• 1. I would like to use Windoze only for games, and for the rest use linux.
  Ofcourse im going to learn how to use OpenOfficeORG but for now i might need MS office. Is it possible to get MS office running on Linux? If so please explain me how to do it.
• 2. I use a printer witch is connected to another Windoze PC, is it possible to print out my documents from there with OpenOfficeORG?
• 3. How can i get Shokwave player running with my Natscape on Linux? Or is there any other way to get round it?
• 4. Can i get MSN messenger running with Linux?

Thanks for your help

well, OpenOffice is quite like MS office...there really is no "hard" difference, except that OpenOffice supports MS (and some others?) formats...at least what I've learnt, the outlook is quite just the same and functioning too. install it, and I guess you can use it if you can use MS office.

and yes, printing is possible. altough you might need to set up something like Samba..

install shockwave flash in netscape..it can be found in macromedia's site (www.macromedia.com) as far as I know, or then just go to google, search "linux flash plugin" and follow the links. installation is quite automatic, you just need to symlink one file to your browser's config folder & restart the browser. not a big deal

and MSN messenger works through Gaim, I think. http://gaim.sourceforge.net might be the place...if that's not the address (I'm not sure) then google for Gaim.

EDIT: the _original_ ms office _can_ be run, from the original install from your windoze partition - at least that's what Wine says. (Wine is a "win api emulator" that runs some win-programs through emulation on your linux...not all works, but some do. and office is claimed to work, see Wine's homepage www.winehq.com or do googling). installing wine is basically getting the binary/source, and installing it, then configuring the config file (text, quite easy even for beginners) and running. in my opinion it's still easier to use OpenOffice as there truly is no difference that could prevent your usage because of not knowing something....if you know MS office, you know OpenOffice

if you have office 2000 and want to stick with.. check out the crossover plugin, its 50 bucsk i think...

http://www.codeweavers.com

I myself wouldn't use any plugins for ms office, and definetely not if I had to pay for them...linux can do the job easier.

if you had seen OpenOffice running somewhere, you wouldn't even think of "learning" it through after ms office - the basics are the same. I encourage you to try it - you won't get disappointed.

Ok thanks for your help.
Is there any tutorial for configurating Samba? I realy need it at 1st place. Sothat i can print out my documents on another windows PC.

I have seen once a menu on my linux screen saying "do you want to install remote printers ?", I said Yes, and I saw all the printers on my Windows systems, I said "accept", and I was able to print from my linux machine to the printers attached to the Windows systems. And I had nothing to be configured on samba.
I have seen that from OpenOffice I can read Microsoft Word documents. But I am not able to write down on my Linux a document in Microsoft Word format, readable by a Windows98 PC.

Yeah yeah.... Once apoun a time i have seen a.......
Witch Distribution do you use? When did it ask?

Check the file extension you use. It should be MS Word 97/2000/XP and not the open office one.

Better question is what distro do you use?

zorba4 is correct. One doesn't necessarily need to configure Samba to print to an MS-native printer.

yup...OpenOffice does write MS office -files, or at least mine did just check the format, as Redeye2 said.

Hmm...I guess some distros like RedHat (?) might install samba in a normal installation and do somekind of "default" configuration, which allows using printers without touching any config's I don't know...I've never used Samba myself (don't have ethernet where there are windoze machines) so I don't know.

good if it worked...

Sorry, folks.
I tried to do simultaneously four things :
a) answer two questions in this post.
b) give my own experience on those things.
c) give some recommendation to beginners.
d) talk about my own philosophy.
So, let's clarify
1) During installation booting Mandrake 9.1 CD's, I clicked in "configure network", which correctly configured the network, and then I clicked on "configure printers", I saw a message saying "do you want me to discover remote printers attached to Microsoft Windows systems", I clicked "yes", it proposed me the name of the printer attached to my Windows 98 fileserver, I said "yes", It proposed me the name of another printer attached on a Win2k server, I said "no", and then "do you want to test the printer"? I said Yes and I had a nice printout. And then when I said "lp /etc/inittab" I went to my PC and had my paper printed.
2) I do exactly like Kuba : my friends and some old-fashioned collegues send ma e-mails containing Microsoft Office documents (.doc).
I can read these documents under Unix.
But when I try to modify them, in order to remove false things inside the document and add the truth on false document, I cannot do it using OpenOffice. I have to do it using Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Word. Even worse, most of my documents cannot be viewed using the freely supplied Microsoft Wordpad, I must install Microsoft Word.

It's really a pity that a lot of PC's are deliverd with embedded Microsoft Word, but if you want to communicate with people using Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Powerpoint, you must have a microsoft partition on you hard disk.

Now, a little bit of philosophy : I have seen some "free" converters, taking as input a Microsoft Word, and giving as output a .pdf document. I will start using this kind of things, in order to stop propagating Word things. But then I will push people buying Adobe Acrobat, is it better to help Adobe instead of Microsoft ?

Zorba4, that is quite a big problem...to get information going from an application to another, from a platform to another.

Why isn't there yet an international format for office-type documents (text, spreadsheet, presentations) - a format that wouldn't cost anything? Money seems to be too damn big a barrier when trying to make things done.

I've used ways like html or similar to get something done. It's not the most official way, but at least people can read it no matter what os or apps they're using...and if I truly need to do an "official" paper, I'll go to some place that has bought those 10000000$ apps and use them. If I can't, then I won't - easy as that. But there's no way I'll support Microsoft...that company is not going to survive in future if it's not going to give up a little bit.

OpenOffice has a "export to pdf" button. Pretty neat