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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.
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.
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..
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:
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
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
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
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?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
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.
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?
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
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." --H.L. Mencken
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?
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.
Will I retire or break 10K?
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.
--
The World is Yours.
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.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
50% of the time! Wow, they've already exceeded its performance under windows!
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.
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
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.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
Well, you can't on Windows...
sulli
RTFJ.
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:
(assuming the app installed an icon to the desktop).
You can see more of the overall Wine 1.0 status at http:/wine.codeweavers.com/status.shtml
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
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.