Thread: If Vista has 'WOW' factor then Linux has ' OH MY GOD' Factor

But what about compatability with info. Say i bring a word document home or pictures on the USB stick will i be able to open the files and edit etc. and visa versa from linux stuff to ms stuff?

Originally Posted by Rovernaut

Linux will not run Windows programs. Unless you do them through a virtual machine within linux or use an emulator.

As for outlook express- linux has alternatives, I use Thunderbird.
For internet explorer- I use Firefox
With Microsoft, unless you pay for Office you you don't get any spreadsheets, word processing etc.
Linux have free alternatives.
For MS Word - Linux Openoffice word processor
Ms Excell -Linux open office spreadsheet
Ms Powerpoint - Linux Presentation
If you use MS office then you would have no problem with the above the lay out is almost identical , except some names are different
There are some decent media players
Burning programs and image editing programs.
And even a periodic table of elements in case you ever need one

Originally Posted by Mick-Kelly

But what about compatability with info. Say i bring a word document home or pictures on the USB stick will i be able to open the files and edit etc. and visa versa from linux stuff to ms stuff?

For practical purposes, yes.

As far as media formats go, Linux will open (and write) VFAT or NTFS files and CD/CVD/USB stick formats, although there are some issues with writing NTFS, as the format details are secret.

Image formats are standardised to some extent (although there are hundreds of them), and typically Linux software will open and write a wider range of formats than typical Windows software. I have never found a picture I can't open with any of the Linux image programs, and there are definitely no problems with the common ones such as .jpg, .bmp, .png.

Open Office and other Linux Office programs (such as Koffice) will read and write MS Office documents, although there can be incomplete compatibility with some documents. One reason for this is the question of fonts - but you can always import the fonts - you can use the same ones, removing a lot of the problems. But problems remain due to the unpublished details of MS formats. Linux office programs, unlike MS Office, support Open Document formats.

In my case I keep "My Documents" on a Windows partition of my hard drive so I can use them from either Windows or Linux - but I actually use Open Office on Windows as well as on Linux.

Originally Posted by Rovernaut

What os is that ? I'm keen to give it a go.

Originally Posted by loanrangie

What os is that ? I'm keen to give it a go.

Rovernaut would have to answer that - but it could be almost any of the latest versions of Linux - what you are seeing is the KDE user interface, which is available in most of them, although some of the special effects are very new and may not yet be there in some distributions for a few months.

John

Originally Posted by loanrangie

What os is that ? I'm keen to give it a go.

Google - "Distrowatch" and be astounded at the range of versions. Some pure science, some dedicated to music and multimedia, some for servers, gaming, business desktops, you think of it Linux can do it.

If you have a couple of old puters around, you can even network them, only 1 machine needs a hard drive and OS, the rest can netboot from it as slave nodes to perform big digit calculations. This is the "Beowulf Clustering version. Very powerful.

Linux runs on any X86 puter from 386 up to the latest dual core 64 bit hardware. PPC of the old mac, even the S390 IBM Big iron runs on Linux.
It is the OS for the PS2 and the new PS3, it can even be installed to the Xbox.
Google - "Linux" and get many millions of search results.
Be aware of course that it is not Windows, so there is a learnig curve. More in the security side, never run as admin or root as it is called, always set up normal user accounts for everyday use. And it will not hold your hand Windows wise, the uber-geeks expect us to actually learn. Not so hard, I managed it.
You can even download a "live CD". a full OS with many many applications, all compressed transparently onto a bootable CD. No need to install a live CD, everything runs directly from the CD. Try it. Most computer mags have a distro or two in ISO form, from time to time. Use Nero or similar to "burn ISO to disk" and away you go.

Shorty

Originally Posted by shorty943

Google - "Distrowatch" and be astounded at the range of versions. Some pure science, some dedicated to music and multimedia, some for servers, gaming, business desktops, you think of it Linux can do it.

If you have a couple of old puters around, you can even network them, only 1 machine needs a hard drive and OS, the rest can netboot from it as slave nodes to perform big digit calculations. This is the "Beowulf Clustering version. Very powerful.

Linux runs on any X86 puter from 386 up to the latest dual core 64 bit hardware. PPC of the old mac, even the S390 IBM Big iron runs on Linux.
It is the OS for the PS2 and the new PS3, it can even be installed to the Xbox.
Google - "Linux" and get many millions of search results.
Be aware of course that it is not Windows, so there is a learnig curve. More in the security side, never run as admin or root as it is called, always set up normal user accounts for everyday use. And it will not hold your hand Windows wise, the uber-geeks expect us to actually learn. Not so hard, I managed it.
You can even download a "live CD". a full OS with many many applications, all compressed transparently onto a bootable CD. No need to install a live CD, everything runs directly from the CD. Try it. Most computer mags have a distro or two in ISO form, from time to time. Use Nero or similar to "burn ISO to disk" and away you go.

Shorty

I have about 5 spare pc's courtesy of work so i can either setup in another partition on my hdd (200gig) or on another pc, what would be the most user friendly version to start of with ?

Originally Posted by loanrangie

I have about 5 spare pc's courtesy of work so i can either setup in another partition on my hdd (200gig) or on another pc, what would be the most user friendly version to start of with ?

I would suggest one of Ubuntu (currently the most popular and designed for non-experts, it has the variants Kubuntu and Edubuntu), Mandriva, Fedora or Suse, but others probably have different ideas. As Shorty says, there are hundreds. If you don't have broadband, get a magazine with a DVD or CD attached - I find the most useful is Linux Format, and the latest issue I have got has both Ubuntu and Fedora on a DVD.

John