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IBM Wants to Port Office to Linux

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the couldn't-hurt-things dept.

shfted! writes "OSNews reports: As part of its initiative to put Linux on the desktop, IBM Corp. wants to migrate Microsoft Corp.'s Office suite to Linux. Microsoft said it's not involved and suggests that IBM might do it by emulation."

6 of 662 comments (clear)

  1. Blue Linux by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yeah, this is great news and it only proves that IBM's in it for real. IBM is also creating a _desktop_ version of Linux - Blue Linux. It's not out yet, but PC Magazine's John Dvorak has already seen it.

    HERE's the PC magazine article about it.

  2. Crossover Office just works by bender647 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Crossover Office has been great for me on my laptop. I work at a plant with 1000 Microsoft users and they can't write a five-word meeting notice without putting it in a Word document. For the sub-$60 license fee, it has been worth every penny. I keep Star Office going on my Sun and Ooffice on my desktop linux system, but more often than not, they can't properly open MS documents. Yes, it would be great if I could convince a billion dollar company to convert all its employees to Ooffice, and convince all our vendors and customers to convert, and convince all the technical organizations to use Ooffice presentation software at the conferences. But instead, I just paid the $60 and got back to work.

    1. Re:Crossover Office just works by zeeboy · · Score: 5, Informative

      Hi,

      Have you tried OpenOffice 1.1? I find it hard to believe ( note: I'm not calling you a liar :> ) that less than half of the word documents won't open correctly. I work in an organisation where everybody uses Office. They mostly create overly formatted Word documents or formula spreadsheets and I have yet to have a single problem opening any of them.

  3. Re:PHB by gad_zuki! · · Score: 5, Informative

    Pointy haired boss, a reference to Dilbert. Its an acronym that really isn't catching on.

  4. Re:Why ? by Maestro4k · · Score: 5, Informative
    • On virtually any other point about Microsoft I would likely agree with you, but on this one, you're wrong.

      At this location on Microsoft's web site you can download the Word 97/2000 Viewer. It runs on 95, NT, 2000, and XP. You can also search "viewer" on Microsoft's web site and come up with viewers for their other applications, including a version of Word Viewer that works on Windows 3.1. I've tested the viewer and it works fine. Many government sites actually offer a download or link to get the Word Viewer.

    There's at least one popular OS not listed there -- Linux. You also have to wonder exactly how well it'll work on documents that the user's decided to turn on a bunch of useless bells and whistles. It lists the publishing date as 1999. It does say version 2000, so perhaps they updated it a year later.

    In any case, just having a document viewer doesn't solve the problem with Government picking an office suite that's propritary and not free. How about the occasion (which is definitely not rare, I've run across it nearly everytime I needed something from a government agency) where you download the document and have to fill it in with your information, then save and send it back? In that case if you only have the viewer, you're SOL. Well maybe not totally SOL, but best case you have to print out the blank document, fill in the information by hand, then mail it and wait for several days for it to arrive and get processed.

    And then you still have that annoying little problem of no viewer available for Linux, Solaris, BeOS (ok, yeah I'm nitpicking with that one), etc.

  5. I am an IBMer using Blue Linux by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative
    Sorry for the AC post, but I'm an IBMer and we're not allowed to make public comments.

    "Blue Linux" does not exist. What we have is Linux Client for E-Bussiness (C4EB), a Linux RH9 desktop that includes IBM apps such as a Lotus Sametime (an excellent Instant Messaging program) client, a Lotus Notes client (Windows version) running under WINE, and a few other things useful in the IBM Intranet.

    There are about 20,000 users or so at the moment, and the IBM Linux desktop community is very active. The IBM CIO is extremely supportive: whenever we see a boneheaded internal site requiring MS IE only or other such atrocities, we report it and the Office of the CIO puts pressure on the site's maintainers to toe the line and support Mozilla.

    Bottom line: "Blue Linux" = customized RedHat 9. It's hardly our own distro. But IBM is not just promoting Linux and recommending it to customers. We're also eating our own dog food.

    We are studying a migration to a Fedora-based C4EB.