First, I am not computer savvy and do not have time to become so. Have been using MACs since the beginning. Now considering buying the new Asus PC Eee 1000 with Linux (like the SSD and the size). I travel all over the world writing and lecturing. I need an OS that can generate and read files in .ppt and .doc so that I can compose and transfer files via flash drives to others and their computers. Will this work with the Linux that comes on the PC Eee 1000? (The guys in the computer shop could not answer this). Thank you!

Hi Handmark - welcome to LQ

There are many programs that can read/modify those files, but the most user-friendly may be openoffice.org:

http://support.openoffice.org/index.html

I am sure it can read/create MS-compatible .docs, and work with powerpoint files, although I haven't done more than read powerpoints with it so I can't say how easy it is to create them.

The other question is whether openoffice runs well on the Eee - I don't know what Linux distribution the Eee runs, so I'll leave that to another poster. I can tell you on a standard Linux distribution it is pretty much indistinguishable from MS office for the most part in terms of functionality, minus the random crashing and excessive cost. It is a large program, so disk space may be an issue.

Good luck

I would rate OpenOffice at about 97% in terms of working with MSOffice files. If this is something you depend on, you might want to run some tests using OpenOffice for Windows.

hello bother if u have openoffice installed on ur linux system,that can read .ppt and .doc of ms office.u can edit them by open office and can also generate those type of documents at the time of saving.
just the difference is THE NAME,u CAN DO ANYTHING IN THIS THAT U CAN DO IN MS OFFICE

MS OFFICE WORD = OPEN OFFICE WRITER
MS OFFICE EXCEL = OPEN OFFICE CALC
MS OFFICE PPT = OPEN OFFICE IMPRESS
ETC....

I am sorry, but this is absolutely incorrect. I have many hundreds of hours invested in getting MS Office to do what I need for large and small documents. I also have a fair amount of experience with OOo, and I now prefer it.

The interoperability between OOo and MSOffice is pretty good, but it is NOT perfect. And there a few things where OOo simply doesn't cut it.

For the OP: You need to try OpenOffice for your specific kind of work---for you, it may be 100%.

hello pixel,I am agreed with u,just look at the following page

http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/...re_Equivalents

There are several problems with .doc files in particular; its a useful format for storing a file in but an absolutely lousy format to use to transfer files between unrelated computers (font problems, paper size problems, printer problems and malware problems. Oh, and lack of compatability between different versions).

If you just deal with simple straightforward documents and you aren't that particular about the exact details of the page layout, you may never even notice.

This means that you can't say that it is 100% for transferring files between MS Windows computers. Open Office makes this problem worse, but not orders of magnitude worse, just a bit worse. And some survey years ago suggested that out in the wild (random files on the internet) suggested that 20 or 30 percent of .doc files had some malware attached. You might actually be happy if you found out that OO wasn't that compatible with MS Malware.

And if you rely on embedded macros, expect problems.

Not so sure about .ppts but I'd expect some of the same problems (page size, printer and font, in particular). But I'd expect if you anticipate a few problems with appearance flopping around a bit and thus needing a little tweaking to get page breaks right, you probably won't have any disasters, although the appearance may be only 'very similar' rather than 'identical'.

Open Office is able to work with .doc and .ppt files most of the time. However you should know, that these documents are written in a proprietary fileformat.

Microsoft does not publish the standards for these formats and from time to time the fileformat is changed without notice.

Then the fileformat needs to be analyzed and reverse engineered to make it useable in OpenOffice.

OpenOffice instead uses open standards to write the documents and you should use them, if you use it.

If you need to exchange the documents with others that do not use OpenOffice, yet, you may export them for example as .doc, .ppt or .pdf.

Or you may even give OpenOffice to your audience for free.

We use OpenOffice in our Office - as almost everything is done with Linux - and we really enjoy working with it.

Dear All:

Thanks for taking the time to try to help me sort this out. Sounds like I better consider this carefully. It would be a drag to be getting ready to do a presentation in Africa and have the Powerpoint mess up...

Any other thoughts appreciated!

Consider giving up these formats - if *you're* writing the presentation and *you're* giving it, why do you need them? KDE has an Office suite which should be good enough, I dont know what you need or what it is these things do, but - it's not the *format* you need, you merely need to give a presentation, or write something and show it, or print it.
Try Abiword as well.

It shard to give up on these formats when they have become, for better or worse, the global standard. I am often giving Powerpoints that are loaded onto local computers. I also often leave copies of Powerpoints and documents on flash drives with colleagues. So, it has to do with compatibility with their systems so that I can present when I am visiting and can leave useful documents/PPTs when I leave.

What about PDFs?

OpenOffice.org 3 beta can import and export PDFs.

IMPORT PDFs??!!!! That sounds like a breakthrough.

But I don't think that was the point....Nylex was suggesting to OP that he release his material in PDF format.

Thanks for the continued brainstorming on this....pdfs would work for transferring the material to another ocmputer. However, for showing a Powerpoint, it would be a problem.