[K12OSN] OpenOffice vs. Microsoft Office

[Walker, Clay]

and as most of you know, the kids can and will adapt to anything.  It's
the adults we struggle with. 

-----Original Message-----
From: k12osn-bounces at redhat.com [mailto:k12osn-bounces at redhat.com] On
Behalf Of Doug Simpson
Sent: Tuesday, May 03, 2005 8:15 AM
To: Support list for opensource software in schools.
Subject: Re: [K12OSN] OpenOffice vs. Microsoft Office

My daughter, a 10th grader here, does 90% of her homework at home
(reports and like that) on OpenOffice and saves them in M$ format for
turning in at school.

Funny thing, too. . .  Her computer at home has winders98 and the
winders version of OpenOffice on it, but she has a VNC session icon that
runs a thin-client terminal from FC3 and she chooses to run the
OpenOffice from there instead of natively from her W98 version.  She
says it don't crash as much in the middle of her work, etc. . .

Here at work, every user has a home directory that is available to them
as an H: drive under winders and /home/<username> under FC3 Terminal
Services.  The H: drives are served out via samba to W98, WXP and W2K
workstations seamlessly and if the user chooses to use terminal
services, they have their own /home which is exactly the same files as
their winders
H: drive.
The differences between OOo and M$O are slight, and if you wish the
files to be readable by M$, just set the deafult document type in OOo to
MS Word, MS Excel, and MS Powerpoint and then they will always be
transferrable.

$.02. . . and worth both pennies!

Doug Simpson
Technology Specialist
DeQueen Public Schools
DeQueen, AR 71832
simpsond at leopards.k12.ar.us
Tux for President!

On Tue, 3 May 2005, Rob Owens wrote:

> I'm not sure if I understand your question.
> 
> If you're asking for the K12LTSP system to have access to files that 
> were saved in Windows, this can be done as long as those files are 
> saved on a network-accessible drive.  You will use Samba to "mount" 
> that network drive and read the files.
> 
> If you're asking about actually running MS Office on the K12LTSP 
> system, I believe this can be done too.
> You will need either Wine (free of charge) or Crossover Office (costs 
> money).  These programs allow you to run certain Windows-based 
> programs in Linux.
> If you decide to try Wine, try using Winetools to set it up.  
> Winetools helps you configure Wine and has a little menu item that 
> helps you install MS Office.
> 
> However, you really ought to try to get everybody using OpenOffice.  
> It works for me, though I'm not a big user of "bells and whistles".  
> What's great about it is that it is freely available for Linux, 
> Windows, and Mac, so when you create a file in OpenOffice it can be 
> read by basically anybody who owns a modern computer.  It also can 
> read and save Microsoft formats, if you need that.  It does this 
> perfectly most of the time, but I have seen some excessively-formatted

> Word docs that when opened in OpenOffice, the formatting was not 
> exactly the same.
> 
> So I just re-read your question and I think maybe you are interested 
> in having the students save their Linux work and be able to open it 
> later with Windows programs.  This can be done, too.  Use Samba to 
> "export" the directory in which the students save their work.  It will

> be accessible over the network by Windows machines.  If the files are 
> in a format that your Windows software can read, then they will open.
> (Note that you can use OpenOffice and save in *.doc, *.xls, and *.ppt 
> formats).
> 
> If clipart is all you're really looking for, I suppose you could use 
> MS clipart in an OpenOffice document, presentation, etc.  You just 
> have to find it.
> Somebody correct me if I'm wrong.
> 
> -Rob
> 
> --- hoffmann at fidnet.com wrote:
> > I would like to try a test classroom with K12LTSP, but I want the 
> > students to be able to open their files on Windows machines (to add 
> > the 'bells and whistles' to presentations, etc.).  I've been told 
> > that this will really slow down the server.  Is this true?  I know 
> > the students (and teachers) won't be happy with OpenOffice by 
> > itself.
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > Karen Hoffmann
> > 
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