Opensource apps replacing M$ apps (office, project, visio) ?
- Thread starter demonic
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How about MS for starts...
Anyway:
Office: OpenOffice (Though to be honest, its not even close to being as good as Office 2007)
Outlook: Thunderbird
Not so sure about Project or Visio, nothing works quite as well as Visio does in my experience and I have no experience with Project.
Anyway:
Office: OpenOffice (Though to be honest, its not even close to being as good as Office 2007)
Outlook: Thunderbird
Not so sure about Project or Visio, nothing works quite as well as Visio does in my experience and I have no experience with Project.
Im looking to replace Ms Office 2003, Visio 2007, Project 2007 with open source applications?
Ms Office 2003 --> Openoffice.
Project --> ??
Visio -- ??
Outlook -- ?
Can anyone help me out?
Thanks
At work we went through this exercise of replacing MS applications recently. My advice is to pick applications that are multi-platform and use open formats, and run these on Windows first, phasing these in gradually. We have changed from MS Office XP to OpenOffice with very few problems - apart from one or two low level secretarial staff who resisted changing over for no good reason. Well actually the reason was that they thought that MS Office experience on their cv would look better than OpenOffice because "it is the standard". Also if you have accountants who use a lot of MS Office macros on Excel then they may need to keep a copy of Excel.
We found OpenOffice superior to MS Office in use. The biggest advantage is compatibility. We used to upgrade MS Office piecemeal because we got the cheaper OEM versions, and our foreign offices upgraded their copies at different times. This created serious version incompatibility between documents being sent between our offices, which was made worse by the fact that you can't see which version it is from the file. OpenOffice has solved this problem completely. It saves in ODT (ISO 26300) format which is a true standard (ie. no version compatibility or interoperability problems), and if you want to send it out as a DOC attachment, you are forced pick the version of Word you want to save as. With MS Office people tended to save and send files in the default format and not convert to an older, more commonly readable version like Word 2000 or 97 even when they were asked to. OpenOffice is also superior due to the built in export to PDF and export to flash media SWF (for presentations).
I wouldn't suggest anyone get Office 2007, at least not for a while because of the changes in the user interface for MS Office 2003 users (OpenOffice is much closer to MS Office 2003), as there have been a lot of complaints about this. Also there are a lot of bugs, security holes etc. http://www.computerpartner.nl/article.php?news=int&id=5003
Anyway to answer your question:
Ms Office 2003 --> Openoffice.
Visio -- Inkscape or OpenOffice Draw
Outlook -- Thunderbird or Evolution (Thunderbird is multi-platform, Evolution isn't)
Project --> more difficult. At work we don't need complex project management, only simple gantt charts.
- If you want a free complete replacement that supports all the features for very intricate projects like large construction projects that will do everything MS Project does and more, then try OpenWorkbench http://www.openworkbench.org/ which only runs on Windows.
- If you want something quick and easy to use that produces gantt charts from task specifications, then try Planner on Linux. This is actually what 95% of people who use MS Project really need. http://www.simpleprojectmanagement.com/planner/home.html
- There is also loads of other project management software which may be better for specific applications, but I am not familiar with any of them.
Other stuff which are compulsory because they are free are:
MS Paint, or Paintshop Pro (for non professional artist use) ---> GIMP http://www.gimp.org/
MS FrontPage ----> NVU http://www.nvu.com/index.php
Adobe PDF Writer ----> PDFCreator http://www.pdfforge.org/products/pdfcreator (note - download the version with ghostscript included in it).
Wordpad -----> KWord (Linux only) lightweight wordprocessor includes the ability to import PDF documents and save them as properly formatted ODF documents for editing.
Image format conversion (command line) ----- ImageMagick http://www.imagemagick.org/script/index.php
Page format DTP ------ Scribus http://www.scribus.net/
A couple of other things you should look at:
If you are sharing documents, you should look at Alfresco which runs on Linux or Windows servers (uses Java server). It is absolutely fantastic and adds version control, automatic format conversion (eg. into ODF) and simple workflow to document management. http://www.alfresco.com/
Also you can use a remote Linux desktop on a Linux server using either FreeNX http://freenx.berlios.de/ or it's commercial cousin NXserver on the Linux server and free NXclients on Windows or Linux clients. NX is Linux's equivalent of Citrix. http://www.nomachine.com/
Alternatively you can simply use X configured for remote access XDMCP on the Linux server and xnest (use mcookie to generate random cookie for security) on Linux clients Cygwin/X on the Windows clients http://x.cygwin.com/ . This will consume more network bandwidth than NX.
For running individual GUI applications on remote Linux server from a Linux client, just use SSH with X forwarding.
If you are sharing documents, you should look at Alfresco which runs on Linux or Windows servers (uses Java server). It is absolutely fantastic and adds version control, automatic format conversion (eg. into ODF) and simple workflow to document management. http://www.alfresco.com/
Also you can use a remote Linux desktop on a Linux server using either FreeNX http://freenx.berlios.de/ or it's commercial cousin NXserver on the Linux server and free NXclients on Windows or Linux clients. NX is Linux's equivalent of Citrix. http://www.nomachine.com/
Alternatively you can simply use X configured for remote access XDMCP on the Linux server and xnest (use mcookie to generate random cookie for security) on Linux clients Cygwin/X on the Windows clients http://x.cygwin.com/ . This will consume more network bandwidth than NX.
For running individual GUI applications on remote Linux server from a Linux client, just use SSH with X forwarding.
Are there any open source mail servers that can do shared calendars and mailboxes?
Our 3rd party hosted exchange is having issues and I want to move us off them by the end of the year. I like some of the new things in Exchange 07, but if there is an open source, reliable, and functional equalivalent, then i would give that an evaluation as well.
Our 3rd party hosted exchange is having issues and I want to move us off them by the end of the year. I like some of the new things in Exchange 07, but if there is an open source, reliable, and functional equalivalent, then i would give that an evaluation as well.
Evolution is pretty much an outlook clone. So go check it out: http://www.gnome.org/projects/evolution/
OO draw works quite well, if you get the libraries you want.
I came across two, a few months ago. One of them got very good marks from a list of folks who used it. But I can't remember how it was called.
I should have stored it. I'll ask my co-workers, I think I told one of them.
I came across two, a few months ago. One of them got very good marks from a list of folks who used it. But I can't remember how it was called.
I should have stored it. I'll ask my co-workers, I think I told one of them.
If you could find out, that would be great. I'd be interested in an open source version of Exchange. Espically if it came with Failover capabilities....
There is OpenExchange which is a complete Linux based drop in substitute for MS Exchange which shares calendars with outlook or Evolution clients.
http://applications.linux.com/article.pl?sid=05/02/02/236258&tid=37&tid=49 The main problem with this is that it is as diffult to configure as MS Exchange itself.
There are also a few other similar exchange replacements.
Another good option is an Imap server like Cyrus IMAP or Courier IMAP server plus insight connector http://www.bynari.net/index.php?id=4094 to give shared folder and calendar sharing.
There is Google Mail & Apps (nice spam and virus filtering, minimum set up hassle, but rudimentary email sharing), but this is probably not what you are looking for.
Yeah, but the Evolution client calendar sharing is supposed to be compatible with the MS Exchange server, and MS Exchange server replacements.
For Open Source replacements - I don't think these are complete drop-in replacements but rather are equivalents.
http://www.scalix.com/
http://www.zimbra.com/products/
There's dia under linux, but it can be a pain at times. Not sure if you can make it run under windows with the windows gtk stuff.
Nite_Hawk
Let me remind you that ms word is wysiwyg and that wysiwyg might not be the same on open office, especially if the person who made the document on ms word, doesnt know how to "cleanly" write a document.
For this reason alone, i strongly suggest sticking with ms office for company usage. I have personal experience with 1 ms word document appearing slightly different on open office because that document was missing an "end page" argument open office didnt split the pages at the same point that ms office did.
Unfortunately(or fortunately if you work for ms) this is a Microsoft world and sometimes you are better off using microsoft programs. It was the same deal with internet explorer, were many pages were broken when you used some other browser. Fortunately, firefox is pretty popular right now, so most of those pages are redesigned in order to work for firefox too(and if everything fails, you still have ie tab extension).
Open Office has gone a long way but still isnt as popular as firefox is. From a usability point of view, open office is fine, although it lacks the helping dogs, cats, aliens, whatever that ms office have and those things really appeal to chicks. My only objection is compatibility.
Of course, if you compare the cost of ms office with open office, things become a lot clearer.
For this reason alone, i strongly suggest sticking with ms office for company usage. I have personal experience with 1 ms word document appearing slightly different on open office because that document was missing an "end page" argument open office didnt split the pages at the same point that ms office did.
Unfortunately(or fortunately if you work for ms) this is a Microsoft world and sometimes you are better off using microsoft programs. It was the same deal with internet explorer, were many pages were broken when you used some other browser. Fortunately, firefox is pretty popular right now, so most of those pages are redesigned in order to work for firefox too(and if everything fails, you still have ie tab extension).
Open Office has gone a long way but still isnt as popular as firefox is. From a usability point of view, open office is fine, although it lacks the helping dogs, cats, aliens, whatever that ms office have and those things really appeal to chicks
. My only objection is compatibility. Of course, if you compare the cost of ms office with open office, things become a lot clearer
.
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