Linux Software

Desktop Publishing; Running MS Office; Some Games

Scribus is an OpenSource desktop publishing application that runs on Linux and the Mac as well as other systems such as that one from Redmond. I don't use DTP very much these days, but I've played around a little with Scribus. Here you will find a detailed review of the software.

I have run Microsoft Office under Crossover. Crossover is a commercialized version of WINE, which in turn is an OpenSource application that allows you to run Windows software. My impression has always been that WINE is not even nearly "grandma-ready" but I found Crossover to be very user friendly and to work very well. The trick was to run older versions of Office (or Endnote, or whatever) as the bugs were pretty well worked out. Here is a discussion of running MS Office 2003 using WINE. The procedure looks doable but hardly worth it when there are better applications that are native to Linux for word processing and spreadsheets, and comparable applications for email/scheduling and presentations.

Coming soon to a free download site near you: Apricot Its an OpenSource game that comes out of the 3D rendering project Blender. Description of the project can be found here.

As you might expect, there are many old style arcade games for Linux. I just downloaded Xoids. I don't play computer games, you understand, I did this for you, dear reader. Have a look:

How do you get this game? If you are using a Debian flavor of Linux such as Ubuntu, just search for "xoids" in the synaptic package manager and select it for installation the usual way. Then type in 'xoids' at the terminal and you are there. May the force be with you.