Hi guys Im thinking of putting ubuntu on my dell inspiron. My laptop has been pretty slow, I tried CC cleaner and the like, but still I want it faster. The only problem is I need microsoft office for school and already have it on my laptop. Is there a way for me to transfer my microsoft office when I switch to ubuntu?
Thanks!
and are there any benefits besides speed for switching to ubuntu?
You might want to read through the linux threads on the forum, most of your questions will be answered.
As to MS-Office, LibreOffice has full compatibility, you can save in all MS formats, and the import of older MS-Office files is actually often better in LibreOffice than it is in newer Office versions. If you need to connect to an Exchange server, any groupware suite in linux can do that better, safer and faster than MS-Outlook. The only MS-Office application that doesn't have a better alternative in Linux is OneNote.
I would ditch the idea of installing Ubuntu if it's speed you want, also in terms of stability and compatibility, Ubuntu is not top. If you have no experience with Linux, check out Manjaro Linux, it's by far the fastest and most practical solution. If you like ultimate user friendliness and groupware and cloud service integration, go for Fedora Gnome, Evolution is the most practical groupware application in the linux world, and it's meticulously maintained to be compatible with Active Directory and Exchange Services infrastructures by RedHat. On other DE's than Gnome, I would go for Thunderbird, but it's not nearly as solid as evolution. Both Manjaro and Fedora are pretty easy to install and configure, as long as the first thing you do after installing Fedora is googling Fedora Utils and installing that, and installing Yumex to use as software center for all the software you want.
The speed benefit of Ubuntu+Unity is very very relative in comparison to Windows, in fact, there isn't that much speed benefit. With Manjaro, your system will just fly.
The biggest benefit of linux vis-à-vis windows is that linux is a PC operating system, not a locked down software console that tells you what to buy and leaves you in the cold.
Welcome to real computing.
ANd if you really want MS-Office, you can still use it in linux without performance or functionality loss through wine:
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/easily-install-microsoft-office-2007-linux/
This is the modus operandi suggested by Microsoft itself:
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/office/en-US/643c69d7-1c82-40d6-9036-a13ca3b14c80/microsoft-office-for-linux?forum=officeitproprevious
But they're right, MS-Office works generally faster in wine in linux than in windows itself, and there is no difference in functionality (well, that is not true, the malware is not linux-compatible, so you have to give up on that). PlayOnLinux is on just about any distros repos, and it's all available for free.
Im new to linux, and basically i just wanted to make my laptop a little faster, as I just use it for school. I wanted to get the chrome os, but since I cant I thought linux would be the best next thing(yes I know the chrome os is based of linux).
Some pc's have the space for a second hd so it might not be a bad idea to see if your particular model has one.. but an SSD is like a breath of fresh air and is amazingly fast to install an OS on.