Free Office & Other Software Article

Former_MSE_Archna

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Free Office & Other Software Article

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aleph_0

Two comments:
Firstly, the link from the front page still points to the free anti-virus & related software page.
Secondly, The free operating system link is a page full of way too much writing that and gives far too much information an average novice linux user wouldn't need, and so is likely to scare people off. I'm sure there must be a better article out there somewhere to link to.

PizzaCake

check out http://fileforum.betanews.com/ for software downloads as there are lots of user reviews and it's less bloated than the other sites

xxx_fox

for good free office software go here http://www.openoffice.org/

"Open Source" is the best source for free software. It's a dedicated community of people who make free software for all to use, So why not use it

gerryg_2

It is unfortunate that the link you point to, regarding Linux v Windows is so wordy and actually out of date.

There is no doubt that getting Linux right can be a bit tricky if all you are is a user.

But there are various "flavours" (distros/distributions) that range from a few quid (Xandros/Linspire) and are intended to be for the complete beginner through to need a little knowledge (K)Ubuntu, openSUSE, to the don't even go there (Gentoo)

But every distribution comes with all the software listed in the article and more (education, graphics design video, music playing and creation, loads...

And it's all much easier now than it used to be and it's always getting better. A study comparing new user usability of Suse 8.2 (it's now openSUSE 10.2) with Windows XP reported a one-all score draw - with the major problem being that users used to Win98 plonked down in front of the machines thought all word processors were called "Word"

Things do work a little differently but it's not difficult.

As the article mentions you will end up using either KDE or Gnome on top of Linux (in fact for the most part you don't even need to know you are using Linux) You can take a look at them on either https://www.kde.org or https://www.gnome.org

If you've got a Windows set up that works why change? Good point, but if you are thinking of upgrading your hardware because you think it's all a bit slow.

How to do it? There's a Linux User Group near you full of beardy weirdy types who'd be over the moon to do it for you (sometimes they advertise open days just for this).

You can find yours on http://www.lug.org.uk/lugs/index.php

You'll never pay for software again and you'll be legal

gerryg_2

It is unfortunate that MSE uses Internet Explorer extensions as the same effect can be achieved by just sticking to standards. https://www.w3c.org

As a consumer oriented site I would have imagined you'd want to encourage open standards rather than those owned by ANY single organisation.

We see today that versions of MS Word are subject to vulnerabilities, ActiveX, the clever bit of IE seems to give rise to problems - isn't that why you need virus checkers?

May I say to anyone that says "wait till Linux gets popular" we won't ever agree on this point but if you were an organisation that didn't want Linux to succeed, wouldn't you be encouraging creation of viruses for it?

MSE_Martin

Hi folks,

Before the techies as always take apart the IE stance. A little mitigating note. This site is still roughly the same one I had built for £100 three years ago. We are currently (as has been announced) in a major redesign. Step 1 is the format, look and navigation, including the style sheet - which is all being designed to standards and works well in all browsers. That should be in december. After that we're trying to do the same with the 'articles' so they work too.

Yet re-engineering and keeping the site going takes time. But don't worry - it's happening.

As for linux, I am more than happy to change the link to one people prefer - the reason I avoided going into it - as this is a moneysaving not a techie article and linux is beyond me!

superscaper

MSE_Martin wrote:

as this is a moneysaving not a techie article and linux is beyond me!

I'd like to think of myself as a techie (being a molecular electronic engineer) and I'd say linux is beyond me as well

wolfman

Linux is cool, I use Kubuntu most of the time these days.

One point I would argue though. Linux is great, but you need to take the time to learn and adapt to it. There'll be plenty of issues/bugs/questions along the way before you get things setup perfectly. I always see far too many posts on Linux forums where people have tried it for a matter of hours, or had one problem and given up.

I know this is money saving, but in the above case you have to weigh up the cost of your time vs the £60 it costs for an XP license. And apart from the XP license, most other things can be found for free (av for example). Plus Windows is obviously a more familiar environment to most people.

I've spent countless hours playing around with Linux, breaking it, fixing it etc... but I quite enjoy it and it helps me professionally so I don't mind spending the time.

gerryg_2

wolfman wrote:

One point I would argue though. Linux is great, but you need to take the time to learn and adapt to it.

Plus Windows is obviously a more familiar environment to most people.

I've spent countless hours playing around with Linux, breaking it, fixing it etc... but I quite enjoy it and it helps me professionally so I don't mind spending the time.

Well, the thing is you are going to have to learn how to use MS Vista (and it will cost you more than £60). Whereas with Linux/Unix file formats and methods of operation rarely to never change

And the big problem for new users is that they assume that they have to fiddle around with Linux in order to join the club. But just because you cam doesn't make it compulsory.

My earliest "stick it on a friend" installation was done in 2002 and it's never gone wrong, ever. (I did another one and I swear the hardware was haunted - so having heaved it all out I now have yet another installation where the only time I'm contacted is to have lunch).

If you are a user that can use a Mac, Linux is a cakewalk

gerryg_2

MSE_Martin wrote:

Hi folks,

Before the techies as always take apart the IE stance. A little mitigating note.

I think this is a great site. My original post was not intended to diminish your efforts (which I read every week, thank you) however this article might explain why I posted

http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=196602058