I am currently trying to open a .doc file in my workstation via terminal. This is my code:
root@ojt:/home/ojt/Desktop# cat arts_life.doc
and it gave me a bunch of unknown characters together with the contents of the doc file. What I actually want to happen is that it will open the actual file in its designated software, say for the arts_life.doc, I would like to open it in the OpenOffice.org Word Processor.
I am a totally newbie in Linux and would like to explore in it. I'm also doing some researches here but I will highly appreciate some help Thanks guys. Godspeed.
Thanks. Yes I have done that. And it worked like magic. By the way, I don't understand why using sudo is dangerous (really, I'm a Linux dummy ). I might do some research first.
It runs openoffice as administrator. This is a big deal.
User accounts don't just organize your files, they exist to protect each other from unauthorized or accidental access. They can only access files they own or are allowed to access. Now, administrator can access anything on demand, up to and including your hard drive's boot sector, just by writing to the wrong files! Running any program as root means that, if you make a mistake, the consequences could be dire:
# "creative uses of rm", http://kluter.home.xs4all.nl/funnies/Section1.html
From: tzs@stein.u.washington.edu (Tim Smith)
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
I was working on a line printer spooler, which lived in /etc. I wanted
to remove it, and so issued the command "rm /etc/lpspl." There was only
one problem. Out of habit, I typed "passwd" after "/etc/" and removed
the password file. Oops.
I called up the person who handled backups, and he restored the password
file.
A couple of days later, I did it again! This time, after he restored it,
he made a link, /etc/safe_from_tim.
About a week later, I overwrote /etc/passwd, rather than removing it.
After he restored it again, he installed a daemon that kept a copy of
/etc/passwd, on another file system, and automatically restored it if
it appeared to have been damaged.
Fortunately, I finished my work on /etc/lpspl around this time, so we
didn't have to see if I could find a way to wipe out a couple of
filesystems...
It's not just humans that make mistakes either, buggy programs crash too, especially big complicated ones. If you don't need to trust something with root, you just don't. Running openoffice as root isn't something I'd reccomend at all.
but I will highly appreciate some help 
). I might do some research first.