Microsoft Office 2007 In Linux With WINE 224
Kenneth Reitz writes "Wouldn't it be lovely to have a nice, clean installation of Microsoft's Office 2007 Suite to run on your Ubuntu Linux Distribution? For some people, this is the only thing that truly holds them back from an all-Linux environment ... But not anymore! We have compiled a nice, concise set of instructions to help guide you along."
Re:Err... (Score:3, Interesting)
Linux + Office 2007 = all-Linux?
Yes. Remember, as GNU fanatics like to say, Linux is just the kernel. "All-Linux" here refers to Linux on every computer the person uses.
Re:Ummm....Nope. (Score:3, Interesting)
This isnt news, really. I snagged Crossover Office last year when it was free and installed Office 2007 so I wouldnt have to load a VM to use it. Unfortunately, as a student, a few of my assignments require 2007, and Id rather run it on my laptop than stick around school doing work.
Re:Really, why? (Score:4, Interesting)
For me, it's not about MSOffice. OOO is fine. Its about a mail client that works with Exchange, and Evolution isn't there yet.
I can't change my mail server, or its settings. I have no control over the mail server, or its gateways for that matter.
With the evolution-exchange package I can only connect via OWA, and thats horrible. Let's face it, even with IEx on a native Windows system, the Exchange OWA is horrible.
I don't think the wine tricks is the answer to my problem, but mail is really the last piece I need to fully convert (I run 2 desktops, 1 XP for mail, and 1 F10 for work.) to linux. Let me tell you when I have to capture text on one, and mail it ... I really hate life. Same for the other way around.
I have access to a site licensed CD of MSO2K7, and although I wont be using it aside from testing to see how it works, it's not a long term solution for me (and many others I'd assume). Evolution needs to get better. I'll wait.
One Note (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Really, why? (Score:3, Interesting)
Because of companies using SharePoint.
Re:Ummm....Nope. (Score:2, Interesting)
The numbers you just pulled out of thin air are pretty much bullshit.
For a lot of companies, Office is mandatory for them to function. Instead of hiring programmers to create good solutions, they have managers and analysts sitting around creating the next business-vital piece of shit package of Excel, Word and Access VB scripts to fill a role. Oh and don't even get me started on huge companies who put business critical data on shared drives as MS Access applications. Like it or not, these are the people who can't switch to Linux because they need Office.
As Shados mentioned, OO.org is missing certain MS Office features entirely.
Crossover (Score:3, Interesting)
I have Photoshop CS2, Dreamweaver CS2 and MS Office 07 running flawlessly in Crossover.
Re:Really, why? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Ummm....Nope. (Score:3, Interesting)
Most users don't use/need all the additional bloated crap packaged in Office. Most just require a good word processor and spreadsheet. Maybe a data base. OOo fits this bill very well.
Me, I'm a contractor, and OOo Writer is perfect for contract documents. Calc handles statements, invoices, payroll and calculation of payroll taxes, bidding calculations, and most anything else. So for most, which option is a wise choice? Cough up hundreds of $$$ for Office, or use OOo which comes standard with most all Linux distributions. This is a no brainer.
But of course life is not this easy for all, and if you're one of the few that needs certain other features found only in Office and have no other alternatives, then you're pwned.
Re:Ummm....Nope. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not always a matter of a single user though. I know that our users use a TON of spreadsheets for example. Half of them don't know how to do much more than plug in numbers into the assigned spots, but they'll still use spreadsheets developed by someone else (we have someone in IT who does Office training who normally will develop spreadsheets for a user if they need help - usually for comparing values. Our Assessor uses a lot them to plot housing sales values in a given area for example in order to determine a proper per sq ft value for property there).
Now, I'm known as the "open source guy" at work. I do my best to promote it where possible, and trust me I get "the look" whenever I bring up an open source solution in a meeting. That said, another employee suggested that we might look at OOo as a way to cut costs a bit. Because of my aforementioned "open source guy" status, it got thrown in my lap to determine how well it would work.
Long story short, around a quarter or more of the spreadsheets that I opened simply didn't work correctly. Even some of the Word documents had some minor formatting errors. The database engine crashed on me quite a bit, and had no Access compatibility whatsoever (though we generally swat a user with a stick if we find them using Access for anything other than a frontend to a server side database). I'll give them credit and say that Impress (the PowerPoint clone) seemed to open everything I threw at it with VERY few glitches (some transitions didn't work right but that's very minor).
All in all though, I ended up recommending that we stick with Office. It just wasn't worth the hassle of determining whether a document would work, and if it didn't going through and correcting everything so that it DOES work.
But does it update? What about OGA / WGA? (Score:2, Interesting)
I know you can run stuff under WINE or whatever, but usually my experience with Micro$oft's idiocy is that many of their update and add-on web pages and functions are intentionally crippled if you aren't running under a M$ Windows OS and MSIE browser.
Specifically you can't click more than about one link at the office.microsoft.com to look for 'free' updates, templates, converters, or whatever without getting hit in the face with an "Office Genuiue [dis]advantage" check that wants to use ActiveX crap in MSID to run WGA/OGA checks that your OS and Office version are all "genuine microsoft software" and "activated".
Last time I checked, LINUX / WINE might not pass WGA/OGA checks, though I'd be delighted to hear that I'm wrong and that you can access updates and 'free' templates / add-ons et. al. from their online sites from a LINUX PC running, say, Firefox + WINE + MSO2007.
Actually their whole WGA/OGA thing is enough of an annoyance to me that I rarely even run Windows or MS Office 2007 since AFAIK their "activation" checks usually barf when you try to do something like switch a given OS / Office instance between running on one dual-booted OS partition or another [e.g. XP vs Vista, Vista vs. Linux] or in vs. out of a VM.
I own Vista and MS Office 2007, but if it is going to be a pain in the arse to actually run the things without having them continually refuse to update / access online free add-on resources or keep activated as "genuine" despite me choosing to dual / triple boot between running my instance in either LINIX, XP alternate boot on the same PC, or Vista alternate boot on the same PC, or in a VM hosted on the same PC, it isn't really meeting my needs. I'd love to run LINUX full time, but various broken applications [e.g. most any video game] don't let me do that 100% of the time. I'd love to run Vista 64 either in a VM or as an alternate dual-boot partition when I can't run just LINUX, but various software breaks running on it as well as LINUX, and sometimes the VM performance of it just isn't adequate. So hence sometimes I'll boot into my copy of XP on the same box, and of course I expect to be able to run all my owned applications like MS Office, et. al. no matter which scenario is in effect at the moment (a pretty reasonable expectation for the same actual machine, I think). Yet between all the registry stuff, "non portable applications" issues, filesystem incompatibilities, and WGA/OGA I don't find a way to do it without major hassle and inability to access my files/applications properly 90% of the time when I'm natively running LINUX.
Hence usually I just say "screw Microsoft" and don't even try to use MS Office / Vista / XP and do everything possible under native UNIX tools so at least I can have it all work transparently in or out of a VM, on one LINUX host PC vs another, et. al.
The closest I've come to having trouble free use of MS Office et. al. under LINUX is to run say XP or Vista in a VM and just ONLY run it that way. That gets to be a problem though since it isn't uncommon for the VM or software activation stuff to break every few months when a new version of the VM software comes out. Also sometimes it is just too slow running in a VM, and sound / advanced graphics [DirectX / OpenGL] never works well in the VM either.
If I could transparently / conveniently switch without problem the same "installation" from running either in a VM or under an alternate boot OS image, that'd work for me about 95% of the time.
Frankly I think they need to hurry up with virtualizing GPU and PCI/DMA resources and then just run EVERY OS or even EVERY application in a VM 100% of the time with high performance and then you'd be able to just analogously "alt-tab" switch between LINUX, Vista, XP, whatever, and have no real performance or reliability problems doing so.