LinuxQuestions.org's Office Suite of the Year: LibreOffice!

qubit · February 5, 2015, 9:10pm

Hi all,

Grabbing over 86% of the vote, LibreOffice was announced to be the
winner of the 'Office Suite of the Year' poll:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/2014-linuxquestions-org-members-choice-awards-113/office-suite-of-the-year-4175528385/

A big thanks to all of our users who voted for LibreOffice, and a huge
thanks to all the people who work on LibreOffice and who have made it
the amazing set of tools that it is today!

Cheers,
--R

Urmas · February 6, 2015, 5:04am

"Robinson Tryon":

Grabbing over 86% of the vote, LibreOffice was announced to be the
winner of the 'Office Suite of the Year' poll:

Any poll without Microsoft Office option is invalid.

Graham_Luffrum · February 6, 2015, 8:35am

Urmas, I obviously missed the announcement that MS have a version of Office
for Linux. Can you please provide the link.

G.

italovignoli · February 6, 2015, 8:38am

Is Microsoft Office available for Linux? I do not think so.

The poll is run by LinuxQuestions, so Microsoft Office advocates can
just avoid to have a look and rest in peace.

Paul16 · February 6, 2015, 9:10am

While at first glance this seems like an obvious troll, after thinking
a bit I feel that there may be something to what Urmas said, though I
would hardly call the poll "invalid" for the omission. As far as I know,
Microsoft Office runs fine under Wine (please correct me if I'm wrong),
and the Wine project does strive to point out that there is little
difference between a native program and one running under Wine. Surely
running MSO under Wine on Linux is a valid choice? Not one I would
choose, for sure, but a choice that should be on the poll none the less?

Thoughts?

Gary_Collins · February 6, 2015, 9:39am

Hi,I was using Writer yesterday, I can't recall every step that led up to this, but I had a line with a tab in it, and went to the ruler to set the tab stop, but the ruler was unresponsive, I couldn't add a tab stop to it.Double clicking on it opened a dialog where, under one of the tabs, I was able to enter the position (in cm) for the tab stop; this worked, but on returning to the document for further editing I noticed that the tab stop was still not shown on the ruler (and so couldn't be changed there). Any ideas as to what might be going on would be gladly received!
On a (possibly) unrelated note, I have found that it is impossible to change margin settings using the ruler when paragraphs with a different left margin are selected together. I can understand the settings not being shown, because -- well, where would you show it? But I feel it would be helpful to have a way to click and set the margin in that case, as a way to align those paragraphs (which don't necessarily have the same style). Thoughts?
best,/Gary

Tom_Davies1 · February 6, 2015, 9:34am

Hi
Perhaps. It might be good to suggest it to the organisers for next
year's poll. Certainly Skype was included, so why not? Unlike with
Skype i suspect that the majority vote would still go to LibreOffice
anyway. Our community is stronger and pulls together better.

People have often identified Urmas as being a troll but often miss his
valid and useful posts as a result.
Regards from
Tom

italovignoli · February 6, 2015, 10:07am

Skype is available for Linux, Microsoft Office is not (and I would not
consider the Wine option as comparable to a native Linux version).

Gary_Collins · February 6, 2015, 10:11am

Hi,I've been having some trouble lately using in Writer especially when using alternative keyboard mappings (Windows 7). Yesterday, for example, I was using a mapping that was basically English but which included macron vowels (that's vowels with a bar over the top, used, e.g., to indicate a long vowel in works of reference for Latin). I found that the assigned key combination - in this case, AltGr+vowel - was giving me a vowel with something like an acute accent over it instead of a bar - though the key combination was working OK in other applications, e.g. WordPad and even the humble NotePad.It did start to work, however; but in order to get it to do so, I had to set the keyboard in the language bar whilst the LO document was active. Is this the expected behaviour? Should LO override the locale settings in cases like this? (wondering).
Again, whilst using the polytonic Greek keyboard, I have noticed that from time to time the key combinations required to obtain some of the special characters "stop working" - that is, the key presses appear to be detected, but they stop having the desired effect. An example: to obtain an alpha with a rough breathing, acute accent and iota subscript, I would have to first press the combination <altGr + shift + '/'>, release those keys, and then press 'a' (for alpha). It's the <altGr + shift> combination that stops working here; when I press 'a' I get an alpha alright, but without the special diacritics (I think that's the right word).Using a combination without <shift> and/or <altGr> still works; e.g. I can press (and release) '/' and then press 'a' and get an alpha with smooth breathing and acute, which is the expected behaviour.
I've no idea why this sometimes goes awry; the focus does not leave the document in question, and I haven't noticed a consistent combination of keystrokes/actions preceding the cessation of functionality. Similarly, I haven't found a consistent way to restore it - I can generally do so, eventually, but it seems to require different steps each time; such steps might include changing the keyboard from polytonic Greek to English and back again, using the language button on the desktop toolbar and/or using my assigned key combinations (in case these are significant, I use <ctrl + alt + 1> to change to the polytonic Greek and <ctrl + alt + 0> to change to the English layout; <Left Alt + Shift> changes between languages (default)); clicking an empty area of the desktop to lose the focus from Writer; giving the focus to a different document; and so on.
Any idea what I might be doing to cause LO Writer to go awry (prevention is better than cure)? Or the reason why it might be going wrong? Or if there is, in fact, a consistent way to restore it (but I just haven't found it yet)?
Any helpful info gratefully received!
/Gary

Tom_Davies1 · February 6, 2015, 8:46am

Hi
+1
A huge congrats to everyone involved in making LibreOffice what it is today
Many regards from
Tom

Tom_Davies1 · February 6, 2015, 10:19am

Hi
Blimey that is really difficult to read! Any chance of breaking it
down into shorter paragraphs with a bigger gap between paragraph?
Regards from
Tom

Paul16 · February 6, 2015, 11:25am

Out of interest Italo, why would you say the Wine option is not
comparable to a native binary?

The Wine people seem to want to change that perception, and although I
share it, I can't quite say why, other than it a) "feels" wrong (which
doesn't really have any technical basis), and b) might be slower, but
here the Wine people seem to be suggesting that this is either not the
case, or not noticeably the case. Do you have any evidence to suggest
it might be the case, or do you have other reasons to consider it not
comparable?

While some might feel that Wine doesn't count, as you can "just run any
old windows program that way" and it's "not linux", for many Wine
represents a way to get the best of both worlds, both the advantages of
linux and the programs that they either are used to or can't find
alternatives on linux for. When it comes to the question of which
office suite people on linux use, I feel it is a valid option, even if
not one I would recommend. Especially as this is a poll of what people
are actually using, not what people consider the "most linux".

Paul16 · February 6, 2015, 11:41am

Of course, that said, reading a bit further into the posts on the poll
seems to indicate that they specifically didn't include Wine + MSO
because they wanted only linux native options, otherwise the field was
just too big. Which is fine, but then it changes the question from
"What is the most used (or popular) office suite on linux" to "What is
the most used (or popular) native linux office suite". Both are valid
questions, but they are subtly, and importantly, different.

italovignoli · February 6, 2015, 11:46am

Because it allows to run proprietary software for a proprietary
operating system, which is something I would definitely avoid in a Linux
environment.

Tom_Davies1 · February 6, 2015, 11:42am

Hi
Yes it does feel badly wrong and kinda makes my skin crawl. Also i am
fairly sure that various parts of MS Office wont work properly - for
example Sharepoint, One Note, Outlook, Access and other things are
quite often troublesome even on Windows and some block such things as
having 2 different versions of MS Office on one machine.

However i do still think it would be good to see MS Office included in
the polls next year. I must admit i am completely confident in MS
Office getting a humiliating defeat on Linux. That in itself would be
nice to see.

Wine Is Not an Emulator and doesn't create an extra layer between the
programs and the bare-metal of the machine. So things on Wine often
run just as fast and sometimes even faster than they would run on
Windows. Wouldn't it be hilarious if Linux is better at running MS
Office than Windows is! It certainly happens that way with some games
and things apparently.

Also if MS Office can be run with any degree of success in Windows
then it opens another way for people to migrate to Linux and removes
one of the biggest obstacles much earlier in the process. Of course
people will later find that OpenOffice is better and LibreOffice is
MUCH better than MS Office but they could discover that at a more
relaxed pace.

So i would like to see MS Office put forwards next year, but mostly
because i would enjoy seeing it soundly and humiliatingly defeated by
all the rest of the suites and especially by LibreOffice.
Regards from
Tom

Tom_Davies1 · February 6, 2015, 12:13pm

Hi
+1
I agree that it is a really bad idea to run proprietary programs on
Linux but i would widen it and say that it's a bad idea to run them
anywhere. However, I don't think there is a significant increase in
how bad it would be on Linux.

Of course part of the whole advantage of running Linux is that it
gives easy access to non-proprietary programs and packages. Using a
proprietary program is a bit crazy!

However another big advantage of Linux is that it gives greater
freedom OF choice whereas MS tends to try to give people freedom FROM
choice. If people want to run proprietary systems then it's their own
choice but they will probably increasingly find that the
non-proprietary systems are better. They just need to be exposed to
the choice more easily than they would be on Windows and then they
will gradually migrate.

Part of the reason people are so terrified of using non-MS programs on
Windows is because the whole of Windows is so vulnerable and such a
mess that the slightest thing makes it fall over. Once on Linux,
people tend to find it's quite safe to play around and experiment with
all sorts of things and fairly easy to recover even if they seriously
break things.

So although it makes me shudder i think it would be kinda funny to see
people attempting to use MS Office despite all the alternatives being
better and free and easier to install.
Regards from
Tom

Paul16 · February 6, 2015, 12:19pm

Well, sure, and I agree with you (at least for the most part), but
that's not relevant to the poll as far as I can see.

Virgil_Arrington1 · February 6, 2015, 12:45pm

For what it's worth, I've never had *any* program run "fine" under Wine. They either don't run at all, or they hang up on me, or whatever. Now, I won't blame Wine or Windows or anything else. It may be I need more education on Wine, but I don't have the incentive to take the time to learn. With a dual boot machine, any time I need to run a Windows program, I just boot into Windows.

That said, it might be interesting to see how the poll might fare if there were an option of "MS Office running under Wine." Does anybody actually do that?

Virgil

Urmas · February 6, 2015, 9:01pm

"Italo Vignoli":

You need to understand that there are only two kinds of soft- and hardware: that which solves the client problem at adequate cost, and that which doesn't. Anything else is irrelevant.

pitonyak · February 6, 2015, 10:34pm

I have read a bunch of these posts and although at least one person thinks that MS office products MUST be on the list for it to be valid, has anyone really asked the question, can Wine run the product in question?

Microsoft Word 2013 is known to NOT work

There are only 8 votes requesting that it be made to work.

https://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/browse/name/?app_id=10959

When Microsoft creates their products, they generally push the envelope and use the newest latest libraries, which Crossover is less likely to have ported. So, if MSO was included in the list as things that people run on Linux, then they would need to include numerous versions to try to get one that people are using.

There is not even an entry for MS Excel 2013, so no one has even cared enough to create one.

If I look at the MS Office 97 entry, there are zero votes to make it work, and only 149 "CrossTie Downloads" (downloads of the automated Cross-Over office installation stuff).

Now, to be more positive on MSO having any bearing, the generic MSO 2013 entry (which is listed as known to not work) has 158 votes asking them to make it work.

https://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/browse/name/?app_id=10518;details=1

Here are their top 25 requested to make work applications: The first number is the rank, the second is the number of votes.

I think that it does not matter that it is not listed as a possibility as one of the top office products (or word processors) used on Linux.

It looks like Word 2010 has 1507 crosstie downloads, so certainly some people are using older copies of Word.

https://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/browse/name/?app_id=6132;details=1