gnome? kde? windowmaker? koffice?

[knaapie]

Hi,

I have installed Ximian Gnome on my system. I was now looking for a nice Office suite and would like to try out KOffice.
However, that is written for KDE.

Would it be a problem if I installed it?

A further question; how does this work with X, Window Managers and Desktops anyway. I'm not sure if I understand correctly how all of this separate stuff works together.

Thanks.

[George Kilroy]

I don't use KOffice, so someone correct me if I'm wrong:

KOffices uses the KDE desktop to run. You can easily run KOffice while you are using Gnome, but KDE (or some parts of it) must be installed on your computer, because KOffice requires some of KDE's files.

If your computer is slow like mine, you might not want to run KOffice with Gnome. At least on my setup, KDE applications took a lot longer to open when opened outside of the KDE environment because an initialization file had to run first. It is my understanding that KDE runs this file when KDE starts up, so perhaps there is a way for Gnome to be told to do the same at startup.

[ 03 January 2002: Message edited by: George Kilroy ]

[Jomboni]

George is right about one thing at least, KDE apps tend to run slower when not run in KDE. They'll still run though. You may also have some issues with fonts in kde apps. When I ran KWord in Gnome, under RH 7.2, none of the fonts would work. When I run it in Gnome under Mandrake 8.1, it works fine. I'm still not sure why.

I'm not entirely sure if you need KDE installed, but at the very least you'd need the KDE libraries. I'm sure somebody who has a bit more experience can answer that part.

As far as other office solutions - if you don't mind big programs, try OpenOffice (http://www.openoffice.org).

It's based on Star Office, and for me at least, it's more stable, and faster, and it's probably the closest competitor to Microsoft Office right now.

[sheek]

Gnome comes with an office suite.. and there is also ..... StarOffice if you dare .....

[Ludootje]

yes koffice works under whatever you want, but you should certainly check out startoffice6.0beta..
as for your second question, how x and wm's etc works, see this topic here: "Gnome vs Windowsmaker???? Confusion (http://www.linuxnewbie.org/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic=7=002407)"; Joeri Sebrechts explains that very well

[ 04 January 2002: Message edited by: Ludootje ]