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http://www.gnumeric.org/ does vastly better than excel on this front and imports workbooks made in excel. It shares statistics code with the R project. Gnumeric is awesome. If you're doing serious calculation in a spreadsheet, use it for teh win!

I'm not sure that I care where Microsoft Excel fails and where it doesn't when it comes to discovering the pattern of failure. If I were a Microsoft Excel user I wouldn't be allowed to inspect the program to see what it's really doing with my data, fix the program (no matter how expert a programmer I may be), alter the program (in violation of the license), or help my community by sharing my improved version of Excel. Then there's the hypocrisy of how proprietors (also known as monopolists) are treated compared to free software developers and distributors—knowing that the program fails where it shouldn't would be enough for people to cry foul and either stop using or never start using a free software program that exhibited such a bug. We rarely hear serious discussions of one's software freedom. Instead, we're encouraged to push that discussion aside in favor of exclusively stressing technocratic ends. Not hearing cries of "Dump Microsoft Excel Now!" or something calling for a switch to a free software spreadsheet (like Gnumeric or OpenOffice.org's Calc) is saddening. Please take this opportunity to learn more about software freedom.

That's assuming that google doesn't filter from the results what it can't understand/process. Are you sure openoffice can't open XLS?

Gnumeric ( http://www.gnumeric.org/ ) certainly can - supports all the functions Excel does plus a few extra (and a bazillion file formats).

I have heard that ODF spreadsheet specifications are very poor - they are based mostly on the ODF "writer" documents, and contain little to no information about the specification of formulas, standardized expected results, etc, and so are relatively worthless as an interchange format. Try Gnumeric ( http://www.gnumeric.org/ ) - open-source spreadsheet software that supports XLS, CSV, and so many other formats I've never even heard of.

And you're using OO Calc why? Gnumeric is far and away the better spreadsheet.

Many shops use spreadsheets as a kind of quick-and-dirty database, and they rely on the ability to sort on 4 or more columns. Calc can only support sorting on 3.

Again, see Gnumeric. Now available for Windows, too.

Well, Gnumeric could be possibly ported to Cocoa in Mac OS X because the core portions of Gnumeric are written in C. However, since Gnumeric is a GTK application, it may take some time moving all of the graphical-related stuff to Cocoa.

As for a Java spreadsheet, I haven't seen a FOSS Java spreadsheet, but it is very possible. Maybe somebody could look at the sources for Gnumeric and OpenOffice or xspread as some inspiration

(While they're at it, perhaps a spreadsheet could be written in GNUstep; I'd like to see that since the GNUstep and Cocoa libraries are almost the same, all a developer has to do pretty much is write a GNUstep spreadsheet, compile it for GNUstep and for Cocoa, and it's done. Two birds hit with one stone.)

Well, Gnumeric could be possibly ported to Cocoa in Mac OS X because the core portions of Gnumeric are written in C. However, since Gnumeric is a GTK application, it may take some time moving all of the graphical-related stuff to Cocoa.

As for a Java spreadsheet, I haven't seen a FOSS Java spreadsheet, but it is very possible. Maybe somebody could look at the sources for Gnumeric and OpenOffice or xspread as some inspiration

(While they're at it, perhaps a spreadsheet could be written in GNUstep; I'd like to see that since the GNUstep and Cocoa libraries are almost the same, all a developer has to do pretty much is write a GNUstep spreadsheet, compile it for GNUstep and for Cocoa, and it's done. Two birds hit with one stone.)

AbiWord Word Processor and Gnumeric Spreadsheet. Fast, functional, non-bloated. (Disclosure: I help out with these projects but have used the competition.)

I think I see the flaw in your logic. It starts to go wrong where you have the thought "open Openoffice.org". Step away from the dark side and try abiword and gnumeric instead. Trust me, you won't regret it.

I can't tell you how relieved I was to see that the BSA aren't targeting the town I live in (Saginaw, Michigan). With all the pirated software that I must have on my computer, I would surely owe them something. Heck, even my office suite is pirated. My desktop environment is pirated. Let them come on by and audit me...

While linux is improving nicely, it still lacks heavily in any music reporduction,

Actually, there's quite a bit of music production software for Linux.

media interfaces

You mean like Shockwave and MP3s?

business applications.

Such as Excel and Word?

I'd rather pay 199.00 bucks for something that works out of the box and comes with lots of software then several hours downloading, burning iso's and then chasing down the latest versions of all apps waisting a whole entire weekend or business days (thus costing more then the 199.00 XP package).

So would I. Fortunately, if I want to run Linux, I can get a complete set of CD-ROMs from CheapBytes for less than fifteen bucks (including postage) and usually install or upgrade the whole system in about two hours, most of it hands-free. Most of these systems have a reputation for running smoothly "right out of the box."

-Marcel