| Linux Newbie Guide X - Linux Applications |
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Page: 1/4 [Printable Version]
Intro. This part covers only application we use or like or both. There
are thousands of Linux programs. If you are unsatisfied with our lean choice,
try: http://www.linuxapps.com/ or http://stommel.tamu.edu/~baum/linuxlist/linuxlist/linuxlist.html
or http://www.boutell.com/lsm/ or http://www.linuxlinks.com/Software/
Word processing
StarOffice Suite
Star Office is a very complete office suite: word processor, spreadsheet,
presentation program, drawing program, html editor, all integrated with a
monolithic "desktop" which some hate, but I don't mind. Full version
of Star Office is available for free for both Linux and MS Windows--it can be
downloaded over the Internet: try http://www.stardivision.com/freeoffice/
(large, ~100 MB download, definitely not practical with a modem). I got a copy
of StarOffice on a CD supplied with a Linux Magazine (check your newsstand).
Star Office source code has recently been released under GPL (Aug.2000) so it
is currently developed under the name of "Open Office".
Star Office looks and acts very much like MS Office for Windows. This includes
richness of features, large size, and slow startup (boy, slow). It may not be
worth the trouble without at least 32 MB of physical memory, the more the
better. It has a very good file-level compatibility with MS Office: read and
write MS Word, MS Excel and MS PowerPoint file formats. The StarOffice word
processor is faster and feels better than WordPerfect for Linux. In short, we
highly recommend StarOffice to cover even quite demanding office needs.
The installation of StarOffice is confusing and it goes like this:
- Make sure you have enough hard drive space. To check the space use the df
(="disk free") command:
df -h
This displays a report on the used and available hard drive space in a
human-legible form (option -h). At minimum, you need some 350 MB of free disk
space (of which, ~100 MB you can release after installation).
- Decompress the downloaded file. I did it as root in the /usr/local
directory for "local server" installation, but you may choose /home/your_login
for "personal" installation:
cd /usr/local
tar -xvf StarOffice5.2.tgz
- As root, run the setup program for a "local server" with the
DOS-style /net switch:
cd Office52
./setup /net
[Without the /net switch, StarOffice will perform a personal installation
(into your home directory), and then only one user will be able to run it.]
- After this "network" installation, each user has to perform
her/his own installation to put some personal files into their
"home" directories (by running program/setup as a user,
without the /net switch).
- StarOffice will insert a menu item into your
"K-menu"-"Personal"-"StarOffice 5.2". To run it
from the command line, I use:
/home/my_login_name/office52/soffice
abiword
(type abiword or AbiWord in an X-terminal) AbiWord (http://www.abisource.com).
It is a good light-weight wordprocessor. Really worth trying for simple word
processing needs. Although still fairly incomplete, it is quite useful to me,
e.g. it supports spelling-as-you-type without the overhead of StarOffice. It
is under heavy development and both versions for Linux an MS Windows are
available. Included on Mandrake distribution CD. (Some development
"snapshots" of AbiWord happened to be very slow on my
computer--don't despair if you encounter such.)
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