Rather than crossover office we now use VirutalBox and have a Windows XP installation with Office for those of us who can't live without it. You can backup the virtual machine (which is simply a big file) for the virtual OS before you do an upgrade of your host OS (Ubuntu in my case) and copy that back, so you do not need to do a full Windows XP install every time you upgrade the host.
Your linux disks (including NFS mounts) can be seen from the virtual windows machine, so you can have your files accessible in both operating systems. Also, with two monitors you can have one with your linux desktop and one with your virtual windows desktop, and you can even cut and paste between the two. Very useful when writing papers etc. With NX you can then use that setup elsewhere (at home) as well, without having to duplicate the whole lot. The virtual desktop works ok via NX, things like coot are a bit more tricky. Johan Dr. Johan P. Turkenburg X-ray facilities manager York Structural Biology Laboratory University of York Phone (+) 44 1904 328251 York YO10 5DD UK Fax (+) 44 1904 328266 On 29 September 2011 13:07, Lucas <lucasbleic...@gmail.com> wrote: > 2011/9/29 Simon Kolstoe <s.kols...@ucl.ac.uk>: > >> Generally I think that the extra money spent on a Mac pays for less time >> spent messing around >> installing software, sorting out dependencies, swearing at the less than >> effective office software etc. >> that plagues Linux which is more of a "computer experts" platform. > > For some years I had dual-boot systems, but since the only thing in > Windows that I can't live without is their Office suite, what I've > been doing for a year or two is having an easy to maintain linux > distribution in my desktop (I use Kubuntu since Dapper Drake, and by > that time it seemed to be the only distro which was anything near > "easy to use", but there are probably other good options today) while > running Microsoft Office via Crossover Office, a very cheap little > program for running windows software on linux (they also have a > version for Mac). It works just perfectly, and it means I only need an > Office license (no need to install Windows, as some do in virtual > machines). > > Also, back in 2003 setting up the video card was a nightmare even in > more user-friendly linux distributions. It seems not to be the case > nowadays, it's been a long time since I had that feeling for > destroying the computer with a sledgehammer after trying the nth > version of xorg.conf and still being unable to run coot. > > Lucas >
