Kingsoft Office on Linux

LibreOffice has always had a special place in my heart. I have been using it since OpenOffice was at version 1 and I have seen the project advance in leaps and bounds over the years.

Since then they branched off and now I use LibreOffice. Now they have some competition. I have been using Kingsoft Office (WPS) on my phone and tablet for a a few months now. Time to test their Linux version and see how it compares with LibreOffice. Know that this is an alpha release, meaning that it has not yet reached the beta testing phase - meaning that it is still very much in development. 

First, go to http://wps-community.org/download.html and download the .deb file and fonts .deb file under it. 

To install, double click on the .deb file you just downloaded. Then click on the Install Package button, in the top right corner of the window. Installation was not difficult or complicated. 

The interface looks similar to Microsoft Office, ie. The Ribbon. While LibreOffice still looks basically the same as Office 2003 (even after all this time). I will not break off into a discussion of whether the interface should have been left the way it was, the whole leave well enough alone vs update the interface to something more current as that is a very long story. 

Well, looks like you can choose your interface, which I think is cool:

I decided to open a document created in LibreOffice, to see how WPS office would render it. Well, it was not pretty. 

(this is after I set the paragraph spacing to single) Can I fault it for not being able to open a document created by a rival? No, after all this is an alpha release and just being able to create documents and export them to PDF is enough for a reasonable person.

The ribbon interface is pleasant and easy to use, I am not going to do an in depth test here as I don't have the time. But I am going to be using WPS Office regularly over the next few weeks I hope to have a follow up post or two mentioning my progress and any issues I have encountered.

Post your opinion in the comments below.

Donations roll call

When was the last time that you donated to an open source project? Now, please bear in mind that this is not a paid or sponsored post. This is something that I feel very strongly about.

Open source software (and even the podcasts that you love) have lots of expenses. People work for little or no money, while doing something that they feel very passionate about.

Here is a list of people that you can consider donating to:

• Your current Linux distro of choice - these guys have huge bills to pay for hosting, not everyone has Redhat's budget here. 
• LibreOffice / OpenOffice / your office suite of choice - without the hard work these guys do, how would we create and edit our documents, spreadsheets and slideshows? I think it is strange how many people buy Microsoft Office, but would not consider making a $5 donation to a good cause.
• Any open source apps you enjoy and use regularly. 

Like I said before, this post was not paid for by anyone. I am setting an example here. I've started going through my list and making donations. Remember that every $ helps, and that with our support the good people who make open source software will be able to carry on doing their fantastic work. 

OpenOffice has been downloaded more than 50 million times, can you imagine what would happen if every person who used their software donated $1? Imagine how many full time developers and testers they could employ? Imagine the progress they could make. Now imagine being a part of that change :)

Peppermint 5 here we go!

So today I finally got around to installing Peppermint 5. I formatted my entire hard drive, so I am no longer dual booting Windows XP (which means that at this point I need to fire up my desktop if I need Coreldraw or my Canon Lide 90 scanner).

I am currently downloading LibreOffice and I still need to set everything up. At least Conky is installed already :)

So, unetbootin helped me (once again) to create a live flash drive, after downloading the Peppermint 5 ISO from www.peppermintos.com This truly is a wonderful little program.

Installation was uneventful, as expected. My Broadcom wifi card still needs proprietary drivers. This means I need to plug into the router when installing, afterwards click on Menu -> Preferences -> Additional drivers. Here you need to enable the wifi driver. Wifi works again, whoop whoop.

While Googling, I found http://www.binarytides.com/better-linux-mint-17-cinnamon/ and I started working my way through the list. Pepperflash is installed by default, which is great. When installing ms-tt-corefonts I had a strange blue window with white text in it. I could not get past this window, so I Googled some more. Finally found a page that said "press TAB, then ENTER", which worked and  was able to complete that installation and load more software.

Conky is back on, (Audacity, Deluge, UGet, VLC and a few others too), I need to install Dropbox next. I have a new approach to Dropbox: I move stuff that I am not actively working on into my OneDrive or Google Drive, this means when I reinstall it does not take as long to sync.

Will post an update as soon as I am ready.

LibreOffice can't spell check

When I installed Peppermint 4 not too long ago, I was not online at the time. I read the disclaimer that said that for best performance I should be. But my WIFI card was not installed automatically due to closed source drivers, etc.

After the install I noticed a message that told me that Language files were missing. "It's English, and everything works", I thought to myself. Then ignored it. However, after installing LibreOffice I noticed that although the program was set to spell check automatically, it did not.

I searched on Google, found a tutorial for how to install languages for Windows based LibreOffice and then it dawned on me... the missing languages.

If this happened to you and you want to fix it:

Click >> Menu, Preferences >> Languages
At the bottom of the window, click Install / Remove Languages
Choose from the list (I selected English to keep this simple)

Now LibreOffice can spell check and I am very happy. So, if possible try to be connected to the Internet during the installation.