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SuSE Linux will run Microsoft Office
PizzaFace writes "SuSE Linux is developing a desktop Linux distribution that will allow Windows users to continue using (some of) their Windows applications, including Microsoft Office. The SuSE Linux Office Desktop will be available for $129 in January, and will include Acronis OS Selector for disk partitioning during installation and Codeweavers CrossOver Office for Windows API emulation."
It's not exactly earth shattering news. Whats next? Slashdot reporting that that distibution Blah is going to come with WINE already pre-installed?
Or am I missing something major entirely?
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It should be interesting to see how Lindows handles a vetran like SuSE entering this turf. However, should be good for the end user.
IMO, SuSE should do well. They have been much more OS than Lindows, and so they don't have to worry about all the bad press.
Jason Lotito
It is sad, but this is probably the best way to get into the desktop business. The ability to run Office is often a requirement when companies aquire OSs.
It seems that they have realized that the transition has to be smooth "SuSE Linux Office Desktop combines the technology and user-friendliness of SuSE Linux 8.1 with proven tools that facilitate the migration from Windows operating systems and applications".
And the biggest advantage of this solution is also brought up the the press release: "SuSE Linux Office Desktop seamlessly enables the continued use of existing data".
The Linux distros must realize (and seems to have realized) that the average desktop user does not care for open source or extra choices. The average user simply wants a productive desktop that is easy to use and works they way they expect it to.
How many geeks are going to buy a desktop OS? None. How many people want to try Linux but can't give up their Office(tm)? Suse apparently is banking on lots.
This is not for geeks. Maybe for geeks-in-training, but not for geeks!
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
That said, no it's not for everybody. But a lot of users (especially corporations) will find it useful if it is preconfigured so that installing and using Win32 apps is easily and fast done.
The 'just download package X' syndrome is one of the main barriers for simple folk using Linux.
Actually, even for experienced users, it's a relief when we get something like Debian's apt.
What SuSE are doing here is to provide a distro that will run MS-Office with no tuning or tweaking or HOWTOs.
This is at once banal, and important. Seamless compatability with Microsoft products is a key tool in the fight to move users off Windows.
And this news is a sign that SuSE have understood this. That's worth saying.
(Just to give another example, we spent several days trying to make Oracle 9i work with Debian, and RedHat, and finally tried SuSE... it came with the necessary (trivial) user accounts preconfigured, and Oracle 9i installed and ran almost at once.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
The office alternatives are good for many uses but not always 100% compatable. Then there is the retraining costs as well. Lastly, when it comes right down to it, Office is not a terrible program at all. It does what it was designed to do (insert your pun about virii here if you must) and it does it well. Nor have I had any stability issues with it in a good long time.
tinfoilmedia
I'd say that it is for most users. Not many users want to have to fiddle with the OS, install extra packages etc. just to get it working properly. I'd say that the vast majority wants computers to be easier and force less choices (thus reducing complexity). I'm not saying that the choice should be removed, simply intelligently set from the start and easy to modify and well documented.
Unfortunately, for most people the problem is that they are not named Microsoft Office or Microsoft Word. People like to stick with what's familiar, and the basic office apps (Word, Excel) have remained pretty much the same for a majority of users at least since version 6 (the earliest one I can remember using). Most of what has been added is fluff and feature creep. Also, a lot of people like to use the same program for the same task no matter where they are. My wife, for example, will only write her papers for school in Word because that's what they have at her school, and if she happens to need to make some last minute changes while on campus, she needs to be able to use the camups computer labs. I've tried to get her to switch to OpenOffice, but she won't-because it's not Word.
Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.
no it wont... as you are still tied to the damned micorsoft EULAS and how much you want to bet that the next eula down the pipe will say "you are not allowed to run this on any operating system other than one made by microsoft" thus making you instantly a free target for the BSA Blackmail squad.
The only way out is linux+evolution+Open Office.org..
a combination that doesn't tie your companies head to a boulder like microsoft does.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Are codeweavers still going to fold back in their work for getting this to work into the orginal wine code?
Or have they changed their minds and decided to keep all this cool stuff to themselves, much as others have been doing lately..
MSOffice ablity isnt worth that sort of cost to me personally ( startoffice/Koffice does fine for what i need ), but if its folded back into the open code, then its worthwhile.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
So what is to stop microsoft from slipping something into the EULA prohibiting Office 11 from being used on a "potentially viral" GPLed OS?
My rights don't need management.
If running Microsoft Office on Linux is such a requirement, why is there no effort to run Mac OS X applications on Linux?
Microsoft Office X is far nicer then office 2000/XP and can read all these file formats. Microsoft make good money out of this port so aren't going to stop producing it any time soon. Because Microsoft don't own the underlying OS they are restricted in the number of changes they can make to Office X to break emulator compatability, unlike with WINE.
Yet OS X is based on Free BSD, so a binary compatability layer should be far easier than emulating Microsoft Windows. I realise this wouldn't give us Visio and possibly not Access, but I would take this option up long before running a heavyweight WINE install on my box, plus we would get the nice Mac plugins which ae generally every bit as good as their Windows versions.
of all the effort that is going into porting Windows programs to run under Linux. The entire idea of the open source/free software movement is to free yourself from proprietary software reliance. I moved to Linux in '98 to avoid using closed-source, stifling software that really gave me no real choices and freedom. It is time that the Linux advocates put their money where their mouth is. If you are an open source developer, you should write for the open source movement, not assist Bill Gates with embrace ans extend. Microsoft talks the talk when it comes to hating Linux and open source in general, but if you pay for Office and other programs, then you are doing nothing to help the open source movement. Face it, people... you DO NOT NEED ANY Microsoft programs anymore. Unless you are a hard core gamer, you don't even need Windows. One of the things that keeps open source from really taking off in the general population is the continued reliance of Windows-based software. Linux could dominate the dekstop in 5 years if people would develop alternative and quit the BS of interop programming. Linux is supposed to be an alternative to M$, not a partner, willing or unwilling. It's time we got off the M$ horse and walked on our own.
If nobody ever paid for the OS how do you think all of these linux distros would still be in business?? My God, it doesn't take a genius to figure out you need income to pay your employees and stay alive. These free-for-all linux times we're living in will come to a screeching halt within the next few years. Why you ask? Because most of the distros are made by companies that are publicly held and their share holders will demand more revenue. If the OS is so much better than OS X or Windows, why is it such a bad thing to pay for it anyway?
OK, so here's the selling proposition:
For $129 I can get an OS that runs Office (but doesn't include it, as far as I can see) and which possibly runs other Windows apps, and which definitely runs Linux apps.
Or, for much less than $129 I can get an OS (Windows XP), that absolutely runs MS Office and which definitely runs vrtually all other Windows apps.
Linux is useful and fun for us nerds, but is a bit of a sell to non-nerds, and I don't see the above selling proposition as favoring SUSE for desktop applications -- Linux has no inherent appeal to non-nerds.
If one really wants or needs to run MS Office, XP makes sense. If one wants Linux on the desktop, I'd go with Redhat 8.0 (with its out-of-the-box non-sucking fonts, except in Mozilla) along with Open Office (excellent free replacement for MS Office) and other software that is designed for Linux use.
Maybe. Does anyone else remember IBM OS/2? Excellent Windows compatibility was included all the way to OS/2 Warp and yet it didn't turn out to be the Windows killer.
IMHO, the inclusion of emulation layers is the first sign that your system is somehow incomplete or incapable. For that matter, take a look at the entire NT architecture -- the foundation of the Microsoft system is emulation. It can be an OS/2 machine, Win16 or even -gasp- NT....
It could be a nice tool for attracting users with applications that currently only run on Win32, but I'm not sure MS Office is the best example of this. The real issues are going to be legacy apps without Linux counterparts (client/server programs that require ODBC/OLEDB, accounting software, POS, etc.), especially those that support an existing database or proprietary firmware devices. If Crossover can successfully support these, then I think it will have done it's job.
Meanwhile, for those considering a move to Linux they should take a good look at OpenOffice, KOffice, AbiWord and any of the other myriad authoring solutions for UNIX (Emacs, TeX, etc.)
Eric Sarjeant
eric[@]sarjeant.com
Still, there are a lot of users out there with a stable (if you can call it that) 98 or ME installation which works for them on a low-spec machine.
The Win32 API hasn't changed much so it's more of an artificial way to force upgrades on people... If it works don't fix it, right?
.: Max Romantschuk
Could this perhaps be that with Windows 2000 SP3 or Win XP (which are required for Office 11), they can have different API calls that have not been made available in Wine/CrossOver?
I can imagine that by changing the software to make calls to the newest APIs, there's a smaller chance that these have already been made available to Linux users through Wine/CrossOver, and thus users would find their Office 11 not working on this SuSE version.
If MS is not allowed to depend on new features in a new OS, it would hardly be worthwile to create new features, would it?
Most individual users would put up the extra $30 for an operating system by someone already recognized as an industry leader, rather than Xandros, a newcomer. To me the exra $30 sounds worth it.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Exactly. Computers should be working for us, instead of us working to get our computers to accomplish some basic task.
experience has shown that distros without a freely downloaded version actually end up with poorer sales due to the lesser publicity.
Isn't Redhat the number 1 Linux distibution? I can't seem to find the free download on their site. Maybe I am just not looking hard enough. I personally am a Slackware guy which does have free downloads but I bought it anyway (support the cause and all that).
There's a non-Wndows OS that has been allowing you to run Office for some time now. It's called OS X.
Mind you, this is actually in many ways a GOOD idea.
Given that Windows 2000 Professional and Windows XP uses the memory model pioneered by Windows NT (e.g., vastly improved memory management and much more graceful recovery from program crashes), anyone running Microsoft Office 2000, Office XP or the upcoming Office 11 should run it under the versions of Windows I just mentioned. Windows 95/98/98SE/ME uses an older memory management model, one that has a bad habit of running out of system resources quickly and doesn't gracefully recover from program crashes.
Small wonder why Windows 2000 Professional is so heavily used in corporate environments nowadays.
It will be very interesting to see if the new version of SuSE Linux will support Office 11, including Office 11's XML support. Or better yet, will we see new versions of OpenOffice and StarOffice that generates XML documents that can interoperate with Office 11.
Why are these linux distrobutions doing this? It seems every day we hear about another linux distro including some form of Wine to allow people to keep using license encumbered bad software (mostly MS Office). I am thankful that Redhat has not done this (I run Redhat 8.0) but has instead chosen to include OpenOffice.org a great office suite that I have had no problem importing and exporting (rather complicated stuff even) from Office97-XP formats. Please, all of you that happen to head up some linux distro....DON'T DO THIS!!! Support the better open standard!
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Anything anyone else would 'miss' from the Office Suite?
em dashes.
To date, every Linux word processor I've tried has looked at an em-dash (the single character that word puts in when you use two dashes--that is, two hyphens--like I'm using them in this sentence) as a letter in a word, and not a punctuation mark.
If I ever get a word processor working the way I want it in Linux that isn't word on wine, I'll post a journal about it.
The Windows Media Player has a EULA which requires you to "have a license to a qualifying microsoft operating system". This issue has come up with the codeweavers crossover product:
Nothing prevents Microsoft from doing the same thing with the Office 11 EULA.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
I don't think Windows (in all its forms) is as much a moving target as the WINE developers make us think. Most commercial Windows apps want the largest possible customer audience. So most companies develop their apps run on Windows 98 as a bare minimum. If WINE can just emulate the (five years old) Win98 APIs, most commerical Windows apps should work fine (including Office 2000).
cpeterso