ubuntu

[dwtt]

Anyone here have ubuntu running on a laptop along with MS Windows XP? I bought a used laptop to bring with me when I move overseas and wanted to try using linux, but the only thing holding me back is compatibility with different document types, especially MS Office documents that other people might send me.

[NSR500]

I've got a few dual booting systems right now with Ubuntu running.
The only issue with Linux is probably just gaming. I have no issues with Office Documents at all because OpenOffice covers most document formats you'll get.

[G1500]

As mentioned, Open office will open your word and excel documents just fine.

[redrex]

I third the Open office vote. I am, or at least used to be, an IT professional (I'm management now And I can tell you that you can't really go wrong with OO. I'm an avid excel user and I've tried other free and next to free options and nothing comes close.

[Ricky-Ray]

Open Office should be just fine. I did run into one excel spreadsheet in office 2010 format where it opened fine in open office version of excel but when it came to print it would only print one row per page. Opened it in Office 2010 and printed it there and it was fine. Not sure what caused that but that's the only time I've see so far where Open Office didn't work correctly with MS Office format documents.

[bartt]

There is another way..
Load a decent OS as a foundation and run VirtualBox, then you can run whatever OS you want in a virtual machine on top of the foundation. No dual boot or any other crap.

For instance I am typing this on a dedicated XP Vm running on top of 64 bit win7. In addition I have another XP VM running for a project and can load any of 4 different Ubuntu VMs at any time I choose. Each is completely separate but they can all share files via my Lan or a share on the foundation OS.

Once set up the VMs are portable to other boxes too..
HTH...

[blakdawg]

I have a dual-boot XP/Ubuntu netbook and it works fine with either partition. Someday soon I'm going to switch to OS X or Ubuntu and run VM's for the last Windows apps that won't die.