Free Office & Other Software Article

MadCowMan

my 2p worth

Having tried to convert a few people to a nice simple linux desktop , I've come to the conclusion that the easiest way these days is just to go with windows + which ever open source alternative for applications ( should one be available )

for example there isn't much Linux kids software about so that does restrict use for educational work.

I'm not 100% convinced by the "software that never crashes" comment above either - all software has bugs (or undocumented features ), its just how you address them that differs.

Linux as a desktop operating system has progressed , its just not *quite* there for the masses to accept just yet.

wolfman

Yeah I'd have to question the "never" crashes comment too.

It is much harder to crash Linux and it does generally handle crashes better than XP. Although in my experience, XP doesnt crash that much more than any Linux distro I've used. In fact for me the difference has been minimal.

Good point regarding Automatix. I've never really upgraded like that so it's not effected me, although something definitely worth noting. I usually stick with a distro for a year, then end up installing a different distro, or starting afresh.

Already there are two posts on here, one that can't get the live cd running, and another that can't get WPA working. As I've said, it's a good choice, but can and most likely will take time to get used to. And once you've got it installed, it usually takes a while finding/experimenting with apps until you choose the ones you like.

bat999

Hi wolfman etc.

But if we invest time now learning to use Linux, dual-booting with XP or whatever, then we can give Vista a miss. (imho)

yellowlawn

MSE_Martin wrote:

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.

Martin,

Just interested to know are you going for the Content Management System (Joomla, Mambo etc) approach with the new site this time? Are you sticking with VBulletin as well? Also is there a sneak peak site for the new look?

MSE_Martin

yellow lawn - all this is discussed in the 'this site board' a past blog (about a month ago) has a sneak peek at the new site (though its changed a bit)

For all other questions - pls ask MSE neil in the this site board.... he can talk your language

hollymcr

This is no doubt an emotive subject but just a few more thoughts to add to the pot.

1. OpenOffice.org ("OOo") isn't simply an alternative to Office; it has some additional feature (eg PDF export) which may make it worthwhile even if you have Office. It can also be made to run direct from a USB stick (see https://www.portableapps.com) so you can make sure it's always with you. I personally prefer this less intrusive installation method (Office does tend to take over your machine!)

2. One thing that's great about Firefox is the plugins. For money savers who use eBay a lot I thoroughly recommend ShortShip (https://www.shortship.com) which adds sortable total price columns to price listings which take into account the delivery costs of items.

3. If you like Firefox, take a look at its sister the email client Thunderbird, which adds things like anti-spam filtering to your email but is functionally very similar to (eg) Outlook Exrress.

4. If you have unregistered shareware on your PC (eg WinZip) you're using it illegally; you're granted (typically) a 28-day trial only, and just because it works after that doesn't mean you're allowed to use it that way. There are many free alternatives (https://www.filzip.com, https://www.7zip.org).

5. Moving from Windows to Linux is just simply about change. These days either are a good starting point, but if you've got used to one of these (or a Mac, etc) then you have to accept things will be different after the change. That's not to say it's not a big deal - to many people it is. But you can easily obtain all the software a typical user needs completely free using open source, and because its open source bugs get fixed faster. If you're not a "power user" and just browse the web, send emails, and write documents etc then you won't notice much difference aside from the lack of intrusion from viruses and other nasties. There are loads of things each can do that the other can't. I haven't tried Vista yet but moving to Linux from XP is probably not much harder than moving to Vista.

6. For those looking at educational software, try https://www.edubuntu.org, for a complete Linux installation with several educational apps pre-installed. Like most Linux distributions these days it also runs from the Cd without installing (just boot the PC with it and play) so you can try it out without installing it (just remember it's a lot slower that way). From what I know of current PC eduction it basically just means using Office anyway, so try OOo instead. Better than the traditional approach of leaving your kids to work out how to download a dodgy copy of MS Office from a filesharing site.

Remember that we're talking about software that you are allowed - even encouraged - to share. Doesn't that just *feel* better than the alternatives?

hollymcr

Just a thought:

moneysavingexpert.com runs on FreeBSD, a free operating system not unlike Linux, having run on Linux in the past. It uses the Apache web server, an open source package which hosts the majority of websites worldwide, beating the Microsoft alternative by a large margin. It uses PHP, an open source scripting language, to generate its pages. It likely uses MySQL, an open source database, to store its data.

moneysavingexpert.com is not alone in these choices; this is a *very* common scenario. The reason is not primarily the price; it is that the Internet was built on standards and Open Source software tends to adhere to standards better than closed source software. Comercial software tends to not like published standards, since by making up your own you get "buy-in": customers have to keep coming back to you because they're stuck with your file formats.

Sources:
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=moneysavingexpert.com
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/web_server_survey.html

wolfman

hollymcr wrote:

moneysavingexpert.com is not alone in these choices; this is a *very* common scenario. The reason is not primarily the price; it is that the Internet was built on standards and Open Source software tends to adhere to standards better than closed source software. Comercial software tends to not like published standards, since by making up your own you get "buy-in": customers have to keep coming back to you because they're stuck with your file formats.

Apache is the most used web server, although IIS is the most used amongst the Fortune 500. Also Apache can run on Windows. Also the .Net framework is very popular (and powerful) and dictates the use of IIS.

With regards to the reason why and standards, I guess you're referring to websites. These aren't dependent upon the operating system, nor application hosting it, but down to the programmer. I can write a compliant site in .Net quite easily, just as I could in PHP.

Also price is questionable. FreeBSD may be free, but there are still maintainence costs, development costs etc... If I were using BSD it'd be for the stability and security. From what I've seen the savings aren't hugely different.

You also mentioned file formats. Ok, Microsoft do have their own file formats, but these don't apply to standards. It's more about accessibility, but Microsoft are addressing this, for example in Office 2007 it's possible to save documents using XML, much like OpenOffice. I know what you mean though, and OpenOffice have done a great job of handling the MS formats.

Beeza_2

I have been trialling OpenOffice alongside MS Office 2003.

For the "ordinary" home or business user I would say that the OO equivalents of Word, Excel and PowerPoint are well up to the job and make ideal substitutes. In some respects they are actually better. I've read some comments that documents saved in Word (.doc) format don't come out exactly the same when opened in MS Word itself. I must admit that I've not encountered that.

I dare say that at the extremes of functionality, such as embedding ActiveX controls, OO Writer starts to fall away compared to MS Word (and OO Calc/Excel similarly), but that level of sophistication is not going to effect 99% of users.

The one area where MS Office does win hands-down is with Access. This comes as part of MS Office Professional so, again, it won't affect a lot of users. The OpenOffice database (Base) can't hold a candle to Access. I'm an application developer by profession and would say that, compared to Access, OO Base is next to useless. It's just about OK for a dumb "card index" type of database, but apart from purely storing and retrieving data, it's not got a lot going for it.

Overall my recommendation would be that if you've already got MS Office stay with it, if you're thinking about buying MS Office 2003 Home Edition save your money and download OpenOffice instead, but if you need a decent desktop database you still need MS Access.

gerryg_2

MadCowMan wrote:

my 2p worth

for example there isn't much Linux kids software about so that does restrict use for educational work.

I'm not 100% convinced by the "software that never crashes" comment above either - all software has bugs (or undocumented features ), its just how you address them that differs.

Linux as a desktop operating system has progressed , its just not *quite* there for the masses to accept just yet.

Apart from what is in skolelinux, edubuntu and (in KDE) edutainment what "kids software" do you think is missing?

On crashing - I have a linux server (Red Hat 8) running a content management system (gforge) though apache and PHP and it has been up since August 2004 - how's that? Check Netcraft.com for uptimes

In which way is a Linux desktop not *quite* there yet? I'm curious