I don’t know if this is the right place to post my problems, but I will be glad if someone could help me sort this out. And also sorry for my bad english.
First, some of our clients are complaining that they are having a hard time opening our reports on their desktop pc’s (XP or Windows 7 I guess) and we here in the office are running Ubuntu 11.10 and we use LibreOffice to make our reports, can we save a file from LibreOffice and open it in a Windows pc or MS Office? Do we have to save the file to what format? I tried saving the file in both excel workbook 2003 and 2007 with no luck.
Second, everytime my officemate tries to restart her desktop pc running Ubuntu 11.10 or everytime her pc accidentally shuts down all her works or reports on LibreOffice that are opened before shutting down gets corrupted. I tried opening the file using a Windows PC but we really cannot retrieve the file. Any suggestions on how to prevent this or how can LibreOffice save the file before shutting down like MS Office do that you can recover the files after a accidental shutdown?
Check out the settings in Libre/Open office, you can tell it to make backups every minutes. Never know it not be able to recover these backups in the event of a crash.
11.04 is now fairly “old” and remember that distro’s can operate 6-12 months behind the curve in terms of applications … so it wouldn’t surprise me of your Office product was a couple of years out of date - which can be critical when it comes to document formatting as our friends at M$ have been continually trying to stop document compatibility.
So - upgrade, if not your Ubuntu, download the latest copy of Libre direct and see if that helps!
Thanks Mark and Mad Penguin for the heads up, I appreciate all your help and would like to give you guys a thumbs up for giving me a very detailed information on how am I going to fix this issues, but apparently I’m already at home when I read all of your messages and would definitely do this the next day at the office. Again, I would like to apologize on being a noob specially on this type of OS cause I’m really having a hard time this past few days due to migration from Windows to Ubuntu.
I’ll keep you guys posted. Thanks a may GOD bless the both of you.
What about Linux Mint 14? Would you recommend Mint as OS in an office environment? Because I’am currently doing some experiments on this OS and I found out that it’s a bit similar to Windows and has a user friendly interface also a lightweight system requirements for an OS but it only runs on LXDE, do correct me if I’m wrong. What do you suggest, do I need to stick with Ubuntu and upgrade all our workstations to 12.04 or can I change my OS to Linux Mint for ease of use and low system requirements?
Firstly Mint 14 doesn’t use the LXDE desktop environment … are you sure you’re not thinking of Peppermint ?
Mint 14 is only available for download with these 4 desktop environments - Cinnamon, MATE, KDE, and Xfce … only the Xfce variant will significantly lighter on system resources than Ubuntu.
It’s Peppermint that uses the LXDE desktop environment, which is also a “light” desktop environment.
As for an office environment - Ubuntu/Mint/Peppermint they’ll all do the job, and as they’re all Ubuntu based they all have access to the same software … so it’s really a personal choice … but if I were you I’d go with the versions based on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS … so this means Mint 13 or Peppermint 3 (or obviously Ubuntu 12.04), those versions will be supported for longer.
On another note:-
but it only runs on LXDE
What is “only” about LXDE ?
My current favourite distro (Peppermint) uses LXDE … sure LXDE can be slightly more work to configure, but the benefit is it’s a VERY light/quick desktop that doesn’t hog half your system resources before even opening an application.
You did not mention if your computers are all Laptops or Desktops 32bit or 64bit systems or a mix?
Personal I run mint 13 because it will be supported until 2017 on our two newest computers and peppermint 3 on our old laptop. They are all used at our company office.
I would upgrade your LibreOffice to version 4 we have been testing it and it is very good.
