CHAPTER 28 RUNNING MICROSOFT OFFICE UNDER UBUNTU (Photo web hosting)
CHAPTER 28 RUNNING MICROSOFT OFFICE UNDER UBUNTU 7. Search for winetools and mark it for installation. 8. Click Apply. You ll be warned that some of the downloads you re about to install are not authenticated. However, in this case, you re downloading from a trusted location (http://sourceforge.net, in fact, the home of many key open-source projects). So it s safe to click Apply. 9. When Wine has downloaded and installed (it was around 15MB on my system), close the Synaptic Package Manager. CROSSOVER OFFICE The developers behind Wine also produce a proprietary version of Wine called CrossOver Office. Technically speaking, this is actually no different from any other version of Wine, except that a GUI-based front end is added to make installation of programs simpler. It also includes several scripts to overcome various incompatibilities between Windows programs and Wine. This makes it possible to install the very latest version of Office, for example. In addition, CrossOver Office also lets you use Internet Explorer-based plug-ins within Linuxbased browsers. You can learn more about CrossOver Office by visiting its official web site at www.codeweavers.com. CrossOver Office is available for a fee from CodeWeavers, but considering they are one of the major sponsors of the Wine project, this is an excellent way of investing in the community. Configuring Wine The Sidenet Wine Configuration Utility is a series of scripts by a third-party programmer (who isn t related to the Wine project) that automatically configures Wine so that it s much more compatible with current software. Sidenet automates the installation of Internet Explorer 6 and Windows Media Player 6.4 (you might find the versions numbers differ). It also tweaks the Wine configuration in a handful of ways to make it work with a lot of software. Note A script is a series of commands within a text file. By running the script, you work through the series of commands automatically. The Sidenet script can create several different types of Wine configuration. The first is a completely Microsoft-free Wine installation, which means that it won t install any Windows- based system files or Internet Explorer. The other options let you install Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player 6. This is strongly advisable, because many Windows programs demand the presence of these two programs (particularly Internet Explorer). Additionally, it s very useful to download several additional components that can then be installed using Sidenet.