Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

[Kevin - The Alchemist - Sonney <alchemist AT darkcanvas.com>]

On Sat, Dec 08, 2001 at 01:41:09PM -0500, Edward Wesolowski spoke thusly:
> I'm terrified to even touch Windows XP with a 10-foot-pole.
> Michael S Czeiszperger & Don Rosenberg:
> What was the app you mentioned that lets Word, etc. run on Linix? I don't 
> want to make a career out of learning curving right now; I need to share 
> files that run on Windows, but I need to look ahead, to the next 18 months.

I'll pick this one up. There are, at the moment, three that work :

wine, win4lin, and vmware.

win4lin and vmware are virtual machines - that is, emulations that act
like a seperate PC - that allow you to run windows, in it's
entirety. win4lin and VMWare Express run Win9x/ME as a full OS inside
a window on your desktop. VMWare Workstation allows you to run just
about every M$ OS, as well as Linux, *BSD, OS/2, and more. Al of these
options cost $$, though.

Wine is an API replacement layer. It allows you to run Windows
binaries under Linux somewhat natively. I use it to run quicken, and
have bene experimenting with other non-office apps (read: games). Wine
is free.

In the short term, win4lin or VMWare Express will allw you to do what
you need. As I've not tried MS Office under Wine, I can't report on
how well it does work. However, since I've had some difficulty with
newer versions of IE under Wine, I have my doubt about Office XP.

In the longer run, Wine and OpenOffice are the things to
watch. OpenOffice is doing their best to maintain document
compatibility witht he various office flavors, although they are
hindered by the ever changing "Office XP uses a new file format" types
of tactics from M$. At the moment, I use OpenOffice under Linux (and
before that Star Office) for most of my tasks. 

<rant>
The best way to solve these sorts of problems, long term, is to
enforce a standard on the industry, and not one controlled by a single
company. By getting more people to use standard document formats -
HTML, Docbook, or XML - we can get past the technical hurldes thrown
at us by every M$ upgrade, and do the important things - write
documents we can share with each other. Documents that aren't 30K for
"How's the wife & kids?"
</rant>

-- 
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--      Kevin "The Alchemist" Sonney      --
--  New email : alchemist AT darkcanvas.com  --
--  http://www.darkcanvas.com/~alchemist  --
--  ICQ: 4855069            AIM: ksonney  --
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"If you'll read the subtext for many of those old strips, you'll find
the heart of an old-fashioned Libertarian. And I'd be a Libertarian,
if they weren't all a bunch of tax-dodging professional whiners."
  -- Berkley Breathed, 2001