[Gllug] conversion from WinXP to Linux

[Ciarán Mooney]

Hi

> c) printer driver support  (we use Kyocera lasers)

Without knowing exactly which make/model you have it would be
difficult to say. But after going to the website and just looking at a
random printer they do seem to offer Linux drivers. Right at the
bottom of the page.

http://www.kyocerasupport.co.uk/index/download_center.false.driver.FS6700._.EN.html

> d) scanner support

This has already been raised the opinion seems to be pretty much plug and play.

> e) graphical ftp client

Nautilus already has this functionality built in. Go to File -->
Connect to server, and input all your details.


> In particular, I have been running OpenOffice on an XP machine and the
> document loading speed is absolutely apalling. I assume its because its a
> Java application (???).   Is this the same with Linux, or just a Win
> problem?

This tends to be opening a file for the first time, and loading
OpenOffice too. Once OOo is loaded then you should have quicker
opening times.

> Also, does OpenOffice handle the new 'gzipped' style of Excel documents
> (most
> of our stuff is on Office95 I think,  but we receive spreadsheets/documents
> created using the lastest MSOffice incarnation).

OOo has opened the Microsoft OpenXML <sic> format for a while now, if
I remember correctly before even MS had implemented it. I have found
in general that with a basic layout documents you can usually open,
edit and save them with no problem. If people start getting a bit
silly with Clipart then it call look a bit strange in OOo. If a
document opens badly you can usually extract the meaning, but the
formatting may be a mess. Although this is getting rarer. Long term
you can try and encourage internal use of the OpenDocument formats,
the OOo default file formats, this will at least save you some
headache.

Powerpoint presentations usually loose formatting when opened in
OpenOffice, but people tend to send them to each other less often.

That said there have been many times when I have seen Microsoft Word
fail to open it's own Word Document file, and the offending file had
to be rescued by opening in OOo and re-saving as a Word Document.

I use OpenOffice on a day to day basis on an Ubuntu based machine,
running off a USB stick! It's fast and very easy. I continually
receive .doc files I have to open (although I don't work in a clerical
environment) and edit and OOo seems to cope fine.


> Any advice/suggestions gratefully received  - also what would be the 'best'
> distribution to use as a replacement for XP beraing in mind the users are
> pretty much computer-illiterate?

Ubuntu is probably a good start. Most of the growing pains will be to
do with the user-interface (Gnome, OpenOffice etc)/ Seeing as these
environments are used across multiple distributions once they have
learnt them once they'll probably never notice the difference. Then in
the future you could switch to Fedora (if you so choose) over the
weekend.

Regards,

Ciarán
-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at gllug.org.uk
http://lists.gllug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/gllug