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I'd like to know about MS Office possible alternatives for Gnu/Linux with possibility to write in math mode, that is to write equations; at least angle signs and triangle signs.

I am going to send some midterm problems to students. I expected that they will write the answers in MS Word and all be happy.

But now I realize that not all students have Windows, some of them probably are free persons and have Gnu/Linux on their machines.

I also wanted to see who is an author of the document (in file properties) to prevent cheating.

I can not obligate them to write in LaTeX or something similar.

I need something MS Office like user friendly but with possibility of simple math mode.

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    You may also find useful alternatives with a search in softwarerecs.stackexchange.com Commented May 22, 2020 at 16:29
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    I find Latex far more friendly than a word processor. (e.g. I can see why a word is in bold). Commented May 22, 2020 at 17:18
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    Can you give some examples of what you are sending them. It may help with finding the best solution. Commented May 22, 2020 at 17:19
  • @ctrl-alt-delor If we me and you find LaTeX in at least in some cases more friendly it does not mean that we can obligate students to write in latex on exam. The bad is I lately realized the possibility of Linux Users among my student that's why I am asking for suggestions. I have no time to organize something valuable since the exam is today. It seems I am going to stick LibreOffice. Commented May 23, 2020 at 2:09
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    Just wanted to add that viewing metadata like the document's author is not a great way for detecting academic dishonesty. Commented May 24, 2020 at 1:15

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Alternatives to MS Office (and, IMHO, better than it!) are Apache OpenOffice and LibreOffice.

But if you do not need WYSIWYG features and need to work with a lot of math equations I'd recommend giving LaTeX a try.

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  • Ok, probably I should explain it above, in the question I will make edit. Commented May 22, 2020 at 16:20
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    @dr_ unix.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic specifies If your question is about:... Applications packaged in *nix distributions (note: being cross-platform does not disqualify)... then you're in the right place Is Apache OpenOffice packaged in *nix distros? Commented May 22, 2020 at 16:31
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    @K7AAY of course it's available for *nix! It used to be the standard word processing suite for most Linux distributions before libreoffice (which is a fork of OpenOffice, anyway). Commented May 22, 2020 at 16:47
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    Yes, it's available but is it, as the On-Topic rules specify, packaged in a distribution, as LibreOffice is? Commented May 22, 2020 at 17:15
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    @EvgenyKuznetsov I recommend you stick with LibreOffice. Although originally based on Apache OpenOffice, LibreOffice has 9 years of improvements and updates over OpenOffice, including speed improvements, many bug fixes, greatly improved MS Office compatibility, and localization in many languages. Apache OpenOffice has very few developers that struggle to make even minor updates and security fixes. OpenOffice is functionally dead at this point. In any case, I think nearly all Linux distributions ship LibreOffice by default anyway. Commented May 23, 2020 at 1:36
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Have you considered allowing some on-line alternatives. Google Docs has a formula editor, but my personal favorite is mathcha.io. I think the Mathcha user interface is both intuitive and fast. You enter symbols and formula elements as text by prefixing them with a backslash, for example, a fraction is entered \frac. You don't need to use a mouse at all. Picking individual elements using a mouse, like it is done using a math editor in a typical office application, is very tedious and slow.

Also, maybe you could ask your students if they have any preferences, and then approve a few alternatives based on their input?

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  • If I could examine them online we have moodle platform for this which controls IP to prevent cheating (We decide not to examine them online since we can not know who has continuous internet connection at home and who has not this option, this is university policy). By the way with google docs or something like this I can not control anything. With editor installed on desktop I can control some sort of electronic signature at least. and it is little bit hard to cheat, plus time limit makes it possible to do what I need to do I guess. Let's see what happens I have exam after 2 hours. Commented May 23, 2020 at 5:53

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