[expat_panama]

Me and some buddies here are putting together a workstation and need the open source software that does the kind of stuff MS Office does (--word processor, spreadsheet, html editor, and presentations).  One additional problem is that we want it all in Spanish, but that part might just be easier if I instead just teach the guy English.

At any rate, can anybody here steer me to a thread with comments and download/torrent links?

[L_Von_Mises]

Me and some buddies here are putting together a workstation and need the open source software that does the kind of stuff MS Office does (--word processor, spreadsheet, html editor, and presentations). One additional problem is that we want it all in Spanish, but that part might just be easier if I instead just teach the guy English.

Almost any Linux distribution will have the features that you are seeking. Open Office comes with almost all distributions and can be installed on any of them. It does just about everything MS Office does and you can open MS documents and save them as MS documents. Regarding Spanish language, I beleive, and someone may correct me, that most of the major distributions offer a choice of several languages.

For a good rundown of most distributions available go to DistroWatch.

You may want to try out some Live CD/DVDs to help narrow down your choices. DistroWatch also posts links to reviews of the distributions as well. They also have links to where you can download the disks.

The ability of the distribution to recognize and use your hardware may be a big factor in your decision. I have a preference for SUSE and Mepis (that's just me) but am going to install Mandriva 2007 on my new laptop primarily because it recognizes all of my hardware which no other distribution was able to (not a Linux friendly laptop but it was cheap).

One nice thing about Linux is all the choices available and once you install one you can customize it to your liking.