s
user 0m4.622s
sys 0m0.235s
ghepeu@KazeNoTani ~ $ time oowriter2
real 0m5.870s
user 0m4.603s
sys 0m0.270s
ghepeu@KazeNoTani ~ $ time oowriter2
real 0m5.462s
user 0m4.321s
sys 0m0.217s
ghepeu@KazeNoTani ~ $ time oowriter2
real 0m5.415s
user 0m4.299s
sys 0m0.227s
ghepeu@KazeNoTani ~ $ time oowriter2
real 0m5.411s
user 0m4.325s
sys 0m0.226s
ghepeu@KazeNoTani ~ $ time oowriter2
real 0m5.416s
user 0m4.328s
sys 0m0.219s
ghepeu@KazeNoTani ~ $ time oowriter2
real 0m5.349s
user 0m4.303s
sys 0m0.225s
ghepeu@KazeNoTani ~ $ time oowriter2
real 0m5.866s
user 0m4.634s
sys 0m0.244s
ghepeu@KazeNoTani ~ $ time oowriter2
real 0m5.312s
user 0m4.305s
sys 0m0.235s
ten consectuive runs (first run since boot excluded). 5 with java disabled, 5 with java enabled. Can’t see this *huge* difference due to “java bloat”…
I only use OOo for reading power point presentations because I have no other alternative to read my class notes. I use abiword for word processing. I used to use OOo before I discovered abiword. At first I enjoyed it, but now I see it as a slow hulking menu bloated ugly but functional piece of software. I hope google can change my view of it. If anyone can it would be them. Best o’ luck to them.
I am glad Google will participate in OOo … it can only help to make it better.
I have always wondered why big companies have been so slow to join the OOo community.
Imagine if all big companies that have more than 1,000 seats of MS Office, stopped paying the annual MS levy, and instead pooled the money to sponsor developers to work on OOo.
You would have at least 500+ developers working on OOo. Not only would the big companies save a lot of money in the process, they would have an office suite that would suite their needs exactly.
Of course that if any big IT corporation would have benn serious about competting with microsoft would have been hired a team of serious programmers with team manager, designers and testers and improve anything in the open source land. You name it: drivers, x servers, windows managers and so on. In 2 years anything from the above would have been many times better than it it now, but then would the revenues of those companies been so big, the partnership with Microsoft would have been in great perill.
To be honest, I think it’s quite sad that in 1986 you could boot GeoWrite from a 5.25″ floppy disk quicker than you can now load OOo on a machine with 2000 times more speed, and thousands of times more RAM.
Though it may supprise you, people were actually productive back then, it wasn’t bashing two rocks together.