this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2024
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What do people use to replace Microsoft Office these days? Have they got wine working well enough to run them yet or are you still stuck with open source alternatives?
There are the FOSS ones, but when I've swapped people over from Windows or Mac and they want something familiar, I give them WPS Office. It's pretty much a drop in replacement for Word/Office.
I want to say I'd put them on LibreOffice, but it's too fucking weird and buggy for someone coming off of Office.
I've used OnlyOffice (FOSS, really modern) and Softmaker Office, which is a proprietary German alternative with native Linux support. It also has the best docx compatibility of the Microsoft alternatives.
Libreoffice, onlyoffice and ms office online mean that unless its a big part of your job, you dont need ms office
I've found that Libreoffice Calc in particular tends to deal with Excel files very well. It can do everything I've ever needed to do in Excel. The browser version of MS Office is good for full compatibility if you have access to it, but can be a bit annoying to use.
MS Word and Libreoffice Write never seemed to understand each other's file formats well for me, especially if you insert equations in text. You can end up with weird formatting that's laborious to correct. It might be best to avoid Libreoffice Write, especially for technical stuff, unless it's improved a lot since then. The online MS Office could help you a lot there.
Latex is arguably the best for that sort of thing, but can be hard to use, since you have to learn it. Still, anyone should be able to open a pdf and get consistent results.
WPS Office is another option but I've never used it. It has official support for a surprising number of operating systems and seems to work well on different file formats. I've seen someone else use it with no complaints, and it does have official Linux support, even though it's a commercial proprietary software, which can be inconvenient.
I save in odt and my teachers havent had any issues with the libreoffice files ive sent them
I sent an odt file to a teacher, and the response was, "don't use open office, use Microsoft office for school" (I use libre office). I asked if he needed me to resend it, and he said that Ms office opens odt fine (¿_?). I started saving as docx in libre office, and he was never the wiser.
Seems like your file worked properly and they were just a bit initially confused by it, but obviously you should export as whatever file format you're asked to if it's been requested of you.
Did the document have lots of equations, pictures or tables in it? Do the documents you make tend to?
There were no communicated filetype requirements for the first assignment. Since I know MS office works with open doc formats, I wasn't worried. He didn't tell me to send MS office formats. Instead, he told me to use MS office. I wasn't going to pay (even discounted) for a product that has (for me) been 100% replaced with libreoffice. So, I tried just sending him the files in MS office formats, which worked to appease his requirement. He later did send an email to the class, asking that we only use MS office and avoid foss office programs. I realized it was him misunderstanding how these software work, so I didn't really sweat it. I'm assuming there was some incompatibility with their cheat-check saas that caused this requirement.
There were some embedded objects in nearly all of the docs, but no equations.
Depends on your requirements. I am mostly able to get along with LibreOffice and I tried Collabora, though both suck in their own way. Winedb says that Office 95 and 2013 have "Gold" rating. Maybe I will try later next week to install the 2013 version.
I know it's bad to say but MS office is a real barrier. That and done other compatibility issues with Windows apps made me abandon Ubuntu for Windows after several months where I otherwise loved it.
For me it's that a game I regularly play really needs their rootkit to run before they allow me to start it... If that ever changes or I stop playing it I'll take a long hard look at Linux.
I am currently using windows, but Microsoft office could easily be replaced with WPS office on linux, there will be some niche features (Power query, Microsoft Access,.. Etc) that will not work for linux but the rest is covered on linux.
"Stuck with"? I find open source alternatives far less infuriating to work with than anything Microsoft produces.
I ran OpenOffice (Libreoffice) around 2008 for two years (can't remember exactly, but when I experienced Vista for the first time, I said nope and wiped my drive. It was fine back then, but those little incompatibilities drove me crazy