ZDnet UK has another article on how many businesses prefer to make a move to open source software fairly quietly. This should be no surprise really given the news and circus-type feel some of the public “studies” of a large company or other organization moving to linux or replacing Microsoft Office. In many cases, there’ve been “personal visits” from Steve Ballmer to try to keep the organization in the Microsoft camp, lot’s of news articles, outside individuals lobbying one way or the other.
Tag: Microsoft Office
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Mandriva Linux 2006 review
There is a Mandriva Linux 2006 review up at mandrake.tips.4.free.fr, which includes a nice primer on “Background: Linux software repositories and software installation”…
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Open Source Clipart Library
I’m putting this under software for Windows and Linux, because this is something I’ve been asked about several times. What kind of clipart comes with OpenOffice.org or with Koffice. There are some samples usually, but clipart is one of those areas that has traditionally been hard to come by for free online. (Yes you could buy a collection of clipart.) Well, The open Clip art Library is filling that gap.
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New wine and new bottles this month for linux users to run windows applications
Well, one of the big items in the last span in linux news has been related to WINE… (Wine Is Not an Emulator). WINE of course in the context of linux is a layer of compatibility to allow Windows applications to run under linux without a virtual machine such as vmware or one of the various “run windows on linux” solutions like win4lin or qemu, etc.
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Zeroday Internet Explorer vulnerability update
The infocon level at incidents.org has been lowered back to green although there is still no patch for this issue from Microsoft and the threat still exists. They like to use the higher level to get attention to an issue, but not leave it on higher alert level for extended periods. They also have noted that Microsoft has updated their advisory.
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StarOffice 8 delayed
The upcoming release of StarOffice8 will be delayed until September 12. One possible reason for the delay is extra time to ensure compatibility with the OpenDocument format which will also be in OpenOffice. (Sun’s StarOffice provides the base code for the OpenOffice project.)
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New office suite release
Desktop Linux reported Friday that Thinkfree office has promoted their $49.95 office suite at LinuxWorld (last week.) This is Thinkfree Office 3. It’s available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Supports Microsoft office file formats, has a Microsoft-Office-like interface and “critical feature compatibility”.
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Light Linux Desktop for older pcs?
I’ve seen a story over at Desktop linux about the release of Turbolite 2005. Which is based on Turbolinux. It’s targeted at older, refurbished hardware. They offer “all the essential functions required for a desktop PC, including a Mozilla Web browser and email client, a Flash player, and streaming multimedia capabilities.”
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Good writeup on patents and standards
There is a good posting at the zdnet blogs talking about proprietary standards and why they are not a good thing in comparison to open standards. The talk specifically mentions Microsoft Word documents as an example of a de facto Proprietary standard and then goes on into a current example with cell phones.
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Considerate Computing
This may cover a fair amount of ground, but here goes….
Today I was looking at a system to see just what software was in use, evaluating the possibility of linux as a replacement. Office, of course was a must (at least the ability to read .doc and .xls files.) This is something that can now be done a number of ways with linux, Kword, Abiword, Openoffice.org, Gnumeric, Kspread all come to mind, as well as Microsoft Office running on Crossover Office. Frankly, I wasn’t too concerned about that. Publisher is another story, but on the linux side, I’ve tried Scribus as a replacement and it’s a maybe. It seems Kword has some of the flexibility of a desktop publishing program, but I may have to look further there. What caught my eye and prompted this update was a peculiar little file on the desktop. It was titled something related to a lease. I rightclicked to get more info. It was an executable file (.exe) I opened it. It was a viewer for a lease form which had been emailed. The building owner had appearantly emailed it in this format to the business owner.