Wine me and Dine me...

[Zorak]

Ok sorry for the cheesy title, but at least you get that this is a wine question.

Yesterday, windows decided to go to the shitter on my dad's computer for no apparent reason, and we ended up using ubuntu to save his vital work (stuff that is due next week), and he got so pissed off w/ windows that he asked me to install ubuntu on his laptop. So, everything was going fine, and we were chugging along perfectly well, but then he asked me if I could install MS office for him. Of course, I knew that wine would be able to run MS Office for him (since that is one of the big advertising points for wine), but when I started the installation process, the damn thing just randomly fails during installation! This is terribly frustrating since as I said earlier, one of the biggest advertising points of wine is that it can run MS Office.

I have tried going to google for a solution to this problem but I haven't found anything particularly useful or helpful. Additionally, there is the slightly disturbing fact that the wine people rate their own support for MS Office as "garbage" despite the fact that they tout their package as being able to run MS Office. I read their bug reports but didn't find anything relevant to me there. But I am bitching too much, let me ask the question: has anyone had this happen to them before? If so how did you fix it? I really would appreciate the help.

Please, nobody recommend that my dad try OOo because he simply NEEDS MS Office. He has made a bunch of incredibly sophisticated spreadsheets for invoice purposes that just won't work in OOo and he is already too comfortable w/ MS Office to make the switch now. Besides, seeing as how he wouldn't even think of using linux before, I think it is a reasonable request to still be able to run MS Office despite moving on to a better OS, yeah?

Thanks in advance.

-Zorak

 

[linux_0]

What version of Ubuntu and WINE did you try?

I know this is not ideal but you could run office in a VM using http://qemu.org/ or http://www.vmware.com/products/server/

http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?iAppId=31

this doesn't look very good


http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxoffice/

Crossover officially supports Microsoft Office 2003, XP, 2000 and 97

I believe they have a free trial so you can try it before you buy it.

I have not used it personally but I've heard good things about it.


GL :-D

 

[linux_0]

PS http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/browse/rank/?sort%5Bmedal_id%5D=DESC;sort%5Bavg%5D=DESC;sort%5Bcount%5D=DESC;sort%5Bapp_name%5D=ASC;curPos=0


I understand you need to run office itself but I would encourage you to gradually experiment with the alternatives. One step at a time so there is no need to jump from one app to the other overnight.

 

[Zorak]

Thanks Linux_0,

We were using Feisty fawn and the newest package of wine from their repository (installed via synaptic). Also, I guess it would be good if my dad could try other alternatives, but MS Office has some really advanced excel functionality that I have not seen present in OOo calc. Also, as much as I like the idea of a free office suite, OOo strikes me as kinda slow and bloated, do you know of any other good alternatives that we could try?

Thanks for all the suggestions.

-Zorak

 

[linux_0]

Koffice, Siag office, StarOffice, Gnome office / Gnumeric, SOT Office, etc


http://www.yolinux.com/TUTORIALS/LinuxTutorialOfficeSuites.html


What are you using in excel that OO does not support?

 

[Zorak]

It is kinda hard to explain because I don't exactly know what he is doing myself, but it has something to do with a custom invoice system that he built himself. He has a bunch of really complex formulae programmed into his spreadsheet and there is a lot of extra presentation stuff involved so it looks like an actual invoice and not just a spreadsheet. When he tried opening it in OOo calc, some of the cells had errors indicating that they didn't recognize the entered expressions and the way he had formatted the invoices to appear was almost completely destroyed/garbled. I realize that the only program that is going to be 100% compatible w/ MS Office is, in fact, MS Office, so for the foreseeable it looks like he will be sticking to that platform. Perhaps I can get him to gradually experiment with one or more of those other suggestions you gave me above. Thanks

-Zorak

 

[linux_0]

http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxoffice/

Crossover is the only program pretty much guaranteed to run office under Linux natively.


Your other options include VMWare, QEMU, etc as mentioned above and possibly ReactOS.

If office runs on ReactOS you would be able to run it in a VM or emulated machine on top of linux so you do not have to install windows in a VM.

GL :-D