Hello everyone, Ned here again.
I've recently been seriously considering moving over to Linux on my laptop. Although I use my laptop at school, so i'll need basic work processing applications on Linux. I have done some research and found a few basic ones, but I was thinking of coming here instead and seeing on what some of the more knowledgeable people have to say. All I need is something like Word, Publisher, excel etc. I don't mind having to pay a fee for the software itself.
Thanks guys.
i would like you to note we have built quite an extensive list of software located here.
The Libre Office suite...
You can even try the Libre suit out on windows if your not sure
If you have a legit Office license you can install office 2010 with playonlinux, 2013 is working poorly at the moment according to my own experience, but office 2010 works fine. I have xubuntu on my school laptop, remember to install powertop aswell, Good luck!
Use LaTeX, it'll replace word completely for you forever... (within reason)
LibreOffice will do pretty much everything you need.
I've been through this exact situation though so ill share my tips.
Microsoft heavily subsidize schools, colleges, and unis to get their software in there partly in an attempt to get students dependent on their software, because of this a lot of teachers/lecturers say they only accept .docx.
If that's the case, that's your main hurdle. I found that actually my uni accepted a number of formats, and where lecturers didn't i compromised with them and had them accept PDF. This was also an accepted format for submissions that are scanned for plagiarism.
So, thankfully, LibreOffice has a PDF export for word documents. Make use of that. Its also worth trying to get them to accept the open document format, its available in the MS office suite, they can read it, but if your using anything other than PDF for submission, id advise checking the formatting of things in your schools computers first as its the same software that the teachers will use to open your documents and Microsoft reallly don't want you using anything other than their formats.
In uni, I also made use of google docs for writing, etc. instead of MS office, this is also good for collaboration. Then export it to ODF finish it off and export to PDF.
@porygon's suggestion is also a good one LaTeX is pretty powerful, get your template dont and all you need to focus on is writing, every time you submit something it will always be to the correct format and always be consistent. (it also exports to PDF)
You can also try the wps is 99 % compatible with the office of ms .
What be this?
Ah, ive heard of this before, I forgot. Do you use it? Can it export cleanly .docx > .odt for example?
If it does im thinking it would be a good tool for moving .docx formats to open formats.
I'm not sure , I usually use libre, but to open ms documents is very good.
IS WPS derived from the Word Perfect suite?
No, it's not.
I have used it before out of curiosity. It does not really have that good MS Office compatibility as it boast it has, but its certainly better than Libre Office. So it can be useful for changing formats.
That being said I still prefer Libre as a tool overall(plus its free software).
Run it in a VM...
LaTeX + BiBTeX FTW