Use SoftMaker FreeOffice, or SoftMaker Office. It is a pretty nice and performant replacement for MS Office.
Google docs works like a charm
Microsoft's “Love” of Linux
141–150 of 421 posts
Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux
#142The author misses the bigger picture completely. Microsoft used to see Linux as competition, and while that might still be true in some ways, it’s largely moot for a couple of reasons. In 2019, Windows isn’t competing with Linux for desktop market share not because Linux poses no threat there, but because the desktop doesn’t matter anymore . Windows, and the desktop operating system as a concept, is competing with th…
the desktop doesn’t matter anymore most casual users gave up computers for smartphones years ago I would consider either statement to be completely false. While less people have full blown desktops almost everyone has laptop and modern laptops are good enough. I would agree that there are many poor countries/places where people can only afford smartphone. But hopefully the future of humanity is to get better rather t…
I don’t think sales figures support the notion that everyone has a laptop at all but I’d be happy to stand corrected.
Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
Microsoft has historically been the single greatest enemy of Linux and Open Source in general. The only reason they now changed face and hopped on the Linux train is that they realized they lost or cannot possibly win the battle when it comes to servers, embedded devices, a large section of developers, mobile, etc. > I can tell you unequivocally the thing holding back the average enterprise from moving their entire b…
Whatever proprietary company is most sucessful will be the greatest enemy. If not MS, then Apple, or Google, or whoever. If you believe in Open Source, you should focus on building and promoting (and fundraising for) open source. Until we get the same $5T-equivalent investment in Open Source that FAANGMwhatever have, Open Source will will trail the rest in many quality and network-effect dimensions that will hinder t…
> Whatever proprietary company is most sucessful will be the greatest enemy. If not MS, then Apple, or Google, or whoever.
That's not true. Apple and Google have not done even 1% of the damage to Linux and Open Source that MS has.
> Until we get the same $5T-equivalent investment in Open Source that FAANGMwhatever have, Open Source will will trail the rest in many quality and network-effect dimensions that will hinder the virtuous sycle of growth.
Except for the fact that most successful modern tech company stacks are mostly FOSS and Linux. Microsoft was essentially forced to offer Linux on Azure because the overwhelming consensus is MS Server cannot hold a candle to Linux.
Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux
#144Microsoft loves Linux because it makes them money. I'm not sure why anyone would expect differently. They won't release products like Office for Linux (though a web interface is possible), and they won't move away from Windows-only APIs. Neither of those actions would have any tangible benefit for the primary users of those produts (Windows users and Windows developers, respectively). Active Directory is so deeply in…
I wouldn't say they'd never do an Office on Linux... If you look at how they've been leveraging web tech and Electron for VS Code and MS Teams, I'd be very surprised if we didn't see an Electron based version of Office in a couple years. Electron has an amazing cross platform appeal for developers and MS has taken advantage of that. Not to mention managing to write applications under Electron that don't suck (though…
The market share for Linux on the desktop is tiny - I can't ever see Office for Linux.
Not sure about your memory claim either - I don't recall high memory usage in Office ever being an issue.
Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have dumped windows completely after spending some time on windows 8 (fyi: system level developer, but... Well i did my share on aix, hpux, solaris, linux, vms too, but I did love windows... Before the age of manifests, putting com interfaces into kernel32.dll,...) What troubles me THE most on linux is interoperability of applications, there is literally nothing replacing microsoft "office" (not a product Office) s…
Hmm the average joe is already using google drive rather than office et al. Works on linux and mac better than the office stack works on windows.
Average student is using Google Docs and Drive but the office workers I hear are driven by corporate culture, and traditional places of work like accounting offices haven’t culturally embraced these kinds of solutions.
Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux
#146There was more of a case in the 90s, but the fact is that today's Microsoft has a strong open source development presence, and incompatibly embracing and extending was always, even in the 90s, an odious GNU practice that they happily perpetrated against non-copyleft Unix.
"FUD" is a mindkilling term, so I won't call this apparently sincere post "spreading FUD", but I will suggest that you try PowerShell Core (MIT licensed) on the platform of your choice.
Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux
#147The author misses the bigger picture completely. Microsoft used to see Linux as competition, and while that might still be true in some ways, it’s largely moot for a couple of reasons. In 2019, Windows isn’t competing with Linux for desktop market share not because Linux poses no threat there, but because the desktop doesn’t matter anymore . Windows, and the desktop operating system as a concept, is competing with th…
Since when? That's nonsense. Browser and a whole operating system are two different things
Even if this were true, leaving the ChromeOS argument aside (which you shouldn’t, it’s awesome for casual users), it has nothing to do with what I said.
Most software that would’ve been desktop applications moved to web applications a long time ago. Web applications don’t care what the client is running, ergo, the web platform is your competition.
Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux
#148Microsoft loves Linux because it makes them money. I'm not sure why anyone would expect differently. They won't release products like Office for Linux (though a web interface is possible), and they won't move away from Windows-only APIs. Neither of those actions would have any tangible benefit for the primary users of those produts (Windows users and Windows developers, respectively). Active Directory is so deeply in…
Why not?
Maybe the OS market was profitable for decades, but isn't anymore?
Maybe their goal is to move everything to Linux in the next decade so they don't have to develop their own stuff, getting all that free OSS dev power and can control them by supplying cloud based user-land software, because "Linux never breaks user space"... who knows.
Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux
#149Can add Visual Studio to the Office/DirectX/Outlook/ActiveDirectory section.
They're sort of heading in this direction with VSCode. I can imagine that VS itself is a non-portable COM-infested disaster area.
COM is great. VS Code is an Electron disaster. (actually, it's the only Electron app I don't dread using, so they've been doing something right)
Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have dumped windows completely after spending some time on windows 8 (fyi: system level developer, but... Well i did my share on aix, hpux, solaris, linux, vms too, but I did love windows... Before the age of manifests, putting com interfaces into kernel32.dll,...) What troubles me THE most on linux is interoperability of applications, there is literally nothing replacing microsoft "office" (not a product Office) s…
Hmm the average joe is already using google drive rather than office et al. Works on linux and mac better than the office stack works on windows.
Google drive absolute shit on Linux.
Idk what it’s like on Windows but all Linux has is the web UI anyway so it’s probably the same.
It feels almost intentionally bad, I’m not sure what’s going on there but I’m pretty sure you couldn’t pay me to use it. IMO at least with SMB you don’t have to use that godawful file manager.