« Return to: The Linux Experiment
| SOFTWARE | Linux program | Verdict | Comments |
| Office suite | OpenOffice.org | THUMBS UP | A great alternative to Microsoft Office, with all the tools you expect from a robust suite. However, some tasks took extra clicks, and some features (such as tracking changes) were a little cumbersome. |
| Office suite | Microsoft Office via Wine | THUMBS DOWN | Of all Office apps running in Linux, Word was the shakiest, and cutting and pasting in Excel wasn't always smooth. On the other hand, PowerPoint behaved reliably--revising slides was straightforward. |
| E-mail client | Ximian Evolution | THUMBS UP | The program looked and behaved uncannily like Microsoft Outlook, and it worked like a charm. |
| Browser | Mozilla | THUMBS UP | No contest here: Mozilla in Linux ran perfectly and felt the same as Mozilla in Windows. |
| Instant messaging | GAIM | THUMBS UP | This all-purpose program worked seamlessly with AIM, Yahoo Messenger, and others. Unlike some Windows clients, it won't do video or voice chats. |
| MP3 player | Totem | THUMBS DOWN | Basic app required a lot of manual work to find music files or reorder the tracks. On the bright side, though, there were no annoying pop-up ad windows. |
| Simple image editor | Flphoto | THUMBS UP | Allowed easy, basic improvements to images; it also arranges photos into albums and creates slide shows. Offered far fewer options than do Photoshop Elements and Paint Shop Pro. |
| Personal finance | GnuCash | THUMBS UP | A very intuitive program with a clean interface, it provides all the essential tools to manage your money. |
HOW WE TEST: We test rewritable DVD drives under Windows XP Home on PCs with 1.67-GHz Athlon XP 2000+ processors and 512MB of DDR SDRAM. To test each drive, we use the bundled DVD video authoring, mastering, and packet-writing software; we use vendor-supplied media or Verbatim media. Tests conducted by the PC World Test Center. All rights reserved.