Misc. Ramblings

First, some background information. Installing an upgrade version of just about any application requires that you have a previous version already installed. In the case of MS Office 2000, when installed from a CD, you can point the install program to your floppy drive to check for that earlier version. In my case, I have a copy of MS Office 4.3 on diskettes. So when the Office 2000 install does the check of my c:\ drive and doesn't find anything it asks where to look. Usually, I then insert the floppy disk in drive a:\ and point the install at that. Thus satisfied, the install trundles on its way.

But there is a problem if you try this procedure while running under Xandros Business Desktop version 2.5 and the included CrossOver Office. The problem is Xandros/CrossOver will only show your fake c:\ drive, as opposed to a mount of your actual c:\ or a:\ drives when dual booting with Windows. Hence, you can't point the Office 2000 install at your floppy drive or anywhere else for that matter.

My quick and dirty work-around was to copy the contents of the floppy disk to the root of the fake c:\ drive. I copied the files to the root of the fake c:\ drive because the install (or CrossOver, I don't know which) would not allow pointing to any of the sub-directories, real or otherwise. Note that the fake c:\ drive is found in $HOME/.cxoffice/dotwine/fake_windows/ (or, I think, in /opt/.cxoffice/dotwine/fake_windows/ if you are installing as the root user. Since I didn't install as root I don't know for sure). Note that the Xandros file manager must be set to display hidden files and folders to see the .cxoffice folder.

The solution I have may not be the most elegant so if you have a better way, let me know. Otherwise, this is more information than I've found on the rather skimpy data found on the Xandros site, CrossOver Office site, and their respective forums.

Speaking of skimpy information, if anyone knows of a Xandros article that gives step-by-step procedures on removing Xandros and restoring your hard drive partition to what it was before installing I would like to know where it is. All I can find is information about deleting the partitions and restoring the Master Boot Record but nothing about changing the partition size without loosing the data already there (when dual booting with a pre-existing Windows installation).

On a related note, Xandros, like other current Linux distributions, can not write to an NTFS formatted partition. Hence, while Xandros can read from your Windows partitions, it can not write to them (even if the partition is mounted as read/write). While I don't know for sure, I would assume this is how things work (or don't work as the case may be) when you try to write to a Windows server or PC with shares formatted as NTFS. If this is true, then using Linux as a Windows client may not be a wise move unless you never need to copy to or edit files on such a Windows NTFS partition.

With that, I think I've paid forward for the year and can get back to my regularly scheduled programming. [g]