[Dclug] "The Simpsons" and the XO laptop

[larry.howe at comjet.com]

Quoting Dan Parkins <dan.parkins at gmail.com>:

> DC Novalugs;
> Greetings from a newbie and first time post.  Please excuse the Linux
> ignorance.
>
> We received our XO just before Xmas and were generally pleased.  My six year
> old loves the wireless and Record Activity.  He's even
> investigating Simcity.  Besides some querks with the cursor, the only issue
> we're having is with external non-XO generated files.
>
> I tried importing MS PowerPoint files with no success.  I'm pretty sure I
> read somewhere that you could do that.  If not, then I'm looking for a
> solution that supports developing presentations for the XO without using the
> XO (my fingers are a bit too large for the keyboard).

If it's an MS Office 2007 file (pptx) extension, then it isn't  
compatible with Linux or MS Office 2005 or anything else but Office  
2007 (MS calls this their "open format"). Office 07 does give you the  
option to save as a regular ppt which will be openable in Linux and  
other versions of MSO.

As others mentioned unless you have OOO on the XO, you're out of luck  
anyway. You may be able to install something on the XO that will do  
presentations, but I'm not sure what that would be.

> Since I'm mired in a Windows environment, that would be my preference for
> now.  In the near future, I'll need help transitioning into the dual boot
> world.

Dual boot sucks, IMHO. Windows doesn't like to share and will freak  
out if the master boot record gets changed. Linux is both a great  
desktop and a great server, but it doesn't make a very good server if  
it's not running half the time. Far better to pick up a recent used PC  
and install linux on that. If you ask around (or check freecycle.org)  
you'll probably find someone giving one away. All you need is the CPU.  
You can use a KVM switch to switch back and forth between the two  
machines, or you can install Cygwin on your PC and use it to display  
the linux PC's desktop.

> Much thanks.
>
> -Dan
>