Help with Wine - I'm a complete newbie

[Daveyboi]

Before I even get to asking for help I should let you know I'm a complete Linux Newbie . I have a very basic understanding. What it is I want to be able to run either windows on top of linux or run certain windows applications IE Microsoft Office (more necesseity (I can't spell) than choice) and Sage. From what I have read either Wine or VMWare is what I am looking for. I am running LBA Linux Grankulla 2.6.

[sdousley]

for running windows as an os inside linux, vmware will do the trick. for running windows applications, wine will do the trick.

as for using microsoft office, why not try Open Office?

I think however, u will probably need wine for Sage, that's if it can even work under wine.

[Daveyboi]

Will open office work with ms office attachments as my work use MS Office as default and need to be able to move docs from one to another easily.

[techieMoe]

Will open office work with ms office attachments as my work use MS Office as default and need to be able to move docs from one to another easily.

OpenOffice will open, edit, and save Microsoft Word (.DOC) files. I'm not sure if this has been fixed in newer versions (I haven't used it in a while) but every so often it *can* mess up the formatting of a DOC file slightly, like replacing a comma with a little box. These are relatively rare, but just making you aware. The .DOC ability in OpenOffice isn't perfect, but it's pretty darn good considering Microsoft won't release the file format.

[Avi]

I use OpenOffice to edit .doc and .xls files all the time and i've had no problems, aside from MSOffice not supporting some of the bullet point options in OpenOffice Writer. You can set it to save to MSOffice formats by default, and the interface is very similar to MSOffice, doesn't take long to get used to at all.

Added bonus of being able to export .pdf files as well.