Thanks to Cowranch

Cowranch I downloaded the Mozilla Thunderbird E mail package as you suggested . Fantastic , makes a mockery of the idiot system that came with my Windows 10 laptop . Thanks for the great tip

When you're ready to take the leap, look into some of the linux operating systems such as Zorin and Mint. They come with firefox and thunderbird as standard equipment,
and are so much more stable and reliable, you'll wonder what the big deal with Windows is all about.

I second the thumbs up for Thunderbird email program. I setup LXLE Linux on my computer and think its great. Stable and fast.

Can you run MS Word or QuickBooks on Linux?

(quoted from post at 04:53:43 01/21/16) Cowranch I downloaded the Mozilla Thunderbird E mail package as you suggested . Fantastic , makes a mockery of the idiot system that came with my Windows 10 laptop . Thanks for the great tip

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You're welcome. I used it for several years, and it's predecessors before that, never had any major problems.

(quoted from post at 07:13:00 01/21/16) Can you run MS Word or QuickBooks on Linux?

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Of course a person would need to evaluate their requirements before switching, but Windows can remain installed if needed, or installed inside Linux in a virtual machine for any, and some Windows software can be installed with WINE.

MS Word, I don't know many typical home users that require that beyond their personal preference. I usually suggest the free alternatives, such as Libreoffice, which will open and edit Word, Excel, and other office documents, but without costing any money, and it works on Windows too. Of course someone needing it for business or other uses, it is not 100% compatible with all formatting. It can however do what a lot of people need.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/libreoffice-5-the-best-office-suite-today-wont-cost-you-a-dime/

There are also the free online alternatives, such as Microsoft Office online https://office.live.com/start/Word.aspx or Google Docs google.com/docs
I don't really care for online apps, but they do work fine.

Quickbooks, no. I haven't tried it personally, but some can get various versions to run, but I haven't seen 100% success. Intuit is pushing more to online Quickbooks, and they put Quicken up for sale so they aren't going to offer that much longer, I suspect some time in a few years they will stop offering a product to buy. Free software alternatives for Linux are GnuCash (also works on Windows) or KMyMoney (also Windows but never tried). I don't think either sync with bank accounts, of those, I think GnuCash would be better for business use with invoicing etc. There is also a pay program, Moneydance, that does sync with banks. It has been around for a few years and is decent.
http://www.gnucash.org/features.phtml https://kmymoney.org/ http://moneydance.com/

An online option for simple needs is Mint.com, mostly for online syncing without manual input of transactions. Wave might be a bit more full featured, but I have never looked at it at all. https://www.waveapps.com/

I found this answer on the internet and from what I know It sounds correct but I have never tried it,
Wine is a free program that allows some, but not all, Windows programs to run on Linux.

QuickBooks might be able to run on Ubuntu with Wine.


Another option is to use a virtual machine program like VMWare or
VirtualBox, and run QuickBooks on Windows inside a virtual machine on Ubuntu.