Hey everyone,
I thought I would share what I have been working on recently.

Sadly this past semester I was forced to scrap my lean debian system and use OS X + a windows 7 vm to get my school work done.

Being an economics major, I'm constantly using excel, and ran into issues using libre office calc. Most professors also insist upon posting their assignments in .docx format, which was really difficult to deal with on my linux machine that lacked a real WYSISYG word processor. Another difficulty I ran into was that class presentations are often done with powerpoint, I had originally planned to use the suckless tool sent for this, but professors like to have a copy of the presentation to view and are used to getting .ppt files to view in powerpoint.

Because of the switch I had to make, my productivity and workflow both suffered. I had to use the mouse a whole lot more. Instead of neat tiles, I had to drag and dig through windows to find what I was looking for. There was always a new update to be installed which would pop up in the corner, there was always something flashing around on screen. I knew I needed to get back to my linux set up.

Now that I have some more time over break, I want to prepare a linux set up for the spring semester.

What I want:
* Avoid using a virtual machine and the OS X / windows operating systems
* Find vim plugins that can ease in essay writing (live preview of markup!)
* Devise a way to handle .docx files (conversion?)
* Figure out how to get the functionality of excel through the command line (perhaps a program like sc?)
* Devise a way to handle .xls files
* Transition to using sent for presentations
* Editing pdf's on linux?

In particular I'm afraid of being unable to replace microsoft excel.

If anyone has advice or has experience using linux during college I would love to hear!