Andrzej Kardaś Web Page

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Many times I heard from people that lack of office tools is what is preventing them from switching to Linux system. They may not like Windows but they think they are forced to use it because of the need to use Microsoft Office Tools to open and create office documents or they think they are forced to use outlook to connect to their corporate mailbox and manage their schedules and task lists. My answer is always the same: you will have less problems with office types of tasks in Linux then in Windows. This is main reason why I am using Linux. I'm creating all types of office documents using Linux and I have never had any problems with opening, editing and creating documents. Most of the people I was working with were using Microsoft Tools and they never complained about the documents I send them. In fact they most likely had no idea that documents I send them were created using free and open source office tools.

If you had problems opening documents created using MS Office 2007, because of the fact that you have older version of the Microsoft Office you will not have such problems in Linux. The most future rich Linux office suite OpenOffice will help you open and create office documents in all available formats. For saving text documents you can use .doc, .docx a long side with open and officially approved international standard .odf, which is default document format for OpenOffice.

If you are afraid that OpenOffice is not maintained by big corporation and is risky to use it because it's feature is uncertain, don't be. OpenOffice is maintained by second biggest IT corporation called Oracle and thanks to it's openness other corporations like Novell are contributing to it's development. As you can see you can have full corporate support for OpenOffice. If you still don't believe that OpenOffice is better choice just look at this Office suite comparison by Oracle.

If you are afraid that using OpenOffice will force you to learn a lot of new things, I can tell you by example of my girlfriend and my mother it took them about 5 minutes to learn how to use it. The most important thing I had to told them was how to save documents using Microsoft formats.

If you are running a firm and you need more professional office solutions like CRM system, accounting program, invoice management application etc, don't worry you will find commercial and free Linux programs that will help you. If you come from Poland I recommend visiting LeftHand company web page.

On belows screenshots you will find examples showing many office applications and tools I use on my Linux computers. I hope you will enjoy watching them and you will want to try them for yourself.