Attn. Project managers - Planner vs MS Project

[3pinner]

Hello there,
I have a job opportunity that will force me to learn project mgmt software.
I choose to use Ubuntu, and have planner application installed, and a book on MS Project 2003. I'm going to try to translate what I read into using Planner so I can get familiar with the process.
I have a coworker that uses MS Project. He has downloaded Planner and played with it, commenting that it is pretty close to MS in function.
My thought is - project planning is project planning, so all project management software is going to share a lot of features.

My question is: how many of you use Planner (from the repositories) and how do you like it?
How does it compare with MS Project?
Am I nuts to try and learn Planner this way?

thanks for the input and any other suggestions you might have to help me along. I really don't want to boot up to Windows if I can help it.

[KingTermite]

Hmmmm....I've never heard of planner.

I thought "Open Project" was the OSS alternative to MS Project (though I've never used either one).

[Daveski]

I don't use MS Project, but it seems that every man and his dog at work is requesting this software. I have pointed a few at Open Project (Windows, sorry), and for viewing other's Microsoft Project files, it seems ideal. Odd that Microsoft produce free-to-download viewers for all of their office apps except Project...

Others have commented to me that Open Project is not a 'functional' as the Microsoft software (whatever that means).

[3pinner]

Planner is available in the repositories.
Their web site is:

http://live.gnome.org/Planner

I glanced at the Open Project web site, and it looks like it has more features.
I have a copy of MS Project 2000 that I will try to load in WINE. I tried earlier and it looks like it will. That would be ideal. I could use the book to learn the MS version, and have the other open as well to compare.

thanks for the mention for Open Project!