Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2007 23:36:28 -0400 From: Jerry McAllister <jerrymc@msu.edu> To: james thompson <jthompson203@tampabay.rr.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org, JamesThompson65@yahoo.com Subject: Re: Is FreeBSD simple enough for Novices, Will FreeBSD accept Office 98 + Publisher? Message-ID: <20070429033627.GA10522@gizmo.acns.msu.edu> In-Reply-To: <4632AF6B.3020500@tampabay.rr.com> References: <4632AF6B.3020500@tampabay.rr.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Fri, Apr 27, 2007 at 10:20:27PM -0400, james thompson wrote: > How difficult is FreeBSD to use in place of MS windows, say compared to > Apple OSX? Well, it depends on your personality and work habits and expectations. I find FreeBSD easier to use than MS and have had very little contact with MAC so can't say much about that one. But, I don't like the windows way of working. I prefer a command line and text based environment. > I believe it may be able to run Offide 98; can Office 98 > with Publisher be ran on FreeBSD? You can get utilities called emulators and virtual environments to allow many MS type things to run, but you need to know that FreeBSD is not at all like MS Windows except that it runs on a computer and you can bring up multiple screens. The two are completely different and incompatible systems. As an Operating System (OS), that is robust and secure and powerful, FreeBSD is much superior to MS-win, but it does things very differently. Generally, if you really want to mainly use actual MS programs, then you probably really want to run MS, rather than trying to run them on FreeBSD. > I want to use FreeBSD to compose > articles, and combine them into a Book for publication, as a Home Office > Operation by a person with little experience beyond windows. In 1995, > I took a MicroComputer Operating Systems course in Windows 3.11 and DOS > 6.22. I have used Windows 95, 98, and XP Home & upgraded to Media Edition. There are many good alternatives to MS utilities for these things. The OpenOffice system can substitute for MS Word and Excel, etc. But those might not be the best for book writing. Learning to create with a straight text editor and include text markups for some formatting language is probably a better solution. Those are all readily available in FreeBSD and are better in FreeBSD than in MS, actually. But, FreeBSD takes some learning to use well. Although once you do learn about it, it will seem quite natural to use, it takes a while to get to that point. Learning by doing with handbook readily availble is the way to go. In the [not very] long run, it will be worth it. ////jerry > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@freebsd.org"
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20070429033627.GA10522>