Have you played with portable apps (http://portableapps.com/)? Libre office works on windows and linux. Past that, maybe something hosted (like google docs, but maybe a bit more Free).
On Thu, May 22, 2014 at 12:59 PM, David Rysdam <da...@rysdam.org> wrote: > My kids and I are 100% Linux at home. (My wife has a Mac, which none of > us touch unless we absolutely have to.) At school, it is unfortunately > obvious the kids use Windows. Also, starting in middle school, the > school expects every kid to carry a USB drive back and forth so they can > work on projects. > > I've had some problems providing support for this, to put it mildly. For > something like a paper, the solution is obvious: write in plain text and > dump into Word at the last minute. (The solution is obvious, but no > child of mine has listened to me yet. That's something I don't think > GNHLUG can help me with.) But for something like PowerPoint, the > solution isn't so obvious. They have to be able to edit it in both > places, during in-class work periods and as homework. > > I don't know what the school expects people to do if they can't afford > Office at home. > > However, I just had an idea. You can get 128GB USB drives on ebay for > ~$20 now. Why not install an emulator-based (as opposed to bootable) > "live CD" image on there that they can then mount the rest of the USB > drive with and edit their work in Linux *even at school*? > > They probably won't be able to get on the network with it, which is fine > since the host Windows OS could handle that. > > Transferring documents (for printing, say) may be a problem, although I > assume the live CD images somehow manage it. Oh wait, to reap the > benefit you'd have to print *from Linux* which probably won't work even > if you had the right printer driver set up. Well, print at home, I > guess. > > I don't think security would be a problem unless there's now some way to > prevent someone from starting an app off their USB drive. > > The only real issue I can think of horsepower: Does the school hardware > have the oomph to support this hack? I'll have to ask my kids what the > school has. > _______________________________________________ > gnhlug-discuss mailing list > gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org > http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/ > -- * Patrick **Flaherty *| * w:* 978 983 6597 *e:* patrick.flahe...@weather.com
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