Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

WillE · Joined: 19 Jun 2013 Posts: 6 Location: Harrogate, England

I love my puppy! Unlike the canine variety it generally does as it's told and costs me nothing. Sorted.

As a professional writer and musician I use my computer for the basics: word processing, web and email. The Puppy experience is fast and stable. It does what I need and runs like shit off a shovel in the RAM of my modestly-specified netbook, doubling its battery-life against the clunky, hard-drive-hogging Windows 7 installation I have. Indeed, the only reason I haven't sacked the latter is on the principle that I paid good money for it (including an upgrade to 2Gb of RAM in order to run the Home Premium version, more fool me).

Sure, Puppy isn't perfect. Firstly, and most important to me, I find AbiWord rather buggy. It does the job but occasional glitches piss me off. Not as much a M$ Word pisses me off, but I still see room for improvement.

Yes, I could install Open/Libre Office, but since I have no need for the rest of the suite beyond Writer it would kinda defeat the Puppy principle. Is there a more stable but still fully-featured stand-alone word-cruncher that anyone could recommend? (I grew up with Locoscript and still yearn for it!)

Then there's that email client that sounds like a sexually transmitted disease. It does that job and I love not having to rely on webmail. I also love the way it sets up your Googlemail account automatically, But it keeps telling me that an upgrade is available; when click on a link, I get a page in Japanese (I think: it could be Manderin for all I know) so I daren't click on anything.

Finally, epdview. I tried opening a pdf file in full screen mode today and the only way I could get out of it was by holding down the reset button on my computer, with l the consequent problems of losing my current session and damaging my file system. I'm not stupid but I really couldn't find a way out.

But hese are minor niggles. Congratulations on the best OS since RISCOS Wink

Burn_IT · Joined: 12 Aug 2006 Posts: 3106 Location: Tamworth UK

I use Softmaker Office, which can be run from a USB stick as a portable app. as well as having Windows and Linux versions. It is not free, but is cheap and has interesting licence terms (very open) About £20.

I also have a copy of Kingstone Office free which is Windows only. There is a pro version which costs around 60 dollars/Euros

Both the above will read and write? MS Office formats as well as the usual formats. Both are fairly similar to Office to use but are far smaller installs.

WillE · Joined: 19 Jun 2013 Posts: 6 Location: Harrogate, England

Thanks, Burn_IT. I'll give them a try.

BTW, searching this board I note that there's actually an SFS avaiable for Kingston Office at http://www.adrive.com/public/85NbyD/kingston-9-0.sfs

slenkar · Joined: 10 Jul 2009 Posts: 228

ive been using puppy only, for several months, havent had any problems, very pleased

666philb · Joined: 07 Feb 2010 Posts: 3177 Location: wales

hi WillE

what puppy are you using? as the problem with epdfview is a bug with JWM (joes window manager) that affected some puppies. it affected the fullscreen option on all apps. This shouldn't be a problem in later puppies.

also instead of resetting the computer, you can press 'ctrl, left alt and backspace' to drop to a prompt, then type xwin to get back to the desktop

linuxbear · Posted: Thu 20 Jun 2013, 14:48 Post subject:

There are other writers using Linux as well .Some of them are using writer's apps which allow them to keep their drafts, research and final versions all in one place. These apps often have the ability to save in HTML as well as formats like doc, kindle and epub. Cory Docterow uses Ubuntu, but I think he writes his books with VI or some other text editor

DaveS · Joined: 09 Oct 2008 Posts: 3726 Location: UK

I think that might be KINGSOFT Office. Use it all the time on my Android devices. On Puppy it renders fonts light years better than Libre Office. Which is nice . . . . . . .

Burn_IT · Joined: 12 Aug 2006 Posts: 3106 Location: Tamworth UK

Dewbie · Joined: 15 Apr 2010 Posts: 1779

WillE wrote:

raffy · Joined: 25 May 2005 Posts: 4839 Location: Manila

Also there:
FreeOffice (English only) in sfs format for Puppy Linux

rokytnji · Joined: 20 Jan 2009 Posts: 2287

Shoot if just wanting a writer with some features instead of a office suite.

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=78199

Unless docx is a requirement that was not mentioned.

Edit: for mail if not using seamonkey mail I use

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=73939

Bananarama · Joined: 17 Dec 2012 Posts: 5

According to my experience SoftMaker Office is unrivaled: slim, fast, highly compatible to all kinds of Microsoft Office formats, comfortable UI, free support. Costs you $69 for three licenses, or ~$40 as upgrade. You can try it out free for 30 days, have a look at the SoftMaker website.

They also offer a lite version for free, which has less features and can only read, but not save docx, xlsx, pptx, but if you need an office suite for basic use, FreeOffice is great, and compared to LibreOffice it has only 57MB instead of ~200MB size.

freeoffice.com

Dewbie · Joined: 15 Apr 2010 Posts: 1779

Bananarama wrote:

WillE · Joined: 19 Jun 2013 Posts: 6 Location: Harrogate, England

WillE · Joined: 19 Jun 2013 Posts: 6 Location: Harrogate, England

PS I did consider the sfs version of FreeOffice, which is fine if you want the whole thing. But you have to install it to select the components if, say, you just want to install Text Maker with en_gb dictionary.