Can I run these programes on Linux?

Question

Hi there, I've used Windows all my life but I'm getting sick of how incredibly unstable it is and how often it crashes and I want to make the change to Linux. But before I even go about the whole "how do I do that?" question, there's a few programes I want to check. Because the advantage of Windows is that everyone uses it, so I want files to be compatible with other people's computers and vice versa, if someone sends me a file, I want to be able to open it. The following are the programes I tend to use on Windows.

MS Word
MS Excel
MS Powerpoint
live messenger/msn
Skype
Adobe Reader
Internet Browser (although I'm aware there's plenty for Linux)
Audacity recording software (not essential but would be useful)

I know that Linux has equivalent programes for things like MS Word, but how compatible are they? Can I write something and e-mail that to somebody, and can I open MS word files with it? How easy/successful is it to run all these programes on a Linux system? Thanks a lot!

Answer 1

You can run some (but not all and not all of them work well) original windows programs under WINE. That is not always a good solution.

Here is a list of equivalent programs for linux that do the same a windows. MS Word, Excel and Powerpoint files are compatible with linux Openoffice. Linux has amsn and several other messenger apps. Skype and Adobe Reader have a linux versions. Audacity is an open source app and available in linux.

You can share files in these apps and the formats are compatible.

A lot of people dual boot both linux and windows until they are sure that they want to stick with linux.

You should read the linux documentation before trying to install it. There are a lot of good free books

for an introduction to linux. Here is a short article.

Answer 2

hi there

MS Word, MS Excel, MS Powerpoint you able to replace with Open Office which is free and fully compatible with MS Office. Skype, Acrobat Reader are supported in Linux. With Live messenger you can use Kmess or install emulator Windows [ WINE]on your Linux system which will run any windows programs as you will have Windows PC. So answer for your question is : Yes you can easy run every programs you asked on linux. I hope this will help you to decide.

Regards Andrew

Answer 3

You can run Microsoft Office using WineHQ, but there is an alternative called OpenOffice which is compatible with MS Office. OpenOffice can also save word documents as a PDF.



MSN messenger will not work, but Linux has a clone of it called aMSN. There are also others like Pidgin, Empathy and Kopete that will also work.



Skype works.



Adobe Reader also works, but trust me, you don't want it. It is full of security holes. Many Linux distributions come with their own PDF reader.



Firefox, Opera, Seamonkey, Flock are but a few of the web browsers available on Linux.



Audacity works

Answer 4

Yes. They will ALL work (internet browser? firefox for linux)



just use WINE for linux. It lets you run ANY windows program at full speed on Linux

Answer 5

yes you can run your programs in linux,the program is called "wine" however you will have to leave windows on your pc so you can open them, but that's no big problem because you can download linux side by side and duel boot whatever you want to use.

Answer 6

I don't know of any free software that saves in the standard open XML file format. Most can open standard open XML format, but they save in older, proprietary Microsoft or Sun's old open document format.



Word, Excel and PowerPoint are free products now. You use them on line in FireFox here:

http://www.skydrive.com/



The free Microsoft web applications do save to standard open XML file format.