Software insisted on by people one is dealing with, like

Larry's wife's accountant, is a major problem. (The same

one I have with Dropbox.)



Although it leads to very large downloads

being required, I do appreciate the method of Sagemath,

who distribute a source bundle that includes all the

libraries, compiler versions etc that the system needs,

so that it is pretty much self contained and will work

on almost any Linux system. If only other developers

similarly included their chosen library versions etc

with their packages....



Malcolm



On 08/01/2019 10:29, Keith Lofstrom wrote:

> Thanks for all the feedback.  For those who desiring

> personal access to tools like dropbox, or windoze apps,

> or ... I suggest running a virtual containing whatever

> proprietary apps you want, and share a partition for

> exchanging data with it.

> 

> I stopped using proprietary apps years ago, because

> of version compatabilities; tool providers make a

> change, I lose access to archival data.  However,

> my wife's business accountant insists on Quickbooks,

> so we run that in an isolated Windoze 7 Virtualbox

> using a shared partition (which gets nightly

> backups), sharing USB drives with the accountant.

>    

> That means trusting Larry Ellison's gang, sigh ...

> 

> Still, open source supports most of our essential tasks,

> including legacy devices abandoned by the fashionable.

> As Garrison Keillor said of the grocery store in his

> fictional town of Lake Wobegon, "If you can't find it

> at Ralph's, you can get along pretty good without it."

> 

> Keith

>