Can Libre Office be installed on an external drive. ?

users
#21

Hi :slight_smile:
The crucial thing is that LibreOffice can be installed alongside MS Office. You
are not asking them to stop installing MS Office (it would be nice but lets be
realistic). They might let you have LO on your main machine there at the very
least. Hopefully they might allow it on all the machines in your area. I think
that is what i would push for. Tell them that you need LO. Tell them that LO
is to MS Office what FireFox is to IE. That they can have both with no
troubles.

I'm never sure about younger geeks. One way of finding out might be to ask them
about iPads or Macs in general. People that use Gnu&Linux are likely to have a
very different response from Windows fanboys. Even if they don't like Macs
their criticisms of it are likely to hint at "other OSes" or "other systems".
Often, geeky types are already using Gnu&Linux systems at home, or on their
phones or mobile devices perhaps without really realising it. Not all Windows
fans are completely closed to other systems. A lot of people like to play with
new gadgets and in the last couple of years that will have exposed them to other
OSes.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#22

Hi :slight_smile:
For an email client i would probably recommend a non-OpenSource but still free
(i think) program called "The Bat".

For my own requirements ThunderBird or Claws are fine. Claws is much smaller
and lighter-weight so it might be faster but maybe has less functionality.
Going the other way, Evolution mostly seems fine. "The Bat" is an extremely
sophisticated email client for Windows. Apparently it does work in Wine, if you
are on Gnu&Linux or Mac (or possibly on Bsd?). There are probably other
email-clients that are also good but i think it's something where you might have
to look outside of OpenSource at the moment. Be wary about using it tho because
there is no way you could return to Outlook, ThunderBird or such-like after
getting used to it.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#23

[quote]
Be wary about using it tho because there is no way you could return to Outlook, ThunderBird or such-like after getting used to it.
[unquote]
I was wondering what you mean by this? I know that TB will run the email files from the Outlook Express folder. Did that before and just needed to locate the OE email folders and point TB to default to that folder[s]. Had to do that for a friend with a Win2000 system.

Now, if you mean you would not want to go back to Outlook [or Express if your system still uses it], I say I would not want to. Thunderbird works better for my needs. Sure, you had to get use to the way it does things over the Microsoft way, but what else it new.

For whatever reason Ubuntu insists that I use Evolution, if I click on an email link in Firefox, and tries to get me to set it up. I do not know why this is since I have TB as my default email client.

Never heard of Claws or Bat before. Been using Thunderbird for 5-7 years now and do not want to give it up.

#24

Hi :slight_smile:
I meant that you wouldn't want to return to something that doesn't have it's
level of sophistication.

Claws is a lot like ThunderBird and i think it has been ported to Windows too
but it's made for low-spec machines. I have heard a lot of good reports about
it and only 1 bad so it might be worth testing out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claws_Mail
http://www.claws-mail.org/downloads.php
http://www.claws-mail.org/win32/
However, if you are happy with ThunderBird then it's a good one to stick with
and going to Claws might feel like a small step backwards.

Ahh, i found this now
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_e-mail_clients
It seems that The Bat does cost money :frowning: Also it needs to be configured because
the default headers get blocked by spam-filters. Apparently one reason why
people recommend The Bat is that it is easy to configure. However i am going to
have to re-consider now that i know it costs money.

It also looks as though Claws tries to do a lot more than just emailing. I had
forgotten that SeaMonky and Opera have email-clients built-in.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#25

I had Firefox before my co-worker - with whom I have to share the work
computer - blew it away because the IT guy standing over his shoulder told
him it was "illegal". Mind you, they gave everyone Chrome, so we can use
that. I have kept OOo/LO thus far, but the future is bringing changes I
don't like. I have been a fairly active advocate, even if I have been a
little quiet the last couple years.

The portable will probably have to suffice in my case. But trust me, where
I can, I do advocate, implement, use and teach about libre software.

I have subscribed to the documentation list, and plan to eventually start
helping with editorial/writing tasks. I've got a busy period coming up, but
should be able to contribute a little something looking toward October.

Regards,
Don

#26

Hi :slight_smile:
Sorry i couldn't help there. Some people have some really weird ideas! Chrome
is more controversial but at least it's faster. Sometimes there is too much
risk of losing what you already have. I used the tactic you are planning on one
time at least and it worked out fairly well. It might be good to test the
portable apps thing in advance if you can.

Good luck and regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#27

I'm already currently testing it. I'm writing this from Portable Firefox.
I just plug in my external drive (with quite a few of the portable apps
loaded) and go. It actually seems to work very well so far. :slight_smile:

Regards,
Don

#28

Hi :slight_smile:
Fantastic :slight_smile: I usually struggle on locked-down systems so having portable apps
could really help me when i'm out and about.
Thanks for testing this.
http://portableapps.com/apps/office/libreoffice_portable
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#29

I don't know what's got "stuffed up" - you're just fine. Apologies
absolutely not necessary. I hope I didn't 'sound' angry. :slight_smile:

LibreOffice Portable works great, btw. Slightly slower than normal, but not
bad. Anyway, there is also GIMP, VirtuaWin (I can't stand not having
virtual desktops), and others. I notice I had to manually download larger
files, and then use the Portable Apps installer to "install" them. I really
like it.

#30

I notice some people are talking about Thunderbird and other alternatives to
Outlook. I should probably remind some people that Outlook is not just a
mail client. It has a Calendar, Tasks manager, voting system, and a few
other titbits that all exist within the same application which gives it a
very high level of integration. The problem is that this integration is very
important for a lot of people in the corporate world, and an ad hoc bundling
of various applications to do the same stuff but not quite as well
integrated might not sit well with some people, particularly if you can't
give the same level of functionality.

Outlook is what it is not just for the email side of things.

#31

external drive. ?

I notice some people are talking about Thunderbird and other alternatives

to Outlook. I should probably remind some people that Outlook is not just a
mail client. It has a Calendar, Tasks manager, voting system, and >a few
other titbits that all exist within the same application which gives it a
very high level of integration. The problem is that this integration is very
important for a lot of people in the corporate world, and an ad hoc

bundling of various applications to do the same stuff but not quite as well

integrated might not sit well with some people, particularly if you can't
give the same level of functionality.

Outlook is what it is not just for the email side of things.

This is precisely why outlook is the only MS application I have installed on
my work machines. Apart from development environments, VS 2003,2005,2008 &
2010 and what comes bundled with windows stupid .... I mean windows 7. Most
of which I don't use anyway.
With the entire company using an MS exchange server and sharing calendars
and contacts I'm forced to use outlook. Let's face it, not everything
microsoft do is bad. Just most things.

The problems with Microsoft come when you have bulk licencing agreements and
are forced to install their products to comply with their licences. Then
management says "We're paying for the licence, we may as well use it." This
makes change very difficult.

Cheers,

From

Bruce Carlson.

#32

Looks like we have an M$ fanboy. Perhaps U should try some of those opensource recommendations first and see if they don't perform before taking a side

I migrated from Outlook to thunderbird (it now comes with Lightning on Fedora). I have my calender, tasks and mails working fine and I'm sure there are a lot of plugins for many other tasks that immigrants would want to use.

I was also using evolution for all that until, well, it got too buggy. But before then Evo was just another Outlook. I'm happy with status quo as of now ... Thunderbird is very stable

#33

Hi :slight_smile:
It's all good :slight_smile: Err, are the virtual-desktops like the work-spaces in
Gnu&Linux? Trying to work without them is really frustrating.

Usb-sticks do tend to be slower than hard-drives so there will be a performance
hit. I think increased speed is why some sticks are so ridiculously expensive.
I think there is a limit with usb 2.0 on just how fast it can go but the type of
cheap sticks i buy seem far below that speed.

The speed hit is likely to be when you first open a particular app because after
that it will have stuff cached in Ram and/or swap/virtual-memory so actual usage
should be about the same. Saving documents should be about the same too so it's
really only when you first open the app i suspect.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#34

It has never ceased to amaze me how a select few individuals in key positions in corporations are permitted to form a self-sustaining interlocked stance on the use of MS Office suite due to their inability to accept they are able learn other ways of conducting business.

MS Office has been constructed to permeate the worlds major corporations because, among other things, it offers this group an easy transition from one company to another. I suspect their main selling point in interviews is that, 'yes' they know how to use Outlook to send email and use its calendar to keep track of which meeting they are supposed to be in next.

When consulting on available options they always balk at implementation of more cost effective (read: FREE) platforms and when doing so whine, 'well the other guys all use it'. Of course as they actually voice it in terms like, 'all our business associates use it therefore we must as well'. Self-supporting hogwash. Personally, I stepped away from Office because, when testing Thunderbird ten years ago, found emails deleted in Outlook, were never actually removed from the PST file. They were simply hidden from the User.

I suspect those at the executive level, like so many others, are simply reluctant to try a new platform out of fear they won't be able to understand how to use it. Mentality akin to what makes children check under the bed for monsters. Fear.

As for Microsoft, if they lost the strangle hold they have gained through the Office Suite of applications. They very well may tumble from the lofty heights and actually have to produce a competitive product. They don't have to do so with their operating systems because of the back room deals made with PC makers by which they enforce their own rule of, 'a PC has to come with an Operating System'.

So my reply is tethered properly to this threads topic: Yes, Libre Office can be installed on an External Drive. The folks at PortableApps.com have two 'LibreOffice Portable' packages available. One for English only (120mb DL, 260-413mb installed) and one for all languages (145mb DL, 516-776mb installed). Whose features are described in part as:

LibreOffice Portable is a full-featured office suite that's compatible with Microsoft Office, Word Perfect, Lotus and other office applications. It's easy-to-use and feature-rich, performing nearly all of the functions you'd expect in an office suite, but at no cost.

They also offer support on how to copy your local LO settings to LO Portable. It requires Users find and copy: /C:\Documents and Settings\[user]\Application Data\LibreOffice\/ to the LibreOfficePortable\Data\settings\ directory. So the difficulty level requires one find the \LO\data folder on the external drive and perform a copy function.

#35

Hi

  I'm using Evolution and it has e-mail, contacts, shedule,
jobs and notes. I think it is a complete program for business and for
personal use. The only think that I would think improve is that notified
with sound and message to the screen when it's time to do something
(jobs for ejamples).

Regards,

Jorge RodrĂ­guez

#36

Hi :slight_smile:
It is great to hear that the portable apps uses a fairly normal folder.  I had assumed they hid  them in some horribly compressed file on an almost unreachable path.  So, this means that a LibreOffice installed on a hard-drive could be made to point at the same config folder on the usb-stick.

So, it's only the extensions stored in those folders that might not work on the different platforms. I thought extensions were in the same format on all platforms but apparently not.

LibreOffice has such a tiny and insignificant share of the market that MS has not even started to try fighting against it.  They will once LO starts to threaten their bottom-line but we are a long way off from that.  Although there are a few things that cause us problems they really haven't even flexed yet.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#37

Onyeibo Oku-2 wrote:

Looks like we have an M$ fanboy. Perhaps U should try some of those
opensource recommendations first and see if they don't perform before
taking a side

See, this is what I don't like about the open-source community. If I express
an opinion that suggests things are NOT completely 100% great about
open-source software and that maybe, just MAYBE, Microsoft knows what
they're doing with regards to software at times, I'm labelled a fanboy.

Jesus fucking Christ look at your self. Microsoft DO make good products at
times. If you keep your blinders on and don't accept some people LIKE using
something such as Windows 7 for example, open-source software will never
compete. I don't understand why I'm now the enemy for not following the
religious fevor of some zealots.

#38

Atomic

Onyeibo Oku-2 wrote:
>
> Looks like we have an M$ fanboy. Perhaps U should try some of those
> opensource recommendations first and see if they don't perform before
> taking a side
>
See, this is what I don't like about the open-source community. If I express
an opinion that suggests things are NOT completely 100% great about
open-source software and that maybe, just MAYBE, Microsoft knows what
they're doing with regards to software at times, I'm labelled a fanboy.

Jesus fucking Christ look at your self. Microsoft DO make good products at
times. If you keep your blinders on and don't accept some people LIKE using
something such as Windows 7 for example, open-source software will never
compete. I don't understand why I'm now the enemy for not following the
religious fevor of some zealots.

I personally (emphasis personally) prefer and promote FLOSS/Linux when
appropriate. However there are situations where Windows applications are
better particularly in gaming and some cad/cam software.

My objections to Windows is it is relatively slow compared to many Linux
distros (I have dual boot system). Also, for me, almost everything I do
can be done easily in Linux. But not everyone is a position to were this
is true. However, this does not mean that software is automatically bad
because MS produced it.

Many of the legacy problems in Windows actually can be traced back to
IBM blundering when they introduced the PC in 1981. IBM was set to
release the PC and did not have an OS, so they asked MS to provide one
on short notice. MS located, licensed, and later bought the rights to
DOS. Backward compatibility means that some poor design decisions in the
original DOS are lingering in Windows to this day. If anyone really
wants to point fingers about Windows, ask IBM how they planned for users
to use a computer without an OS, I have often wonder about this.

#39

Onyeibo Oku-2 wrote:

Looks like we have an M$ fanboy. Perhaps U should try some of those
opensource recommendations first and see if they don't perform before
taking a side

See, this is what I don't like about the open-source community. If I express
an opinion that suggests things are NOT completely 100% great about
open-source software and that maybe, just MAYBE, Microsoft knows what
they're doing with regards to software at times, I'm labelled a fanboy.

Sorry for the use of the word "fanboy". Probably not the best
description but there seemed to be a biased polarization from the way
you compared Thunderbird and Outlook. Read the quote below (you own
words):

I notice some people are talking about Thunderbird and other alternatives to
Outlook.

It implies that those 'talking' or looking at Thunderbird are making a
mistake. Naturally, anybody would ask why?

I should probably remind some people that Outlook is not just a
mail client. It has a Calendar, Tasks manager, voting system, and a few
other titbits that all exist within the same application which gives it a
very high level of integration.

And that was the answer. Is that well researched? Comparing products
without a fair experience of both is what makes one look like a
'fanboy'. I use Microsoft Products too and as Planas pointed out, their
OS hosts fantastic games. As an Architect, I use Autodesk products a
lot. We don't have products that compare well with those in Linux world
except for Bricsys' BricsCAD (but that's just for traditional 2D
drafting).

The problem is that this integration is very
important for a lot of people in the corporate world, and an adhoc bundling
of various applications to do the same stuff but not quite as well
integrated might not sit well with some people, particularly if you can't
give the same level of functionality.

Here is where some traces of valid point came in,... but you left it off
too soon leaving your subjects to weigh things with the features you
mentioned earlier (which is mostly in Thunderbird). However, I'm not
sure about Thunderbird is to what extent it can be automated as Outlook
(like most M$ product) supports automation via VBA. I am also not sure
about collaboration possibilities like with Microsoft Exchange, but that
because I haven't looked into those areas. So far, I get all I need
from Thunderbird -- especially those you sited as features in Outlook

Jesus fucking Christ look at your self. Microsoft DO make good products at
times.

I wasn't disagreeing with that. But I do have a problem with that first
sentence. "Jesus" and "Christ" are names held sacred by some people.
Putting "fucking" in-between? ...well, please this thread has people
from different spheres of life. Consider all.

If you keep your blinders on and don't accept some people LIKE using
something such as Windows 7 for example, open-source software will never
compete. I don't understand why I'm now the enemy for not following the
religious fevor of some zealots.

Its like telling the people looking at LibreOffice Calc to consider that
M$-Excel has a lot of features that appeal to the corporate world,
without recognizing that most of the examples sited to support your POV
are actually functional in Calc!

#40

Am 05.09.2011 02:41, Charles E. LaMonte wrote:

Greetings Ladies and Gentlemen, Is it possible to install Libre Office on an
external hard drive ? The computer will have either Windows Operating System or
Linux Operating System. Thank you.

If you really want to be prepared for Linux desktops with neither OOo nor LibreOffice and for Windows desktops as well, then you should divide your disk in 2 partitions with one file system for WIndows and another file system for Linux, install http://portableapps.com/de/apps/office/libreoffice_portable on the Windows file system and copy the LibreOffice folder from your Linux installation to the Linux file system.
Adjust bootstraprc according to Regina's suggestion and make sure that the user profile is world writable. For the program files read-access is sufficient.
Not sure if and how both programs may even share the same user profile. Once upon a time I managed to do this with Thunderbird 1.x.
Anyway, with such a disk the respective operating system can mount the respective file system and launch your own copy of LibreOffice if the host system allows for execution from plugged block devices.