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[Phys-L] Re: Excel substitute



Jeff Weitz wrote:
not all of them have Excel installed on their
home computers, and it's a pretty pricey program. Does anyone know of a
shareware or freeware substitute that would work well for intro physics
and that can exchange files with Excel?

Well, I run Linux ... Debian Sarge in particular.

For a spreadsheet, I use _gnumeric_. It is
-- to a quite good approximation indistinguishable from excel.
-- in some ways better (e.g. more math functions).
-- in some ways not as polished, especially when it comes to
the less-widely-used features.

It can read and write .xls files, among other formats.

To answer the obvious but not-quite-asked question: there is also
abiword, a word processor for Linux, which can read and write .doc
files, among other formats.

The only thing I even halfway miss about the Windoze environment is
Eudora, which is IMHO far and away the best mail user agent. Under
Linux I use mozilla -mail, which gets the job done, although the
user interface fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the
way down.

For a school machine, I would seriously recommend flushing Windoze
entirely and installing Linux. That is a big win in terms of price,
security, performance, and everything else.

The only stumbling block for doing this on students' home machines is
that home machines get used for gaming, and only a fraction of the
games run well under Linux.

Debian installation is easy enough for typical high school kids to figure
out. (Adults might have to ask for help the first time :-).
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