Want Office on your Linux system???

SuperCheetah · Mar 27, 2002

Here is a neat program that allows Linux users to use Microsoft's Office on their machine.

Wednesday March 27, 2002 - [ 03:16 PM GMT ]
- by Tina Gasperson -
http://newsforge.com/newsforge/02/03/27/0444257.shtml?tid=15

Codeweavers is the company known for its work with the Open Source Wine project. Wine emulates the Windows environment and comes with just about every Linux distribution. Performance has been spotty until now. Today, Codeweavers announced the 1.0 release of Crossover Office.
This product only makes sense for people who already have a Microsoft Office CD. If you don't, stick with StarOffice or pay Microsoft USD $370 plus tax for the suite. But if you do have Office 97 or 2000 laying around, Codeweaver's Crossover Office will let you fire up Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access in Linux, and even surf the Internet with Explorer, or check your mail with Outlook.

Post back on what you guys think of this....

lokem · Mar 27, 2002

I just noticed this article as well But I've also noticed this little gem at ArsTechnica:

gobe Productive 3.03
by Zach "johnnyace" Brookheart
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/02q2/gobe/gobe-1.html

Ars reviewed the 2.0 version of gobeProductive for BeOS back in the day, and if you read that review then you know that this was a software package that no BeOS power user could live without. Well, now version 3.0 is out, and it's a solid, updated port to both Windows and Linux. In this review, I’ll be looking at the Windows port with an eye to introducing the package to users who aren't familiar with its particular feature set. That being the case, I don’t feel the need to hit on any features that we’ve all come to expect in a word processor or a spreadsheet program (e.g., spell check).

It's an office suite originally for BeOS. The new version supports Linux and Windows as well. It looks rather sleek and has a small memory footprint (that's what the article says)

SuperCheetah · Mar 27, 2002

Yeah, I saw that one earlier. Glad we got the two in the same post!!! Great little programs in my opinion.

lokem · Mar 27, 2002

Originally posted by SuperCheetah
Yeah, I saw that one earlier. Glad we got the two in the same post!!! Great little programs in my opinion.

Agreed! With these 2 products out, hopefully StarOffice won't be ignored. Have you tried OpenOffice lately?

Phantasm66 · Mar 27, 2002

Red Hat exec tussles over MSOffice for Linux

Red Hat exec tussles over MSOffice for Linux
By John Lettice
Posted: 26/03/2002 at 12:15 GMT

Red Hat CTO Michael Tiemann yesterday said that the availability of Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer would "open the door to a new range of potential customers" for Red Hat. Which we take as meaning that, if the States' version of the Microsoft antitrust remedies were accepted, Red Hat would be one of the companies bidding for an Office licence. Tiemann had earlier said he though Red Hat would be "fairly interested" in bidding.

Tiemann of course may not entirely know what he's talking about, if the trial transcript is accurate. Asked whether Red Hat had developed Linux from scratch, he apparently answers no, " that was Lina Torbaugh." There you go - the Mortimer Mouse of Open Source, Linus' evil twin Lina. This is almost as good as the one we found years ago, where Ray White of Wyse apparently claimed: "The future is always two ennunecs." But we mustn't make fun of the hard-pressed transcribers.

More seriously, Tiemann came under heavy fire from the Microsoft camp over Red Hat's application development, or lack of it, culminating in the question: "Do you think that these examples suggest that one key to being a successful operating system platform vendor is developing applications that run on your own operating system?" He'd just been taken through a long litany of companies (Apple, Sun, IBM, about as long as it gets these days) who were OS vendors who also developed apps, and Microsoft attorney Stephanie Wheeler had taken some pains to establish a paucity of application development round at Red Hat.

Tiemann finally said that Red Hat's employees involved in porting apps to the Red Hat platform was more than ten and less than fifty, and conceded that it was "most likely" many less than 50. There was also a clear difference between what he was talking about and what the questioner wanted to talk about - the app porting capabilities are virtually entirely 'Red Hat-izing' existing open source apps, and the company neither develops applications from scratch nor ports third party proprietary applications.

In the latter case it obviously wouldn't, of course, but beneath the clear attempt by the defence to tar Red Hat as to all intents and purposes a distributor which puts minimal resource into development, there lurk a couple of serious points. For starters it is largely a distributor which puts minimal resources into development, at least by Microsoft's standards. Granted, the open source model means that development is broadly spread, so you're maybe comparing apples and pears when scrutinising Red Hat's "less than 50," but it's possibly reasonable to observe that commercial Linux distributions in general could use a tad more polish and individualisation if they're to play against Microsoft in business.

And if Red Hat did find itself in the position of licensing Office, what resources would it have to do anything about it? If Office were open sourced by the courts, then it could go into the standard development mill, but a licensee would find itself with one of those third party proprietary apps Red Hat doesn't do to deal with.

Next, the matter of R&D spend came. Red Hat, it was pointed out, spent $18.8 million on R&D in fiscal 2001, and $12.1 million in 2000. Apple spent $430 million in 2001, Sun over $2 billion, and Microsoft $4.3 billion. You can see where this is driving, can't you?

"Q. But as far as you know, Red Hat hasn't devoted any effort to try and develop from scratch an Office productivity suite to run on Red Hat Linux; correct?
A. That is correct.
Q. And Red Hat has never spent any money trying to develop its own Office productivity applications suite to run on Red Hat Linux as far as you know?
A. That is correct. The money that we spend on that task is related to ISV relationships, development tools that we provide to ISVs and other efforts we make so third parties may do that job for their benefit and ours.
Q. Red Hat has never ported any office productivity applications from one platform to the Red Hat Linux platform; correct?
A. I believe it's likely possible that some of our people have provided assistance to the Open Office project, which is an office productivity suite which can run on Red Hat Linux.
Q. Red Hat has never tried to reverse engineer Microsoft Office file formats, has it?
A. Some employees who work on things, such as ABI Word, have likely possibly looked at and attempted to reverse engineer aspects of the Microsoft Word format, for example.
Q. Likely possibly, Mr. Tiemann?
A. Uh-huh.
Q. You don't know that for a fact, do you?
A. I don't know.
Q. Red Hat includes in this box of Red Hat Linux 7.2 the StarOffice 5.2 Office Productivity Suite; correct?
A. That is correct.
Q. And StarOffice 5.2 is a Sun Microsystems' product, isn't it?
A. That is correct."

Moving swiftly on to establishing that Tiemann didn't know for sure whether Red Hat would bid for Office, or how much it would be prepared to pay, the defence had a pretty good run on this one. ®

source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/24584.html

lokem · Mar 27, 2002

Gee.. For a CTO, he's rather blur and indecisive. That would work *wonders* for investor relationships.

Anyway, bidding for MS Office on Linux? Thanks, but no thanks.

uncleel · Mar 27, 2002

Lindows® to keep its name..
http://www.3dspotlight.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=699&highlight=lindows

SuperCheetah · Mar 27, 2002

lokem, I can't say I've tried OpenOffice. I'm only a newbie with Linux and very inexperienced. I'll have to look around and read up on it.

lokem · Mar 28, 2002

Originally posted by SuperCheetah
lokem, I can't say I've tried OpenOffice. I'm only a newbie with Linux and very inexperienced. I'll have to look around and read up on it.

In that case, you really should give OpenOffice a try I've tried StarOffice 6.0 beta and I love it. Haven't had time to d/l OpenOffice yet though, but they're rather similar. Will let you know how it goes if I get the time to d/l it.

Mictlantecuhtli · Mar 28, 2002

I've used OpenOffice for a long time, I don't remember which build it was back then. In addition, I also have StarOffice 6.0 beta - Sun mailed me that a patch is available which moves the expiration date to June. The final version should be available in May, they say. Gobe Productive is excellent, too, I have 2.0 for BeOS.

Phantasm66 · Mar 28, 2002

I haven't tried Star Office 6.0 beta yet, but I am guessing when its out of beta Ximian will incorporate it into their updates, since 5.2 is already a part......

I hear it is a lot better....

Mictlantecuhtli · Mar 28, 2002

It is, IMHO, I didn't like that "desktop" style 5.2 had.

lokem · Mar 28, 2002

Originally posted by Mictlantecuhtli
It is, IMHO, I didn't like that "desktop" style 5.2 had.

Agreed, that made the entire interface look very "heavy" and messy.

I've used OpenOffice for a long time, I don't remember which build it was back then. In addition, I also have StarOffice 6.0 beta - Sun mailed me that a patch is available which moves the expiration date to June. The final version should be available in May, they say. Gobe Productive is excellent, too, I have 2.0 for BeOS.

The main reason why I didn't use OpenOffice last time was because they didn't support printing! The most basic thing a word processor must do, they didn't implement. No doubt that was quite some time ago; I'm sure they would have added that functionality already by now since they're already at version 1.0 (build 641C)

just1n · Apr 1, 2002

ms office on linux?

i'll stick with a clay tablet if ms office makes its way into the linux world

-j

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