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Alternative Software
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This section gives some pointers to where you can get started using Open Source replacements for some of the common software that you probably use every day. An alternative to WindowsYou don't have to be running Linux to use Open Source software. Many products will work on Windows and MacOS X. If you do decide to run Linux then you can run both operating systems on the same machine. A commonly used version of Linux at UWA is Red Hat (another is Debian). Information about Red Hat can be obtained here. The more freely-available version of Redhat is call Fedora. The latest versions of Debian and Red Hat can be obtained from the UWA FTP server A demo version of Linux that can be run from within Windows can be obtained on CD from UCS. For further information go to the web site www.knoppix.org An alternative to Microsoft OfficeOpenOffice (www.openoffice.org) is a free replacement for Microsoft Office. It includes a word processor, spreadsheet tool and a powerpoint-like presentation software. It can read and write using the Microsoft Office document formats and so exchanging documents with others using Microsoft Office is not a problem. OpenOffice can be downloaded from the UWA FTP server. Sun Micrososystems provides a commercial version of the same software called StarOffice which is available to run on UWA owned computers free of charge. An alternative to Internet ExplorerMozilla (which is the OpenSource version of Netscape) comes with Redhat Linux but can be run on Windows and MacOS X. The latests version is called Firefox. See www.mozilla.org) |
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