LinuxQuestions.org
Download your favorite Linux distribution at LQ ISO.
Go Back   LinuxQuestions.org > Forums > Linux Forums > Linux - Newbie
User Name
Password
Linux - Newbie This Linux forum is for members that are new to Linux.
Just starting out and have a question? If it is not in the man pages or the how-to's this is the place!

Notices


Reply
  Search this Thread
Old 06-13-2013, 07:45 PM   #1
parkerhale2828
LQ Newbie
 
Registered: Jun 2013
Posts: 1

Rep: Reputation: Disabled
I am totally new to Linux ultimate 3.2. tired of windows and hackers, popups etc.


I write novels for a living and I read you can install windows office 2007. First I need to learn how to mount devices and sign in as root. Thank you for any advice. Parkerhale2828
 
Old 06-13-2013, 08:26 PM   #2
TroN-0074
Senior Member
 
Registered: Dec 2011
Location: Michigan USA
Distribution: OpenSUSE 13.2 64bit-Gnome on ASUS U52F
Posts: 1,444

Rep: Reputation: 340Reputation: 340Reputation: 340Reputation: 340
There is an office suite in Linux called libre office, and another called open office. With these you can create documents, spread sheets, presentations, sketches data bases etc. You can save them in a format that is compatible with other software like microsoft office.
To mount devices like a flash drive, you just plug the drive in the USB port and your file browser take it from there.
To. Log in as root you just open a terminal and type your root password. Once as root you can easily mess up your computer so be careful with wathever changes you do to it.
Please write more novels like The Song of Ice and Fire.

Good luck to you
 
1 members found this post helpful.
Old 06-13-2013, 08:36 PM   #3
frankbell
LQ Guru
 
Registered: Jan 2006
Location: Virginia, USA
Distribution: Slackware, Ubuntu MATE, Mageia, and whatever VMs I happen to be playing with
Posts: 19,272
Blog Entries: 28

Rep: Reputation: 6124Reputation: 6124Reputation: 6124Reputation: 6124Reputation: 6124Reputation: 6124Reputation: 6124Reputation: 6124Reputation: 6124Reputation: 6124Reputation: 6124
You cannot install Windows applications directly in Linux., but many Windows Apps can be installed and used with WINE. Some versions MS Office are more compatible with WINE than others. You can learn more http://www.winehq.org/.

There is also Crossover Linux, a for-pay application that offers compatibilty. I once used their product for Windows Media Player and found it quite functional, but that was some years ago.

Good luck.
 
1 members found this post helpful.
Old 06-13-2013, 08:49 PM   #4
suicidaleggroll
LQ Guru
 
Registered: Nov 2010
Location: Colorado
Distribution: OpenSUSE, CentOS
Posts: 5,573

Rep: Reputation: 2142Reputation: 2142Reputation: 2142Reputation: 2142Reputation: 2142Reputation: 2142Reputation: 2142Reputation: 2142Reputation: 2142Reputation: 2142Reputation: 2142
Quote:
Originally Posted by TroN-0074 View Post
There is an office suite in Linux called libre office, and another called open office. With these you can create documents, spread sheets, presentations, sketches data bases etc. You can save them in a format that is compatible with other software like microsoft office.
But keep in mind that these programs are VERY limited, and true compatibility with Microsoft Office is laughable at best. If all you're doing is writing a text document then chances are everything will be fine, but as soon as you start inserting images, equations, or using more advanced formatting, it's VERY likely that your documents will look completely different when opened up in the real Microsoft Office. I only use OpenOffice or LibreOffice to read documents or to create documents that will be kept on my own machine. If there's any chance I'll be sending these documents to other people I always use the real MS Office, because the OO and LO compatibility is terrible.

Now I'm not knocking OO and LO completely...they're not the ones who are at fault here. The problem is the MS Office file formats are terrible to begin with. Even opening the same document in the official Windows version of Office vs the official Mac version of Office creates problems. Opening the same document in one version of Office versus another version of Office (eg 2007 vs 2010) even creates problems. It's a horrific situation with rampant formatting problems across the board. Probably the same reason why pressing "enter" at the wrong location in a document will move a completely unrelated image 10 pages earlier in the document down by 3 pages. I really wish MS Office would die in a fire, but it never will, and we're stuck with its problems. And this means that 3rd party software will never be truly compatible with it, since it's not even compatible with itself...
 
3 members found this post helpful.
Old 06-14-2013, 08:18 AM   #5
rtmistler
Moderator
 
Registered: Mar 2011
Location: USA
Distribution: MINT Debian, Angstrom, SUSE, Ubuntu, Debian
Posts: 9,877
Blog Entries: 13

Rep: Reputation: 4930Reputation: 4930Reputation: 4930Reputation: 4930Reputation: 4930Reputation: 4930Reputation: 4930Reputation: 4930Reputation: 4930Reputation: 4930Reputation: 4930
I second the comments of suicidaleggroll.

I've found a lot of problems taking documents from the Linux write applications and using them with Windows, or viewing them. Formats get altered, content is not visible, file attributes are not interpreted correctly. Linux for some reason chose the title for the window border differently, in fact I couldn't guess where, but we didn't want the recipient to open it and see a totally misleading name. Meanwhile when we viewed document properties in Windows, the title was in there, and correct for the author's intentions.

As a result, given the propensity of Windows documents out there, I use Windows for creation and editing and only use Linux to view docs, because if I create one and send it about; people see it oddly in their MSOffice. Same thing if I take an MSOffice doc and make a change to it; it will get messed up.

A suggestion is that you consider creating and editing, but not formatting while in Linux. I'd also recommend something more basic, either gedit or gnuemacs and just stick with pure text, paragraphs with no formatting. You can probably also make it so that the editor inserts CR-LF versus just LF that Linux uses Natively. For instance in gnuemacs, you can change the file mode to be MS-DOS and that will do it. Then when you're done, pull it into Windows and do all the formatting for your final copy.
 
1 members found this post helpful.
Old 06-14-2013, 09:19 AM   #6
jdkaye
LQ Guru
 
Registered: Dec 2008
Location: Westgate-on-Sea, Kent, UK
Distribution: Debian Testing Amd64
Posts: 5,465

Rep: Reputation: Disabled
YMMV I'm an academic (now retired) but still do loads of writing including loads of technical articles. (Just finished one today -- a full day before the deadline! ) I have used Openoffice and now Libreoffice for years and years with virtually no problems. I don't have any contact with MS products and never found the need for any. I don't get complaints from MS users (including publishers) about my .odt files. I'm sure posts #4 and#5 are entirely accurate but my experiences are very different. You pays your money (or not) and you takes your choice.
ciao,
jdk
 
2 members found this post helpful.
Old 06-14-2013, 11:05 AM   #7
Doug Huffman
LQ Newbie
 
Registered: Jan 2008
Location: Through Death's Door on Washington Island, Wisconsin in Lake Michigan
Distribution: Fedora
Posts: 28

Rep: Reputation: 6
OOo was perhaps my first hint that there is software beyond M$. M$Office is their weapon against open standards.
 
Old 06-14-2013, 11:10 AM   #8
rtmistler
Moderator
 
Registered: Mar 2011
Location: USA
Distribution: MINT Debian, Angstrom, SUSE, Ubuntu, Debian
Posts: 9,877
Blog Entries: 13

Rep: Reputation: 4930Reputation: 4930Reputation: 4930Reputation: 4930Reputation: 4930Reputation: 4930Reputation: 4930Reputation: 4930Reputation: 4930Reputation: 4930Reputation: 4930
Quote:
Originally Posted by jdkaye View Post
YMMV I'm an academic (now retired) but still do loads of writing including loads of technical articles. (Just finished one today -- a full day before the deadline! ) I have used Openoffice and now Libreoffice for years and years with virtually no problems. I don't have any contact with MS products and never found the need for any. I don't get complaints from MS users (including publishers) about my .odt files. I'm sure posts #4 and#5 are entirely accurate but my experiences are very different. You pays your money (or not) and you takes your choice.
ciao,
jdk
That's a good point to bring up. I've always tried to save/etc using the MS doc or docx formats, or same for excel. Whereas open office has other formats which it chooses as defaults. And sounds like that works better. Thanks jdkaye.
 
1 members found this post helpful.
Old 06-14-2013, 11:12 AM   #9
schneidz
LQ Guru
 
Registered: May 2005
Location: boston, usa
Distribution: fedora-35
Posts: 5,313

Rep: Reputation: 918Reputation: 918Reputation: 918Reputation: 918Reputation: 918Reputation: 918Reputation: 918Reputation: 918
Quote:
Originally Posted by suicidaleggroll View Post
But keep in mind that these programs are VERY limited, and true compatibility with Microsoft Office is laughable at best. If all you're doing is writing a text document then chances are everything will be fine, but as soon as you start inserting images, equations, or using more advanced formatting, it's VERY likely that your documents will look completely different when opened up in the real Microsoft Office. I only use OpenOffice or LibreOffice to read documents or to create documents that will be kept on my own machine. If there's any chance I'll be sending these documents to other people I always use the real MS Office, because the OO and LO compatibility is terrible...
when i was a job seeker, i would email my resume in pdf format. open office has an export to pdf feature built rite into the file menu.

also, i worked at a computer lab in college and they had open office as well as m$ office.

this worked out very well because the number 1 problem is people had floppies from home (yes i'm old) and used word-97 which is not forward compatable with word-2000.

opening it in oo, and saving in the appropriate format worked 100 % of the time.

i even had people with ms-works, lotus-works, coral-wordperfect files and oo was able to read the file most of the time.

Last edited by schneidz; 06-14-2013 at 11:20 AM.
 
1 members found this post helpful.
Old 06-14-2013, 02:03 PM   #10
jdkaye
LQ Guru
 
Registered: Dec 2008
Location: Westgate-on-Sea, Kent, UK
Distribution: Debian Testing Amd64
Posts: 5,465

Rep: Reputation: Disabled
Quote:
Originally Posted by rtmistler View Post
Thanks jdkaye.
You're most welcome, RT. And thanks to you for the kind words. In Europe .odf formats are pretty much the standard now so we don't have much difficulty. 7 or 8 years ago I was doing some work for the University of Namibia and they got some money to pay from from a German grant organisation. They sent me a form to fill out in .doc format and I politely asked them to send it to me in .odt format. I mentioned there were some add-ons for MS Word so that exporting the file in .odt format shouldn't be problematic. They actually apologised profusely and the next day I received the form in .odt format. As I said in my previous post, I haven't experienced any difficulty in using a non-proprietary format.
ciao,
jdk
 
2 members found this post helpful.
Old 06-14-2013, 08:47 PM   #11
frankbell
LQ Guru
 
Registered: Jan 2006
Location: Virginia, USA
Distribution: Slackware, Ubuntu MATE, Mageia, and whatever VMs I happen to be playing with
Posts: 19,272
Blog Entries: 28

Rep: Reputation: 6124Reputation: 6124Reputation: 6124Reputation: 6124Reputation: 6124Reputation: 6124Reputation: 6124Reputation: 6124Reputation: 6124Reputation: 6124Reputation: 6124
I would hardly characterize LibreOffice or OpenOffice as "very limited," except as regard certain aspects of their "Save As [Microsoft format]."

Calling them "very limited" could be interpreted to imply that they are like WordPad.

Their native formats allow for composing complex and versatile documents.

When "Saving As [Microsoft format]," I have found that complicated formatting--lists embedded in other lists, to pick one example--often gets malformed or lost. I also understand that Excel macros don't translate, but OOo/LO Calc is a powerful tool.

I used to manage a complex 26-worksheet OpenOffice Calc file with all kinds of internal links and within and amoung sheets (it was the annual financial records for a church, organized by credits and debits, with accounts, subaccounts, and sub-subaccounts. As individual items were entered on a week-by-week basis, it automatically incremented the monthly and annual figures, and produced the relevant reports in a ready-for-print format.)

Last edited by frankbell; 06-14-2013 at 08:48 PM.
 
1 members found this post helpful.
Old 06-14-2013, 08:56 PM   #12
suicidaleggroll
LQ Guru
 
Registered: Nov 2010
Location: Colorado
Distribution: OpenSUSE, CentOS
Posts: 5,573

Rep: Reputation: 2142Reputation: 2142Reputation: 2142Reputation: 2142Reputation: 2142Reputation: 2142Reputation: 2142Reputation: 2142Reputation: 2142Reputation: 2142Reputation: 2142
Quote:
Originally Posted by frankbell View Post
I would hardly characterize LibreOffice or OpenOffice as "very limited," except as regard certain aspects of their "Save As [Microsoft format]."

Calling them "very limited" could be interpreted to imply that they are like WordPad.

Their native formats allow for composing complex and versatile documents.

When "Saving As [Microsoft format]," I have found that complicated formatting--lists embedded in other lists, to pick one example--often gets malformed or lost. I also understand that Excel macros don't translate, but OOo/LO Calc is a powerful tool.

I used to manage a complex 26-worksheet OpenOffice Calc file with all kinds of internal links and within and amoung sheets (it was the annual financial records for a church, organized by credits and debits, with accounts, subaccounts, and sub-subaccounts. As individual items were entered on a week-by-week basis, it automatically incremented the monthly and annual figures, and produced the relevant reports in a ready-for-print format.)
You're right, I apologize. I didn't mean that the programs themselves are very limited, just that their compatibility with MS Office is very limited. I use OO and LO quite often for internal documents and have never had an issue with their capabilities, but when it comes to either importing MS Office files or exporting their own files in an MS Office format, they fail constantly.

OO and LO are fine pieces of software when working in their own native formats, but if your goal is to work with MS Office files in a Linux environment, OO and LO will leave you sadly disappointed. It's standard practice at our company to purchase a Windows and MS Office license for any developer that joins the company, so they can install it in a VM. Trying to interface with the rest of the company and our sponsors using OO and LO is just an exercise in futility and a waste of time.
 
1 members found this post helpful.
Old 06-14-2013, 10:17 PM   #13
jlinkels
LQ Guru
 
Registered: Oct 2003
Location: Bonaire, Leeuwarden
Distribution: Debian /Jessie/Stretch/Sid, Linux Mint DE
Posts: 5,195

Rep: Reputation: 1043Reputation: 1043Reputation: 1043Reputation: 1043Reputation: 1043Reputation: 1043Reputation: 1043Reputation: 1043
Quote:
Originally Posted by suicidaleggroll View Post
Probably the same reason why pressing "enter" at the wrong location in a document will move a completely unrelated image 10 pages earlier in the document down by 3 pages. I really wish MS Office would die in a fire, but it never will, and we're stuck with its problems. And this means that 3rd party software will never be truly compatible with it, since it's not even compatible with itself...
Very well said.

Unfortunately I have seen this as well with OO or LO. Maybe it was because the document was opened and edited in MSOffice once or more. But that doesn't really matter. In my experience, usually a document is malformed beyond recognition when you edit it the last time sending it out to the coworkers (or worse: the client) 5 minutes before the deadline. Which renders any application, being it OO or MS Office, totally useless. You don't want to be screwed up because of an application. Even if the fault is by something else, another editor, compatibility or the position of sun and moon, it is unacceptable.

Since some time I stick to Latex for anything longer than one page. That completely voids the risk of screwing up a document just before the deadline. It even enables you to write a report and focus for 98% on the writing and the remaining 2% on the layout. Unfortunatly it also reduces co-operation option to 2%. Even less.

jlinkels
 
1 members found this post helpful.
Old 06-14-2013, 11:30 PM   #14
jdkaye
LQ Guru
 
Registered: Dec 2008
Location: Westgate-on-Sea, Kent, UK
Distribution: Debian Testing Amd64
Posts: 5,465

Rep: Reputation: Disabled
If we return to the OP who has not reappeared. His/her desire is to write novels using word processing software to do so. I don't think there can be any doubt about the ability of Libreoffice to accomplish such a task. If his/her publisher insists on a .doc or .docx format for submissions of MS then when the novel is finish our OP can click on "Save As" and can save the document as .docx or .doc. I hardly think that a novel is going to tax the capabilities of Libreoffice's file format conversion capabilities. So OP, if you're still out there, listen to the sage advice of TroN-0074 (post #2) and install Libreoffice. Write your novel. When finished click on "Save As" and and save it in a format your publisher desires. Have fun. End of problem.
ciao,
jdk
 
1 members found this post helpful.
Old 06-14-2013, 11:51 PM   #15
Z038
Member
 
Registered: Jan 2006
Location: Dallas
Distribution: Slackware
Posts: 910

Rep: Reputation: 174Reputation: 174
Quote:
Originally Posted by parkerhale2828 View Post
I write novels for a living and I read you can install windows office 2007. First I need to learn how to mount devices and sign in as root. Thank you for any advice. Parkerhale2828
Hi, I see you have not been back to your thread yet. What Linux distro and version are you using? I'm sure we can help you sign in as root and mount devices via fstab and mount command.
 
  


Reply


Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off



Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Why I'm here! I'm tired of Windows! Is Linux my answer? cwshadows Linux - Newbie 8 03-25-2013 12:45 PM
LXer: Tired of broken Windows? Try Linux LXer Syndicated Linux News 0 03-18-2013 01:40 PM
[SOLVED] newbie here looking to learn linux . Just tired of windows snd a lot of the problems oklahoma62 Linux - Newbie 4 01-14-2011 10:47 PM
I am new to linux and tired of virus' on windows sdupuy Linux - Newbie 5 12-16-2009 11:15 PM
Windows xp sp2 pro//Linux ubuntu//Windows 7 ultimate PC_Head Linux - Newbie 1 01-22-2009 09:12 PM

LinuxQuestions.org > Forums > Linux Forums > Linux - Newbie

All times are GMT -5. The time now is 07:40 PM.

Main Menu
Advertisement
My LQ
Write for LQ
LinuxQuestions.org is looking for people interested in writing Editorials, Articles, Reviews, and more. If you'd like to contribute content, let us know.
Main Menu
Syndicate
RSS1  Latest Threads
RSS1  LQ News
Twitter: @linuxquestions
Open Source Consulting | Domain Registration