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snow, and the slowest is the rough ground. The latter will actually slow you down when you slide over it, so try to avoid it. Also, be sure to flap Tux's fins only when you are below the yellow line in speed; otherwise, you will be slowed down. You can also pick up a great deal of speed by flying through the air. You can use angled sections of the race track as ramps to propel Tux through the air. Upon his descent Tux picks up a great deal of speed and also avoids obstacles on the track that might slow him down. Of course, keep in mind that flying too much might mean missing valuable herring you need to pick up along the course.

Chapter 8. Office Suites and Personal Productivity

Linux has come a long way since the early days. When people started to use Linux not just for tinkering with the system, but rather in order to get actual work done, various kinds of servers such as email or web servers were the normally used applications. Typical desktop and personal productivity applications such as word processors, spreadsheets, or collaboration tools were mostly unknown on Linux.

This situation has changed fundamentally. A variety of office suites and other personal productivity applications are available, and this chapter describes some of the options. The focus is on OpenOffice, probably the most feature-complete office suite available for Linux today, but we also talk about other options, as well as collaboration tools.

Using OpenOffice

By now, OpenOffice has become the leading full-function free and open source office suite program for GNU/Linux and is included by default on most distributions, including SUSE, Red Hat, Debian, and others.

This should not take credit away from the other free and open source office suite development projects—KOffice and AbiWord come quickest to mind—but OpenOffice gains the stage here due to the relative maturity of its code base and the elegance of its native open XML file format (which even KOffice has) as well as the suite's ability to run on Windows and its compatibility with the popular proprietary file formats.

"OpenOffice" Versus "OpenOffice.org"

Certain conventions of language used in this chapter would be confusing if they are not highlighted. The term "OpenOffice," or its abbreviated form "OOo," typically refers to the software, the code, the product, the office suite itself. In referring to the development project, the terms "OpenOffice.org" or "OOo project" or "OpenOffice.org development project" apply exclusively. To make things even more confusing, there is also StarOffice, which is based on the same code base, but sold by Sun Microsystems as a commercial product.

The Modules of OpenOffice

One among several hallmarks of OOo is the tight integration of its word processor, spreadsheet, and all other modules , which leads to a strong consistency in features, menu placement, and ease of use. The OpenOffice modules are listed in Table 8-1.

Table 8-1. The modules of OpenOffice

Module name

Function

Label under File → New

OOoWriter

Word processor

Text Document

OOoCalc

Spreadsheet program

Spreadsheet

OOoImpress

Presentation editor

Presentation

OOoDraw

Graphics editor

Drawing

OOoHTML

Web (HTML) editor

HTML Document

OOoMath

Math formulas editor

Formula

We cover OOoWriter, OOoCalc, and OOoImpress in this chapter, omitting the remaining modules because they are less frequently used and their features and functions are well supported in the leading reference texts and online documentation for the users who still depend upon them.

OpenDocument and OpenOffice 2

This section of the book was written for OpenOffice 1.1 and therefore will be most helpful to users of Versions 1.1.1 through 1.1.5. By the time of publication, however, the OpenOffice.org development project will have released OpenOffice Version 2 worldwide.

Generally, OpenOffice 2 looks and feels more like the modern versions of Microsoft Office. This should help smooth transitions to the open source office