CHAPTER 28 RUNNING MICROSOFT OFFICE UNDER UBUNTU (Cool web site)
CHAPTER 28 RUNNING MICROSOFT OFFICE UNDER UBUNTU Note The Wine programmers are constantly striving to make Wine compatible with all Windows software packages, but at the time of writing, Office XP and 2003 didn t work, although some people have reported moderate success. The Wine project has a database explaining which software packages work and which don t. Often, any tricks or tips others have used to make the software work are also detailed. You ll find the database at http://appdb.winehq.org. Follow these steps to install Office 2000: 1. Insert the Office 2000 CD, and then click on the GNOME Terminal window. 2. Mount the CD, switch to the /media/cdrom folder, and use Wine to run the Office setup program: mount /media/cdrom cd /media/cdrom wine SETUP.EXE 3. Work your way through the Office 2000 installation program as you would if you were running Windows. Select the default installation option. Installation didn t run perfectly smoothly on my test PC, although it may work fine for you. I received several errors messages, which I simply clicked through. At the end, the Office installation program seemed to be locked into a cycle of configuring itself. Eventually, it finished and presented the Office installer repair dialog box. I clicked to cancel this, and was then told that installation had failed. However, I found that Office 2000 had, in fact, installed perfectly. Another test I undertook resulted in error messages about Internet Explorer being split from the Windows Update process. In addition, the installation window was very small and the text within it largely illegible. However, I was able to work through the installation wizard by pressing Enter a few times. You may find it worthwhile to install the Microsoft Core Fonts package before installing Office; see Chapter 21. As I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, Wine is something of a hack, so you may encounter some challenges. However, with a little common sense, you should be able to get Office 2000 onto your computer. Running Office Components In order to install programs, Wine creates an entire pseudo file system that mirrors a typical Windows hard disk. This is normally located in the hidden .wine directory in your system folder, but the Sidenet script you used to configure Wine will have placed it in your /home directory. Therefore, you should be able to browse to /home/