Wine Runs Word 2000 And Excel 2000

LLurex writes: "There's a short comment and screenshot on Ian Schmidt's Wine Page about everyone's favourite Windoze Emulator finally running Excel2000 and Word2000 (imho the only really good applications Microsoft ever published)! No more lame excuses, time to switch OS ..." The screenshot of Excel looks pretty much, well, like a screenshot of Excel. With this, two of the most persistent reasons not to run Linux appear to be fading; of course, what's to stop Microsoft from releasing versions that won't work under Wine, ever? That could be a good reason to stick with GNUmeric and pico.

Comments

Re:It could NEVER happen

[Ian Schmidt]

Oh my Jesus, I've been Slashdotted. :-)

Now then, lemme trot out my standard response to this claim, usually made by embittered former OS/2 users.

Microsoft does not control their own platform anymore. Their installed base is spread across 5+ Win32 implementations, including 95/95OSR2/98/98SE/NT351/NT4/2000. Office *has to* run on every single one of those, because many home and business customers don't upgrade their OS much if ever. This plays right into Wine's hands, since Office cannot use any new whizbang features on new MS OSes. They are being slowly strangled to death by their very own market share - it's a beautiful thing, and it goes along with ESR's arguments about DOJ being fun but unnecessary.

No kidding -- programs can't create Office2K files

[devphil]

Word 2000 still has nothing on LaTeX, IMO.

In your O and a bunch of others' as well! A huge advantage of the TeX family over the Office family is that arbitrary programs[*] can create valid TeX input, without actually having TeX. My reporting scripts can emit LaTeX on systems that don't have LaTeX, and then email the file to systems that do. Machines with half a meg of RAM can still originate beautiful text. Plus all the other obvious advantages.

[*] Okay, maybe not all arbitrary programs. Only those which can output text. :-)

Use forbidden under license

[Andrew Dvorak]

Doesn't the Microsoft Office EULA specify that you may only license the software if you own a legitimate license for any of their Windows 9x - NT - 2000 software? Or is this just MSIE?

If so, it would have been nice for the DOJ to cover this .. then again, they may have..

Wrong. MS Access :-).

[Christopher B. Brown]

MS Project may be the bee's knees for managerial types, but for "departmental applications," the close third to MS Word and MS Excel is the database application.

And just as the Classic Failed Project is the one that tries to develop a word processor to compete with Word, the widely useful thing that few have really seriously tried to do is to construct a "multiplexing data access tool" like MS Access.

Access may suck bad as a data repository, and MySQL and PostgreSQL may have it well-beat in that arena. But you can use Access with those DBMSes, thus obviating that demerit. What they don't offer, and nothing else does, either, is a tool that provides pretty/flexible ways of:

• Building queries using QBE (Query By Example);
• Screen Forms (not entirely unlike HTML Forms);
• Reports;
• The code that hides between Forms, Queries, and Reports...

Just one more...

[rjamestaylor]

Now there's only one more app that needs to run on Linux before I Shut Down once and for all:

Internet Explorer 5

Why? Because my clients need a rock-soild, easy to use, fast, compliant, stable, free browser for our Internet/Intranet applications. That's IE 5.

Until then I will need to run Windows to test my development work. If Wine really runs IE5--then I'm done with dual boot/VMWare/etc. kludges.

Now hiring experienced client- & server-side developers

Re:Just one more...

[FattMattP]

There's a screenshot of IE5 working under Wine on the page this article is about.

http://home.twcf.rr.com/ischmidt/wineimg/ie5.jpg

Uhhh

[be-fan]

A) Let's see. Gnumeric & Pico vs. Excel and Word. Do you people actually produce documents any more complex than a OSS API doc? (Which could be printed on a napkin in a lot of cases!)

B) The whole "windoze" thing bothers me. No one has convinced me that Linux is better than NT4, and when I look at my 3D graphics benchmarks, I prove to myself that NT4 is in fact better. So it troubles me that article authors get away with using "windoze." Of course it is to be expected of unwashed masses, but those posting articles should be held to a higher level, don't you think? And I doubt it will fly too well if I start refering to it as "LinSux" from now on, would it?

hypocrites

[Mojojojo Monkey Inc.]

Why run Office 2k when you have a perfectly good application in Star Office? Use an Open-source program for an open-source operating system...

Re:hypocrites

[Psmylie]

Why run Office 2k when you have a perfectly good application in Star Office

Because a lot of businesses use Windows Office products, and you might need to share files back and forth. Using the same word processor just makes things easier, and thus makes it more likely that people will start running Office without Windows. This is actually a good thing.

Re:hypocrites

[systmc]

> Why run Office 2k when you have a perfectly good application in Star Office?

Because that perfectly good application isn't Office 2k. Many jobs require the specific use of Word / Excel.
---

Re:hypocrites

[smartin]

Well, first of all, Linux is about having the choice to run the software you want. Wine is providing us with more choice which is great. That said, I would prefer to not use any M$ products at all, unfortunately, I work in an environment where people do use these products and I must exchange files with them. Until StarOffice, Corel, .... get thier products to the point where they are 100% compatable at least at the file level, I can't use them because people get pissed off when i mess up the format of the document. The only way that anyone is going to replace M$ products in the work place is to provide something that works well and fits in seamlessly.

Re:hypocrites

[gallir]

Are you crazy? Star Office a good application? It's slow, bloated, it hangs, dry RAM, not fully compatible with Word2000, etc. etc, and even has its own desktop!!!

I hate MS, but don't tell me StarOffice is better than Word or Excell 2000. Stick to SO if you like it and have enough memory, but I recommend it so easily, specially to my mother.

--ricardo

Wine Is Not an Emulator

[A nonymous Coward]

...contrary to your leadin...

--

Ya-freaking-hoo

[Strike]

Word 2000 still has nothing on LaTeX, IMO.

I'll admit that I just got the latest CVS of Wine yesterday and gave Excel 2000 a shot, though.

Re:Ya-freaking-hoo

[emag]

I can only heap loads of praise upon one of my college professors for requiring that all project reports be turned in as Postscript. He then went on to give us a brief LaTeX tutorial, and I've been using it ever since.

It's been almost a seven years now since I was introduced to it, and even though I've had to make LaTeX do some pretty heinous things for people who have gotten used to the horried output of WYSIWYG word processors, it's been a faithful companion. Even when I need to write something up for work, I write it in LaTeX, then either provide .ps, .pdf, or .html output for various folks.

I've even gone so far as to tell headhunters and potential employers, "No, I do not have a Word copy of my resume. If one of text, html, pdf, postscript or dvi isn't readable by you, then I'm not interested." (Yes, I keep my resume in LaTeX too)

Long live LaTeX! :-)

--
It's pretty pathetic when karma can drop when you do nothing

Re:Why else would you even have the software?

[Andrew Dvorak]

The EULA doesn't state that you may not use it on NON-MS systems, it merely says that you may not license it (despite the fact that you spent $500 to "license" it, and the media and docs) without "owning" a license to any one of their Windows operating systems.

Second, when used in its most loose context, this licensing practice might just be considered bundling the software in such a way that gives microsoft a competitive edge over their "competitors" (abuse of its monopoly)

Before there was WINE or anything of the like, this provision was not necessary because it was not possible to run Office on anything but windows -- it was implied that windows was required because it was windows software (Not to mention it was *also* expressed on the packaging). Now that there is WINE, an open source implementation of the Windows API, Microsoft must eliminate the possibility that they might lose money to a competing product (Windows/WINE).

• Windows does not require office.
• Office requires Windows (or an implementation of - WINE) to function properly

Microsoft has created Office as a product separate of Windows. But when it is possible (as proven by WINE) to create an implementation of Windows, requiring the "original" is inappropriate.

Re: Word screenshots

[Ian Schmidt]

I'll post one when I get home from work. Had I known I was gonna be Slashdotted I would've included one :)

Re:It could NEVER happen

[Spoing]

Now then, lemme trot out my standard response to this claim, usually made by embittered former OS/2 users.

It's not embittered, it's, ah, mmmm...never mind.

Their installed base is spread across 5+ Win32 implementations, including 95/95OSR2/98/98SE/NT351/NT4/2000. Office *has to* run on every single one of those, because many home and business customers don't upgrade their OS much if ever.

Updates to the system libraries are a standard event for many Microsoft products, not just Office. Put in one change that uses the system level (ring 0) in an unusual way, and you end up with Wine chasing after compatability for another year. It just has to be a non-obvious and flakey looking implementation of a 'standard' system call that could have been done on the application level (ring 3), but isn't and is for a specific program. Since they have the source, they can build specific versions of each program for each target WinXX version.

Since they're rumored(?) to be moving to 'subscription licencing', they could put it in the TCP/IP stack, and then we'd have quite a bit of work to duplicate.

Re:Winword on linux?

[GypC]

Yeah, right.

"WTF happened to the passwd file?!!"

"I thought it would look better in 12-point Times..."

"Free your mind and your ass will follow"

A double-edged sword ...

[ikaros]

Okay. Let's posit the following:

• Joe Average doesn't give a dingo's kidney about Linux unless he can run the software he already has on it. Reliability comes second to familiarity to him.
  Keep in mind that this isn't Joe's fault, it's just that MS has done an exceptional job of making it look like there are no alternatives, therefore Joe Average knows MS and that's all.
• Joe Average probably has, because of Microsoft's relentless crushing of its competition over the last 15 or so years, more than one true MS application on his computer.
• Therefore, Joe Average wants to be able to run Microsoft software on a Linux box before he will seriously consider running Linux instead of MS.

Therefore, Wine is key to getting people to give Linux a shot in two ways:

1. Joe Average can have his buddy the geek from down the street set him up so he can see what all this "lie-nucks" stuff is about, after which:
2. Joe Average gets comfortable enough on the system to get curious about what else is out there and promptly discovers a whole new BillG-free world.

I might also add another advantage not specifically related to Joe: A company's systems people can slip a few Linux boxes (configured with fvwm95, Wine and Office) on a few desks, and no one notices the difference until they realize the system hasn't crashed for no damn reason at all for a while :)

So now, Joe Average is willing to consider and possibly even uses Linux, although he may still be running Office on it just because he knows how to use it.

So far, so good. The first side of the sword slices at Redmond nicely.

Now for the other side of the sword.

Unless there is a consistent effort on development of native Linux applications, all that's going to be accomplished here is that MS will gain a foothold in the Linux world and can make our lives miserable.

I know, I know. Development's going on right now, even as we speak. But how many of us look the other way at the limitations of StarOffice or WordPerfect just because we get a warm fuzzy from the fact that it's all MS-free?

If Linux's acceptance comes to hinge on Microsoft software (an oxymoron if ever I heard one, but if the above holds true, not impossible at all), that gives MS an unacceptable wedge over the future path of Linux development -- after all, if we fail to address the needs of MS application users (as defined by the programmers at MS), they can take their apps back to a Windows box.

In my more paranoid moments, I think that this is the reason that Wine hasn't had an encounter with Microsoft's legal division - Wine does, not by design but by result - extend the potential embrace of Microsoft.

What to do, then? Wine is necessary in order to wean current MS users from their digital crack, but at the same time, opens up a whole new playground for MS to lurk in.

I'm not going to propose an answer here, because I don't know what it is. But it's not often that I'm both heartened and chilled by the same piece of news.

Re:It could NEVER happen

[Ian Schmidt]

There's another dynamic at work here: 3rd party Windows applications. If MS gets too wacky with their system/API updates, it will break 3rd party apps, often in non-obvious ways. This has happened several times in the past with things like the MFC shared library - customer and 3rd party outcry has always forced MS to release an "update" that restores the original behavior.

Add in the fact that many large companies using Windows have at least one piece of custom in-house software. If that software's broken by any tomfoolery, MS again looks bad, and this time in front of a potentially huge corporate customer.

What about the others?

[Glonk]

It mentions that Office 2000 can be run under WINE, but it only specifically mentions Word 2000 and Excel 2000. What about Outlook, Power Point, and Access, etc? Do those work as well?

It could NEVER happen

[emag]

of course, what's to stop Microsoft from releasing versions that won't work under Wine,
ever?

What, indeed?

I mean, Microsoft would never sink so low as to add code to their software to prevent it from running someplace they didn't want it, would they? Such as, oh, Windows x.yy terminating with an error message when run under DR-DOS?

Or, turning things around a bit, "Windows isn't done until Lotus won't run."

No, it could never ever happen.

--
It's pretty pathetic when karma can drop when you do nothing

Re:It could NEVER happen

[Jason Earl]

Wine's ace-in-the-hole is that Microsoft also has to be careful not to break any other commercial applications with it's new version. That even includes all of the applications that the Fortune 500 develop in house. If a new version of Office breaks in-house applications, then it doesn't get deployed until there is a "resolution." There is more to Windows than MS Office, and if Microsoft broke their OSes so that only Office would run they would soon find themselves without a market.

For example, imagine that you were a commercial developer and Microsoft broke compatibility with your products simply because it didn't want Office to run under Wine. Now imagine that you also learned that Wine would allow you to release your commercial application natively under Linux using libwine.

I imagine that there would be a lot of ticked off developers releasing Linux versions of their software.

Microsoft has to be very careful, or they will find they are only speeding up the inevitable.

What about NSFPU?

[mangu]

Who wants to edit text and/or spreadshits? I want to run "Need For Speed - Porsche Unleashed" under Linux. Have to wait until Wine compates with DirectX 7... :(

Yeah, 'windoze' is old, but neither OS is better

[Crag]

"Do you people actually..."

A lot of books are produced entirely with *NIX.

All OSs have strengths for different environments. If, like me, all you ever need is ssh and a browser, then Debian GNU/Linux is better than NT4. I wish I could run IE, but even without it I prefer Linux for responsiveness and lack of "surprises".

If, like a lot of people I know, you run proprietary applications that don't exist for Unix, then NT is the clear choice. No argument is possible.

For games it depends on the game. Benchmarks be damned, I'd rather run Quake on Unix (Linux or BSD).

For CAD it depends on the app. Some aren't even available for NT.

For video editing, depends on the app, NT is probably first choice, or for super high-end, maybe IRIX or something obscure.

For medical data manipulation, it depends entirely on the application, but I suspect Unix comes out a little ahead for stability.

This debate isn't one which can be answered definitively, any more than you can answer a car debate definitively. I like VWs for personality. Some Japenese cars get better milage. Some American cars get style or raw horsepower/dollar bonuses. You get the picture.

"...I prove to myself that NT4 is in fact better"

Then you're right. NT4 is best for you, hands down. You must be very happy, you've found your "soul operating system".

No

[Dungeon Dweller]

Wine is not an emulator. The acronym is true because it DOES NOT EMULATE. If it did, you could run the binaries on computers that are not x86. Wine is a set of routines that allows you to load windows executables into memory, which has nothing to do with emulation. In addition to this, it points windows environment features to systematic equivalents on the host machine, which is still not emulation.

The whole concept of using it as a porting framework came a while after wine came out. The idea being that if you can do it in real time, you can just use libraries that do it head off, which is a pretty simple (conceptually) thing to do too.

Questions

[Anonymous Coward]

• Will Wine properly display the BSOD?
• Will patches to Wine be released as Service Packs, months after problems have been found and characterized?
• Will Wine reduce my system uptime to something more expected (like 2 or 3 days)?
• Will Wine redefine standard acronyms, like SMTP = Simple Microsoft Tunneling Protocol, DNS = Digital Nervous System, etc.
• Will Wine use illegal tactics to pressure vendors to not display other companies' Wine-equivalents?
• Will Wine ask "where do you want to go today?"
• Will Wine ship with a EULA inside a shrinkwrapped package?

Microsofts products aren't 100% compatible

[Nailer]

Try doing some serious layout work in Word 2000 and Word 97 [which allegedly use the same file format] and watch as things jump all over the place. or better yet, try saving into Word 6 format from Word 97 and watch as all your graphica are scrolled 1/3 to the right, and have r and g on one side, and b on the other. There are Linux suites now which are nearly as compatible with Word as Word is. And that's the best you can ask for. WPO2K does a shitty job [I've trested all five], StarOffice 5.2 does a good one [they're rewritten the import filters from 5.1]. But I do agree with you about the choice. Who the hell says I have to use open source software with an Open Source OS?

Windows can do remote login with a GPL tool

[yerricde]

Not to mention an OS where you can log in remotely and its like your in front of the machine without a hideous lag of 'move mouse'...'wait for screen to catch up'...'click on icon'...'wait for screen to repaint new window'...'move mouse'...

Remote graphical login is now in the hands of lowly Windows 9x users with Back Orifice 2000, released by CDC under GNU GPL. If Back Orifice 2000 is a digital crime tool, then so is PCAnywhere.

Re:What about VxDs?

[Ian Schmidt]

VxDs are not supported on NT or Windows 2000. They are an anachronism from Win9x's DOS core.

Running Windows Programs

[Moderator]

Isn't that where OS/2 failed? If we want programs for Linux, the best thing to do is to petition companies to release them. Otherwise, companies just say, "Well, we'll only release a Windows product because Linux can run it anyway." Then you end up with more Windows products selling, and less Linux products. Remember, the Windows versions probably won't support all the features available on Linux.

--

Warning: Zealous Flamebait Ahead

[ichimunki]

This is sick and wrong. Very much so. Why not just post links to goatse.cx and call that an article? I feel dirty dual booting my Mac, I can't imagine how I'd feel actually running MS software inside a Linux GUI.

Missing the Point

[zpengo]

WINE shouldn't be used to port Microsoft applications that don't work well in the first place (especially when we have Star Office et al.), but instead to port great video games over to Linux.

Verily, the lack of video game support is one of the main reasons that the world has not yet converted entirely to Linux.

:o)

Fonts still a problem

[jbridges]

Has anyone else noticed how bad the fonts look in that screenshot? Yikes! Looks like Windows 2.0.

Still an area where X lags behinds windows, both the font renderer and the lack of anti-aliasing.

Getting programs to run under WINE

[hey!]

It's been a year or so since I ugpraded, but I've been running Win32 Lotus Notes on it and it's pretty usable with the occaisional crash -- not enough that I'm checking the updates page on a regular basis, you see.

One problem I've found with getting programs to run under WINE is you have to raid a windows box's system directory to snitch the DLLs you need (e.g. the DLLs OLE subsystem). That's not exactly fair game.

I'd be very interested to know if they got Office to run under WINE with no MS intellectual property other than what might be copied to the hard disk by the Office 2K installer.

Re:Introduce platform-specific bugs

[cyber-vandal]

I never saw anything in the spec like "test for DR-DOS and break". I would be very surprised if this has changed

So that $150million they paid to Caldera was just out of generosity?

Even better!

[ca1v1n]

1) MacOS X

2) Classic Environment

3) VirtualPC for MacOS 9

4) Windows NT 4.0

5) LinuxOne Lite (name? You know what I'm talking about.)

6) WINE

7) Word 2000



Or you can wait for the official port, which should be out soon. At least in theory.

Re:Develop more productive things

[Srin Tuar]

50% of the time! Wow, they've already exceeded its performance under windows!

Re:Develop more productive things

[systmc]

> but I'd rather run them under Windows 2000, as well as several thousand other Windows applications

You run several thousand Windows applications? Impressive. ;) For those who only need to use one or two specific applications, for whatever reason, not having to dual boot or not having to own a dedicated computer is rather helpful.
---

Ok. They're key apps, but it's not the biggest..

[iceT]

Word and Excel are good apps, esp. because of the incompatibility in all office products import/export features. I've NEVER seen an import that worked all the time, especially when using some really advanced features of the product.

Of course, then there's the other 'lost app'. One to which there is no comperable version available for Linux (at least not what that I've found).

MS Project.

Being a manager, I can probably get away with Star Office for a lot of stuff. Hell, most of my stuff is in e-mail anyway. What I really need is a decent project-management package. Something with good task management, GANTT chart support, and maybe even some workload capabilities.

Re:Stability?

[sulli]

Can we run Excel2k and be 99% sure that it won't crash on us?

Well, you can't on Windows...

Re:the reasons aren't fading...

[knitfoo]

I think it's going to be sooner than you think.
Part of the Wine 1.0 effort now underway is to dramatically improve the end user experience of Wine.

For example, there is now an easy to use configurator for the .winerc file. While it's not committed to CVS (yet), you can download winecfg here.

We're working on getting most installers working under Wine; for a lot of installers, you can do the following:

1. wine setupxxx.exe (answer the questions)
2. Click on the icon on your desktop
   (assuming the app installed an icon to the desktop).
3. app runs.

4. You can see more of the overall Wine 1.0 status at http:/wine.codeweavers.com/status.shtml

Options

[SomeOtherGuy]

Yes- I admit I paid up for VMware...However it was worth a couple of hundred bucks to not have to worry about "what version of CVS wine do I need to run what version of this office suite OR when can wine support this tax manager OR what parts of this program work and what parts do not work". At least with VMware I can keep all of those nasty .dll's in their own "jail" (along with the rest of Windows) that appears as nothing more than a single file (big file) to the rest of Linux. I do not have to worry about paths or weirds filename~. It was worth it. And for anyone that needs Quicken, Excel, Photoshop, Dreamweaver or any other M$centric app -- just bite the bullet. (And for all those people that say VMware sucks because it is not Open Source or Free, etc, etc....Are you using Wine to run Open Source or Free programs??? -- That line gets crossed one way or the other -- I choose the easiest and most efficient thank you.