Linux and Power Point

[javasaurus]

We're getting some new equipment here, and the manufacturer produces the software to run the equipment for Linux operating system. Everything else here is Windows based.

How difficult is it to get images/text from a Linux system to a Windows system? Is it as easy as saving a .jpg and mailing it to yourself? If the Linux system is not on a network, are there cross-platform thumb-drives? What about compatibility between Power Point and the Linux equivalent?

Any info or links will be appreciated!

Thanks!

Comments

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

All Linux kernels/distributions since "2.2.42" (some 7-10 years old now) can read a FAT or FAT32 file system, the standard file system for DOS, Windows 3.1, and Windows 95/98. FAT32 allows for more characters in the name over the old 8.3 but does so by hiding the fact that it's really an FAT/8.3 file system with a wrapper at the driver/os level. In other words, a "hack".

At any rate, all flash drives and memory cards are either FAT or FAT32 'cause it's portable, fast, and out of patent so there's no licensing restrictions on them. You can plug it in and most modern linuxes will recognize the device and make it available for mount, and some desktops will actually go ahead and auto-mount it much like they do with cdroms.

OpenOffice can probably read most PPT files, though there are always font/color/layout problems with any translation. OpenOffice's output of PPT files are likely more correctly preserved when finally imported to PowerPoint.

There's no unix2dos conversion needed the way one would with text files. Same with word processing documents and spreadsheets as long as they're exported in the windows format by OpenOffice.

JPG files are what they are and are totally portable. PNG files are what they are but not ever system handles some of the more obscure aspects (like alpha channels for transparency) the same way. IE6 I know ignored the alpha channel, and I have no idea of IE7 fixed that (and given that they fixed so little else with regards to standards, like their CSS model, I doubt it).

plain text documents have to be converted and "dos2unix" programs are all free and easily found for both platforms. hit your google, and some Linux distros already have them. If doing FTP, you can say "ascii" mode and the FTP client will translate it on the way. all that changes is that dos uses "\r\n" (carriage return / line feed, old printer codes in ASCII) for a newline where-as unix only uses \n. Without the \r, programs that are "stupid" (Notepad, for example) don't know what to do with them.

[dacuteturtle.livejournal.com]

Options are myriad.

You could just connect to a windows share and drop things.
You could create a windows share on the linux box and yank things off.
You could use Filezilla to connect via SSH and yank the file off.
Thumb drive or other FAT or NTFS removable device.

Your exact needs will dictate the best course of action.

Filezilla via SSH is likely the easiest network transfer method to set up with the fewest gotchas. Other methods have better advantages, but also have more gotchas and more decision points.