Computing Facilities in the Department of Physics

Star Office, a Linux based Office Suite with MSOffice compatibility

This Office Suite brings MSOffice type applications to the Unix desktop, currently it is only available for linux so users must either be logged onto a linux workstation or bring up an xterm from a linux PC on their desktop.

PLEASE DO NOT USE HERMES to run star office, it has enough to do running the web server, ftp and dhcp. These are all system functions and slowing up hermes means slowing up the entire Physics Network, I will "kill off" any soffice processes I see on hermes, so be warned! If your group does not have linux machines then the only machine available for soffice is "green" which resides in rm123.

One big advantage is that Star Office allows users to read microsoft documents and spreadsheets, it also has a very good drawing package.

First time users of Star Office will need to run /usr/local/Office51/bin/setup to generate default "dot" files and enter some information about yourself. To start Star Office, simply bring up an xterm from a linux box and type "soffice &" or "soffice filename.doc &" to read a word document you may have saved. It can also be started automatically from the netscape mailer by editing the applications preferences, see Netscape - editing application preferences for details.

Please have a look at the printer setup shortcut when you first start Star Office, it allows you to set default printers which will need to be changed if you work at different locations.