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Productivity Applications and Backup

Office Suites

LibreOffice 6.x
LibreOffice logo

LibreOffice is bundled with LinuxMint.  It also works very well with Microsoft Windows.

If your version is out of date on Linux — for example, it may still be on the 5.x branch (check current version at www.LibreOffice.org/download ), you can add the “fresh” branch PPA to your LinuxMint system by adding ppa:libreoffice/ppa to your software sources (in the terminaL:  “sudo add-apt-repository ppa:libreoffice/ppa && sudo apt-get update” ).

Follow adding the ppa by “sudo apt-get upgrade” (or work your way through your graphical update and/or software manager) and your system should download and install the current, “fresh” version of LibreOffice.

LibreOffice has just about perfect compatibility with Microsoft Office.  Sometimes to ensure shared documents look exactly the same you will need to get copies of the fonts your collaborators have used.

 

Certain edge cases will require MS Office.  MS Office 2016 will work fine on Windows 7, 8.x and 10.

On Linux you will need to use WINE to establish the required operating environment. Office really pushes the Windows feature set and the 64bit version of Office seems to give Wine some troubleIt may be easier to run Windows in a virtual machine or a separate partition than to try installing Office on Wine on Linux.

MS Office Home & Business
MS_Office_Home_and_Business

Like most software from Microsoft, Office has a ton of versions. The one linked above is licensed for use either in home or business scenarios. This is a one-time "perpetual” buy-out license which allows the product to be used as long as the user likes on a single computer.

There is also a Home & Student version for strictly non-commercial use.

Office 365 is Microsoft's subscription-based license. The subscription needs to be renewed every 365 days to enable continued use.

Each of the MS Office license options linked above are “key card” purchases.  This means Amazon will ship you a license key and you will download the software directly from Microsoft.  By changing options on the linked pages you can also receive a disk or a “direct” download with license.  Those options will always cost a bit more.


Labels

gLabels
gLabels logo

Some aspects of labels can be a hassle in LibreOffice.  gLabels is an excellent application which is specific to making labels.


Backup

luckyBackup
luckyBackup logo

luckyBackup is a graphical front end to the excellent rsync command line tool available in Linux/Unix.  It makes it easy to make ad-hoc or scheduled backups.

 

rclone
rclone logo

rclone is similar to luckyBackup, but it has the additional benefit in that it can back up data to the cloud.  You can backup to your own server(s) or to excellent backup-specific services such as Wasabi.  Backups can be encrypted before they leave your computer so that they are completely secure.

rclone is a command line tool.  As such it is particularly well-suited to scripting.  If you need a little assistance to get going there is an excellent graphical front end: RcloneBrowser

Additional details coming soon!



Page Last Edited: Tuesday, June 12, 2018
Page First Published: July 24, 2015

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