I have installed wine in my linux. But how do i install office 97 cos there is no copy of windows98 inside the laptop. It is linux only system. So must i install windows98 first or i can just install office 997 from the bash prompt?

I think that you would have a tough time getting M$ office to work under wine. Why don't you use one of the Linux apps that can read and write M$ office file types like Koffice or Open Office?

If you want to install software using Wine, most of the time all you need to do is run the installer (such as setup.exe, install.exe, or whatever it may be called) using Wine, like so:

wine setup.exe

With luck, the setup program will be fooled into thinking you're installing on a Windows machine. Of course, this presumes you have set up a fake-windows installation directory. Read the Wine documentation for more info on how to do this.

For Office, you may have better luck with Crossover Office. It's a commercial program (around $50), but might be worth a look if running Office in Linux is important to you.

Or, as bulliver suggests, try running one of the native Linux office suites. OpenOffice is superb and has little trouble with MS Office documents; if you don't need something that complex, there are many nice word processors, spreadsheet programs, and other apps that are at least as good as MS Office, and free!

Good luck!

I would very much like to run OpenOffice, but the problem is that it often give me error message. I am currently running mandrake linux 8.2, and i just purchase a copy of MK 9. I would like to install the OpenOffice 1.0.1 in the CD without upgrading to 9.0 cos it often hang using the laptop. How do i install from the CD and do i need to upgrade the system in order to do so?

The one thing I found bad about OOo is the fact that there is no Access support. I'd rather not order something from overseas (especially at a time like this) and so am learning php and mysql to create databases using a webbrowser.