Linux version of Logos Bible Software

MikeM said:

You must be like the old guys that sit around at the park talking about how this ought to be done and how that ought to be done, yet none of these old guys has anything and never got anywhere in their life.  Or, you might be a consultant.

I am sorry, but I find that offensive.  I spend half of my ministry working with "the old guys".  They have got somewhere with there lives - they are smart, they are thinkers; but they have accomplished what they needed to accomplish.  If you have an OSHER (http://www.osherfoundation.org/) program near you, visit one.  These old guys are still studying (astronomy, biology, art, religion, writing, quantum mechanics, etc.) and they have accomplished quite a bit - in education, industry, and at home. 

Our church's second service is at a senior living complex near where we are located - it is a blessing to minister to these people.  They are often more excited about their faith than those in our regular morning service. 

I praise the Lord for "the old guys" - they were responsible for bringing the faith to our generation -

Yours because His,

Floyd

PS  Lest you think I am one of those "old guys" that knows nothing, be aware that I spent the greatest part of my career in the computer industry.  I am not yet an "old guy" - but pastor a small church in upstate New York preaching the word of God regularly to our two congregations.  I only have accomplished nothing when I compare myself to what God has accomplished in my life.

Floyd Johnson said:

MikeM said:

You must be like the old guys that sit around at the park talking about how this ought to be done and how that ought to be done, yet none of these old guys has anything and never got anywhere in their life.  Or, you might be a consultant.

 

I am sorry, but I find that offensive.  I spend half of my ministry working with "the old guys".  They have got somewhere with there lives - they are smart, they are thinkers; but they have accomplished what they needed to accomplish.  If you have an OSHER (http://www.osherfoundation.org/) program near you, visit one.  These old guys are still studying (astronomy, biology, art, religion, writing, quantum mechanics, etc.) and they have accomplished quite a bit - in education, industry, and at home. 

Our church's second service is at a senior living complex near where we are located - it is a blessing to minister to these people.  They are often more excited about their faith than those in our regular morning service. 

I praise the Lord for "the old guys" - they were responsible for bringing the faith to our generation -

Yours because His,

Floyd

PS  Lest you think I am one of those "old guys" that knows nothing, be aware that I spent the greatest part of my career in the computer industry.  I am not yet an "old guy" - but pastor a small church in upstate New York preaching the word of God regularly to our two congregations.  I only have accomplished nothing when I compare myself to what God has accomplished in my life.

I'm sorry that you are offended, BUT if it's true, it's true.  I have respect for older folks, but not necessarily older folks that are "experts" on everything yet never got anyplace in life.  That doesn't mean that I have no compassion for them, it's just that I don't intend to take any advice from them.

If you were a young person starting in business would you go to the most successful businessperson around for advice, or would you go to the park and listen to the old guys that never got anyplace?

Try to rightly divide what someone is talking about and stay focused on what is being said.  I did not compare the person that was trying to light a fire under my backside in a personal flame with every old person.  You erroneously took it there.  Go imagine that I said other things now.

MikeM said:

or would you go to the park and listen to the old guys that never got anyplace?

Your continued insults tell me more about you, than about them.  End of discussion!!

Floyd

Erm...Is it time to think about possible reasons behind the question?

1) As a minister I have been using the Logos Scholar's Library for a number of years and find that it has been a superb investment. I want to continue to benefit from that investment.

2) Here in the UK a high proportion of Christians in ministry are ditching or have already ditched Windows for moral as well as technical reasons - I would suspect that the proportions of Christians (core market for Logos?) using non-Windows operating systems is higher than the general statistics might suggest. I use Ubuntu Linux and only keep Windows at all for occasional use.

3) ESword is free and has an expanding library and has tempted more than one of my colleagues in ministry away from Logos. GnomeSword is the Ubuntu version of ESword. ESword also has a platform-neutral online version.

Logos cannot afford to ignore Linux any longer.

Andrew

AndrewJAllcock said:

Logos cannot afford to ignore Linux any longer.

Can you give more than anecdotal evidence? The trouble is, most of the surveys out there put the Linux userbase in general at 1% worldwide. It might even be less if only Christian users is taken into account.  It might be higher or lower in the UK. Then whatever this Christian user base is, a smaller percentage would ever consider buying Logos Bible software.

Even at 1%, the question is can Logos even break even on the development of a Linux version of its software with that small of a market. If it can't, then it will have to subsidize it. I would assume this is the case and is why Logos appears to be ignoring it. (purely speculation)

FWIW, the same reports put the Mac userbase at 10% and the Windows user base at 90%.

I was not aware of these sites ... maybe you should consider sending an email out to your customers about them.

Is there any way to set up preferences the Bible site, re translations to have at the top?

I trust that you are heading for something that is as functional re orig lang's as blueletterbible.

It would be great to see Logos establish a big "footprint" in the free-web arena, esp re lexical and morphological aids.

Trying not to drift off-topic but you did ask a direct question...

George Somsel said:

AndrewJAllcock said:

2) Here in the UK a high proportion of Christians in ministry are ditching or have already ditched Windows for moral as well as technical reasons - I would suspect that the proportions of Christians (core market for Logos?) using non-Windows operating systems is higher than the general statistics might suggest. I use Ubuntu Linux and only keep Windows at all for occasional use

You have arroused my curiosity.  I know that many seem to be opposed to Microsoft for various reasons.  I think mostly envy of their success might be the biggest reason.  I don't recall ever hearing anyone say that they objected to Microsoft on moral grounds.  What might those be?

OK , my assertions are based on anecdote - and without a comprehensive survey might prove to be unsustainable - but are what I have come to believe from the evidence of my own experience and conversations.

1) Numbers: Out of my current team ministry of three, two of us do not use Windows as our main OS; In the leadership of the church I left at the end of 2008 two out of six in leadership did not use Windows as their main OS; my former theological college is entirely Mac.

2) Reasons: many and varied I'm sure and would open a whole can of worms. For myself I believe that an effective MS monopoly for PC architecture cannot be equitable and I remain uneasy about how this effective monopoly has been attained. You might be correct in citing envy of success as a common motive but I would add to that a suspicion of success.

AndrewJAllcock said:

The one statistic I did notice was the number of views this thread is getting...

I have an academic interest in Linux, but no desire to use LOGOS on the platform.  I have the latest version of Ubuntu - but have not yet installed it.  If history is any indicator (though I realize it often is not), I probably won't.  I wonder of how many like me are out here.

One more thought - the availability of LOGOS in Linux/Unix might confince me to install Linux, but  doubt I would continue to use LOGOS on that platform, even after I installed it.  Could be wrong, but having used Linux in the past, I expect it is true.

Blessings,

Floyd

Apropos nothing in particular, anyone heard of Google Chrome?

Whether my assertions about current non-Windows OS useage stand up to close statistical scrutiny wider than my own network or not, Linux derivatives seem to be the future for PCs as money is supporting their development and distribution from the likes of Canonical and now a heavyweight like Google.

Graham Owen said:

My personal experience here in the UK contrasts with yours in that I do not know any Christians who use Linux and all those who have tried it have abandoned it as unusable.

I agree. I have a ton of techno programmer/developer friends and only one of them uses Linux as a desktop... oddly enough, even though they write open source programmes, they use Windows as their desktop and a few have moved to Mac in the last couple of years.  The one friend that I do have that uses Linux for a desktop, would never consider paying money for Logos Bible Software. In fact, he pretty much believes in not paying for software, so he uses open source.

The trouble I see is that the average consumer just wants to buy a computer configured and use it. I know there are a growing number of netbooks and even mainstream PCs coming with Linux preloaded, but this is still arguably a very small percentage of the market. (I don't have access to any hard stats on this). Also, I think a lot of times consumers just buy what they know. They used a Windows PC at work, so they buy one for the home. They aren't really that fussed about what is superior technology or even a bit cheaper.  They certainly in most cases aren't going to set up a dual boot, or even more drastic, format their windows hard drive to put Linux on.

Don't get me wrong, I love open source. I was using Linux before the media even figured out it existed quite some years ago (though I prefer FreeBSD). However, unless there are substantial changes in the market base, we won't see a lot of niche software like Logos on Linux. Perhaps Google and others will challenge the dominance of Windows, but I would guess we are looking at least five years away, probably 10.

The in the meantime, the answer is Virtual machines like Fusion, codeweavers, etc. which allow us to run Logos on Linux boxes.  I would guess the trouble is with some of these solutions it is near impossible to expect Logos to provide technical support for Logos not running in a native environment, particularly for something like codeweavers.  There are too many variables and possible Linux distros, configurations of hardware, etc. Certainly if someone were to post a problem with running Logos under one of these virtual machines on these forums, only a very small percentage of users would be able to answer.

I do agree though with some of the sentiment. Things are changing and no one knows where we are heading. Alternative OSes have not weakened, but strengthened in recent years. OSX was almost gone, but has made a huge comeback credit to some ingenuous work, moving to the Intel chipset and being based on BSD. Linux has made HUGE strides in being almost a one click install and certainly has made a huge impact in the server market.  Google just announced this week that they were going to release their own OS for netbooks next year.  So we'll see where this goes.....

MarkSwaim said:

Once again I am not an expert in this field so I just brainstorm suggestions which may or may not be helpful.  Cloud computing of course works regardless of OS and I guess I am becoming convinced that cloud computing should be an option.  But I like the idea that it is not the only opiton and that we could have our purchased books downloaded.  I would say, however, that if the cloud computing option is an option, why not build Libronix to be able to work offline as well regardless of os.  Does that make sense?

One possibility is to use Java. The trouble is in my opinion, is that I have never found an application that I really liked on Java. I know this is subjective, but it seems like there are compromises being cross platform in the design and integration into the host Operating System. In other words, Java apps always felt like they were really integrated.  They looked different and lacked the polish.  So far, I feel the same way about cloud computing.  I guess the value here is that when I am working on my Mac, I want Logos to really be a full fledged Mac programme.  Or when I am working on my wife's Vista desktop, I really want it to be a full fledged Vista application.  So I guess what I am saying is that part of the beauty of Logos is that it looks and feels like it belongs in both those environments.

Good news is that without a doubt, things are continually developing and perhaps new things are around the corner.

My solution is to not run Logos. There are other solutions that work just fine on Linux. My opinion, however, is that they are not as nice, which is why I still have the software sitting on my shelf unused years later. If it were more important, I would install Windows in a VM.