I just installed LibreOffice on my main operating system, Linux Mint 9 LXDE.
Mint 9 LXDE came with Abiword pre-installed, so I used it for awhile. I wanted to stay away from OpenOffice because of what was happening with it. And I had been waiting for LibreOffice to go official, which it did several months ago. I was just slow to get around to installing it.
But today I installed it, using the command line since that is the easiest way. LibreOffice works great. It opens quickly, it opens all the file formats that I have, while Abiword had trouble with .docx files, and it is easy to use. Of course, all of that makes sense, since LibreOffice was developed by some of the same people who did OpenOffice.
For people who use another operating system, and who never, or rarely, use the command line, it is not hard. It is easy to find the commands needed to do just about anything that needs to be done. I found a great tutorial at the Linux Mint community just by searching how to install LibreOffice in Linux Mint. Mint user Alexio had posted the exact commands needed for the install, and it worked fine. And that was even with my system being LXDE, which is much younger than Gnome or KDE, for which the tutorial was primarily written.
People in Linux communities are usually very helpful. Virtually anything that needs to be done on a computer using Linux has been done by someone, and they have posted instructions on how to do it.
But for anyone in Southern Colorado who wants to try Linux (I use and recommend Mint) but does not want to search for commands and programs, go on over to http://blackmarketcomputers.com and send me an email or give me a call. I can show you how to use Linux, and I can get you set up. Once you learn it, Linux really is the best way to go.
