Linux® Bible, 2008 Edition: Boot Up to Ubuntu®, Fedora®, KNOPPIX, Debian®, openSUSE®, and 11 Other Distributions

Chapter 21. Working with Words and Images

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Using OpenOffice.org

• Using KOffice

• Using AbiWord

• Taking documents from Windows to Linux

• Creating documents with Groff and LaTeX

• Creating DocBook documents

• Printing documents with Linux

• Displaying documents with ghostscript and Acrobat

• Working with graphics

• Using scanners driven by SANE

Computers are great for collecting and recording music, playing games, and communicating with far-off lands. While these functions are popular and exciting, one tool has been considered essential since the earliest days of personal computers: document-creating applications. From ultra-simple text-only editors to feature-rich groupware systems, you'll be hard-pressed to find a PC without this basic functionality. Such software is so important that Microsoft makes billions of dollars each year selling productivity tools for the Windows OS.

Linux users are, on most levels, no different from any other PC user. They need to write letters, make presentations, write books, and sort information in spreadsheets. For the Linux user, a copy of Microsoft Office is simply not in the cards yet, but there are many powerful tools from which to choose.

OpenOffice.org is a powerful open-source office suite available as a download and as part of many Linux distributions. Based on Sun Microsystems' StarOffice productivity suite, OpenOffice.org includes a word processor, spreadsheet program, presentation manager, and other personal productivity tools. In most cases, OpenOffice.org ...