Anyone use a Free OS instead of Windows...or...

[Derek]

i'm sick of being tied to Microsoft for all of my Office needs...invoices, quotes & everything else i need MS Office for.

i looked at Linux and their program Libre Office which is similar to MS Office. anyone been able to make the switch to a free Operating System and the free Office-type programs that go along with it?

will Office 2010 documents work seamlessly with Libre Office?

 

[Derek]

figured i'd try to answer this myself. it's great that all this stuff is FREE. LibreOffice "Writer" is like MS Word...it opened my invoices & quotes seamlessly and printed exactly the same. some MS Publisher images & documents are not the same when opened in LibreOffice (LO) "Draw". LO "Calc" looks like their version of MS Excel, but i dont use Excel so...

i am typing this through the Firefox browser in the Linux based Ubuntu Cinnamon Operating System (OS) right now. you can try it before installing it...pretty cool feature! you can do the same with the Linux based Mint OS. just burn the 2 OS's to 2 DVD's, which they walk you through easily. then insert the DVD and restart your PC and you can try it instead of installing it.

will i switch from Win7 to either of these? probably not with this Desktop. 1 of my Tablet PC's i just wiped clean to sell and i don't have a Windows restore CD so for that i might sell on Craigslist and offer to install either of these free OS's for the buyer...or i'll throw Win Vista on it if they'd rather have it.


is anyone using Linux & LibreOffice for their business??

 

[Shawn Forsythe]

I primarily use a Mac, and I suppose I could say that the Mac OS now falls into the category of "free", inasmuch as the OS is now free, as has been the case with an iPhone or iPad.

Apple has now taken a big step in providing a major revision update at no charge for the consumer OS. Of course the OS is included on any Mac purchase, but now it is likely that future revisions will also be at no upfront cost.

You may see Microsoft follow suit, but it may be a bit iffy, as Microsoft has traditionally been primarily a OS software company, whereas Apple is focusing increasingly on hardware sales and applications.

BTW, I have Mac OS, Ubuntu, Chrome, Windows 7 & Elementary OS all installed and functioning on my Macbook Air. I used to have Windows 8 as well, but I ditched it. Maybe I'll give 8.1 a go, but as yet I have no compelling reason. I have 8.1 on a Toshiba of mine.

 

[Dan]

I have used/played with Linux since 1996 and I also decided one day enough was enough and I'm going to run all my home systems on Linux and my business. I set up a Linux server as we'll with everything being stored on it as my own cloud so to speak back when cloud only meant the puffy things in the sky. We'll long story short it was a GIANT pain and didn't last long. Linux is fun but when you like to figure things out you often find yourself with a broke OS and wonder what next. I was forced back to windows until I got smart and bought a Mac. Now I get to have my Linux and keep on working too. I have 2 laptops with win7 and one with that joke of an OS win8 laying around and I have not used them in 6 months. I run parallels on my mac for a small win7 so I can run Quickbooks. Quickbooks makes a mac version but the only problem is if you run Service Monster you can't import your data with the web connector utility because there isn't one for mac, however you could do the export from Service Monster and do the old way of matching up but that sucks. Mac does everything else I needed from windows but better because it never crashed. Hope this helps.

 

[Derek]

good info tx guys. i can tell you're both a little more technically advanced than i

the only problem i've run into, which might mean the end of Linux for me for now is, it doesn't support inking...or i should say LibreOffice doesn't support it "yet." M$ Word supports it so i use it for all my business files on my Tablet PC. supposedly LO will support it "some day."

unless there is another Linux-based Office software that i could check out for possible inking.?.

 

[Dan]

Other choices but I can tell by what your saying Linux in general isn't for you. I suggest getting a laptop or desktop and loading it and trying it out for a bit. You will break it on accident and realize you don't have the ability to fix it and there goes your hard work, time and maybe files it you can't figure out how to get back to them.

 

[Derek]

wow good post! i didnt realize how unstable Linux is yep, def not for me then :\


tx Dan!

 

[Connor]

I use libre office on my windows machine. Eez fine.



Sent from a Mexican restaurant in Martinez (pronounced Martin-ezz





I'm a jerk.

 

[The Great Oz]

We've run on Open Office on Linux for several years, but are switching to MS Office at the end of the year. The limitations of open source were never worth the hassle, and it's finally become apparent that the loss of productivity costs a whale of a lot more than paying for MS Office.


PS: Linux is an operating system, not a word processing program. It's perfectly stable, but to make it do anything you either have to write the application, download applications written by geeks in their spare time, or pay for a program like redhat that gives you some of the functionality of Windows. The instability is in the apps.

 

[Dan]

Linux is stable and powerful but as super user you have the ability to cause more problems than you can figure out. I often would run into library updates or o/s patches that would break something else for example you would lose the printer until you figured out what the cause was in the new update. Then you figure out how to revert back or patch the something else..... Always a lot of time. As far as office apps just bite the bullet because ms office rules that side of the world. I even run it on my mac. I bought office 365 with 5 user license for the year for like 100 bucks. Think I still have 4 left...lol.