On 2013-11-06 16:22, Pete Wright wrote: > So, should she be able to do in LIbre what she would be able to do in MS > Office? (I am assuming the college does not make much use of the > fanciest bells and whistles that probably differentiate the two > suites.)
The short answer is yes. Reality is more complicated due to human nature; read on. > The most recent bump she has hit is a biology assignment to make graphs > out of data; the examples (samples) are provided as txt files and the > instructions are to use Excel. Our first attempts to do the job with > Libre calc and/or base failed. Her instructor, via email, just says > "use the computers at school if you don't have Excel." There are quite a few people, and there are college professors among them, who believe that Excel is the only acceptable program for a particular workflow, and nothing (including evidence to the contrary) will change their belief. Graphs are a very common example of that. The differences between Excel and Open/Libreoffice charting functions have derailed many a Linux desktop migration, not because Libreoffice is less capable, but because the menus are in different places, the options are called different things, etc. Your best bet, if you're serious about using free software but want your daughter to get a passing grade out of this professor, is to take a drive to the school, once, with either a laptop with Libreoffice on it or a USB key with Libreoffice Portable. Have your daughter do the assignment on Excel while you watch and figure out how to duplicate what she's doing in Libreoffice. Save your work in an .xls or .xlsx file and bring it up in Excel to verify the chart looks right. Then she'll know how to do charts in Libreoffice that the professor will accept (unless s/he's so maniacal about Microsoft that s/he combs through the file looking for references to competing office packages, which seems farfetched, but then, you do live in Microsoft country). I've heard of professors in grad schools who've rejected papers in double-spaced Courier with no other formatting simply because something tipped them off that they weren't produced in Word, and I live almost 3,000 miles from Redmond. I'm hoping your daughter's prof is less crazy. (For what it's worth, I've never owned a license to any MS Office program, and haven't had a PC running Windows (or anything else that didn't involve a Linux kernel) in 11 years now. My clients and vendors apparently don't care as long as they can read my files.) Good luck. Rob -- ubuntu-studio-users mailing list ubuntu-studio-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-users
