3 programs for Windows that you can use online in Linux

If half of the energy that Linux users put into arguing with Windows users about the best operating system, we had put into improving it, it would have been the year of Linux on the Desktop long ago.

It must be recognized that in matters such as cCompatibility with proprietary formats or the availability of games has been greatly improved, although it is far from being a perfect situation. That is why we comment 3 Windows programs that can be used online in Linux.

The truth is that there are programs that have no open source alternative and that cannot even be used using Wine. Nevertheless, thanks to the cloud, we can use them without having to change operating systems.

Let's make it clear. None of these programs is free software, and in many cases you must pay a license to use them.

Microsoft Office

If you attended your high school or university studies at the beginning of the last decade, surely you have suffered the experience of sharing text documents or spreadsheets with your classmates or teachers. Things like tables, lists, or macros never worked properly in OpenOffice.

Some distributions such as Ubuntu included in their repositories Word or Excel document viewers that worked under Wine. But that did not work when editing them.

Thanks to The Document Foundation and LibreOffice, the issue of compatibility has been greatly improved. And if LibreOffice does not work, we can use WPS Office, Softmaker Office or the first of the online alternatives; Google documents.

But also we can use the online version of Microsoft Office, the best known and most popular of the office suites.

Unlike the desktop version, it does not include a database manager. The list of services included:

• Word: Word processor.
• Excel: Spreadsheets.
• Powerpoint: Presentation program.
• OneNote: Smart notepad.
• Form: Online form builder
• Calendar: Calendar manager.
• Contacts: Contact manager
• Sway: Interactive Content Creator
• OneDrive: File storage.
• Outlook: Mail client and task manager.

Some things to keep in mind.

All these online applications can interact and synchronize with the corresponding desktop versions for Windows and Mac.

Of course there will be differences between using the desktop version and the online version.

For example in the Word user interface page layout, margins or page breaks, covers or headers and footers are not displayed. Additionally, many types of objects are displayed as placeholders. The page background cannot be modified either.

Regarding the files, those that are password protected cannot be opened or modified. Nor can the destination of the links be changed.

In the case of Excel files that require the use of Active X, form controls, digital signatures will not be displayed or in some cases data connections.

Some functions may behave differently in the online and desktop versions.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC

The company has long planned to abandon classic desktop applications for cloud-based services. One of the first steps is taken with its application for editing, organizing, storing and sharing photos Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.

The program allows store photos in albums, share them on Twitter, Facebook and via the web and label them.

Some of the available effects allow us to change the size of the photo, modify the color profile, change the contrast, modify the focus and adjust lighting, saturation or intensity.

Abby finereader

For a long time Abby Finereader was the only reason that prevented me from uninstalling Windows from my computer. It was undoubtedly the best optical character recognition program for Windows, and on Linux there was no worthwhile alternative.

Optical Character Recognition Programs automatically identify from an image, symbols or characters that belong to a certain alphabet, and then store them as data. The result can be used with a text editing program.

Abby's own developers had actually ported their technology to Linux, but no one was interested in adding a graphical interface to it.

With the free version you can recognize up to 10 pages per month. The result can be exported to Microsoft Office, pdf, epub and fbr formats. The storage can be done on the computer or in a cloud storage service.

The big problem with Abby Finereader Online is that it does not have an intermediate product. It goes from the free version with 5 or 10 pages per month to the corporate subscription that allows you 5000 pages per year with an annual payment of $ 149.

Both Microsoft Office 365 and Adobe Lightroom CC are available under monthly payment licenses, at affordable prices and without any type of restrictions of use

More information

• Microsoft Office online.
• Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC.
• Abby Finereader online.