Is FreeBSD simple enough for Novices, Will FreeBSD accept Office 98 + Publisher?

[Chris Slothouber]

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On 2007-04-27 22:20, james thompson wrote:
> How difficult is FreeBSD to use in place of MS windows, say compared to 
> Apple OSX?  I believe it may be able to run Offide 98; can Office 98 
> with Publisher be ran on FreeBSD?  I want to use FreeBSD to compose 
> articles, and combine them into a Book for publication, as a Home Office 
> Operation by a person with little experience beyond windows.   In 1995, 
> I took a MicroComputer Operating Systems course in Windows 3.11 and DOS 
> 6.22.   I have used Windows 95, 98, and XP Home & upgraded to Media Edition.

Hi James,

As far as being able to easily create articles, create a book, and
publish to a website, IMHO Apple OSX's ease-of-use and seamless design
takes the cake.  All new Macs (including the iMac) come with a very easy
to use (and powerful) set of applications called 'iLife'.  Included is
the 'iWeb' application, which makes the task of creating and updating an
attractive web space quite simple.  More information on this 'iWeb' app
can be found here:

http://www.apple.com/ilife/iweb/

On top of this, a 30-day trial for the 'iWork' bundle, which includes a
word processor/desktop publishing app called 'Pages' and presentation
software called 'Keynote' (basically PowerPoint on steroids, this is
what Al Gore used to create his much-ballyhooed 'PowerPoint'
presentation with).  If you want to keep using it, it's only $79 (versus
$200+ for the basic MS Office Suite for Windows).  Pretty good value for
software that fuses simplicity and power.  It can also import all of
your old MS Word documents without too much fuss.  Here's some info on that:

http://www.apple.com/iwork/pages/

I really don't mean to sound like I work for Apple, but since everyone
has given the opensource/FreeBSD side of your questions a fairly good
beating, I thought I'd present the other end of your email a fair
treatment.  All of this can be done very well on FreeBSD (or Linux, or
Windows) just the same, but as far as what you're asking, OSX truly does
make the whole job a heck of a lot easier, without sacrificing much
functionality.

I hope this information helps!

- - Chris

- --
Chris Slothouber (chris at hier7.com) -=- Mercenary Sysadmin
BIZ: http://www.hier7.com -=- building.better.ideas
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