| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3] > | Moving to Unix Thread poster: Terry Richards
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Michael Beijer 
United Kingdom
Local time: 16:50
Member (2009)
Dutch to English
+ ...
| a few questions | Feb 14, 2016 |
John Holland wrote: Michael Beijer wrote:
The problem with using Linux, at least for me, is that most of the Word documents that my client send me (99% are .docx and .pptx these days) are very large and contain all manner of complex formatting, tables, etc. I have tried many times to open and edit these documents in programs other than MS office (the list is long and interesting), on various OSs, as well as on Windows, and ran into problems almost every single time. Compatibility is the only reason why I run MS Office on Linux. LibreOffice (as opposed to Apache OpenOffice, which is not updated as frequently) works for 95% of what I need to do, but that last 5% is often determinative. I do use the ODT format for all of my own work. Luckily, it really is not difficult to install and run MS Office in a Linux environment. I've been doing it for years.
Just out of curiosity, how you get MS Office to run under Linux? Also, is it possible to run Dragon NaturallySpeaking on Linux, and if not, are there any decent speech recognition solutions available on Linux these days? I have come to rely on Dragon very heavily these days, and can no longer imagine a world without it
| | | | | More information | Feb 14, 2016 |
Michael,
For installing MS Office on Linux, please see the two links I posted above, in my first response to this thread. One link provides a fairly detailed description of installing MS Office 2010 and 2013 using CrossOver, a good solution I've used in the past. The other link from the Ubuntu forums explains how to install MS Office just using Wine. That post is from 2011; things run even better now with the recently released 1.8 version of Wine.
If one is not using Cr... See more Michael,
For installing MS Office on Linux, please see the two links I posted above, in my first response to this thread. One link provides a fairly detailed description of installing MS Office 2010 and 2013 using CrossOver, a good solution I've used in the past. The other link from the Ubuntu forums explains how to install MS Office just using Wine. That post is from 2011; things run even better now with the recently released 1.8 version of Wine.
If one is not using CrossOver, it can be helpful to use something called Winetricks, a script also available in the Ubuntu repositories, to install some needed dependencies for MS Office such as msxml6.
https://github.com/Winetricks/winetricks
For Dragon NaturallySpeaking, check out the information on the CrossOver website:
https://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/crossover/dragon-naturallyspeaking-10
That looks pretty promising. Unfortunately, I have no experience with it, or with other speech recognition programs. It's just not something I've looked into as yet.
Hope that helps! ▲ Collapse
| | | | Dan Lucas
United Kingdom
Local time: 16:50
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
| More options | Feb 14, 2016 |
John Holland wrote:
Luckily, it really is not difficult to install and run MS Office in a Linux environment. I've been doing it for years.
It's interesting to hear first-hand experiences like this. I'm generally pretty happy with Windows - and have a ton of money and time invested in their ecosystem - but I do sometimes think I would like to be independent of any one platform vendor, including Microsoft. And I would quite like to use Emacs in the operating environment most suited to it and have access to tools like fetchmail.
Previously the sticking point has always been Office because I absolutely need to be able to deal with those files transparently and, as you say, it's often that 5% that counts with Word and Excel. These days I would also have to consider SDL Studio, but that would probably be okay; it seems quite well-behaved.
Then you just have to put together a launcher like Synapse, a file manager (Midnight Commander?) and PDF tools and the like and you're mostly done. OCR might be an issue, but again Wine might provide the solution.
Might be time to put a dual-boot solution on my PC again...
Regards
Dan
| | | | Egmont Schröder
Germany
Local time: 17:50
Member (2013)
Chinese to German
+ ...
| Think about virtualization | Feb 15, 2016 |
When I started as a translator, I also tried to use Linux (Ubuntu), but I gave up mainly because of compatibility problems between Open Office and Microsoft Office. Sometimes files simply didn't open or the layout got corrupted, so I lost some good clients.
I am currently using Windows again, but I can't get my hands Linux which I am running via dual boot on the same PC.
My goal is to set up a Linux system which runs Windows in a virtualization (a free software for this ist VM... See more When I started as a translator, I also tried to use Linux (Ubuntu), but I gave up mainly because of compatibility problems between Open Office and Microsoft Office. Sometimes files simply didn't open or the layout got corrupted, so I lost some good clients.
I am currently using Windows again, but I can't get my hands Linux which I am running via dual boot on the same PC.
My goal is to set up a Linux system which runs Windows in a virtualization (a free software for this ist VM Ware or Virtual Box), where I can use all applications and CAT tools for translations. I am going to use another virtualization only for surfing in the internet (Linux or Windows). When this one is infected, it can easily be dumped and won't affect the host system.
I think this will be a very safe und stable system, with all advantages of both systems. And virtualization is also a good way to try out Linux on your system. ▲ Collapse
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esperantisto
Local time: 18:50
Member (2006)
English to Russian
+ ...
SITE LOCALIZER | For starters,… | Feb 15, 2016 |
…those who are thinking about moving to Linux should refer to Marc Prior’s Linux for Translators site. Some parts are a bit outdated, but generally it is the best starting point. And, of course, browse through Proz.com software comparison tool.
As for M$ Office compatibility, well, problems in compatibility between different M$O version can be ev... See more …those who are thinking about moving to Linux should refer to Marc Prior’s Linux for Translators site. Some parts are a bit outdated, but generally it is the best starting point. And, of course, browse through Proz.com software comparison tool.
As for M$ Office compatibility, well, problems in compatibility between different M$O version can be even worse than between M$O and OpenOffice. Anyway, installing M$O under Linux is not a big problem, as it has been pointed in previous posts.
What else? Nothing special. With Linux, you plug a USB stick or a DVD and in half an hour you get a system ready for real work, not a bare-bone desktop that requires installing tons of other things. No viruses, trojans etc. Just a system that looks and behaves like you need and not like some greedy bill or steve wants. ▲ Collapse
| | | | esperantisto
Local time: 18:50
Member (2006)
English to Russian
+ ...
SITE LOCALIZER
John Holland wrote:
GoldenDict should be provided by most GNU/Linux distributions.
GoldenDict in repos will most probably be some outdated version like 1.0.1. You’d better grab sources from Git and compile a fresh build.
| | | | Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 16:50
Member (2008)
Italian to English
Terry Richards wrote:
I am considering moving over to the Unix side of the Universe.
Obviously, I would have to be able to do the same (or equivalent) things that I do now. This primarily breaks down to:
- Working with MS Office documents
- Using a CAT tool (currently WordFast Classic but I would be willing to change)
- E-mail
- Web browsing
Why not consider the Mac operating system, which is based on Unix and does all those things (and more)?
Too easy?
http://superuser.com/questions/49434/how-unix-is-mac-os-x
[Edited at 2016-02-15 09:04 GMT]
| | | | | GoldenDict in the Ubuntus | Feb 15, 2016 |
esperantisto wrote: John Holland wrote:
GoldenDict should be provided by most GNU/Linux distributions. GoldenDict in repos will most probably be some outdated version like 1.0.1. You’d better grab sources from Git and compile a fresh build.
Ubuntu has a git build in its repositories:
http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?suite=default§ion=all&arch=any&searchon=names&keywords=golden%20dict
The build in the current (non-LTS) version of Ubuntu is based on 2013 code. It might not be the newest, but it's certainly newer that 1.0.1.
But of course you're correct that it's possible, and even easy, to compile using more recent source code. I haven't done so because I've had no problems with the version from Ubuntu.
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Yes, Mac is a option but surely more expensive wath BSD's or linux. I work with libreoffice and .docx documents practically without problems. Only have problems with a very large .docx with much more tables.
Regards
| | | | Dan Lucas
United Kingdom
Local time: 16:50
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
| Let's avoid silly labels | Feb 15, 2016 |
esperantisto wrote:
Just a system that looks and behaves like you need and not like some greedy bill or steve wants.
May I suggest that we avoid labels like "M$" in this forum. It gives the impression of a try-hard hipster student rather than a professional.
Would you consider a client to be professional if they called you "e$peranti$to" because they think you charge them too much or that you're only in it for the money?
Let's give credit where credit is due. Apple, Microsoft and Linux each make desktop computing easier and more productive for different people and in different ways.
Regards
Dan
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Eugenio Garcia-Salmones wrote:
Yes, Mac is a option but surely more expensive wath BSD's or linux. I work with libreoffice and .docx documents practically without problems. Only have problems with a very large .docx with much more tables.
Regards
LibreOffice is great (I prefer it to MS Office) and there are very few problems with working with the DOCX format in LibreOffice Writer. I was thinking that my number of 95% earlier was too low - it's more like 98% LibreOffice Writer, with MS Word used mostly for formatting checks at the end when needed. PPTX is another matter, but that is a small part of my work.
In any case, I really just wanted to stress that having access to MS Office in GNU/Linux is not an insurmountable problem.
There are many reasons why a person could want to switch to a free in the sense of FOSS (free and open source) operating system. Here's one person's account of his motivations and experience:
https://backchannel.com/i-moved-to-linux-and-it-s-even-better-than-i-expected-9f2dcac3f8fb :
"On a spring day in 2012, I shut down my MacBook Air for the last time. From then on, my primary computing environment — at least on a laptop computer — was GNU/Linux. I was abandoning, as much as possible, the proprietary, control-freakish environments that Apple and Microsoft have increasingly foisted on users of personal computers..."
Also, no thread about possibly moving to Linux would be complete without a link to this classic:
http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm
| | | | Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 16:50
Member (2008)
Italian to English
Eugenio Garcia-Salmones wrote:
Yes, Mac is a option but surely more expensive....
Not if you factor in all the extra time to make some other Unix-based system do all the things you want. The MacOS will do it all out of the box. But I suspect you don't really want something easy.
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Dan Lucas
United Kingdom
Local time: 16:50
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
| Time really is money | Feb 15, 2016 |
Tom in London wrote:
Not if you factor in all the extra time to make some other Unix-based system do all the things you want.
I have to agree. So often people don't count the price of their own time.
If a person is interested in tinkering anyway then the time spent isn't an issue, because it's satisfying in itself. For such people (and I think the OP is one) Linux is a great choice, but for 95% of general users a Mac makes far more sense.
Dan
| | | | Michael Beijer
United Kingdom
Local time: 16:50
Member (2009)
Dutch to English
+ ...
– Felix
– memoQ
– Studio 2014/2015
– KnowBrainer
– SpeechStart+
– Vocola
– Dragon
– AnyCount
– TO3000
– xBench
– PerfectIT
– tlTerm
– tlCorpus
– dtSearch
– ASAP Utilities
– TransTools
– Adobe Acrobat
– All my legacy Dutch-English, English and specialist dictionary programs
– TMLookup
– Ron... See more – Felix
– memoQ
– Studio 2014/2015
– KnowBrainer
– SpeechStart+
– Vocola
– Dragon
– AnyCount
– TO3000
– xBench
– PerfectIT
– tlTerm
– tlCorpus
– dtSearch
– ASAP Utilities
– TransTools
– Adobe Acrobat
– All my legacy Dutch-English, English and specialist dictionary programs
– TMLookup
– Ron's CSV Editor
– GT4T
– ManicTime
– IntelliWebSearch
– AutoHotkey
– Boxifier
– EmEditor
– DirectoryOpus
– XYplorer
– ABBYY FineReader + ABBYY Screenshot Reader
– AlignFactory
– SynchroTerm
– Holdkey
– FastKeys
– ArsClip ?
No thanks! Think I'll stick with Windows.
[Edited at 2016-02-15 11:42 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Only if it makes sense to you | Feb 15, 2016 |
Linux is an option, not a requirement. There are workflows and personal preferences that are more adapted to a virtual Windows environment on Linux, or simply to the Mac or Windows environments themselves.
The original question here is not whether everyone should change, but rather whether there are any specific problems - notably around MS Office file formats and CAT tools - for freelance translators using non-Windows and non-Mac operating systems.
There are those of u... See more Linux is an option, not a requirement. There are workflows and personal preferences that are more adapted to a virtual Windows environment on Linux, or simply to the Mac or Windows environments themselves.
The original question here is not whether everyone should change, but rather whether there are any specific problems - notably around MS Office file formats and CAT tools - for freelance translators using non-Windows and non-Mac operating systems.
There are those of us who do use these OSes. There are several CAT tool options (four have been mentioned in this thread), and MS Office file formats can be dealt with both by using LibreOffice and by installing MS Office (at least on Linux - I don't know about FreeBSD). Modern distributions don't even require that much tinkering, although a period of acclimatization is required, especially for seasoned users of other operating systems.
Thus, it is manifestly possible to work as translator without Windows, if one desires. It's a viable alternative for those looking for a non-proprietary approach.
[Edited at 2016-02-15 12:32 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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