[SOLVED]Returning to Mint for school and MS word questions

[JohnBobSmith]

Hello everyone,

I'm having tremendous difficulty setting up Arch Linux for school. I just, can't see my baby, my super-duper minimal and gamer-oriented Arch install, ever functioning for this purpose (school). This is on top of MS word refusing to install... Therefore, I'm going to dive back into Mint! I have an extra HDD perfect for this purpose. I have the XFCE ISO downloading now, thought it might be a bit.

As for MS office, I'm hoping it will go a lot better from within Mint. I have the disc based "Office Home and Student 2010" laying around, with a working CD Key. I know the key works because the installer got past that part. Of course, I could try LibreOffice or perhaps Abiword, but that defeats the point of using my laptop for school if I have to constantly edit/fix/repair documents before submitting them to my teacher. The question is: Does MS office 2010 work from within Mint? Can it be made to do so? I'll go for the free software if all else fails.

Otherwise, how's everyone been around here? It's been a while since I last checked in.

[MintBean]

I don't know about office- that's a question for the Wine forums.

As to Arch, I wouldn't use it for school. If an update causes problems and you've got school deadlines, it could be a pain. Mint is ideal.
I've just started playing with Antergos, which is basically an Arch installer give or take. It's worth a look if you want something to play with on a dual boot.

[Habitual]

Platinum Rating at WineHQ:
https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager. ... ion&iId=10

What edit/fix/repair documents? Only if you get them that way.
It's not rocket science. Open the doc, save as LO or OO format or not and be about your business.

[Pierre]

you could be better off, if you installed a more mainstream Linux System,
like say LinuxMint, although there is nothing wrong with Arch Linux itself,
&& then coupled that with a Paid Version of ./wine:
https://www.codeweavers.com/compatibili ... ffice-2010
- for better reliability for your school computer.

ie: the last thing that you would want, is some PCs issues, when doing your assignment(s),
or even your homework

- - reliability of your system, would be the key ingredient, for your school needs.

[Fred Barclay]

Welcome back!
How's it going in the frigid north?

For my uni work, I always used LibreOffice Writer. I just saved the document as a .rtf and none of my instructors seemed to have any formatting issue.

[JohnBobSmith]

@Habitual
In the past, I have tried using libre office and using LO/OO documents. Opening them using my schools copy of MS word always had page spacing and paragraph indentation issues, among other things. So then I would have to "repair" the document by using the schools copy of MS word to manually fix my paragraphs and spacing. It made for a great deal of extra work that I want to avoid this time around.

@Fred
I just put in about 10 hours of outdoor work today at -25C. Fixed a gas powered space heater ("Herman Nelson"), fed cows, fixed trailers, got trucks to start and plowed out a large portion of the yard. It's cold...

I'm getting ready to install the ISO now, wish me luck.

[Fred Barclay]

JBS: which version of libreoffice was that? LO 5 has been much better about compatibility in my experience.

Anyway, I can certainly understand why you would want to use MS Office.

[52ROSt]

Sure most schools have MS WORD because they don't know about LibO. Would they know they could save quite some money.

LibO is pretty good in working with MS formats. Graphics could stil be a bit of a problem. In business I have to deal almost daily with MS formats but don't get real problems. Saving in rtf- format looks like a good idea.; need to try this.

As for people attending the school, I recommend to provide them additionally with a LibO Portable Version on a USB stick. I always have one with me for presentations in MS PowerPoint. I simply start my LIbO Portable Version and run my Impress presentation

[Pierre]

Sure most schools have MS WORD because they don't know about LibO. Would they know they could save quite some money.

most school's would have obtained a school-wide discount, from Microsoft.
- the same type of discount is available from Apple, as well.
that's why most school's use their product(s).

the new kid in the school yard, is Google, & it's ChromeBook.
- more bulk discounts.

[JohnBobSmith]

*faceplants*

Through faults that are only my own, I didn't check that the ISO was actually downloaded successfully. Wasted at least 1 hour until I realized my ISO was only 250MB! So now I need to re-download, possibly babysit the process, and try again in the near future. I really want to give Mint a shot again. It looks great! Unfortunately, I'm busy helping my dad farm, so free time is limited. I've got a truckload of yellow peas ready to be shipped and sold. Assisting with generating income for my family must come first of course.

For the LO version at the time, no idea, but certainly well before the 5th major version release. Whatever version Mint 15 had was the version used, if that helps anyone.

[52ROSt]

@Pierre

a school-wide discount,

You are right. That's their way to get new paying customers. Make kids adicted to MS or Apple etc.
- I try to get my grandchildren use to LInux and LIbO.

[JohnBobSmith]

Alright here I am, successfully installed to disk!

Code: Select all

Linux david-HP-Pavilion-g6-Notebook-PC 4.4.0-53-generic #74-Ubuntu SMP Fri Dec 2 15:59:10 UTC 2016 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Now to fix my ridiculous hostname and start upgrading/updating everything. I'm seriously digging Mint 18! This is a great Linux distro, The developers should be very proud of their accomplishments.

EDIT: I'm intending to use this thread to discuss my MS word woes in the near future. Standby...

[JerryF]

Platinum Rating at WineHQ:
https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager. ... ion&iId=10

What edit/fix/repair documents? Only if you get them that way.
It's not rocket science. Open the doc, save as LO or OO format or not and be about your business.

Not that simple. I've had complex MS Word documents that, when opened in LO Writer, are not the same as before.

[JohnBobSmith]

*gives up*

I tried the install again, and the installer is still crashing in *exactly* the same spot as it was on my Arch install. Crap... The good news is libre office is a *LOT* better since I've lasted tried it! I was blown away! That, coupled with my teacher saying that google docs could be a real possibility, and that she prefers hard copies when submitting, means electronic formatting issues are null and void. I'll use libre office/google docs from here on in. And I'll also finish setting up my Mint install *after* I feed my cows. They need to eat too. Its a shame they can't taste my meatballs with rice...

Marking as solved because the solution is to not make buggy proprietary software work on Linux. Libre office has improved leaps and bounds. Use that instead.

[NChewie]

@JohnBobSmith

If you are just presenting a finished document to the school, you could export it to pdf from libreoffice, so that there will be no problems with format, as you can even embed your fonts in the pdf.
Many of the difficulties with Word<->Writer difficulties arrive when there is some fancy formatting going on. In theory, MS is meant to support odf standards, however they don't get it right.

I use libreoffice to do all my work and export to pdf to produce letters, etc.
If I have to send a document to be updated by a client, this is saved in .docx format, which works well for simple documents with headers, tables, MS fonts, standard bullets, etc. It is when the client then starts messing with it and adding Word-specific features, that there may be formatting issues when I re-open it to make further changes.

See https://support.office.com/en-ie/articl ... fb57aebfdc for a description (from Microsoft) of some of the features that do and don't work well. Obviously they do not want you to leave their paid suite to use the free suite from libreoffice.

Here is a 2012 view from the other side of the fence: https://brattahlid.wordpress.com/2012/0 ... -standard/ where it is noted that MS failed to fully implement the standard that they pushed through ISO in their 2010 release

Since then, MS has released a new suite in 2013:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML states:
Microsoft Office 2010 provides read support for ECMA-376, read/write support for ISO/IEC 29500 Transitional, and read support for ISO/IEC 29500 Strict.[7] Microsoft Office 2013 and Microsoft Office 2016 additionally support both reading and writing of ISO/IEC 29500 Strict.

and finally, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_s ... ibreOffice states (under ISO/IEC 29500:2008 / ECMA-376 2nd edition implementations):

LibreOffice has built-in support for importing and exporting Office Open XML files in ISO/IEC 29500 standard.
Microsoft Office 2016 continues to use the strict ISO version.

So if your school uses the latest version of Word, and you use Libreoffice Writer and save your document as
Office Open XML Text (.docx)
then Word should read it perfectly