Productivity

Productivity

Productivity software availability has exploded in recent years, and commercial developers have been producing excellent software for the Linux platform. The Firefox browser, Opera, and Mozilla are freely available (with some licensing restrictions) as well as the OpenOffice productivity suite, KOffice and a host of others, which often come standard on Linux distributions. Many distributors package commercial software with their distributions, and many commercial producers offer free downloads for Linux. Linux productivity packages can usually read and write files from productivity packages on other platforms; Linux has always been at the leading edge of compatibility and openness.

Linux happily coexists on the same machine as other operating systems including Windows or Mac OSX, and Linux easily accesses the files stored by other operating systems. You can use one of many virtualization techniques to run Linux and Windows or any other operating system (even another version of Linux) on the same machine, simultaneously. You can run many Windows programs on Linux via Wine, or commercial helper products such as Crossover Office or Cedega, both of which even support the popular game Word of Warcraft! There are countless Linux distributions which run beautifully from a CD or DVD without the need to install the operating system. This makes it possible for new Linux users to see if they like Linux without erasing their old OS or having to buy another computer.