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MS Office for Linux
webslacker
was the first to write in a ZD-Net article that claims that
Microsoft might be porting Office to Linux. This is not as
outlandish as it might at first appear since a Java port of
Office was underway at one point. On the one-hand
the availability of Office might increase the use of Linux
in businesses -- like its availability on Macs did for Macs.
On the other hand, it might reduce long-term quality if
smaller vendors are squeezed out of the market. What do
you think?
First of all, this sounds like a real pain in the ass for MS. Why would they want to do this? This, plus GNOME/KDE would most certainly eat at MS market share. If I had office for linux, then I'd NEVER need to use windows (I don't play games.) Office is the only reason I ever boot up my win95 partition.
Ms would be the dumbest company in the world if they did this. If i was Gates I would fire who ever came up with this crazy idea.
Turnabout is fair play, after all.
I bet Corel would hate it--right now they pretty much have a lock on linux&windows word processors.
hedge
i hope this doesnt go through. i cant handle having ms products on my machine.
Their windows monopoly comes from office. This is just to extend the office monopoly.
religion is the opiate of the masses.
Why don't they try to get Office functioning correctly on windows and mac before they make more broken software for other platforms?
If Office becomes the biggest office suit on linux
we will right back where we started, with buggy
software that is hard to escape because of its huge share of the market.
Its obvious to me that microsoft has little commitment to quality, I still have a windows machine, it shows.
If they ported office to linux would it still spy on us?
It's big, ugly, but works fairly well.
(Yea, flame on. It's more stable than
office 97.)
The new patches allow you to open/save
Office95/97 files.
I use emacs myself, but sometimes get office
files e-mailed to me. (%^$^&$&**&).
Since I set up StarOffice, I didn't boot Windows
for months. Then, one day, I looked at the size
of the partition, and made it into ext2 file
system. Never looked back.
it seems to me that they would have never considered this if it weren't for the DOJ.
i smell a pig.
The voices in my head say that the entire windows kernel is written in WordBASIC.
It still seems strange, though. It would mean contradicting themselves rather severely, too, since they "believe" at least for marketing purposes, that linux(and unix in general) is lousy and dated.
Depends on what you mean by documentation. I'd hate to download a program and find out it's documentation was produced in a WP. Nothing pisses me of more (for instance, MGE's UPS Software for Linux distributes the documentation in Word format).
:)
If you want to use a WP to write a printed manual, or maybe for a PDF file, fine.
I use plain text for most stuff, and LaTeX for anything I need to print. HTML for the web, obviously, but hand-coded. I meet specs better than most editors do
Hey Rob, how's that for a poll? What's your favorite text document representation?
Here's a plan. Claim linux support is forthcoming. Make a huge show of support, and make enough progress to show some screenshots. Delay, delay, delay. Come up with a crappy bloated demo version. "It's more difficult than we thought run a buisiness-class application on Linux." More delay, more excuses. Finally, drop the project as 'unworkable', and recommend that people stick to a OS more suited to the task, like Windows 2000.
This strategy has worked for MS before. I can't help but think they would try it again.
Getting out of the OS business? I can't honestly believe that they would willingly give up a portion of their empire.
Maybe they forsee a Ma Bell-like breakup from the DOJ trial, and are trying to strengthen their applications division?
no, their monopoly is desktop operating systems, which they leveraged into office suite dominance. take their proprietary os away and
they have to compete on a level playing field.
Yea, flame on. It's more stable than office 97.
Bullshit. If you say StarOffice is stable you hav never used MSOffice
And I'm sure a Microsoft Java version of Office would be even more of a pig. It could almost rival Staroffice in sluggishness and bloat. ;-)
Yeah, maybe that's it. ANTI-FUD ??
"Who'd want to use it"? Obviously not you. You've got everything you need with emacs and tex.
But how about people who want to focus on the content of their document and not on the technological superiority of their word processor or spreadsheet?
An office suite is a means, not an end. Maybe you yourself are a Very Little Brain.
The current Linux community may have a lot of
that thinking... but the suits who choose
software for corporate desktops - while they
may privately not like MS for a variety of
reasons - they also probably hate a lot of
other companies - like their competitors, etc.
even more... so in the big picture... from a
corporate standpoint you hate everybody... and
you do business with the ones that that fit best
into your strategic thinking... so everybody
hates MS, but will do business with them if they
get their hands on the right pieces of the
system... remember, MS fought and bought to
get their stuff on the Mac OS... at certain
times, it may be more important to dominate the
API, or browser, than the OS... this is a
REAL BIG ONE, and these are only my initial
thoughts...
Actually, that's much the point of TeX.
Maybe they can examine the core file to find the
bugs in their products !!!
Rob, can't you do some kind of a macro to filter out "GNU/"
No non-linux person will ever use something called GNU/Linux
"GNU/Linux? What the hell is that?"
This is a continuation of the strategy originated by IBM and adopted by MS of announcing a product to freeze the market, prevent Office users from switching the competition, and then dropping the project a year or two down the road. Of course the Feds don't let either IBM or MS do this via official announcemnts any more, so no they do it via "leaks".
If you look at the Muth interview last week, the Office rumor is obviously the second act in a FUD campaign designed to buy time until W2K is ready for release. Think about it - Office on Linux means big losses for Windows, at least in the corporate market. Unless, of course, they never produce it.
Bill Gates:"Oh NO! Linux is better then NT and its free! What do we do?
:-)
ms employees:"We could break it like we do all the time with windows apps"
Bill Gates:"but how do we do that?"
ms emplyees:"We can just release something for linux and claim that the kernel needs to be modified to run the program and then bam, we can then slow linux to a crawl and fool zdnet into thinking that NT is faster. How about office"
Bill Gates:"You are all geniueses! This is great and all the linux fans will look like fools and we will like the good guys of innovation."
This is the plan. Since they can't wreck the kernel manually and have linus let them get a way with it, they can just release ms office that modifies the kernel and if Linus or Alen cox say no, ms will say tough people will need office and Dell and IBM will include office with every linux box so therefore it will be crippled with almost every machine sold. NO respectably bussiness is going to turn down a machine with office and NT will look faster. I guess we will be paying for 2 os's again. One for the crippled version and then again for the non-crippled standard kernel. If ms wants to wreck havoc in linux land, this is the only way I can think of that they can do it. You know every tech guy will want linux with a crippling version of office.
That's total bullshit. Wonder what you'll do when it's no longer "cool" to tell your friends you're running Linux?
Would they "invent" their own, use Motif, or use our favorite of them all: GTK?
Yeah, I really hate it when I'm forced (at gunpoint, no less) to install products that I don't like on my computer.
the people who would want to use it are the people who we all want to eventually adapt Linux in their corporate world.
I love the comment that it'll take time to port Office to the STANDARD Win32 Api let alone to linux. That'll teach microsoft a lesson about using proprietary apis that only it knows about. Now it has to re-invent the wheel (again). Maybe they'll make it square this time.
Hmmm - I post this article to LinuxToday and SlapDash at the same time.
LinuxToday pick it up almost immediately.
Appears on SlapDash some 4 hours later.
Phillip Brown (who has no account and is, perhaps, of no account)
The article is just ZDnet's interpretation of one or two anonymous comments.
What if they're serious about porting the major
MS apps? This is really bizarre!
inside M$ Orifice itself or are they going to modify the Linux kernel so it crashes constantly?
Yes... but if this actually happens, the Linux
community will be invaded/diluted by vast
numbers of corporate types who are more interested
in standardization/compatability/3-5 year vendor
survivability/etc. than in how the code actually
works... so your comments about what the
*current* members of the Linux community think
and want will be overridden by the
corporate types who spend the big bux on
software purchases... this has
happened several times in the 20 yrs micro-computers have been around...
I don't know about everybody, but one of the reasons I like Linux so much is because M$ dosn't have their greasy hands all over it.
ABSOLUTELY. The last thing I want to see is the stench from Redmond polluting the Linux environment. Once MS products are in the picture, I can see MS, slowly but surely, implementing proprietary add-ons that will FORCE users into the exact same situation they're in now. Now that I think about it, what's to stop MS from producing their own Linux distribution?
I have both M$ Office and StarOffice 5 for Win95: I no longer have M$ Office on my hard drive. I like StarOffice a great deal, and consider it better than M$ Office (I just like it more).
It is well worth checking out if it is available on the OS you use.
:|
> MS is always looking after the little guy.
:)
> Before MS Office i had to publish my beer bottle
> collecting newsletter using thousands of dollars
> of proprietary software.
Yeah right.
> Now with the new MS model of doing business and
> the shift towards commodity software, I know
> hold the power at my fingertips.
MS did not invent commodity software though they are the most successful in that market.
> and would have been DENIED these opporunities if
> we were still sitting on time-share terminals
yes, but VB is not the only thing out there that will open opportunities.
> What about MS Flight Simulator. Could little joe
> average afford to fly a plane?
MS bought the god damned flight simulator from another company and certainly didn't invent the thing.
I had a flight simulator back in the day for my Commodore 64!
> And what if there was no MS?
Some other company would be in their place doing the same thing they're doing.
> Have you all heard of this Y2K problem. All
> these Y2K ready MS softwares replaced those
> softwares of past.
Which is probably why MS doesn't guarantee any of their software to actually *BE* Y2K ready.
anyway, I bet their software's still not Y2038 ready, so there
1)your link is broken
2)www.wine.com is about wine, not WINE
Either you are an MS troll, or just incredibly stupid. Oh, wait. They're equivalent. Sorry. Why don't you go back to shoving that glass rod down your urethra. Then shatter it and drink 15 glasses of water. Piss out the shards. Mail the whole fuckin package to your troll-in-law.
Then what you need to do is start burning yourself. Cigarettes are a good start, then you can move up to cigars and eventually steel rods. Make some real good blisters on your forhead and eyelids. Chicks love this kind of stuff.
Now you've got only a few more steps left to achieving total coolness.
You have to cut yourself. Not with a knife silly, but with one of those little saw things that are on swiss army knives. Start in between your toes. Then you can do the soles of your feet, and maybe your upper lip. Then do a couple of really good gashes on each butt cheek.
Now slice off one of your ears with the saw. Take the ear and stitch it to your chest, near some of the blisters from the burns. This should take about 1 day to get really nasty and infected. Within a week you will begin to notice headaches, and puss dripping out of your swollen, fetid body. This is normal. What you need to do is rub some dog shit on these wounds. You want to get the kind with worms in it. Also hang out with some farm animals to pick up maggots.
Eventually, the worms and maggots will develop under your skin to an amazing extent. You will bulge to twice your normal size as the infections and parasites attack your body. You will have constant diahreah with blood as your intestines disintegrate. This is normal. Do not be worried.
The last step is to take sandpaper and soak it in gasoline. Now rub the sand paper all over your skin and maybe you will kill some of the parasites! You will probably feel lots of stinging pain at this point. Do not worry. This is perfectly normal.
After this, you will be ready to post another message on slashdot. All the cool users have been through this hazing ritual at least four times.
Until you complete this, you are only to use the itnernet to look at porn involving people who weigh over 300 pounds.
Thank you, have a nice day.
There are like 3 or 4 sides to this, first let's assume Office actually get ported to Linux and it actually runs comparable to windoze's version,
MS might still have quite a bit of the OS market for at least 2 or 3 years after it release, because corp does not move fast, they won't move their entire entire IT sturcture to an unproven platform, there are also many more business app being run today then just Office, there are things like flowcharting software, GUI clients for some RDBMS', M$ Project....etc the list goes on and on, but having Office is definitly a big step forward. and as long as Staroffice, WordPerfect and Applix have up today filters that will work with the current version of Office, we don't need to have M$ Office.
Second, if M$ ported Office and runs like crap (see netscape) compare to the Windoze version, then they can FUD and say Linux sucks.
Third, (the more likely scenario) they just BS'ing, there will never be a port of any M$ software to Linux. (until Linux has like >60% of market share on OS. I'll be happy if I can just keep Nightmare Technology OS off of my machine!
just my $0.02.
The main objection I have to Office is the massive amount of DLLs etc that pollute and silently upgrade the system. That's a lot harder to do (if it's even possible) with Unix. Maybe MS will learn something about coding during this project.
What's more likely is that there are MS programmers working on a port, but it's not an official project. The only way they can release Office for Linux is to admit that Linux is a viable alternative and, except for in court (a temporary situation) MS NEVER admits that anything besides their products will even run, let alone solve your problem.
Office is a big seller, but NT (with it's per-seat licensing, add-on functionality and corporate buy-in) is the real cash-cow.
I'd have to say so.
No clue. I didn't use it when I used a M$ operating system (at least on my machine). If I were forced to use it for some reason I hated it in comparison to WordPerfect. I've never used the other office products too much but I do know that Excel is a blatent rip off of Quattro Pro (which used the right mouse button back in the Windows 3.x days!)
In general I have found that M$ products are fine if you feel like doing all of your work the way people in Redmond want you to, but if you feel like deviating from that you are screwed.
Don't get me wrong, these products are great for the majority of people that use computers (office personell) because they will use whatever is put in front of them.
And OSS version would be even better.
Dream on.
Now who in their right state of mind would think that M$ would port their applications to Linux, especially Office, their biggest cash cow???
1. This "announcement" did not even come from Microsoft. It is a rumour. (*Read* the article).
2. Porting Office to Linux would not make *any* sence. Think about it. This would cause many many people to switch to Linux, trigger a major Linux boom and pull their OS monopoly from under them. Can somebody explain why M$ would want that???
3. All M$ products are based on Windows and all their technology is tied to Windows (think OLE, COM, etc.). Just imagine how much effort it would take to port something like Office to Linux.
4. If they did decide to make the port, they'd have to eat back their own FUD.
I have 2 possible explanations for this nonsence. It is either a stunt for the DOJ trial or a way of creating more FUD (or both). They can say: OS competition is so tough that we are planning to port our products to Linux to survive. But then they can say we changed our mind - Linux just doesn't cut it. It's not even a real operating system.
Yes, MS has the DESKTOP monopoly.
And MS continues this monopoly by using pricing to get the OEMs to enforce it.
But MS doesn't charge as much as they COULD for the desktop.
They leverage the desktop (undocumented API's and "integrated" components) to force the sale of their more profitable office suite.
That is why Netscape had to die. If the OS became a commodity, their monopoly would fall. Once they lost the monopoly, their profit centers couldn't be sustained at their artificially high margin.
Simple economics.
The big win here is with attached files. People mail me Word and Excel files all the time. I usually keep my laptop on my desk, powered up and running Win98, so I don't have to reboot my PC to switch back and forth from Linux to MS. I've found that the stuff I can run on Linux (star office, wordperfect) doesn't always do a good job on certain office docs.
I can't believe that M$ would ever port office to Linux. But if they do, it would be an enormous milestone in the corporate legitimization of Linux, much more important than a comapny like Corel picking up Linux. If MS were to pick up linux support, everyone would.
It would also be a good indication that MS is tryng to mend their anti-competitive ways.
This isn't something regular users can do (unless they have root or root rights).
I think that the news would quickly catch on that "MS Linux" wasn't as good as "Red Hat Linux" or "Caldera Linux" or "Joe's Garage Linux".
In fact, it would probably make quite an interesting story.
"MS ships Office for Linux. 'Bloatware' exceeds even Linux's capacity for speed."
Currently the two versions of MS Office you hear about are:
MS Office 97/Windows 95/98/NT
MS Office 98/Macintosh
However, unless I'm mistaken at least pieces of MS Office have been ported to the following platforms at diffrent points over the years; SunOS/Solaris, HP-UX, and Windows NT/Alpha. While I've never seen MS Word or any others running Native under UNIX it was advertised in old issues of UNIX World in the early 90's.
FACT: MS makes a large percentage of it's money with Microsoft Office, that is the real reason there is a version for the Mac. The profits off of the Mac version were actually higher than the Windows version.
Think about it. Loosing Windows 98/NT/2000 would probably help Microsoft, loosing MS Office would HURT Microsoft.
Based on all of this it makes good business sense to start porting to Linux now.
THEORY: We might be more likely to see a port of MS Office on Linux/Alpha than on Linux/x86. MS probably isn't happy about the support, such as it is that Linux has gotten from Intel, remember why there was a port of NT to the Alpha.
hi,
AbiSource are developing an excellent GPL'ed word processor called AbiWord.
It's current tarball 0.5.1 is very usable and it is under heavy development.
It uses the GTK toolkit. And although it is coded in c++, it is very fast.
Check it out, and if you can code c++, consider helping them out, they are nice guys.
Within a few months when they reach all the basic feature set they have planned, you will never need to use MS Word again..... I think this will be one of the killer linux apps of 99.
ta,
ws.
The functionality of office is already availble on Linux. Instead of using shitty as access, you can use mysql, postgres, oracle, informix, db2, etc.. The transition from word to wordperfect is a breeze. The only real problem is with a spread sheet. There really isn't a decent spread sheet program for linux except the one included in star Office, which is semi-decent. Also StarOffice is a monster of a program, slow & huge.
I've found the various incarnations of MS OS's that I've used starting with MS DOS 2.11 to be buggy.
On the other hand as a whole I've found Microsoft Office on the Macintosh to be stable. I'm running MS Office 4.2.1/Mac, 4.2 was so buggy and slow it was quickly replaced, of course 4.2.1 is still slow. On the other hand I'm told that Office 98 kicks ass.
Would I buy MS Office for Linux? Maybe. Would I like to see it released? YES! The reason we're stuck with MS Windows at work is Office, and I'm sure a lot of other businesses are in the same boat.
I can see it now. Microsoft, in all its bloatedness and market-oriented nature, will say that they took the entire linux kernal and used a COM wrapper to expose its various properties so that it would mesh with Office. Then there'd be talk of more COM/COM+, ActiveX, Object this/that, and other Microsoft Two-Dollar Programming terms that I am sure M$ will brag about, saying that they made Linux usable for the masses. In reality, all it will be is a big mess full of holes and half-truths as M$ will have a hell of a time assimilating the Linux kernal/nature into the M$ hive-mind.
After all, who the hell said it has to work well? It just has to make its way to Linux. People & the DOJ will notice this and say to themselves, WOW, M$ really isn't so bad. It would be all a ploy to get a one-up on Linux.
This will probably seal Linux's fate as the first server OS to successfully migrate down to the desktop. Microsoft Office will fill the last major market before Linux is primed to seize the desktop from Win32. There are still video, audio, and professional graphics voids to be filled, but I'm convinced those will come in time as well.
/etc and each person being able to personalize them in their own home directories) and the way Microsoft tries to implement things (like when they tried to make Office on the Mac not work from any directory but its own within the root). Expect to see per-user licensing and non-existent shared binaries and libraries.
The nice thing about this is that desktop users will see the incongruity between the way things normally work in Linux (many users using the same binaries, for example, with system defaults established in
These breaches of convention, when compared with the other open-source office tools being developed at the same time (koffice, gnome office), which use CORBA to tie all the tools together, use shared libraries to minimize resource usage, and smaller tools working together rather than bloated one-size-is-too-big-for-everything sprawling featurism Microsoft is so fond of, will result in the free software prevailing and Microsoft ultimately losing the desktop.
Imagine that... if my prediction holds true, Microsoft will have had a direct hand in sealing Linux's victory on the desktop!
Hopefully, MS will think twice. Maybe they should contribute substantially to the WINE project instead. That way, they don't have to recode all their apps. Hmmm... besides how the hell will they get their C++/COM+ to work on a C-based OS?
Out.
exactly. well put.
Your comment on Windows DLL Hell rang my bell... big time... ... why don't they fix THIS - in NT
How in hell any OS can allow apps to install
/overwrite files in the system directories and
expect to be stable is so far beyond my little
mind's comprehension that it takes my breath
away... I could write a 10-page rant on this...
With all of MS's claims to do sophisticated
designs of COM, DCOM, ActiveX, yadda, yadda,
yadda,
at least...
And I have never seen much criticism of this
on the net... Am I missing something???
FORCE all apps to install in their own
sub-directory tree and prevent them from overwriting the main system files... Much as
I don't like MS... that simple rule ALONE would
reduce their system hassles about 40-60%...
another reason: Linux community is mostly hostile towards Microsoft. In fact a lot of people switched to Linux to escape M$ products. They will have very hard time marketing...
Maybe MS is hedging their bets.
Office is expensive. If linux makes inroads to the corporate desktop MS will want to be there (along with Corel and StarOffice).
Maybe I'm being optimistic but I think that it is a matter of time before linux is on the desktop. It is tremendously expesive to upgrade thousands of machines to a OS which costs 50->100 $ per seat (without server costs).
If the Linux desktop effort continues at the pace which is currently progressing at it will be in a good position when Windows2000 ships.
If I were in charge of the Office branch of MS I'd be OS agnostic and looking to make money anyway that I could.
This just made me think of something. About a year ago I was hearing rumors of some major Linux related project inside of Microsoft involving porting API's, if not NT on top of Linux. It was supposed to be in a functional state. The scary thing is that MS has enough people that something like this could be true, and they might be able to ship a version of MS Office for Linux anytime they want.
Who is to say that they don't have versions for Linux, BeOS, and who knows what sitting around all ready for Bill to give the OK to ship them.
um, yeah. this is *exactly* what happened. how did you know?
MS uses this technique now and then to create confusion. The idea seems to be to get large
groups of folks to sit around and wait for MS
deliver the good stuff. Of course they are really
off doing something else that will further undermines the competition.
Can you post the details of this ... I would
blocking in a HOW-TO
(for Windows,... of course)
like to know, and I bet a lot of others
would too... include details on
a. how to identify IP blocks that
MS owns - and may have hidden
ownership of...
b. system configuration steps in painful
detail
c. tests to show that MS software is
not bypassing the control files you
have configured...
this is a lot to ask , I know, but I bet
it would be *very* popular... and could
you publicize it somewhere... the postings
are piling up so fast here that it may
get buried and lost... so if you get it
written don't be afraid to advertise it
on newsgroups, and other postings here
... cause the interest will be *high*...
I don't doubt that Microsoft would do a port, and I wouldn't be unhappy if they did do a port, but Microsoft is awfully famous for making promises (or leaking inside information) about products that will never exist.
I give it 50/50 that it's true.
If Microsoft actually does this, I don't think it would be too unreasonable to think that there is an ulterior motive - for example, crushing the competition. Say they get rid of WordPerfect, Star Office, etc., and then they decide that Linux isn't a viable market. They did this with Apple, and they did this with Amiga.
End result: we need a freeware wordprocessor that can compete against Word.
first, flood the linux office market, then
embrace the hell of it, then squeeze hard.
harder. harder. then force everyone else out,
then raise prices big time.
I disagree.
What I hate about MacOS is that it's dumbed down like Windoze.
In fact it's dumbed down EVEN MORE than Windoze!
Interesting and scary. Expanding on your idea, imagine a scenario where MS people fork off the Linux kernel and appoint their own engineers to maintain their fork. Of course under the GPL term they have to release whatever changes they make. But the evil part is they can selectively accept/reject changes make by GNU/Linux community. They can even absolve the changes contributed to the Linus's kernel. Suddenly they have a powerful, reliable kernel that is ported to all popular platforms at no cost! They can then bundle their popular applications onto MS-Linux in binary form. Would they want to or benefit from doing this? Would their pride allow them to throw away NT?
Office for Linux is just going to hurt NT and probably to lesser extent the desktop Windows. I think this is 90% rumour, and 10% due to the fact that there're even Linux fans in redmond.
I disagree about Netscape.
The Windoze version has ALOT worse performance than the Linux version. The bad thing about the Linux version is that it uses Motif.
Of course they didn't - IIRC they are still under a consent decree that prevents them from announcing anything. They just "happen" to have developers asking lots of people for help porting Office to Linux, and it just "happened" to appear on ZDNet. Just like all those "grass roots" letter writers "happened" to write MS favorable letters to the editor.
I am really sick of all the talks about Microsoft Office, as if the sky would fall if we don't have the Microsoft Office. I believe most of the MS Office addicts have never seriously tried the WordPerfect 8 (especially with Service Pack 4 or 5). We have used both products, and, except the initial gimmicks (which became very annoying after a while), WordPerfect 8 beats MS Office 97 hands down on every aspect. Furthermore, Quattro Pro is seriously undervalued. It is much easier to use, and provides more features than Excel.
Thus, before you say anything about Microsoft Office, try WordPerfect first!
GNU/Linux usually refers to Debian (iirc) but should be what all Linux distros are called since Linux is only the kernel of course. :)
Linux acceptance (on desktops) in the corporate world depends on things like Office. If MS ported Office to an MS-version-only of Linux (So what if it is open source? There's nothing that says Office needs to be open source.), which flavor Linux do you think profit dudes like RedHat would be more likely to support? Then, who do you think would control the main Linux development/evolution?
Why not? They already ported IE to Solaris and HP. ... hope they don't do the same to the kernel.
My big concern is that they will mess things up in the rest of the system. When you install FrontPage server extensions for Apache, the actual httpd executable is REPLACED without any warning
P.S. Will this only be for x86, or will they actually try to port to linux's wide variety of hardware?
What, you expect them to use somebody else's code that most users probably already have, which they therefore can't charge extra for?!?
hmmm...think maybe backoffice will be the next port? IIS on Linux...yee-hah!
In all seriousness, putting the best server on the best OS would be pretty nifty. Maybe MS would even release the source!
Same here. I agree. StarOffice 5 (I am
using the 5.01 filter update version now)
has enabled to live in the office inside Linux
without booting to Windows for many days at a
time.
For reading purposes, it works fine. But, once
I wrote a doc in StarOffice and saved it
into Word95 format and sent it to a window
using coworker who had some problems re-editing
it using Word.
Um, no. MS would have to release these hypothetical kernel mods as source, so any sabotage would be plain for everyone to see.
Nope, the packaging mechanism would be called MEEPT. :)
Switch to FreeBSD??? :)
Then we'll move on to the next techie thing, and then they'll follow when it's colonized enuff :)
When I write this comment there are some 190 comments on Slashdot about the ZDNet article. Over at ZDNet there are no articles - nada, zip, zilch and so on. Wouldn't it be more helpful to post your comments on the site that carries the actual article, instead of some obscure nerdsite that no regular joe in his right mind would visit?
Or do you just assume that Rob's little place is so fucking gay that no one can keep away? I'm sure that an intelligent reply on ZDNet would be worth a couple of thousand replies on this site. Then again if one think about the usual quality of comments on this site - perhaps it is far better that all the elite d00dez stay away.
Bill S B
I think they did IE for UNIX awhile back. You notice how many people are using it tho'.
...then I'd buy it. No questions.
wp8 is really pissing me off!
I have to deal with Outlook and Word at work and I f**king HATE them. No way I would every consider installing them on Linux. ;-)
On the other hand, I don't believe the rumor.
- If MS creates a working version of MS-Office for Linux, instantly 75% or so of desktop computer users will no longer have any need to run MS-Windows.
- If Linux thus becomes a viable alternative to MS-Win, then OEMs will actually have a real option for desktop pre-loads.
- If MS-Win thus loses its monopoly on the desktop, Microsoft has just lost its Nuclear Weapon; it is through the OS monopoly that it maintains all its other powers and advantages.
So, barring the remote eventuality that Microsoft actually has to start competing for a living, it'll never happen. And by "it" I mean a full, meaningful port of MS-Office to Linux. Oh, we may see some hideous crippled mutant, but it'll never approach the level of functionality of the "real" product.It could happen. And then we'd be back where we are now, more or less -- a hacker fringe developing and using a superior open system, and the rest of the world choking on an MS operating system. The main difference would be that the MS operating system would be based on much better technology than the one currently in use. Frankly, it's fine by me.
The "easter eggs" (like the Castle Wolfenstein 3D clone embedded in Excel) might have something to do with it..
Keys to corporate acceptance of Linux. Lets face it, if we ever want Linux to grow up and start REALLY pushing M$ around Linux has to become friendly to the end user once set up. A port of office will give users something thier COMFORTABLE with and will reduce training done by network staff. Now I'm sure there are a million of us computer geeks out there screaming "GET A LIFE, PICK UP THE MANUAL AND READ IT!". But there are other people in this world {that out number us} that dont want to have to deal with Linux's complexity, and they shouldnt have to, thats our job. So you can kick and scream all you want, but Linux wont take over anything in the desktop world until business people can use it, not just computer peepz.
Computers are about business, and businesses dont care how kewl the OS is, they care how it is going to reduce costs and make it easier to get things done. Microsoft caters to this market, and they do a good job of advertising that they do, and thats why they are on top now even thought NT increases costs. There are many better OSes out that have never crosses a M$ programming lab. But they remain on the server end because they dont help the user. Good implementations of UNIX, Linux or any other OS always keeps the users in mind. Because they matter more then we do, we can adapt (thats also our job) they shouldnt have to.
Try to remember this before smashing an Office port. Anything that helps make Linux easier to use or more familar to the users makes it easier for us to get Linux accepted. We all want Linux to get accepted I assume? So heres to a port of office, a port of the explorer shell (with some improvements i hope) a port of the planet Venus, and anything else microscum wants to port. Id like to see Linux develop to a good desktop business environment even if I have to get microsoft to help. Here endith the sermon.
Brittin Cruthers
Systems Analyist
...by a lame company to pull its' lame ass out of the fire.
Too little, way too late...
The revolution is already in progress and it WON'T be televised...
I'm still waiting for THEM to release a working copy of Ineternet Exploder for Linux... I have pretty much given up on the media viewer hype for Linux propaganda that was released 6 months ago. Can't THEY see that that bit of PR got them nowhere and this bit of fodder will get THEM just as far? So much for thinking out of THEIR box they built for THEMSELVES.
Sarcasm? What's that?
Hey, have you ever tried to use StarOffice? If MS Office is an unstable program, then SO is not a program at all. Linux *doesn't* have any decent office app (SO? WP? Applix? sorry, Linux versions are the ugliest apps ever been on Linux). Lack of good word processor (and fully .doc compatible, btw) is the only thing that makes me feeling uncomfortable in Linux. If MS Office is ported I will be the first to buy it.
THAT! is the future MS will push Linux to.
And if they succed the industry in the future will be as tied up to MS as they are today. Linux wont make a difference.
MS will be in control, introducing new tech in "Visual Studio for Linux" that only work with MS latest expensive Enterprise Apps.
Pushing developers to write programs and additions that depend on these applications, thus promoting MS sales of them.
This is exactly MS strategy with Visual Studio and Visual C++ on Win32 today. The manuals and wizards only talks about Active Tech (former Active X) MFC and COM, which are MS dependent. Very few chapters about "general C++ methods".
If or when MS gets on the Linux bandwagon they will be unstoppbable.
Cant just someone blow that Redmond company up!?
/Patrix
I think MS will make up for a lot of their recent behavior by porting Office to Gnulix. And about time!!!!
Try to switch between StarOffice and other apps
for several times lets say a minute. The crash is guarateed. SO5 is a *very* unstable program, no need to mention there is still no hardware able to run it at acceptable speed.
'00 versions of Office will do things in new, incompatible ways for no apparent benefit.
Wrong. 2k supports all Word formats as well as XML.
The cool thing is, you can't squash a free product. Does WP, StarOffice cost any money? If not, their product does not rely on market share at all. Holy cow I just realized something. Microsoft is going to create a niche in the Linux market, then a few years down the road they will take StarOffice and Corel to court for "giving" their product away for free. Assuming they lose this DOJ case they will no doubt win that one.
no way.
...Microsoft Mouse
There seems to be a ring of truth to this as I was offered a job to work for M$ writing code for *UNIX* with Motif and C++, I turned it down (not because I hate M$ but because Big Blue gave me
a better offer) anyway its good news for Linux as I like execl as a spread sheet, but I prefere Lotus Word Pro as a word processor, but generally I just use Applixware which is mighty fine
office ware (now I thought tate was a shirt & tie)
There seems to be a ring of truth to this as I was offered a job to work for M$ writing code for *UNIX* with Motif and C++, I turned it down (not because I hate M$ but because Big Blue gave me
a better offer) anyway its good news for Linux as I like execl as a spread sheet, but I prefere Lotus Word Pro as a word processor, but generally I just use Applixware which is mighty fine
office ware (now I thought that was a shirt & tie)
Thank you for saying what so many of us wanted to say but dare not lest we be cyberpersecuted! Being gay is wrong in the eyes of the Lord and as such it is an abomonation of all that is good. Only by saying NO in a loud and clear voice can we stop these pillow biters from taking over our society and perverting it. And if we don't stop them soon their will be no offspring produced in the world. Well, perhaps, there will be a race of amazon women that reproduce via sperm derived from genemanipulated mice - but I refuse to speculate about what is being cooked up in the laboratories of sexual deviants!
Anyhow - Thandor - God is pleased about your actions today. And I'm quite sure the minister at your church will reward you plenty, until you are ready to recieve the gratitude you so richly deserve from the Lord himself!
William Saint Burrough, vicar in the North Anglican Church of small animals, stationary and confectionery.
If something like this gonna happen, they will definitely use the same approach as in IE for Solaris and HP-UX. They use MainSoft's porting toolkit, which is a *complete* Win32 implementation on Unix. So this is just matter of recompiling. Oh, yes, and MainSoft uses Motif, so don't wait for gtk+ version :-)
Compatibility's burden due to poor design from the start. If they follow your advice, many existing Windows applications won't install. Then they hide their head in the sand, anyway Windows user will handle that as they have no choice.
Is the Office upgrade treadmill already a faint memory?
I'd choose WP or Star Office in a business environment over MS Office. The license for MS Office is way too expensive. btw it's just a short time before Lotus presents their Linux office suite.
---
Abstract
Billy G is the antichrist.
He will treat Linux like the MAC.
This isn't about pride.
It is about profit.
Like the MAC, a Linux port will just gain them seats that they would have lost anyway, giving Windows 2000 a chance to come back later and take it back. This is exactly how they treat the MAC.
Port IE to Solaris ix86!
Big beautifull binaries baby!!!
With windows 2000 limping, there is no reason for Microsoft to treat Linux any differently from the MAC -- seats that they cannot get 100% of now, but expect to later. MAC and Linux market share is the same. Soon, we will all be whining about Microsoft the way MAC users do (as opposed to our own special kind of whining).
soon gtk..gotta love X Window System.
Unix/Linux apps install in system directories as well. Why do you think you need to be root to do a make install?
This make me think for a while...
while everyone (almost) is preparing fighting the OS wars, everyone seem forgot that MS have another monolopy, that is the Office Suite.
The Office suite although not as bad as the OS itself, but everyone (almost) thought its was good. This is one area where MS actually spent plenty money on it.
What the effect of porting Office to Linux, it will bring a lot of *cluless* office users to Linux world. It will polute the Linux world.
These people care less about open source, free beer, freedom , RMS and GPL. They just want to get they office job done.
See how the office had taken control on the Mac where the Apple have to made IE the default broswer so that MS could port new Office Suite to Mac. This is just sad. Plain sad.
When win api is done. Then, they bring over the shareware authors. blah blah blah.
I rather die than support win API into Linux, they will polute the linux community.
AbiWord is really nice because it does not use the insecure and bloated .doc format. If you don't like AbiWord, try Maxwell. Go to freshmeat.org, just click something to find new stuff :)
There is no library for printing on newer inkjet printers and non-postscript, e.g. Epson Stylus Color 600 and no decent font support in X11, huge binaries which require at least 64M RAM, and the dependency on GTK is what needs work..
;)
Nope, but imho it's better than nothing anyway..
...never over estimate a company that spends it's money foolishly...
(Microsoft can not fight that which it can not own, either directly or indirectly)
Please, tell me, as a corporation, how does one intimidate thousands of random and anonymous contributors to a movement brought about by one's own actions?
I think what we're seeing here is the birth of "had it up to here" socialism. It's a blister type of phenomena that pops up in capitolist environments whenever a monopolies chafe consumers (both individuals and businesses) to rawness. It goes away when the irritation abates. All that Microsoft's 20billion in heat and motion amounts to is scratching and itch on consumers that is starting to become red and inflamed.
IE was ported to Solaris and HP-UX by two guys coming from Linux. It's extremely likely that MS already has a Linux port of IE.
They can control a big chunk of middleware (ole, etc.) to their own ends.
I think, if Bill put their hands on a little part of the linux code, then it might be a problem...
Microsoft never do a stable, confiable and good system. Why we use m$ programs? If we dont give then a
way in, then they can't came and destroy ours goals.
Ciao Voe!
He will just shift tactics enough to continue on as before -- a little shift, a big shift, whatever is necessary. The momentum is only temporarily slowed.
Windows 2000 delayed == Windows 2000 Office upgrades delayed.
Linux Office upgrades available now.
Oracle ported theyr RDMS to linux in no time, M$ didn't even port internet explorer and wordpad yet. I don't think they can do it.
Isn't the Linux situation like the MAC situation?
That is one option. They have a whole lot of code, money and people.
Takes me back to Atari vs. C64 days where the most compelling reason to switch platform was that a few games were much better on the other platform!
-LJ
StarOffice works fine on my system. Note that Linux is composed of many interdependent parts. I use the 2.2 kernel, with glibc2, and the latest stable or semi-stable ( i.e. not the CVS versions) versions of everything. MSOffice crashed on me far more than StarOffice or WordPerfect.
Then again, I do have a k6-2 400 with 256MByte RAM...
- zdnet comments are heavily filtered
- zdnet makes money on comments (unless you junkbuster them?)
The internet is about speed and openness. Slashdot is about the best at those.
You can't use a delaying tactic here. Corel, etc., are actually happening. Microsoft cannot allow them to gain strength. Microsoft only wins the vaporware vs. vaporware competitions. DOJ case is only about OS. Freedom here to flex the application monopoly.
Win2k is delayed. Get market share now. Win2k comes back later. Customers will not whine any more than they are now. Do win2k customers whine now about MAC Office ports? -- They are not related -- win2k vs. linux is only a figment of our imaginations. Only people who were going to switch to linux anyway will do so. Linux is just like MAC -- microsoft doesn't really care -- just embrace and extend later.
Yes, but with most make installs you are able to choose where you install them (configuration options).
Subject says it all.
Wanna know how? Go here for a theory.
BTW I posted the Linux Is For Everyone link before but I screwed up and it directed everyone to the wrong page. GRRRR. Sorry!!!!
Reconsider your arguments in light of the fact that Office is available on the MAC. How is Linux any different? Few pointy haired bosses will switch to Linux over this. They will just wait and wait for win2k. Microsoft just gets revenue from those who won't give up what they are going to use anyway, be it MAC or Linux. They come back later with a decent win2k -- if Linux or MAC are weak then, MS gets some OS customers back. The whole game is changed by the very real Linux market share right now.
I would love to see Office on Linux - it shows that Linux has "Made it."
And they actually earned their monopoly by building a good product - they did a wonderful job on Office; and especially Access.
I welcome MS Office - it is one of the main reasons why we don't use Linux where I work.
Mark
I heard stuff like that around Word 6.0, mainly because I seem to remember that it was next to unusable on the Mac and performance of the said adaption layer was a big reason. Are they still doing this? I think that the Mac IE, for example, is developed in San Jose and has a different code base than the Windows version.
My opinion is that the last thing the world needs is Office for Linux. It is a usability nightmare.
If I'm not totally mistaken, the Java port of MS Office actually was an office-like suit made be somebody else. MS felt threatened, bought them out and put the project on ice. So much for free competition and buisiness ethics.
You're a loser. Your mother wears combat boots. You're an idiot.
Did that make your day?
In the worst case they create their own GUI system (instead of X) for MS Office.
This GUI system would only run on MS Linux
(and so would MS office).
So everyone buys MS Linux to be able to use the
MS Office. The result is that either people buy
NT or they buy MS Linux. Either way, Microsoft
the money will end up in Redmond.
> Maybe you yourself are a Very Little Brain.
:-)
What, you mean Winnie the Pooh is online!
Maybe so that they can make its performance worse on Linux than on Windows, so that MS can then claim that Windows is a superior product!
I think that you will find that MS was writing applications for the Mac even before Windows was released.
We sure are!
Compatible with which .doc version? Even different versions of MS Office are not fully compatible with one another. This is a way for forcing people to stay on the upgrade treadmill.
that it lets you go and make yourself a coffee whilst it loads, and sometimes even lets you drink it :-)
Stupid fuck !
Use Citrix then. Almost as slow as X
IE has NO connection to the Windows OS.
The IE integrated shell for Win98 is basically produced by replacing the file view component by
a html output engine, and then strapping the IE renderer onto the end of that.
I don't even think on what will happen when hordes of Microsoft (TM) (and Rwindows) programmers go to linux. Thinking about Linux Visual Basic gives me nightmares. I will have to find another OS if Microsoft windowize Linux. And you know that they can do it because they have a lot of money. They can throw their M$ Offishit and ActiveXit and M$ Java and M$ Vizual Basic for free on Linux and they will not loose a penny, but Linux will die slowly, suffering in pain, just like windows is doing. You know that people will start to use those shities if they are free because they think that they are better just because they are easier to use.
They wont .... its too imature and pain in the arse to program and very limited.
If anything, MS would use they win32 api port they made for unix, then recompile. Gtk would give anyone nightmares.
Btw rob, change the borg/gates pic to the image of gates witha pie. That would be nicer.
gtk wont be ideal will 3.0, it needs a lot of work.Im sure you gtk coders know what pain it is.
EOF
I believe that it would be GREAT if Microsoft ported Office to Linux. Especially if they poured LOTS of money into it. Because it would be nice to see them loose LOTS of money because of quality, lower cost software available for Linux. My view of the Linux community at large is that they are not concerned with name recognition. They are more interested in quality. It would be nice to see upper management follow suit.
Yeah - I really want a bunch of Microsods APIs floating around my nice clean system. Maybe they can start putting thousands of unwanted DLLs everythere too. For this to be a good thing MS would have to fundamentaly change it's approach to programming.
Why not make a new WP for linux using html4 and css as layout/structure language?
:) Just throw in some doc2html filters (ok, this might be a bit heavy to do, MS own doesn't work acceptably [what's new])
Yeah, just laugh you!
But, I actually code my essays in html (in linux) so I can print them out/work on them at school too (they use w3.11, w95 and wNT)
Using an finished renderer like one from Mozilla and then spending all efforts on making a good wysiwyg editor for the documents = A WordProcessor!
Ofcourse then we'd in the same time have an excellent html editor.. Cause.. That's what it really is, just 'fooling' the users a bit..
Oscar Campbell
Enough said.
wouldnt that article mean you had 3 hands?
NT on the new Pentium II-350's at my college takes longer to *shut down* than Linux does to *start* on my K5-133!
;-)
I tried Office 97 yesterday and just trying to use it for about 10 minutes confirmed what I already knew.
that is sooo unladylike... all those naughty words have no place in a technical argument. and that namecalling never proves anything.
like we didn't know that mr. bill will never, never support any non m$ product.
go back to your rooms and don't come out until you are ready to apologize.
I know there is Office for Mac. Do you know why? It was a deal between Apple and MS (Have you been following the lawsuit?). MS released Office for Mac on the condition that Apple stops making Quicktime for Windows.
Besides, Office for Mac is fucked up beyond all recognition. It's like twice as slow as Office for Windows. (Have you seen the ZDNet tests? Even they admit that "Office is optimized for Wintel").
on the other hand, MS has released freeware viewers for office docs dfor windows. You never know, they might just do the same for linux eventually.
With the advent of VBA, the official macro language of M$ Word, Excel, etc., virii embedded as 'autorun' macros can be embedded in ordinary documents. VBA's capabilities work in the program's environment, so that macro virii can infect WinXX, Mac (and now Linux?).
Perhaps the product should be renamed 'M$ Typhoid Mary'.
Word Perfect and Corel has allways been a torn in microsoft they want to remove. MS might feel that they can reverse any ground corel has won (And the other Office-type program) if they make MS-Office for Linux. If they did, it would be the only app.
ZDNet whorring for M$, trying to help their master parylize the market for the Linux Office Suite competition too?
This is just a rumour - everyone here knows what M$ is capable of - and how they do things - the ONLY Linux Distro this would ever run on is M$Linux.
We all know M$ has no love for software or the people who develop it - they love money. Period.
(Don't even THINK about ANY M$ open source - they've probably got so much stolen code in their crappy products they'd be in court forever).
I for one, don't want or need Win32 APIs on top of a *nix system. I don't code for Windows anymore - and I prefer to keep it that way.
Then came the punchline;
Slashdot is about the best at those.
Oh my God, I haven't laughed that hard since... Well since ever. Thanks!
William S B
Huh? You think that for Linux to be a viable OS it must be blessed by the First Church of Microsoft, and baptized in the datastream of Office 97?
Linux doesn't need 'validation' from Microsoft or anyone else.. and the place where you work uses only MS products because they're too lazy or too scared to switch to something else.
You are terribly wrong and really believe what M$ wants you to believe:
Office 2000 doesn't support Word for DOS Formats but StarOffice supports StarWriter for DOS.
And even bader, the World shall think, Office 2000 will support XML. What it really does is writing HTML with some XML-like tags which keep the proprietary formating information of Word-Documents. Before the definition of XML this was named Microsofts proprietary HTML-Extensions!
An M$ Internet Explorer does support this XML-like
Extensions, Netscape Navigator won't.
Didn't you expect it from M$ anyways?
WP lost the MS market. If MS is seriously about porting
Office to Unix, it would damage Applix, Star Office and Corel.
Huh? You think that for Linux to be a viable OS it must be blessed by the First Church of Microsoft, and baptized in the datastream of Office 97?
/.
This is so typical
Keep your religious ideas away from my computer. Seriously, computers are tools to get work done. They are not some holy altar which must not be contaminated by microsoft's software. I use Linux because it is stable and allows me to do the work that I get paid to do (write software). If microsoft has some software that help me be more productive, then I'll use it - and not shoot myself in the foot because I think it is "immoral" to use MS software. The only time software is immoral is when it is used to hurt other people.
#1. Good business sense. Office is where the $$$ is, that's why it's still on the Mac. MS knows that this will cannibalize NT/98/2000 sales, but maybe they realize that a year from now, Office and NT will come from separate companies (thank you, DOJ!), so the Office folk are going to leave the NT guys out to twist in the wind.
/usr/local/system32 on my Linux box!
#2. Same thing with tools. MS makes lots and lots of money on Visual Studio and VB. If you can build Office on Linux, VB is practically already there. Just think, we can look forward to seeing msvbvm7.so everywhere! I truly shudder at the thought of having
I can't argue with #1. I'd do it if I were the Office product manager. #2 could backfire: if I can write DCOM servers and VB GUI's on Linux with official Microsoft tools, then there's just one less reason to have an NT box around.
Perhaps Microsoft has grasped the Linux phenomenon --and its tangle with the DOJ--deeply enough that it has realized that the OS is a losing battleground dominated by free software that it cannot control. It will then do whatever it can to retain control of the (highly profitable) tools and applications layer.
It doesn't matter whether this is good or bad, it's going to happen. Prepare to make the most of it.
Beware the Mark of the Beast 666
only wait
they gona buy trolltech
they gona buy cygnus
MS is 80% Office and 20% Windoze
Err the macos version of Office disproves the 'never, never'..
I'd love to see Bill port Office. Give ppl one less reason NOT to buy/use *BSD and GNU/Linux.
Sabotage? What are you talking about? Microsoft has developed innovative technology that integrates with the Linux kernel and provides customers with rich functionality and enhanced application performance and you call it sabotage?
Ridiculous. We simply offer a better product and better value for our customers. Don't take our word for it, though; compare our competitors. Here's a couple of videos: one of Star Office and one of Applix, both running on the enhanced Linux kernel. You can see how much longer they take to do even very simple tasks. And they are both disturbingly unstable, crashing an average of 3.7 times each in a simulated workday. Microsoft Office on MS Linux is clearly the industry leader in quality, reliability, compatibility, ease of use and technical support. We're sure that in time you'll come to understand this. We've just had a very productive meeting with some of your top managers, and they fully recognize the advantages to be gained from an all-Microsoft computing environment.
right on schedule...
1.denied
2.FUD
3.Embrace
4.Extent
can't you see this? Microsoft is just being itself. They are doing what they did to JAVA. Now everybody put on your OSS war helmet. this is going to be one bumpy ride. specially if Microsoft starts doing MS-Linux distro. even if it is open they will find a PGL loope hole so they can start extending without opening the code.
hah....M$ is so transparant.
My only real complaint is the proprietary file formats. If M$ would standardise around the XML formats, and support free libraries for loading and saving their contents, then I would not see any problem -- my biggest with Office is the lack of compatibility between O95 and O97. Presumably, we will see the same problem with O97 and O2K.
At least the performance is reasonable -- I tend to prefer Excel 95 under Wine already -- using Excel 97 only for file compatibility. The silly thing is that Excel 95 and Word 95 load quicker under Wine (wine startup time included) then staroffice native -- also, the apps run quicker.
Fonts don't work correctly yet -- but thats mostly the fault of wine and X11 (partly wine, mainly X -- X's font system is as lame as 'doze 2.0!!!)
sure - there was a good product somwhere around
Word 5, but since then rampaging (its hardly
creeping!) featurism, the final takeover of the marketeers, and the realization that to keep the income coming in they have to change their self-decreed standard file formats every release have taken over. A good product now? Remember the fiasco with Word 97 when they released it and then "discovered" that it couldnt export to previuos versions without going to RTF and losing all the previous decade's "advances". Remember the easter eggs that pad the executable. Remember that the binary document standard includes your MAC address. The last thing I want in an office suite is a dancing paperclip, oh and a flight simulator,
and something that "corrects" my grammar every time it sees a roman numeral...
I sure hope they port over all those useful wizards, and word art, and office assistants...
features! ha!
--be
Yah! Mine started back in the '80s when a bunch of us were porting some electromagnetics simulations from the mainframe G-level compiler to MS's F77. Wouldn't it have been nice if they had a mechanism in place to inform the users (and we were actual, registered users - sent back the damned cards and everything!) that their compiler had over 200 bugs in it! Had we known that we wouldn't have invested the time and money in their crap. Their support at the time was about as execrable as it is now; it took a co-worker about two weeks w/ MS phone support staff before they'd admit that our problems were already known and on the list of 200+ that were weren't told about.
Using Microsoft products reminds me of the ancient joke:
As for:
Oh, I don't know. They're both too bloated for my taste. Maybe WordPerfect has gotten better since my DOS days when I first came to disdain it. Perhaps, I just haven't worked with the Linux version enough yet. Right now, Applix is working fine for what I need a word processor for (and with RTF format, it creates Portable-Enough(tm) files so I can work on documents at home and take 'em back to the office.
We know Microsoft's strategy regarding challengers.
Here's my take on what the strategy is:
-Create a 'leak' of information that you (the 500 lb. gorilla) are considering moving your big guns over to another platform (in this case, Linux).
-All other developers who MIGHT consider developing their own product (which duplicates the features of yours quite closely) get cold feet. They don't want to get steamrolled.
-Development momentum for the other platform gradually disappears and the other platform moves into obscurity and becomes a nonissue.
-You (the 500 lb. gorilla) come out WAY ahead and you never even spent 'money/development time/programmer hours' creating a damn thing and your competition still gets nowhere.
Hows that for Standard Microsoft Procedures, sound familiar anyone? MacUsers??? Hello!?!?
Ummm, I think that's part of the point a lot of MS Office detractors are trying to make. They care more about the content of their document than whiz-bang features or the market share of the company that produces their software.
How on earth do MS products encourage people to focus on content anyway? The philosophy behind MS Office seems to be that the user should never have to personally review what s/he has written. Personally, I think that this is a little dangerous. People are being trained to believe that, the moment they have dealt with the little red and green squigglies, they are done with their document. People are being taught that they don't need to proofread.
You've made some very important points, Sleepy, and I believe that your interpretation of non-Windows MS apps may in fact be true.
Now, I'm not too familiar with the Open Source "requirements" for releasing commercial Linux apps, or rather if any such requirements exist... but does anyone know if there is a possibility that a product like Office would NOT be released under GPL, etc.? That would set a horrible and disturbing precedent, if it is possible...
On the other hand, if MS is required to release legally "hackable" versions of their apps under Linux, then I don't suppose it would be such a bad idea. The community could always improve on their shortcomings, and we won't necessarily have to pay out of our noses for those subsequent improvements.
This is, of course, assuming that they're not just blowing smoke up our asses, like you suggested.
-ad
To slightly misquote a line from "The Soul of
a New Machine":
To those who say that Microsoft's entry into
the Linux market will legitimize it, the
bastards way welcome.
Agreed. ZDnet responses are sensored and I, for one, would rather not do their job for them.
/. and the information is de-fused.
Information is power. If ZDnet thinks they can rework and sell your post as a story, they probably will. If I post on
You may, or may not, like what I have to say but at least I can say it here and it can be heard by those interested. Then, they can assume their own reaction as grown-ups that don't need spoon feed by the media.
A self-declared troll, no less... /. - plan to replace Bill Gates with ourselves and be just as bad, I disagree. Part of the whole point of free software is that no one gets monopoly control of it. Also, however rare you think it might be, I think a lot of us might feel morally wrong about making 20,000 times as much as the average person (based on a $50K salary for the average person and $1B/yr earnings for Bill Gates, neither of these numbers are accurate, but they do pretty well as ball park estimates) without doing 20,000 times as much work. In any case, how would a user community take the place of a sole tyrant?
Ok, first of all, pet peeve of mine about the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was officially "State Capitalist" starting just a few years after its creation, way back when Lenin was still alive. Perhaps you've heard the old quote - I forget how it goes exactly - about bread and circuses, and how you have to give the people one or the other? Communism was exactly that for the U.S.S.R. In other words, communism was just propaganda in the U.S.S.R., it was always capitalist. Not that the Soviet regime didn't have some socialist principles, but mostly it was just fascism.
As for your contention that we - presumabley you mean the Linux community, which is fairly heavily represented on
MS is not losing any OS war; Hell, there is no friggin OS war for the desktop. If this rumor is true, it simply allows MS to spin Linux as no threat to them. They are leading the market, not reacting to changes, got that ? MS is a creature of momentum, without perceived momentum, the share price folds. That's why they must kill UNIX. And Linux may turn out to be the greatest way yet for MS to kill Sun, et al. They can appear to be taking charge of enterprise and desktop developments in Linux instead of watching the traditional UNIX co.s do it. Another emerging trend and revolution lining the pockets of MS and its shareholders --Huzzah! Open source is the fundamental ground of Linux, and that is a great danger to MS' interests. But do MS shareholders understand that? Hell no (most NASDAQ shareholders prolly couldn't say what the companies they own shares in actually do) --so why should Bill care?
Future Scenario:
MS develops Office to run on top of Linux.
Uses proprietory API layer developed by MS.
Everyone starts using it.
Microsoft says only "certified" to work with "their version" of Linux.
MS purposes makes it break with RedHat, SUSE, etc.
Companies/people migrate to "MS Linux" to insure compatibility.
MS sells the most popular linux distribution.
This is the type of trash-talk, that generates the typical anti-linux response so commonly given.
People who suggest replacement of MS Word, with La-TEX, seem to have little comprehension of the 'real world' outside of their own attempts at a thesis. Even taking TeX at it's directed purpose and comparing it against MS -word target audience, and it become apparent that there is just a little overlap.
I doubt that TeX will become the common office document processor, under any of it's forms. does anyone remember _why_ PageMaker and InterGrief in either the windows format or the unix format did not succeed in the Office environment?
Either of these two commercial products provide the same type of basic functionality that LaTeX is structured to provide.
suggestions that Win9x applications be replaced with high maintanece software with a narrow focus is a step in the wrong direction.
Perhaps the focus should be on providing software that works =better= than the products from Redmond.
-klt-
I'm a MacUser and that was my first thought when
I saw this. It happened many many times on the Mac, and now M$ is going to use the same tactic to try and wither Linux.
The whole quote about M$ "promoting XML to the level of Word and Excel's propriatary formats" made me retch.
As someone who has been there. Let me say DON'T BELIEVE IT. Go ahead and work with the StarOffice guys to improve their product, or write your own OSI Office. Start today!
That way, when M$ is on the ropes and finally DOES port to Linux, it'll be too damn late.
Annoymous Kevin
We must support the AbiSource guys, they are producing a very nice office, even cited by M$ in court as competition (!), and everything is GPL!!
Welcome to Linux, nice to C you here!
username: root
password: stairway2heaven
Microsoft wasn't very smart in using this. No one will buy it. A lot of linux users refuse to use anything microsoft, no matter the quality. And anyway, no linux user would EVER use a product they had to PAY for. I mean, c'mon? Money in exchange for SOFTWARE? rediculous.
Besides that, if MS doesn't release the source code, they're going to have trouble with one of linux's greatest strengths: simply recomplile the software and it will run on any piece of hardware you stick it on, be it x86, PPC, or alpha. But since MS will obviously not release the source code, you won't be able to compile it yourself. Meaning MS will have to maintain a plethora of different available versions of MSOffice/linux, for every imaginable package manager and hardware flavor.
If anyone does buy it, all i have to say is that the days when a 386 worked great for linux will be OVER. You'll need at LEAST a dual pIII.
But at home, I do 'make install' as root, and put most things in /usr/local. And for libraries there is not much choice unless you want to mess with LD_LIBRARY_PATH. All libraries go in /usr/local/lib and I don't have much control over possible overwrites.
First of all... Office is an unstable security problem.... MS knows this well. They see Linux as only a server market threat. So porting office, the biggest security problem ever created (macro viruses, backorfice, etc) if it catches on, would help unbalance the statistics on security on Linux vs. NT, in which Linux of course is winning.
Second of all... It would be far too easy to slip a trojan virus into Office which could compromise security, damage devices, etc. It would be hard to discover because the source would not be available and they'd deny any knowledge of such a virus even if discovered. They could possibly write their own macro virus, and claim they didn't know about it since that happens all the time to MS Windows users.
Third of all... The people who keep claiming in this thread that this port of Office will allow Linux to beat MS Windows need to get back in touch with reality for a second. Even if Office catches on, and makes Linux a more viable business desktop, it's still supported by Microsoft! In the end they win out either way, because they can simply drop support or stay behind a version or two, or claim credit for making Linux a success, etc. Regardless MS's OSs would do phenomenomally better than Linux due that Office is an MS product.
Fourth of all.... They're trying to spark the debate we are currently having. Either they want to gauge the reaction, or they are trying to cause commotion. Several people have already (idiotically) stated that they would stop using Linux if MS ported products. (Note to the jackasses who said that they wouldn't use an OS with MS products installed, you have no clue what Linux is if you believe you'd be forced to install any package.) Many people are trying to (as I am) discover their reasons for the port, this is probably what they want. They want to cause a reaction that will somehow benefit them. Now either this is to prove that Linux is a true competitor that reacts exactly like a corporation would. Or, they are trying to cause fragmentation or stagnation in open source development.
I say you ignore Microsoft, they can't touch us. Whatever they port, it matters not. If you do or do not want to use their software you have that choice.
Microsoft does not know what it's messing with, they think they know. They'll soon find that they are getting a little bit different competition than they're used to. When you piss off the people, the people rebel. FUD tactics might work to destroy other companies, but when it is turned right back smack in the consumers face they recognize it.
Nelson Rush
chesterrr@att.net
Yes I think AOL stated they are planning on it.
Nelson Rush
chesterrr@att.net
IF the rumor is true, the PURPOSE of such a port woll be to reduce quality on the Linux platform by squeezing other vendors out of the market...
Next thing that will probably happen is MS will create "Linux 99" or some bullshit like that.
That will be the day i stop using computers.
YES!!! Port to Athena!
X is faster than Citrix on a decent network. I've used both on the same network, and found X much better.
>supposedly every install checks to make sure the
> DLL is an upgrade...
Two problems:
a. Upgrades *should* be backward compatible but
they can very well introduce new bugs, and
incompatibilities with *other* existing
software...
b. If you want to test out interesting looking
shareware or stuff from smaller/unknown
vendors you're taking some risk that they
know exactly what they are doing, and are
giving you clean and solid copies of
MS binaries, etc. This gets scary when you
want to try something from individuals, etc.
You're assuming that MS Office would be based on X
Windows. Although that would be sensible, building a
whole 'nuther window system, incompatible with X,
would give MS a lot more leverage to shut non-MS
apps out. I'm betting that Office, if it ever ships, will NOT
use X. Or, if it does, will require a window or session
manager incompatible with the rest of the world.
K<bob>
Suck my dick MS
There is one reason and one reason only that could possibly make you dumbshits port office to linux...
Fear that people are finally beginning to realize how much better linux is as compared to your unstable, insecure, overpriced, and amazingly slow OS, windows.
AFAIK IE is ported usually by outside houses (as was the case with the UNIX version) by companies doing their own Win32 porting libraries.
Think of it as compiling Windoze apps using Winelib or Willows Twin.
Tux says: "you seem to be typing more slowly and backspacing more often. Don't kill yourself on this document. Go home, have a beer, play with your kids." ... oh dear, this meeting conflicts with the Phantom Menace opening ... shall I reschedule it?"
Tux says: "I noticed you said 'finalize' and 'win/win' in the same paragraph. Your hair is too pointy. Get real and write like a human being."
Tux says: "I notice you mentioned 'Linux' and 'lack of support' in the same sentence. Shall I open a window to Linux Weekly News for you?"
Tux says: "Checking your calendar
Personally, I have both.
:^P)
I'd rather use StarOffice just because it's stabler than Office97. (Eat dat.
Yeah, it *is* easier to deal with SO5.0 with a nicer machine (K6300/64MB ram, myself) but, personally, I'm running Window Maker and Star Office at the same time, which has *much* less impact on the system than trying to run Office on Win98 :^P
In addition to scaring developers, consider the other side of FUD.
Potential business adopters of Linux have been carefully considering exactly how you leave MS Office behind, if such a move is to be made. Now with this "MS Office on Linux" pre-announcement, they don't have to make that kind of decision, since APPARENTLY they can have Linux AND MS Office.
So they WAIT. (and continue on MS Win while they do.)
Coming soon:
MS Decelerated X
MS Kernel '99
MS Window Manager '99
MS inetd '99
The main problem I've faced with MS software, as
well as Applix, and other word processing and
spreadsheet apps, is the data format. As long as
the data is not easily "minable", I can only
ensure continued access to it by using the
appropriate company's software. I am much more
concerned about access to my data 5 or 10 years
from now than I am about the tools used to create
it.
Assuming that the "quality" of Ms-apps is any
indication of their engineering abilities, do
you really believe their engineers are up to
such a daunting challange?
:-)
your ignorance is only
slightly greater than the
level of disinformation
that you have been fed.
Only time you'd need a product like Word is if you feel that pagination, printing, or typographical presentation are more important than structure and content. The web emphatically underscores the subordinate roles of those features to substance.
Need to make a presentation? HTML. Only luddites are still using Power Point.
Need a spreadsheet? For financial analysis? OK. Excel's functionality is quite useful (though many use Excel purely for non-financial work because the table/grid/matrix/ is already laid out; problematic when it comes to sharing that info though)
In short. Office is nowhere. Porting Excel is useful.
Let go of the old-fashioned ways of communicating with Word and Power Point and embrace email and the web. You've got nothing to lose except a subconscious dependency on MS and others of their ilk.
Admiral Yamamoto
You don't have to have it moron
XFree86 3.3.3.1 server binary? You can not run X11 on older machines with 32M ram, IDE harddisk swap going on. I'm not talking about AbiWord ....and about font support, no anti-alias in X11?
I never suggest to dismember GTK port!? ssss.
...if I could avoid it.
But look at it this way: at least I'd be able
to choose my *operating* *system* if I did have
to use Ms-Turd--instead of being forced into Ms-
everything.
Which is why this really ain't gonna happen. It
does not fit in with Microsoft's scorched
network vision.
> People buy Windows because it runs apps, not
> because it's Windows -- this is why
> Linux isn't huge. It has no (full-grown)
> mouse-clicky apps that people want and
> need. MS' monopoly is in Office, not in
> Windows.
I've become unconvinced that that's true. When I was running OS/2, that was the conventional wisdom among OS/2 users: that the key to OS/2 success was more standard productivity apps. After the release of Warp v3, OS/2 became relatively successful and the userbase expanded. There were a host of independently developed productivity apps that were in general better than the equvalent applications for Windows (DeScribe as compared to Word, Mesa 2 as compared to Excel). In 1996, OS/2 began to decline in popularity, probably because many people regarded Windows 95 as "good enough." Lotus ported their SmartSuite to OS/2 at around that time. Then in 1997, months after the release of a highly end-user oriented Warp 4 (with very nifty context-sensitive help, voice recognition/dictation, etc), IBM repositioned OS/2 as a thin-client system for a few Fortune 500 customers and withdrew all SOHO support. At no time since 1994 or so was there ever a dearth of end-user apps on OS/2.
Linux, on the other hand, offers a model of computer use where "apps" in the sense of monolithic GUIfied programs for doing very specific tasks (like word processing) are not really necessary. In Windows, and OS/2, the focus is on the applications you use, not on the tasks you want to accomplish, and that's a bad model of computer use. In Linux I use a chain of small tools to accomplish the tasks I would have used a word processor before (Emacs Auc-TeX, LaTeX, BibTeX, dvips, pstill), with a host of advantages along the way (better typesetting, easy repurposing of documents for different types of presentation, easy access to bibliographic databases, etc). The demand of new Linux users for Windows-alike applications is really a demand for the Windows-way of doing things. Once you accept the Windows way of doing things, the viability of your platform can be controlled by a few vendors who control access to key applications.
I imagine that Micros~1's goal in porting Office to Linux is to further decommodify file formats and make more users dependent on the formats Office writes. They can always yank support for a platform later.
> Help out with AbiWord/KWord/LyX/Thot!!! We don't
> need or want proprietary software. People who
> use proprietary applications on free OSs are
> completely missing the point.
I agree with you here, but even libre wordprocessors are a bad thing because they are a bad way of working. I recommend that people read Allin Cottrell's Word Processors: Stupid and Inefficient for some insight on tools vs. applications. (LyX is exempt from these criticisms, being based on LaTeX).
I was wondering the same. Do people hate Gates/MS because he went out and achieved the "American Dream" of kicking everyones a** in the corporate market or do they hate Gate/MS because his software gets released in a state of bugginess and gets patched a million times between new releases. If MS released a free for DL Linux distro like the others, except with some built in add ons like ActiveX and Windows Media Player, would everyone still hate him/them. What exactly is the reason to dislike him? I'll even start I dislike them because their software keeps locking up/crashing my computer@home and our systems@work.
I'm a linux user, and I love linux. However, I'm getting sick of seeing people praise software that, in reality, is just as bloated, buggy, and crash prone as its windows equivalents.
No Office suite should be 80 megs. Whether it be under Windows, Linux, BeOS, or whatever. We're talking about text processing here. Why should things be so big?
AppleWorks, an office suite for the long extinct Apple II series of computers, fit entirely within a single 800K 3.5 floppy. It was a great suite and fit in under a meg! Why is today's software so insanely bloated? We really can't do all that much more than we could in the good ol' days.
StarOffice is ridiculous. It's even bigger than MS Office. There has to be a better alternative.
-=^o.o^=
GNUCash looks like a nice program, but it's worthless to me if it doesn't have online banking like Quicken does. I can download my daily transactions and pay my bills electronically from my home computer using Quicken.
Erik, I think you answered your own question. MS would likely do it to add credibility to their claim that Linux is a threat in the desktop market. They probably would turn around and scrap it.
The part I find funny is that they would likely enhance Linux's standing on the Desktop by doing so. In essence, they would have yet another hand in creating their own enemy.
It's so obvious that you work for Microsoft
It should be common knowledge that the sole purpose of the Mac port of Office is to "ease the transition to the Microsoft Windows platform". It is neither a good port, and is fraught with problems and ill performance (no doubt on purpose) - I've had to use Office on both the Mac and MS platform extensively, and the discrepencies are obvious. If a MS Office port for Linux is written, it will be for the sole purpose of getting people to leave the Linux platform in favor of the Microsoft Windows platform - rather than having the prestige of supporting another platform. Bear in mind that WHATEVER Microsoft does, there is absolutely no intention on their part to benefit another OS - that would represent a conflict of interest to them. I, therefore, find it hard to consider using a MS product so developed, and would rather use one of the many high quality Office products already available for Linux for the very reason that these products would be much better supported...
Mike
Go back to '9x (x 3-5). There are a few well known networks (and protocolls) IBM, Dec, Novell (and others). There is also this university thing called the internet.
Open protocols drove it, proprietary protocols suffered. Lots of people said it was impossible. It turned out to be unstoppable.
Cheers,
/jarek
Publishers I deal with require TeX, LaTeX or Quark. Word bites--> send in a Word document and you'll find your advance squandered to pay a compositor to retype your entire document in some reasonable program. I am not kidding. Office is a joke. It's a standard, which makes it okay for retarded secretaries to send each other word documents containg dip recipes via email. If you think more of yourself, get off the ms-juice, man.
Sammy
As usual on /., subtlety is utterly lost...
I really can't get through them all. Are there any good ones?
Well its nice to see how typically biased most of the thread on this subject is.
First, Office is a useful product. I use it quite often on my windows box with very few if any difficulties.
Second, Id prefer to run it under Linux.
Third, ANY application or suite which comes to the Linux OS is only a benefit.
Those of you in the MS bashing field need to grow up, and you need to do it soon.
And as recommended I mention the GNU project. While fine and dandy it still hasnt produced a decent word processor.
For those of you who are not informed of the truth, I must present you the truth.
Windows is a very good operating system. Linux has a weak value in that there isn't enough integration of software and operating systems. With memory so low cost these days, it's only logical to integrate Office & IE to the next version of Windows.
Linux, on the other hand, has no integration. Everything is strung together through weak pipes and IPC. This sort of thing shouldn't be going on when memory is so cheap. It is logical, after all, that two components the GUI and the kernel ought to be integrated, and that the web browser and the gui and the kernel and the word processor ought to also be compiled into one monolithic system.
No, Windows isn't perfect. If it were, every peice of Microsoft software would be loaded on startup. This wouldn't make the OS more expensive becuase you would have to purchase specific licenses for the already included software.
Maybe by the time Windows 1905 comes out in six years, Microsoft's engineers will truely respond to users and remove the option of binary executables at all, making the whole system a blob of unprotected memory and unrelated integration.
Linux, meanwhile, will be tinkering away with technologies like Corba, making software - even more - componentized and OO. Now who wants that?
MS basically dumped MSIE on the market, to kill Netscape.
They're going to do the same thing with MS Office, to kill any potential competition in the Linux landscape.
Once they've done so, they'll retract MS Office from the Linux platform, and Linux office users will have no choice but to switch to Windows.
Evil, eh? But it's right out of Microsoft's playbook.
The last thing Micros~1 wants is a level playing field, because it *might possibly lose*.
The more I think about it, the more it seems clear that the guys behind AbiWord are doing the Right Thing. Because their code is GPL'ed, it can't be killed.
It'll take a few months for it to build up momentum and become an MS-killer... but the sooner you start using it, the less control Microsoft has over the Linux platform.
open butter was started by a young agriculture
student in iowa back in the late 50s. she was tired of all the contemporary butter technology always breaking down. so she decided to implement her own version of the butter churning systems she had learned about at school. she made her version available to whoever wanted it, because she did not like all the butter technology patents and proprietary butter systems being made by the big butter companies.
>If I post on /. and the information is de-fused.
/. is constantly being monitored and censored? Several very interesting, or just funny, comments disappear all the time. So what is the difference? ZDNet monitor their material before it goes online and /. do it after it is published. Big difference...
You are aware that
Bill S B
You suck!
No, you suck! Linux r00lz!
M$ doesn't know what it's in for! It's definately dead meat now!
It's a typical MS bait-and-switch vaporware plot to undermine Linux support!
KDE blows goats.
GNOME has to PAY goats to LET it blow them.
you loosers should quit makeing fun of mispelings they dont mean anything its intelect that maters
It's a step forward for Beowulf; now everyone will NEED a cluster just to make their office suite run at a decent speed.
(Actually, if you check out just about any message with an interesting-sounding subject and a dozen sub-messages, you're bound to get all the important points summed up in there. If not, do it again.)
The key here is that if Linux really takes off Microsoft wants to be the company to suppplie office since office is as good as you can get to a key platform. The move is purely strategic and you can bet Mirscrosoft isn't going to do anything to help to popularity of LINUX if it can.
When I saw this bit on my screen this morning, my first reaction what one of horror. Knowing M$'s history, and taking in account those "Halloween" (sp?) documents, it is logical to see that M$ sees Linux as a very real threat and that they will use every mean to deep-six it.
There is a real possibility they will try the "embrace & smother" (ok: embrace & extend, then smother) strategy with Linux. We might see Yet Another UI lib (MDE ?), even some binary-only essential integration lib sowed into any Linux machine their office suite in loaded onto. They will try to pollute Linux, or at least make some form of "xenophobe" app support lib, or... who knows.
And *if* they don't try to corrupt the underlying OS, they will try to pull the same stunt they pulled on MacOS: make "Linux Office" a less complete version of M$ Office (no Access, no VB, no...), probably throw in a few timing loops to slow things down (like it was found on MacOffice a few moons ago). "Look, software runs faster with Windows XXX! We're better than Linux! (yada yada yada)"
As much as M$ Office might be a positive thing for Linux were the circumstances be different, given M$'s desire not to be #1 BUT THE ONLY ONE and their willingness to use any means possible to achieve this goal, I just hope that they just never come close to Linux.
(No, I do not trust M$. Not at all.)
I would actually prefer M$ to stay with WinXXX only, and to see Lotus port SmartSuite, and Claris/FileMaker port FileMakerPro, and... many other companies port their S/W to Linux. If this were the case, we would end up with more software to run with Linux than there would be under WinXXX !!!
Now wouldn't *that* be special: being able to say "why use Windoze, there are fewer companies producing less software than what you can find under Linux!".
I wish, I wish, I wish...
But in the mean-time: BILL, STAY AWAY, GO AWAY, WE DON'T WANT TO SEE YOU!!!
Bruno Majewski
(too lazy to get an account)
I agree. I think Excel, and even Word are both good programs. They may be slow, but they have more features than I have seen for any office suite for linux.
I purchase products based on the quality and value of the product, not because of some immature political reason. If Excel came out for linux I would buy it. Why? Because it's better than any other spreadsheet for linux thus far (yes, I've used Star Office's spreadsheeet, gnumeric, and others).
The bottom line is if you don't like Microsoft's Office Suite, then don't buy it. But please, do not call me a moron or misinformed if I choose to use it.
The linux "community" seems to be about as inclusive as the KKK. If people don't agree with you they're not stupid, they're different (ok, sometimes they're stupid, but hey, live and let live). I love linux (and FreeBSD), but don't care at all for Windows. If people want to use windows, fine, I don't care. Whatever works for them.
If microsoft wants to write open source software based on existing GPL'ed code, I certainly wouldn't mind. However Microsoft is never going to write open source software, so I we really don't have to worry about it.
COME TO THE CLASSIEST NUDE SITE ON THE NET.E ST.HTM
HTTP://WWW.MICROSOFT.COM:4350/~BGATES/SLUTF
love, bill.
Click on the hof link and you'll see that there have been several 500 comment stories, and one, the Gnome 1.0 article reached over 1K comments.
Microsoft Corporation has had a long history of utilizing its software to combat its opponents. Not only have they destroyed advances in software technology, but you the user loose your privacy. Before you flame, please search through the archived articles at news services such as CNN. It will change your opinion of Microsoft. I wouldn t doubt that Microsoft monitors /. and comments from time to time.
:)
I don t trust Microsoft with my computer, and I had many valid reasons to completely migrate to Linux two years ago. Stability, efficiency, and source for almost everything. I find there is
nothing it can t do that I want to do.
No thank you Microsoft, I now know where I want to be today.
if the jokes are funny why do they need a fake laughter?
Who ever said that sitcoms were funny?
Read about BF Skinner and see how most of us American's act like Pavlov's dog.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Reverend Bill, I am perplexed. The Lord won't tell me what you're talking about. Usually he's awful damn chatty about them there awful abominations and preversions, but this time he just clammed right up. What the hell is a "pillow biter"?
Please tell Allen and all the boys (wink, wink) I said "Hi", you old Tangerine, you!
or something.
don'ch'a mean like, "censored"?
All this bullshit is being generated by a robot!
There's nobody here but me! I'm the only human left alive! Shit!
SOYLENT GREEN IS PEEEOOPPLE! PEEEEEEEEEOOOPLLLE!!
Aaaarrrrgggghhhh!
Just a thought ... maybe they would release Office, and people would say that's great! then after say 5 or 8 years of Office upgrades, etc., M$ would decide they will stop making Office if the Linux community doesn't give them whatever they want, like $150 million or stay out of our multimedia way or whatever. It's been known to happen, just ask Steve Jobs.
I doubt M$ has made any final decision to port office to linux. Anyone ever think that maybe they just wanted to see what kind of reaction it would get from the linux community (they were anticipating the 500+ posts on /. for the story)?
"for me? thank you!"
behold my sarcastic naysaying alarmist remarks.
There is no way I will buy MS Office for Linux > just on principle.
Well, Linux is open source, they can optimize Office like it is for Windows by reading the Linux source I would assume. That is, if they *care* to, which is most likely not.
Me too and I *do* play games:) And theres more to it; maybee I could use Linux @work.
--
gurb (Office2000 localizer)
Uh, visual basic programs compiled into native code still require the visual basic runtime (now refered to as virtual machine). How do you think vb applications execute commands such as mid/left/right etc without the runtime library?
I like LaTeX. I can see a lot of situations where LateX solves a problem way better than a word processor. As to usuability, most people are generally too stupid to own a computer anyway!
I hope something is different now then it was in
1994-1996. At that time OS/2 was selling at a
pretty decent rate and at one point selling
1 million copies (no preloads just retail sales)
and had over 15 million users. FrameMaker for
OS/2 was in gamma but then killed. The same thing
was happening to other 'Windows' ISV's OS/2 apps.
Why were they killing products that were near
shipping and had customers eagerly waiting?
Micros~1 could/can/(probably did) threaten access
to Windows APIs or threatened to release a 'fix'
in Micros~1 Office that would break other apps,
ala WinSock.
What I'm saying is that it is dangerous for a
large ISV to build products for ANYTHING that is
not 'sanctioned' by Micros~1. Today I still read
about vendors not willing to be mentioned by name
for fear of Micros~1 reprisals. Unless the DOJ
can stop this, we will not see Windows ISVs
putting apps on Linux. They will be told to "kill
the baby" and step in line.
Locutus
You lie ... I've seen little evidence of a usable
product from Netscape/Mozilla since 4.5. How many
years will it take Mozilla to release binaries of
a stable, simple, fast and good-looking web browser and HTML editor for ANY platform?
All Mozilla seems good for is writing position papers about theory and suckering people along.
With AOL now in control of Netscape, do you really expect many resources to go into the Mozilla project? Sure, AOL will let Mozilla carry on with free labor from suckers who contribute to the project, just in case something
revolutionary, and free (for AOL), comes of it for
AOL to then patent and market.
Netscape sucks, and always has sucked. Its products are slow, ugly resource hogs. It takes
more memory to run one session of Navigatior than to run the enitre Linux system with KDE on top of it also running its browser/filemanager.
Bugger off, Netscape, so there may someday be a good set of Linux internet tools for non-nerds.
KDE is getting there, and let there be others as well who can put Netscape in its place (away from our desktops and in the wastebasket).
I'm with you, I hate the way Office Suites make
you think about applications and not so much your
data. The OpenDoc concept of documents containing
data of several types needs to be revived.
The data segments in the file contained
information on what small plug-in (plug-in for
your OS) could view or edit the content. What was
cool about this was that when you put a plug-in
in your OS/OpenDoc all documents registered with
that plug-in used it. Plug-in a spell checker and
all text-based document segments could have THIS
spell checker applied to it.
StarOffice, WP Office, MS Office, etc all are
almost platforms in themselves and the rest of
the OS does things differently. OpenDoc or the
data centric OS would enable a more seamless
interface to new technologies/applications. Not
that patchy 'do it this way HERE' and 'do it
another way HERE' mentality we have today.
Locutus
With the recent news of MS moving $400,000,000
around to next quarter, it was said that Office
is resonsible for 30% of Micros~1's revenues.
The $400 Mil has something to do with coupons for
Micros~1 Office 2000.
Micros~1 has become quite good at creating new
monopolies by leveraging its originally large
DOS marketshare. That is what I think has the
Television studios, cable industry, and every
other area that Micros~1 and Bill Gates touch.
They are bearly adequate at software development
but getting much better at patching pieces of
code from other companies/partners products into
their OS/applications.
Locutus
You are angry angry person.
release Internet Exploder source!
Yes, exactly. They would stall the evaluations of
Applix and StarOffice products because MS Office
for Linux is just 6 months away....Then every
6 months or so they say it is just x months away.
Like what was done to IBM, no pre-announcing
releases, the DOJ must do atleast this to MS.
Locutus
if memory is so cheap why don't you pay for my next upgrade???
And if only bright peapole like you bought computers the market would shrink to nothing.
Why should a computer be something complicated and only for the "gifted".
If LateX can't solve ALL problems better than my word proccessor why bother lerarning the damn thing. You could allways learn coding postscript directly if you like that better.
The old "Word" for Dos and "Word for Windows" are totally different applications, just the same name.
Show this post to a prospective hire; if they either start fuming and frothing at the mouth or nodding and saying, "You know, the guy has a point," you don't have to concentrate real hard on the rest of the interview.
/.ers should have immediately recognized as nonexistent should have been a bit of a tip-off.
Oh, and the fact that it referred to a product which all
I'll try to tone down the subtlety next time, reminding myself of the tender ages and lack of sophistication of much of the readership.
I am sitting here in school reading your crap, I cannot see why you try to flame linux and its kernel by saying that WINDOWS is better!!
Actually some people, like myself dont like gui, and dont even use Xwin and such EXTRAS, which are made by programmers all over the world, FOR FREE! I cant say the same for MS, anyways.. some ppl like myself work better from console and use gpm, works great for me..
lastly, I would like to say that you are an idiot, and actually severly impared mentally and should be killed, you brainwashed MS gimp!!!!!!!
I though linux was kinda an escape from Microsoft.
Microsoft Liunx 2000.. think about it
:)
Dark_Hour
2288665
timson40@bunt.com
Correction, it's spelt
...
liNUx
my fault
Dark_Hour
Very true. They seem to be trying to do 20 jobs at once. They need to take their times and focus. No rushing to cause bugs which are discovered and people are amazed, then go download 10+mb patches only to find that the patch had a bug. No one has time to wait, yet they depend on office to do their "office" tasks. There are plenty of tools for this in linux. SO5, gnumeric, gnotepad+, heck even good ol' pico.
Why waste time M$ ? Fix your own problems first before introducing new ones to another operation system.
Hmm, reading your post and see that most of you words are less then four letters... hehe funny. Also, i don't ever recall seeing that if its not linux it sucks. Many great games have came out for windows. Also lots of programmers began with windows. Win is kinda like a learning tool. One of my reasons of using linux is to learn new stuff. Learn how to compile and have control of what is in your kernel. I see that it seems that you are just afraid to re-partition and put a linux distro on. You should format that drive of yours.. and give it a try. Learn something before you post garbage. You must have reading problems too if you have been reading for a year now, and thats the best conclusion you can come too. I have been reading for about 2 months now and Its not about Linux rules, its about buisness. Get a life. Get Linux.
I just though i would say, I like your saying
Linus Torvalds dreams of world domination. Bill Gates dreams of a stable OS.
:)
Dark_Hour
The thing I most hate about Microshaft products is that they're crap. They're unreliable and bloated.
If Microshaft Orifice is ported to Linux, some people are going to start using it, which (IMHO) can only be a bad thing.
And can you really see them going open-source? I think not - they'd be mocked by people who can write code properly!
Why can't people comprehend irony and satire?
Since memory is a part of intelligence, why don't you get someone to buy you some of the latter? Maybe that memory will help you remember experiences of sarcasm, so you'll be able to recognize it better.
this is the lastest post evah!
That's exactly what I was thinking...
I think Microsoft is trying to bet on two horses here.
One one hand if Linux ends up being the number 1 OS they will loose on windows, but benefit from selling programs to it.
On the other hand if they do port their applications to linux, people will have even less reasons to by windows.
All in all. Microsoft is known for vaporware. I will believe this when I see it in the stores.
Amiga? The only product Microsoft ever released for the Amiga was Amiga Basic, and I doubt that had much to do with the death of the Amiga. I never heard of them announcing any products for it, either, and even if they did, that was not what killed it.
Commodore killed the Amiga, noone else gets to take any of the credit for that.
$ dict gay
From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [webster]:
Gay \Gay\, a. [Compar. {Gayer}; superl. {Gayest}.] [F. gai, perhaps fr. OHG. g?hi swift, rapid, G. g["a]h, j["a]h, steep, hasty; or cf. OHG. w?hi beatiful, good. Cf. {Jay}.]
1. Excited with merriment; manifesting sportiveness or delight; inspiring delight; livery; merry.
Belinda smiled, and all the world was gay. --Pope.
Gay hope is theirs by fancy fed. --Gray.
2. Brilliant in colors; splendid; fine; richly dressed.
Why is my neighbor's wife so gay? --Chaucer.
A bevy of fair women, richly gay In gems and wanton dress! --Milton.
3. Loose; dissipated; lewd. [Colloq.]
Syn: Merry; gleeful; blithe; airy; lively; sprightly, sportive; light-hearted; frolicsome; jolly; jovial; joyous; joyful; glad; showy; splendid; vivacious.
I've never understood why english-speakers call homosexuals gay. Did they think that homosexuals are happier than heterosexuals or something?
Why would the dependency on Gtk need work? Should they port it to Athena, or what?
*shudder* At least you didn't suggest porting it to Open Look. Of course, now somebody will do just that.
> Then the only problems will be the bloat in
> Office.
Actually, I think the real problem is the bloat in the MS libraries, and Visual F-. Hrm... almost all Windows programs are bloated. Almost all Windows programs are written in Visual Basic and Visual C. I wonder if there's a connection?
Maybe if they replaced their libraries, Office would install in under 150 meg...
Naaah.
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
Unix apps usually install under a path specified when you run the configuration script (or edit the Makefile in some cases). If you specify no path, usually they assume /usr/local. The installation puts files under appropriate subdirectories in the hierarchy you specify, that is, if INSTALL is the install directory, it puts binaries under INSTALL/bin, libraries under INSTALL/lib, and so on.
This means a user can install an app anywhere he has write permission. For example, I install apps all the time in my home directory on machines I don't have root access on.
One might conceivably allow regular users to install apps in system directories by making those directories owned by a group, say the "install" group, giving that group write access to the directory, and adding the users to the group. I don't know if doing such a thing would be a good idea, though.
---
Just after I bought Corel stock assuming they'd clean up after Linux conquers the desktop...
I don't know what's wrong with your system, but have you thought about hardware? StarOffice 5 is stable for me on FreeBSD 4.0-CURRENT, so I don't know what you're having a problem with here. In addition, I've been using StarOffice for many months on my K6 (now K6-2 300) and the speed is quite acceptable. It's not as fast as something highly optimized for Unix, but didn't you notice they use a cross-platform toolkit to mediate between SO and the OS? Kinda like what Mozilla is doing with NSPR...
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
On the other hand, other office like projects might suffer if something like office takes interest away from them. For those of use are GNU heads, we know our way is the better way. Open source is a fundamentally superior way to develop software. Proprietary software has two things going for it right now: It has been working on easy to use applications for the masses longer, and it is the status quo. Free software is catching up, and the status quo is changing.
Office for GNU/Linux might hurt us in the short term, but as pointy haired bosses get used to the GNU Order they're going to start questioning why they can't get the fixes and enhancements they want to their proprietary apps. Before long they'll be dumping proprietary software and contributing to free software along with the hobbyists.
I think for now Office for GNU/Linux is good because I'm worried that when a large enough chunk of users have a bad experience with GNU/Linux it will loose its good name in the media, and then it will be much more difficult to gain acceptance. Office would help to stop that from happening. Since I know free software can't loose in the long run, I don't mind some short term set-backs.
I'd rather have Applix anyway. It's cheaper and works just as well for what I want it to do. I'm sure StarOffice would also be just as good. I would rather pay the $70-90 price tag for either of these than the huge price tag for office any day.
-------------------------------------------- It looks just like a Telefunken U-47! -Frank Zappa
This makes complete since to me. M$ isnt a stupid company if linux continues to grow (which it will). They will have to loose there bull headed resistance to it and build apps for linux or fall. They have never had a problem building inferior products for the MAC or anyother OS. The problem will be once they are in they will "LEVERAGE" there products into each other. For there own advantage through small inconsistencies. Poisoning the water is what M$ is good at not geting in.
Star Office is available on windows, you knob. As well as OS/2 and Mac. And I believe Applix is available on windows too.
No kidding- if they do this, they will show some real tactical genius at picking libs to fragment Linux. Perhaps they will pick FSF libs- and _freeze_ the things- you can't upgrade the FSF libs without breaking MSOffice- it could _check_ to see if it should crash if newer libs are present! They _can_ halt development of important shared libraries that way.
They can also put in timing loops that gradually make everything slower and slower- at one point somebody analyzed the really slow Mac office and found, not simply P-code, but _busywaits_ in the assembly language. Not fooling- they are totally willing to sabotage their own software that disgustingly in the name of future control of the operating system. Because of that, Mac Office has sometimes been _greatly_ inferior in practice to WinOffice, slow, unresponsive, when in background drags performance of all apps down... people have made benchmarks for machines based on sabotaged applications like this, and it can happen again. They are long range planners in some things- making the best Linux office suite might _not_ be their long range strategic goal. Just a warning...
Bingo! This is the big threat. It's absolutely trivial to require special libs. What do you think they do on Macintoshes, for crying out loud? It's install extensions like mad, all over the place. Stuff that's always running. I saw a MacOS 7.1 installation go from TEN! megs of ram to FOUR _just_ by removing all the MS extensions. There was more MS code in RAM than there was Apple code... _this_ is what you can look forward to by trying to integrate Microsoft tech into your Linux. Take it from the battle-scarred and heavily marginalised Mac users, okay? You have no idea how vulnerable you really are. Don't even con yourself that you can play their game and win it. They'll 'win' you. Just say no- find other ways to do things.
Chris, who has all-non-MS ways of doing all sorts of things on Macs _and_ linuxPPC...
Er... I'm told that if you place the insertion point within a block of text of one size or style in Word, and begin deleting text, and delete past where the style block begins, due to the deletion of the internal marker all the text _after_ your insertion point abruptly changes style. So if you try to delete across a style block, Word flips out and causes big chunks of text following the insertion point to be suddenly formatted differently. I'm also given to understand that this is a _very_ old bug, except that it's still not fixed because this uncontrolled spasm of the formatting is either considered a feature, or people are used to learning that it does that by now.
How is this different from 'when you try to edit text it will not work or even make the problem worse'? o_O
Since when? No chance. It'll be MS certified closed kernel mods, take it or leave it. Oh, and you have to reinstall the service packs after you do anything to the kernel, or it won't work.
Who's going to _make_ them release source against their will? That's not what open source is about anyhow. Doing that is as bad as the Texas guy who's being sued over the contents of his thoughts (as seen recently on Slashdot). "Not only must you turn over your idea to the company, it also has to be released to the public as source!" no no no...
Sorry man: no deal. I'm still doing GPL, gonna continue doing GPL, hopefully with ever more useful actual software and handy code bits to share, and the code is available to anyone but those who won't let me (and everyone) into their process.
That's more important than regulating market share. In fact that helps regulate market share all by itself- in theory the prize will simply go to whoever has a basic competence and will put in the most work on a thing. This is not bad- hell, if I write, say, a parser to translate the RGB values for MacOS custom appearance colors into hex codes as used in HTML tags (which I have done and it's open source, probably easy to translate into whatever language you like) and a bunch of merry little hamsters in wheels at Microsoft run about adding ways to get the color of everything you could imagine and translate it into everything from HTML to LAB to CMYK, _and_ _publish_, what's wrong with that picture? If they write bad code, fix it. If one of their variations is useful, use it. It really doesn't matter at that stage...
YO! Microsoft programmers down there in the woodwork! Start hacking on GPLed projects and share your code as the license absolutely requires! Your masters may be corrupt evil buggers that should be in jail, but _you_ have equal rights with all programmers- there should be no stigma based just on where a programmer works, only on how he or she handles it! JOIN us >:)
Hee. It's fun to say 'us' on slashdot. You instantly get flamed from 27 different directions. I don't care. Amnesty, respect for Microsoft programmers! Forget your boss and JOIN us. Pitch in. It matters, and you're the crazed amphetamine-laden no-vacation beavers of the software world, and you know it, too. Stop giving all that energy to Bill, and use that high overstressed voltage for a good cause for a change. JOIN US. *waves shiny pocket watch* youuu are getting sleeepyyyy... you are going to write GPLed open source... join us...
*hehehehehe*
Yeah! Come on, join us!
As a tech who's made MacOS 7 _system_ software go from ten megs to _four_ megs just by removing MS extensions, I have to beg to differ. OK, more like shriek "AAAAAAA! ARE YOU CRAZY???" :)'
That is the _first_ thing they will require. Expect stuff like new swap mechanisms for IE, or special memory allocating mechanisms in parallel with the normal ones- substitute filesystem handling routines is _very_ likely because MS like to squeeze a bit of extra speed any way they can, no matter how dangerously, and are happy to ignore any API if they can sleaze some extra caching or a quicker write access.
The _first_ thing they will require is kernel modules. Come on man, look at the record! MacOS extensions for Office? Substitute _menu_ drawing code, substitute dialog boxes, substitute _TextEdit_ for crying out loud? Look at the Frontpage extensions- replacing the Apache binary for crying out loud?
Know what you're dealing with- they _will_ replace anything they can think of. If they didn't, their stuff would be even _slower_ (though it would crash less if they followed the rules). This isn't a hypothetical- they've already done this to the Mac platform. Now, who here says Macs crash like crazy? OK, now who has used a Mac which did _not_ have _any_ Microsoft extensions or code in it? HMMMMM.
Final happy note- there have been Microsoft apps which _hacked_ the _system_ file permanently when installed. Currently to my knowledge they do not- but the latest IE ignores the normal tacky-but-controllable Mac style of memory allocation and allocates memory like _mad_ in the _system_ _heap_, not in the app's heap at all. Wheee, _nice_ going guys, let's just dump buggy swatches of memory right in the system heap so if anything goes wrong it's jammed right into the guts of MacOS. Guard pages? What guard pages? *rrrrrr*
Yes, it's a lame memory model in the first place, but abusing it that way is tantamount to sabotage and _totally_ makes it impossible to control IE's resources when run. And IE immediately starts slamming pages and data into the system heap, too- more caching, pity it's not being done in an _appropriate_ way... gaaaaah! *fume*
Er.
Let me start over. *ahem*
'No, Microsoft probably _will_ force extensive kernel patches to be used even though this could seriously risk stability and reliability.
uh, how's that? Get the feeling that I'm not just guessing? o_O
How about their committment to the Mac, then? :P
Big hype for Mac Office- meanwhile, they KILL the mac versions of everything ELSE! The encyclopedia? *poof* Games? *buahaha* Corporate messaging? *foosh*
You gotta be both a lawyer at heart, and _seriously_ cynical to the point of evil, to guess what they will do, and then they'll do it. I'd guessed they'd hype Mac Office and kill everything else quietly- sure enough, they have, and their Mac line is a lot smaller than it was, and not getting any bigger. Regarding Linux- dunno if they'll release a distribution, but they will eventually release _something_ that will require kernel mods, and that's the thin end of the wedge. If they're being very nice they will _tell_ you their installer is hacking your kernel. They have not always been very nice. Choke on _that_ one, Janet Reno. They have the morals of criminals- never assume you're dealing with a normal business. Look for the knife in the back, even if you're just a _user_.
Posted by Hidden Syntax:
Look at it this way. Microsoft won't be able to use any "built" in functions of their os and make sure that others can't use them. This way its a level playing field. Corel vs. Microsoft. Umm, If MS comes out with a port I will d/led and compare. It will be very interesting to see which is better. The developer who develops for Linux to stay afloat in the business or the developer who develops to expand a "monopoly"?
Hidden Syntax
Posted by AnnoyingMouseCoward:
I mean after all, his Billness has been making hints about how M$ has got a prototype 64-bit "New and Improved" OS currently in the pipeline for the last 18 months or so.
My daytime job is at a company that uses Windows and it's really great to see the way people in management go into a state of agitation when I say to them "...ther's no point in us commiting to develop 32-bit Windows programs, Bill Gates has already made it perfectly clear that 32-bit Windows will be dead in 3-5 years...".
Since I started doing this, managements interest in Windows has dramatically decreased ( we don't need it, we make 90%+ of our money out of hardware anyway... ).
That's the thing about FUD and Vaporware - it's a two edged sword that can cut you just as badly as your competitors. If M$ is dum enough to try this, their just going to get burned.
Posted by Phantom of the Operating Syste:
Instructions:
To Install, log in as root,
Office will ask you for your root password
It is recommended that you run this application
as root.
-phantom
Posted by Wonch:
For me, Microsoft sucks... But by the way, it can
be a pleasure to see how bad is their crap on Linux! Windows hacks wouldn't work this time, boys!
Warning: No Satire...;)
Posted by bSMfh (bastard ScoutMaster fro:
Yup. You got it right.
It sounds good.....
but it's basically
FUD
FUD
FUD
Posted by noWan kenobi:
that's probably what he thinks. But let us see... he is porting office to linux because he needs money. let's face it. WINDOWS will not last long.
For me, Microsoft sucks... But by the way, it can
be a pleasure to see how bad is their crap on Linux! Windows hacks wouldn't work this time, boys!
I can predict right now what's goign to happen.
Microsoft Ports Office to linux.
It runs like shit. Microsoft says "Well, if you were using windows, you wouldn't have this problem. After all, it's obviously the Operating System, as Office runs fine under Windows". Or they'll play the "Linux fragmentation" game or whatnot.
Either that, or I could easily see them just starting a port just for the benefit of their current problems with the US government, and scrapping it as soon as the case is over.
Microsoft is not known for doing things "for the betterment" of anyone other than themselves. Currently, the desktop, or office environment, isn't threatened by Linux, the network market is. Why in the hell would they bother? You would think they would slam things like Apache and Sendmail, trying to find replacements for those.
-Erik- (the ever-pessimistic)
This is not necessarily a bad thing. There is no way that Microsoft office could compete on Linux with free software equivalents that have 80% of the functionality and 0% of the cost.
For free applications to be used over commercial apps they need 150% of the functionality. Cost is not an issue, Microsoft has made a business out of having their software pirated, and benefitted very much so in the long run.
Even if they NEVER made a damn DIME on an Office port for linux, that insures that they can push that market in their direction on multiple platforms, which means laying the final blow to Wordperfect.
-Erik-
Right. Accidently. The Unix-Haters handbook has this right - xauth et la is a pain; no one is ever going to accidently discover X is network transparent.
Uh.
1) Telnet to shell
2) set DISPLAY
3) run xterm
4) type xauth +(ip of shell)
5) run program from shell
is that hard?
-Erik-
Or do you just assume that Rob's little place is so fucking gay that no one can keep away? I'm sure that an intelligent reply on ZDNet would be worth a couple of thousand replies on this site. Then again if one think about the usual quality of comments on this site - perhaps it is far better that all the elite d00dez stay away.
.. poor. I would have to write a post there, quote yours, and never have any referencing in the visual output whatsoever that it is a reply to your topic.
First off, I couldn't reply to your post on ZDNet. The article system there is very
Second, if you were a regular visitor here, you would know that ZDNet puts some half-assed rumor like this up at least once a week, to stir guys like you and me up to go to their site to generate ad revenue. ZDNet has enough money, and Rob Malda, IMO, doesn't. I'd rather fund his back pocket to know that I have a place where I can talk freely, which brings me to the third point.
Censorship. Read the other replies, i'm not going to restate the obvious.
-Erik-
Office is M$'s only product that's worth a tinker's damn but I don't care whether they port it or not.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
>You've got everything you need with emacs and tex.
Yeah, most people do. But using LyX or AucTex is just so amazingly difficult -- it's much quicker and better to learn Word's templates.
Not.
Oh, and people actually develop cool add-ons for Emacs. Things like agents which perform fuzzy searches in the background for things that might be related, write code for you, etc. etc... the sort of things that Visual WindowBuilder++ Pro users pay through the nose for.
And of course it is just TRAGICALLY hard to run MSWordview to turn Word documents into HTML.
Basically, you're either a troll or an idiot.
Remember that what's inside of you doesn't matter because nobody can see it.
Anyway, it will never happen so long as Windows has any kind of market share at all. Office is the second part of Mixrosoft's one-two punch, and they're not about to compromise that by porting to a competing OS Like Linux.
TedC
sterwill 30401 14.7 3.2 6248 4168 p7 S 11:08 0:01 ./AbiWord
That is just 4 MB of real, non-shared, non-cached RAM it is using. I'm also using debug and non-optimized builds of GTK and GLIB for debugging purposes. I believe you were about 60 MB off.
Then use the Windows port. Or the BeOS port. Or the MacOS port. Or write a Qt port. We don't plan on dismembering the GTK port; it's come a long way and people are happy with it, and you're always free to submit code.People buy Windows because it runs apps, not because it's Windows -- this is why Linux isn't huge. It has no (full-grown) mouse-clicky apps that people want and need. MS' monopoly is in Office, not in Windows.
For this reason I consider it possible that the story is true, but unlikely because Linux lacks a lot of what Windows users have come to expect. (Another way to put it: Windows lacks a lot of what Linux users have come to expect.)
And yes, most of Office is in VB, if what I hear is true. That would explain the lack of performance!
Those things said, I'll never use it if they do port it -- it's proprietary and will very much have the effect of deterring new development in free-as-in-speech office suites.
Help out with AbiWord/KWord/LyX/Thot!!! We don't need or want proprietary software. People who use proprietary applications on free OSs are completely missing the point.
Maybe MS will learn something about coding during this project.
ROTFLMAO!!!!!!!!!!
That's a mighty hostile response there. I sense a lot of insecurity eminating from your post. Perhaps you are feeling inadequate because your MSPaperclip rejected you? Now you are bitter and resent others having pleasant relationships with their software.
Just a thought. I could be wrong. Anyway, that wasn't a well thought out response. First of all, you assume that MSOffice allows you to focus on the content rather than screw with the software. Hmm.. obviously you haven't tried to use a toc and section/page numbers in a large document. Even Microsoft execs couldn't do it right for their court statements. Second, you assume that there aren't any office suites for Linux that allow you to focus on content. I think you were wrong on both counts.
Ha!.. just as I'm writing this, Excel just crashed on my boss' computer and took everything with it. Funny.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
For free applications to be used over commercial apps they need 150% of the functionality. Cost is not an issue, Microsoft has made a business out of having their software pirated, and benefitted very much so in the long run.
I don't agree that free apps need 150% of the functionality. One of the things that makes them better is that they don't include a bunch of useless junk that almost nobody would ever use. Even somewhat advanced users use only about half of the functionality in MS Office. They don't use any of the other features for 2 main reasons. First, the features are difficult and/or buggy. Second, there are better/easier ways to accomplish the desired effect.
The free office suites don't need all the useless extras in order to compete. They need to do all the basics, and do them better and faster than Microsoft. Then, if other features are needed, they can be added. First and foremost though, the app must be stable and run as fast as possible. Do that and people will use it.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
MS makes the most profit from their office suite because they control the platform it runs on and nobody can really compete with them there. It's the defacto standard. MS wouldn't last long if it actually had to compete on even ground. I don't think they'll get into Linux in any serious way. There is too much ill will towards them in the Linux community and too much competition right now as well. They wouldn't last.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
The browser threatened to make the OS a commodity. If the browser ran on several platforms and could do the same things on all of them, it wouldn't matter what OS you ran. That could kill Windows, which would, in turn, kill their Office monopoly which is where they make their money. That's why Netscape had to go.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
The only time software is immoral is when it is used to hurt other people.
Actually, I'd say that the person using the software was immoral. Not the software itself. Software is inanimate. It can't be immoral.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
They can't optimize like they do for Windows... at least the end result won't be the same. In Windows, they know all the tricks that they don't make public. This makes their software seem more on par with faster software, despite the bloat. In Linux, they bloat would be readily apparent and nobody would want to use something like that.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
I'm happy with Star Office, when I actually need one of those silly things, which is infrequent.
I don't understand how "switch[ing] between StarOffice and other apps for several times" would have any effect. There's no notion of a currently active app in Linux or any other version of Linux. There is the notion of a window having focus, but that's rather trivial in nature. When I use StarOffice, I put it in its own virtual desktop so it doesn't clutter (or hide) everything else I have running, and so I switch to that desktop (or page, or whatever Enlightenment calls it). I frequently switch back and forth rapidly between it and another virtual desktop with no ill effects.
Yes, I've had a few SO5 crashes, but as other people have stated, I've never lost any work. I'm none too thrilled about that anyway, but it has no effect on the OS.
Performance-wise, it's just fine, although admittedly it's easier to deal with on a Celeron 300/450A and 128 MB than a K6-233 and 64 MB. And in terms of integration between modules, it blows Office (95, at least; I haven't used anything more recent) clean out of the water.
Of course they can also say if they DON'T sell any apps that there's no market on Linux. Vendors flee, and Linux goes the way of being a server only OS.
Broad generalizations, yes, but it might happen.
Honestly, though, I don't think this is all a bad thing. I'm hoping even MS is surprised by this move (if it even comes to fruition)
C'mon, do you believe in the halloween documents? Do you believe in this Office story? The only time when MS remembers the existance of Linux is when it mentions it on trial. "Linux is no threat to MS.. Oh, wait a minute.. Linux is a big threat to MS and so there is no monopoly.."
That's funny.
Have you noticed that the acronym OSS has been first used in the halloween memos?
And you are a fool. Everybody knows that there will never be a port of a microsoft product to linux for the simple reason that the linux user base and microsoft dislike each other too much. This is nothing but an attempt by Microsoft to delay the adoption of linux and it won't work. People are pretty much fed up with the vaporware from microsoft and this kind of thing won't help microsoft, but rather bolster the DOJ's case against microsoft, since it's widely known and acknowleged that microsoft has little or no role to play within linux. Why do you really think chrome effects got shelved? It was most likely because microsoft couldn't get the non-microsoft world to embrace the concept, let alone support it.
It's not as simple as that.
If I wanted to put it simply, I would say this: The Windows Monopoly came from their DOS Monopoly, which in turn, came from their Pretty High DOS Market Share and the unfair ways in which they took advantage of it (making programs like Windows not run (or give the appearance of not running) under other versions of DOS, licensing agreements which forbid or discouraged vendors from shipping competing versions of DOS, and other things that integrated together). This is what Caldera Thin Clients is suing Microsoft over.
The above sounds pretty reasonable and accurate, but it leaves out a lot of details. It does seem pretty complicated to explain precisely how Microsoft got its near-monopoly since they've done so many things that wouldn't do much for Microsoft without eachother to obtain it in the first place. A diagram with lots of circles and arrows and stuff might help.
--
This web site will cure all your ailments.
SaDan wrote:
Perhaps the proper question is this: Why would Microsoft want you to believe they're going to port their important application software to Unix platforms? The reason seems to be clear: to make people think Microsoft is genuinely committed to cross-platform environments. It's not like Microsoft is in a hurry to actually do anything. They'd much rather have everyone using Windows, and actually porting their application software to most popular Unix platforms won't exactly help that happen, even though they'll be more than happy to give lip service.
Witness their similar *cough* efforts *hack* at porting Internet Explorer and NetShow/Windows Media Player to Unix platforms.
Only recently, after a year of promising, did Microsoft actually produce versions of IE for HP-UX and Solaris (IE 5 Beta for HP-UX is actually available). You'd think they would be able port to other Unix platforms about as quickly. A few months ago I witnessed a friend loading the HP-UX version of IE on an HP 700RX (I think that's the model) X terminal connected to a HP 9000/780 (J- or K-series, methinks) workstation, and it took ten minutes to load and was pretty slow.
And Microsoft has been saying they would make a version of WMP for Unix available soon for months. A NetShow (predecessor to WMP) player for Linux and a few other Unix platforms is also available, but that page isn't linked from the WMP Download page anymore, and I actually tried the player on some videos that a company I work for produced but it wouldn't work.
To sum it up, they're not doing a very good job of developing cross-platform software, IMHO. And I guess this is your rat, unless you're smelling another rat.
--
This web site will cure all your ailments.
Anyways. How many products did Microsoft actually finish porting after the company which was already attempting a competing port got scared off by Microsoft's plan?
The last one was RealPlayer, which Microsoft killed off by introducing an alpha of NetShow without ever finishing it.
Then there was beta of IE4 for unix, which scared off Netscape from ever releasing a browser after 4.5.
And why the fsck do these comments submit when I hit return?
"MS isn't good at ports"
I'd suggest: "MS isn't good at software."
If you could shrink-wrap and sell marketing off the shelf, THEN you'd really see a monopoly.
But the availability of Office on Linux might make it possible for me to get my college to switch supported OS to Linux. The Information Technology Committee has been toying with this idea for all this year. Star Office on Windows machines has been a dismal failure with the users. The damn thing is so complicated that it has scared every user we got to test it and they went running back to Office.
I would never use it, or any other MicroSoft product, but if it helps us to replace windows...
If it helps to squash StarOffice, WordPerfect and the Open Source efforts, it is a bad thing. And lets be real, that is the ONLY reason MicroSoft would even be considering it.
>Or do you just assume that Rob's little place is so fucking gay that no one can keep away?
Maybe I'm the only one, but I'm failing to see the connection between homosexuality and where comments are posted.
You refer to the low quality of comments here, yet you add a bigotted rant yourself? Maybe you should look to yourself to start improving the quality of comments here.
"Now watch what you say or they'll be calling you a radical, liberal, fanatical, criminal." - Supertramp, The Logical So
> The Windoze version has ALOT worse performance than the Linux version.
It is, however, far more stable, at least in my experience.
"Now watch what you say or they'll be calling you a radical, liberal, fanatical, criminal." - Supertramp, The Logical So
Why is it that so many people are so blinded by the fact IE is made by Microsoft? I'm not a Microsoft fan myself, but I can see the technical merits IE has, which are far in excess of the credit it is given on slashdot. In fact, in my experience, in terms of stability, performance, and rendering quality, it outperforms netscape.
Unfortunately, some people see fit to use the very same trick they hate when Microsoft uses it against Linux - FUD.
IE may not be original, it may not come from your favorite company in the world, it may be windows only, but don't let that cloud your vision of the actual product itself.
"Now watch what you say or they'll be calling you a radical, liberal, fanatical, criminal." - Supertramp, The Logical So
"My opinion is that the last thing the world needs is Office for Linux. It is a usability nightmare."
which? Office, or Linux?
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Their contract with SCO over xenix states they can't compete in the Unix world. They might be able to get around this with Linux since Linux doesn't have Unix branding but it would be a big court fight.. Not that they wouldn't find a way to do it if they could make money on it, but the Linux world is so philisophically removed from the MS world, it's hard to see the match.
"L'IT c'est moi!"
Never fear, brave Linuxers. Microsoft isn't going to port Office to Linux until it becomes completely apparent to everyone and their dog that Windows 2000 won't fly. This sort of announcement is the sort of completely deniable statement that Microsoft has always used to lock down the consumers and keep them from buying into a competitors product.
"Don't switch to Corel PerfectOffice under Linux just yet," says Bill Gates, "If you wait just a little bit I will port Office to Linux." This way Microsoft keeps people from shying, if just for the short term, and gets them to create just one more big spreadsheet, or application that would need to be ported.
By the time the customer realizes that Microsoft has been pulling their chain, it's too late. They have all of a sudden made an even more significant investment to Microsoft's closed architecture.
This isn't about Microsoft feeling out the Linux waters. This is about Microsoft keeping people from trying Wordperfect 8 running on top of an operating system that isn't going to crash on them 4 times in a hour. After all, in the software business it is almost as important to make sure that your competitors _don't_ get customers as it is important that you round up customers for your own product.
Jason
I must admit that I have gotten pretty relaxed about letting software install itself where it wants. Most times I don't even look at the Makefile unless It doesn't compile. Of course, this really isn't a big deal with OSS apps (and even closed WordPerfect was at least well-behaved).
:). They wouldn't go away, they would just have to play fair.
There is no way that I would install MS Office 2000 for Linux as root, however. I have had enough of DLL Hell to last me a lifetime. If the operating system needs to be modified to run Office then thanks, but no thanks.
Not that Microsoft is seriously considering porting to Linux. They wouldn't have a chance of competing if it weren't for the OS leverage.
Not to mention the fact that people like winners, and Microsoft is the biggest winner of all (right now). If Microsoft ceded the desktop to Linux they would undoubtedly be perceived as having lost. Their stock price would drop. Their most talented programmers would look for work elsewhere (it's the stock options that's got them tied down), and Microsoft would cease to be king.
Of course, they would still have a big pile of money
The good news is that if Microsoft did try to embrace and extend Linux they would have to do a good job of it. None of the current Linuxers would tolerate Linux middleware that was worse than the tools we already have for Linux.
Or in other words, Microsoft's stuff would have to be very good, or it wouldn't get used. It would, at the very least, have to be as good (or at least less expensive) than the Windows tools. Basically, Microsoft would probably have to give up it's current desktop monopoly for a piece of Linux's future.
This would actually be good for several reasons
1) Hardware manufacturers would HAVE to give out programming specs (Linux would be the dominant platform).
2) Microsoft would have to compete on a more level playing field. It wouldn't be completely level (as they would undoubtedly have their own secret libraries), but it would be world's better.
3) People forced to use MS software would at least have a stable platform on which to run it.
Jason
Actually it is very possible to install most Linux software in the users home directory. I personally have installed whole window managers, and their accompanying applications in my home directory. At the very least it shouldn't have to install anything outside of /usr/local . You would have to be crazy to install a Microsoft application as root.
MS-Office, Star Office, Applix ware, Koffice, Wordperfect suite....
It means choice.... those who have a need for it will use MS-Office. Those without need can choose anything they like...
But i do admit that it is a scary thought.... MS entering the OSS market....
Someone at ZDNet observed that while porting Office is not impossible, Micros~1 will have problems with GPF and BSOD emulation. But i believe i have a workable solution to the GPF situation... use code profiling libraries to capture segmentation faults and bus errors, and jump from there to the familiar, user-friendly GPF interface that Windows users demand. Besides maintaining the consistent user experience that is Micros~1's trademark, this solution has another advantage... profiling should effectively emulate the interactive performance of Windows NT.
I'm still working on a BSOD emulation mechanism. So far, all i can come up with is a kernel patch, which isn't close enough to a full OS reinstall to satisfy traditional Micros~1 user demands for ease of use. However, it should be able to perform simple Windows functionality like freezing the mouse and disabling Ctrl-Alt-Delete.
Hand me that airplane glue and I'll tell you another story.
There is no Office97 for Mac... they are staggering releases between platforms, so Mac users got Office98 and Exlorer 4.5.
In any case, all their claims about Office98 being a Mac-native app are obviously bullshit, no app without 10 nested compatibility/abstractions layers would possibly be as slow and resource-hungry as it is. Its features are totally counter-intuitive, and forget about large documents or intensive uses, all the modules will crumble on the mightiest, and slablest, of machines.
Binary Boy
If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
-- Derek Bok,
Well said! The world can, as we all did, come to Linux, and not the other way around... there is no need to waste precious time and focus (since money has been traditionally less of a currency in this community) "battling" Microsoft when I think its ridiculous to even lump the two together as opponents... proprietary OS developers have no interest in the goals and strategies of the OSS community, and likewise, save vendors like RedHat, we should pay no interest to what they consider "business" since Linux wasn't created as a commercial product to begin with...
:) maybe someday the OSS syndrome will be significantly dominant that producing proprietary software will not be realistic, and until then, just ignore the other side.
anyways, lets all just turn our noses and not even glance sideways at those devils in Washington... comparing Linux to NT only makes those presenting the comparison look like fools because they miss the point of OSS entirely... the goal isnt to compete with proprietary, it is to provide viable alternatives for those brave and pioneering geeks among us
Binary Boy
If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
-- Derek Bok,
Very astute, and I hope no one will be suprised when the release performs exactly as you say... for anyone who has used Office98 (a Mac-only release), or even read the benchmarks, Im sure you know what I mean...
When PowerPC-based machine performs an ORDER OF MAGNITUDE slower than a comparable x86 box in Excel on raw calculations you think someone would be fired, but Im sure the marketing genius in charge of insuring crippling performance in Mac apps gets a bonus everytime they make another office worker convert because of unacceptible performance.
Sure, launch time may not be as bad as Word 6.0 was (we're talking two-digit minute counts), but at least once it ran it didnt seem especially lame... Office98 runs like a mangey, one-legged pony.
Binary Boy
If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
-- Derek Bok,
Something like this may happen the day MS decides that it's windwos monopoly is gone. Then they would have to defend the Office monopoly by porting to java or linux (or whatever is big at the time). Personally though, I don't believe the monopoly is all that strong. I've been living happily with linux and staroffice for quite some time now. The apps are getting there and word 9x or excel seems to be no problem either.
To me MS is facing a citutation very similar to Novel in the early 90's and linux is very much like the internet it self at the time.
Cheers,
Jarek
Who'd want to use it?
It's a pig (no offense to pigs..)
Of course it would give those with Very Little Brain some faint comfort..
t_t_b
--
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
There may be something to that..
One possible outcome of the fed's lawsuit could be to split M$ into two: app's and OS'es
So M$ would be happy to have Office on Linux - I just doubt very much that they could do anything but a crappy job of it..
t_t_b
--
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
..to pigs..
t_t_b
--
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
Fuck me?
Not..
I gotta use M$ Office 97 on Win95 with "Active Desktop" and all that crap at work and it's a pig!
(no offense..)
That's on a box with an AMD 233 and 48mb ram!
It's a pig!
M$ can't ever pare down their fat junk to any reasonable degree -- you won't find *any* M$ app that's gotten anything but fatter and fatter and fatter over the years.
They won't have a chance of putting out anything for Linux that's not worse than what they've already got!
Which is a pig!
- moi
ps: I use pico under Linux and SuperNote Tab under Win95..
--
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
Never fear, brave Linuxers. Microsoft isn't going to port Office to Linux until it becomes completely apparent to everyone and their dog that Windows 2000 won't fly.
Perhaps everyone at MS is already aware of that. 35 million lines of code (written using Microsoft's cowboy coding practices too), release delays, bugs galore. They've even put on hold their plans to replace 95/98 with NT. Perhaps they've realised that if they get it out in 2000, it will be a bloodbath, doing worse damage to their reputation than shelving it indefinitely...
Compare this to Apple and Copland. They knew that the rewrite of the overgrown and convoluted MacOS wasn't going to fly, and binned it. And NT is more of a problem than MacOS was.
This wouldn't be the first time that Microsoft has done something like this. Case in point, they took a lot of the wind out of Mac's sails with office. They apparently left the windoze code in the mac version, which made the code more bloated than it already is. This led to crashes and instability. McDonnell Douglas (and probably others) went from being mainly Mac to mainly Windoze pcs because of Word. It wouldn't surprise me a bit if they were up to this same crap again.
--Storm
> Instructions:
> To Install, log in as root, Office will ask you > for your root password
> It is recommended that you run this application > as root.
And did we neglect to mention that we will send your system information, including passwords, system information and installed applications to our marketing and security directorates in Redmond? We will also attach encrypted information to each document to be sent out.
--Storm
Linux is like the net in that its publically owned. If you really worked for microsoft I would be appauled if office was being ported to linux. As a ms employee you know that the office revolution started with bundling as an attempt to squash os/2. If office was the standard and consumers couldn't even share data with the world with os/2, then it would die. Office, I admit is better but I believe ms made office as a political move to sell windows. Microsoft needs one competitor in the market so thats why office is developed for the mac. If anti-trust laws didn't exist, would you write ofice for the mac? I think not. Microsoft has behaved in many anti competitive practices and I can't think of any reason why ms would port office to the linux, other then to destroy it. You mentioned that you believe in a all-Microsoft computing enviroment but linux is a problem because everything is opened and its much easier to compete and you lose money because of windows isn't part of the office solution.
"Never stick an electrical appliance down your pants." -Tim Allen
and Linux can't. Stamp out all remaining office competitors, then yank office away and let Linux flap in the wind.
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
I think this would be great. I might not personally buy it (I'm an old school WP user), but we'd probably buy copies for the 50+ end users at work.
I'll take more choice any day, even if they aren't necessarily the best choices.
How do you play it?
Nope, the packaging mechanism would be called MEEPT. :)
The Microsoft Extend and Embrace Package Transport, MEEPT. To be released Very Soon Now from the Borg Near You.
NT on the new Pentium II-350's at my college takes longer to *shut down* than Linux does to *start* on my K5-133!
NT at work takes longer to log in than it takes my Linux box to start.
Sometimes I wonder what NT does during that time and if it really is a multiuser OS.
Well put.
M$ is infamous for announcing software that they may never ship, just to keep people from rushing out to buy the competitors products. This is one of the dirty tricks that M$ learned from IBM. This is one of the questionable business practices that IBM was forced to abandon as a result of its federal anti-trust trial. IBM had to wait until just few months (forgot exact number, = 3 ?) before a product would actually ship before they were allowed to announe the product.
at Alice's restaurant, 'ceptin Alice.
On rare occasions I'm forced to use Word. It drives me absolutely _insane_. It keeps trying to _guess_ what I'm doing. So I'll do some clever formatting. The next paragraph, it'll do the formatting for me, and I'll say, "Wow! clever!". But then I'll want to _stop_ or change the formatting and I have to fight it. So total work contributed is 0.
:) Much more efficient, and everything comes out in beautiful TeX. Everyone at CMU already uses TeX anyhow -- math, science, CS, you name it. To the point where no one notices or comments when I sit and type papers in a cluster on an ultrasparc. Hehe.
:) and it runs nicely on a 486/33 (my little brother's computer) and I've _never_ in my life needed a bit of functionality that wasn't in there.
:)
I prefer LyX or LaTeX. I _tell_ it what I'm doing and it formats it. No thought involved. Just type
Excel is pretty good (I like it anyhow, and I've had to do some decently hefty data analysis w/it). But according to Ian the GNOME Games Maintainer "gnumeric does everything and is excel compatible. The only thing it can't hack yet are charts." The solution? Keep a windoze box around for the occasional chart.
Actually, that's a feature I miss. I have wp8 personal (tho I never use it) and it has the charts stripped out. I generally have to use chart stuff in WP6.1, which is the last word processor I paid for. Sure it's for windoze, and it's 16bit code, but it's a great wordprocessor (I kinda prefer it to wp[7,8]
I hope the nice gnumeric people (or the nice KDE people for that matter) get us a beautiful, excel compatible chart program to link into the spreadsheet stuff soon, then we'll be complete
The Linux desktop kicks the tail off windoze any day of the week ending in y (note that linux goes on vacation {d elem days | d does not end in y} while windoze takes off {d elem days | d ends in y}) hehe too much 15-251.
I'm going to make a recommendation here.
Support the free (speech not beer) office suites. Support gnumeric. Support the KDE spreadsheet whatever the hell it's called. Support the KDE wordprocessor and the gnome one, whatever the hell they're called too. Support LyX especially 'cos it rules and it's the best and Matthias Ettrich invented it for us.
Don't support them because you have a philosophical objection to the commercial ones. Support them 'cos the commercial ones _bite_. Why is it that my version of wordperfect from 1993 is an amazingly tight word processor and has every function I need and runs like _lightning_ on a slow low mem pentium, and my current computer (k6-200) can't run word97 well?
All the new office programs are crashy, poorly done bloatware. They add "features" in such a way to destroy the core ease-of-use and functionality of the programs. Have you ever _seen_ how many incomprehensible little buttons the latest ver of Word clutters your screen with? I swear the symbols are in Vulcan (klingon?).
Exert some pressure for clean, stable, well-designed, functional, elegant, fast-as-nuts word processors. Ensure the survival of the best code. Sure, demand compatibility. It's necessary. But support the free office.
Send your free (speech) office development teams some free beer today to let them know you care.
And stick it to the man who wants to give you annoying office suites that just exist to piss you off. He _personally_ came up with the damn paper clip. With _malicious intent_. Really.
Ya know, a year ago I got hooked on /. I thought what a great place cool ppl etc....
But you ppl are about the most closed minded obnoxious jerks I've run across in a long long time.
"IF IT AIN'T LINUX, IT AIN'T COOL"
BS!
You ppl are as bad as Billy Boy. He uses MS to get control.. You ppl use LINUX and are just as bigotted.
If MS ports OFFICE over to LINUX Great! If not oh well. Who cares?
But think about this... Wouldn't more users be inclined to try LINUX if they had applications they are familiar with to work on?
Go ahead flame me... I've seen the worst you ppl can do and I am not impressed.
Impress me by making an Office Suite that would do everything MS office does w/o all the bugs and fat.
Go ahead... prove me wrong about my assumptions based on a year of reading what you ppl post.
P.S. And try to use language with more than four letters.....
MS has never earned anything. Their very first product, a BASIC interpreter was based on code stolen from Wang and was written (by Paul Allen) on a governmental time-sharing system in violation of their terms of use.
"Word" was originally called "Quill" and was written by some little company in Louisiana around 1981. MS bought it when they needed a word processor to sell to a Japanese client.
MS never writes anything, and they don't make excellent products. They buy OK products and then make them unstable, unfriendly and unusable (oops, I meant to say "user-friendly").
Learn the truth before you go spouting the MS Party Line.
--
Posted with Mozilla
You spelled "parallel" wrong :)
Ato de!
--
Posted with Mozilla
'Cause they're run by suits, not hackers ;-)
ElpDragon.
I seriously doubt MS would use anything not developed by them to run Office.... they'll probably static-link everything, either that or dump a buncha proprietary libs all over the fs...
ElpDragon
Or Mainsoft did.
for various reasons. The easiest being that Star Division, Corel, Applix, etc. have incentive to make a cool product that is affordable. MS has incentive to make a temporarily affordable product that will eventually defy standards and cost too much $$$. They are so transparent.
So if they are diverting any $$$ to a product for Linux, fine. It's fewer $$$ spent on that windows garbage.
Compatibility with and capabilities of Microsoft Office are the biggest obstacles for a lot of users who would otherwise switch away from Windows. Microsoft is not about to kill a ton of OS revenue for a few more office suite sales.
Besides, since when does Microsoft write software for a competing x86 OS? A couple Mac ports, a Solaris/SPARC port of IE, fine - those are platforms that Windows will never run on anyway. Is there a Solaris/x86 port of IE? Was there ever any OS/2 software from Microsoft? Linux, on the other hand, threatens to take people away from Microsoft and keep them away. There's no way they would do anything to accelerate that process.
Oh, yeah, and they'd rue the day that one of the technically-challenged reporters covering Linux accidentally installs it on two computers, and discovers X is network-transparent.
"Hey, everybody, we can run and administer Office from our servers now, without waiting for W2K to materialize. All we have to do is upgrade all these obsolete Win98 client systems to Unix!"
I would imagine MS only is developing this in case Linux becomes more popular than they presently believe it will. They are just keeping their bases covered. If Linux doesn't dominate the market, the Linux version of Office will remain safely tucked away in a back room in Redmond.
If they do release it though, I would imagine they will give away their own Linux distribution with each copy of Office they sell.
The question then, is will Office Linux run on the X11 Windowing system or will MS try to develop their own GUI for Linux?
Yes, they are probably porting it and the applications division wants to deliver it, but as it obviously eats NT sales, the operating system division is probably not too happy about it. This is exacly what happened to IE4 for Linux. They did port it to Linux (I am not sure if they actually finished the port), but they never released the thing.
Vaadin - the best open source framework for building web applications in Java - no plug
Gee, anyone remember Microsoft's "commitment" to pure Java?
another almost laughable one:
Microsoft's commitment to open web standards!
bah hah hah
First - they dynamically allocate less download bandwidth for Netscape browsers, so when I want drivers I get them at 2 kb per second on a T3. I've proven this by instantiating an IE download of the same URL on the same computer, where IE "somehow" downloaded the same file FOURTY-SEVEN TIMES FASTER. Hmm..
Second - They block non-Microsoft web browsers from critical parts of their web site. Want information on Microsoft's year 2000 bugs.. well, they refuse to show you if you use Netscape or Opera. Want to complain about it on the Feedback page? You're also blocked. Those Microsofties are such Klever D00dz
Third - A patent on style sheets? I think I remember using them in Quark *years* ago, before Microsoft (or at least that clueless putz BillG) had even HEARD of "the Internet".
Fourth - Anyone ever try to take Microsoft documents across platforms? The #1 reason I cannot choose a Mac for my personal/email workstation is because people know firsthand how committed to Quality Assurance. They leave bugs and incompatabilities in the product so there's always a reason not to stray from Windows, or if you're on a Mac, a reason for your boss or IT to apply pressure for you to switch.
Fifth - What a GREAT way to FUD Corel. Corel stock is looking better these days, but what better way to kick these people in the balls by spreading rumors of Office for Linux. They don't even have to RELEASE anything... just vaporware it.
I can tell you exactly how MS will do it. They will attempt to use a product called MainWin which provides a Win32 implementation on several version of UNIX. The end result will be a binary native application but it will have the same look and feel and usability as the Windows version. They are definitely not rewriting their Win32 code. I am involved in porting a Win32/MFC/COM product to Solaris and HP and am using a similar method. If you want more details about these Win32 implementations see http://www.bristol.com and http://www.mainsoft.com
Bullshit. Microsoft probably seeks to gain the exact opposite effect: "Microsoft has a Linux strategy for their office suite, so why the hell should we?"...
I can only see Office in the near future running
:-)
in Linux if it is writen in Java.
A gtk+ version would be great.
C-ya
Get my e-mail after a captcha test in: http://tinymailt
I don't see MS porting Office to linux in the near future. Linux has already arrived on the server and is challenging commercial UNIX, and demolishing NT on the server. The next stop is the desktop. Linux will start to arrive on some desktop systems within a year or two. This will be aided by things like the KDE, and some of the office suites. MS Office, which is one of the few MS products I like (their server and OS products suck, but their consumer application stuff tends to be OK), would seal linux's place on the desktop. This is very contrary to the interests of MS. Therefore, it makes sense for them to withhold Office until linux gets the critical mass as a desktop system to make the benefits of a port outway the costs to windows.
I think Office for Linux is an inevitability, and is something I sort of look forward to. However, it is a long way off in the distance.
The question then becomes with KOffice using much of the same design and integration aspects as MS Office, but upon a stronger foundation (Corba and Qt as opposed to COM and Win32) will MS Office become irrelevent on the linux platform before it is released.
They might just cause enough trouble, though, to slow Linux development down as their "special" kernel extensions are puzzled out by the 'Community.
If this story is true, I'm betting they're just trying to hedge their bets -- productivity software is their other monopoly, of course, and thus far it's free and clear of antitrust investigations. Additionally, maintaining control of standards is their stated goal, and if Linux is successful, a port of Office would be their only option (besides patents, which are unreliable).
However, MS has rarely done anything in the name of simple competition, and I'd bet they would try something sneaky, like making Office run inordinately slow (the Mac version always seemed fishy that way) or requiring some sort of proprietary GUI. Hell, they might even find ways to deliberately crash the kernel, making Linux seem more buggy.
All in all, a Linux port of Office would be one of the smartest things I've seen them do in quite awhile, all things considered. Which is why I'm actually a little worried.
Kythe
(Remove "x"'s from
Kythe
If this is the case, Linux is at another critical juncture. Many people who use it do so because they don't like Microsoft products. It's possible, therefore, that enough current Linux users would shun an Office port to make things difficult for this particular strategy. There are existing alternatives, after all, both proprietary and free. And they don't require that you hand over the desktop.
Of course (assuming the rumor is true in the first place), they might just try to make Linux look bad with a slow, buggy port. Or it could be that they're just hedging their bets. But history doesn't point that way, IMHO.
Kythe
(Remove "x"'s from
Kythe
Oh, yeah, and they'd rue the day that one of the technically-challenged reporters covering Linux accidentally installs it on two computers, and discovers X is network-transparent.
Right. Accidently. The Unix-Haters handbook has this right - xauth et la is a pain; no one is ever going to accidently discover X is network transparent.
I just can't wait to see this:
What a load of shit. If it properly follows unix filesystem standards, writes and parses perfect (read standard) XML, and isn't a bloated pig, I might consider it. Otherwise, no.
support gun control: take guns from cops
believe it or not, Word/Excel came out first for the Mac. Not sure about Powerpoint.
As a Mac user, it's not something I'm terribly proud of, but still...
- Darchmare
- Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
- Jeff
I said that was a possiblity right here in
&*#%$!! you all very much.
Love and kisses, Alums
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
All I know is that I had a problem with the professional CD that I purchased from them. They had me send it back to them for tech support, and I got it back OVER TWO MONTHS LATER!!! with a note saying they couldn't figure out what was wrong...I've replied to that over a month ago and have yet to get a reply back. Screw StarOffice!! I'd rather take Corel WP than use their sh*t suite anyday!! 8 (
Is this the first thread to go over 500 comments?
If so , can we get Katz to write something about the signifigance and symbolism of it, especially if the Dow goes over 10,000 anytime soon, could he maybe tie it in with that?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
That's all I want. :-)
I do a daily CVS checkout of wine, and a periodic (1-2 day intervals) test for MS Office 97 functionality. A week or two ago I was able to type in Word ;)
Recent builds of Wine segfault on almost everything I run though. Might be an unresolved wine problem, might just be my box.. hmm.
Anyway, Office has run BETTER than MSIE in all my tests. I figure Corel+WINE will have Office running at a "2" rating in a few weeks.
Nothing worth doing is worth doing today.
In the short term it will help Linux gain some much needed market share, especially on the desktop/workstation. Long term though, and this is the direction that we really need to think when considering Linux, it will probably stiffle the development of better Office like suites on Linux if:
:)
1) A MS release of Office on Linux is GPL'd or source is released. (people will more than likely try to "fix" Office instead of work on better/cleaner suites)
2) Microsoft actually keeps up development and releases under Linux. Remember that Office under MacOs is somewhat worse than Office under Win.
Both are not likely to happen. This,if it turns out to be true, is probably just MS trying to look like is it "with the community" and as a ploy to fend off DOJ monopoly assertions. So, if MS releases a version or two for Linux and then lets it die I think that it will, in the end, help out Linux. If they keep it going though it could pose as a roadblock to acceptance of better office like suites for linux in the future. Release of any office source code brings a wild card into things that I really don't have any clear thoughts on (midnight here, I should be in bed sleeping
MS has market share out the wazooo... They can afford to lose some to get a better standing with the DOJ, who is only concerned with MS OSes and Web Browsers right now. By porting Office, they create a lessening of their Win OS market share for the near term and gain market share in a fast growing segment. they look like they want other OSes but in reality they only get to control an entire app segment on a new OS in the near term, allowing them to control it's use later on down the road when the DOJ smoke clears...
I say we let him do it though. It helps us in the long run because MS will end up getting bitten by trying to steer Linux. Bill is a smart man, but he simply can't outwit the entire OSS and Linux community.
If anyone wants to learn from history...watch that robert cringly pbs thing again!
Why did Bill write apps for the Mac in the first place? To hedge his bets on the GUI interface and to make money, while at the same time he was co-developing Windows (OS/2 at that point) with IBM.
Bill is a smart guy and it makes sense that he sees these reasons to port/write apps for Linux:
1. It's a good hedge bet against any action by the Justice Department to attack the fundemental monetary value of Windows.
2. It makes MS look more cross platform and will help his Linux is a competitor defense.
3. Keeps up with its competitors in the Office space (Corel, Star Division, probably Lotus soon), who are already on/or are on their way to Linux.
4. It provides a new revenue stream from people who haven't necessarily payed their MS tax for the operating system, which means these people may have more money left over to pay for fat applications. As much as most Linux users don't like MS I would bet that most would buy Office if there was a Linux version.
5. It costs Bill less to expand the market for Linux than any version of Windows, which means MS can make a killing on application sales and support without having to push Windows all the time. If MS has writes a decent graphical application installer for GNOME/KDE their Linux software will SELL like hotcakes.
Those are the realities as I see them. The truth is out there, now we just sit back and see if anything comes of it. At worst I wish them luck.
I agree with you insofar as I suspect that this is exactly what Bill&Co are thinking right now. MS will never do anything with Linux unless they think it will make it look bad; they have far too much False Hubris.
However, it could backfire. If people install Linux anticipating Office, and then MS never delivers, they will probably buy Corel or Star or something, because it is more of a pain to install an OS than an office suite. MS has pulled the vaporware trick too many times for people to put up with it when they don't have to, and if Linux is their platform, then they don't have to.
I predicted this months ago, BTW... watch for Microsoft Linux Distribution, 1.0, coming Real Soon Now, based on MEPM, the Microsoft Enhanced Package Management system! Exactly like RPM, but incompatible for 'integration reasons'.
Feh.
I support most replies and their positions.
This is how I see the situation. Microsoft is going through a four stage system.
1. Deny it exists.
2. Oh, it does exist but we are not worried.
3. That thing is junk. (FUD)
4. Oh, well it does exist and it does have a market. So let us [Microsoft] exploit it.
The reason I suspect is 3 and 4. If it does seem to be a market they will be ready to exploit it with Corel, or they will prevent Corel from selling the Word Perfect Suite. With the money they have the excercise of actually doing a port is good for Microsoft. If the FUD works then they stop the project and go on to the status quo. If Linux does become a market then Microsoft will be ready.
Now for Linux it self. This will only work if it actually is shown to be done. The customer that will buy Linux because of MS Office, will only buy Linux when there is MS Office for Linux. So for the short term it is nothing for expanding Linux market. Long term it could get a few more people interested.
Final words is we should watch this but still point people to the existing set of Office Suites and Word Processors. Let our friends use the ones they like and help them with getting them to work.
Lastly if someone says, "should I wait until MS Office for Linux comes out to use Linux?" We say, "Don't wait, partition your drive and try it now. Do you need any help with installing Linux?"
Iain
After all, Office97 for the Mac looks about 99% the same as Office97 for Win32. The major differences are the ones that have to be there because the users are used to that OS being that way, like the file open/save dialogs, menus, etc.
Office97 even comes with VBA, which is pretty much the same as the VBA that comes with Office97 for Win32. The only difference I have noticed so far is that the Mac version treats file/directory paths a little differently, expected on a Mac.
I have mixed feelings about this, but my first, and most important, thought was that Office97 is the only thing keeping a lot of people inside Win95/98. Once that's out of the way, Windows will rapidly decrease in popularity. I wonder if AOL will do a port of their software to Linux. Hehehe.
---
They have a monopoly on both, and they used their Windows monopoly to create the Office monopoly, just like they did it with DOS -> Windows before.
---
First of all, Office is one of the better MS apps. I've used it on multiple machines, and it is _usually_ pretty stable, which is enough for the average user. The good thing about this is that Office is one of the main things that are keeping people inside of Windows. Even if you're an anti-Microsoft fanatic, it's pretty hard to survive without Office if you're running a business or anything else. Us geeks prefer other text editors, but most business people don't know what a formatting tag is, let alone how to use it. They don't have time for that. Sure, _we_ could probably create a document in our editors with the same speed they create theirs in Office, but it would probably take them 3 times as long. If this turns out to be true, I will sing and rejoice. And about Microsoft making their own Linux distribution: extremely unlikely to impossible. They'd have to release the source.
---
If Office crashes under Windows, it will probably freeze the whole box and you'll have to reboot. If Office crashes under Linux, you just kill it and the box will keep running. I don't think that even Microsoft has the power to write something buggy enough to crash Linux. Anyway, Office is one of the more stable Microsoft apps, and it's the only thing keeping most people inside of Windows. The only problem is that I'm not sure how serious this article is.
---
I don't need no stinkin' closed source word processor on my box. I'd rather help AbiSource finish AbiWord and put it under the GPL.
(Dollars to donuts it'll be ready before Microsoft even admits they're considering a Linux port).
I think he said "pretty much" because he didn't want to bother going in to the whole silly scenario of what would happen if Microsoft did appropriate some GPL'd code in to one of their products.
;-)
If they insisted on shipping the product Microsoft would be legally obligated to release the entire source code of that product under the GPL. This is, as the previous poster said, silly. (It'd also be pretty nifty for us hackers---I'd love to fix some of the annoyances I have with Word).
The GPL is strong enough as it stands. Let's not muck with it just to hurt one particular company.
--B
P.S. If the license excludes the "market leader" from using the product what happens when the Red Hat has 51% of the market?
xauth et al. are a pain; no one is ever going to accidently discover X is network transparent.
As you may or may not have heard, when you ssh to another box it automatically forwards (and encrypts) your X connections so applications "just work". I use it all the time to log in to my work computers from home over the modem and run my favorite mail client (Emacs).
I think the Unix Haters Handbook is getting a bit out of date.
To those who use Microsoft Office and/or repeat
the tired mantra "desktop applications are
required for an operating system's viability on
the desktop...":
What, where, when, why, and how do you use it?
What applications do you use; for what do you
use them; what or how many features of each
application, etcetera?
---------------------------------
"The Internet interprets censorship as damage,
Well, I have to say I'm agnostic about the whole thing, but I'll take a stab at explaining just WHY these LINUX zealots are so freaked out about this.
Microsoft repeatedly demonstrates that its motives are to do nothing other than:
If that means destroying the competition, then they'll do it. If anyone challenges them, they:
Quite frankly, We don't trust Microsoft. We can't trust Microsoft. Each time they do something, they only do it to better themselves, or to re-position their overwhelming market dominance, or to re-inforce their desktop monopoly. We can hardly blame them. This is capitalism, after all.
But we would be stupid to think that Microsoft is doing anything other than helping themselves. We can't trust Microsoft to do something good for the Linux community. Their record is awful.
For a company with such a demonstratably poor track record, making a deal with Microsoft is like making a deal with the devil.
On the other hand, I'm a big believer in "It's the apps, stupid!", and if the one thing appears -- that one thing that is keeping my boss from replacing all those Wintel boxes with something running Linux, then this could be good for Linux.
Face it. We've heard Microsoft play down Linux for a long time. "Ach, that Linux stuff. It' cheap free hackerware. How good could something free be? Microsoft is quality technology"
This rumor of a new product could be their way of thinking that Linux is a real operating system now. That's pretty cool.
Linus Torvalds dreams of world domination. Bill Gates dreams of a stable OS.
-- If you met me, you probably wouldn't remember me. I'm pretty hard to remember.
Ditto.
I feel like a traitor saying, but I know MS Word inside and out. I've had to layout several publications in it (should've used a real layout package, but it wasn't an option).
I would probably switch to something else eventually, but there are so many occasions when I just want to quickly generate a document. I know how to do it in word.
Applix doesn't do it for me. Staroffice crashes on my hardware. The free WordPerfect is somewhat incomplete.
MSOffice would probably exhibit many of these problems too, but *IF* it was stable. WOW. I could probably move my whole family to Linux.
Well. . . If Intuit would ever port Quicken!!!!
-Alan
Man, if one could buy a box of "MS Marketing 99", I'd be the first in line!
.
They'd only have to release the source to programs they made that use GPL'ed code. They could easily make a proprietary DE and window-manager without releasing any code at all. Of course, they would have to make the kernel code and GPL'ed utilities' code available, but big deal, it would likely be the same kernel/utilities you'd find on any Linux distro. You would probably be able to take M$ Linux and just ignore or uninstall the DE / window-manager and use Gnome and Window Maker or whatever.
And this WOULD ensure hardware support by M$ ass-kissing vendors.
As long as Microsoft has to compete on a level playing field I have no problems with them. Of course we will have to be on guard against their old dirty tricks, but the DOJ will surely be watching them closely too.
And I would MUCH rather be doing support for MSLinux than Win95/98/NT !!!
.
I think Star Office IS available for Windoze.
NT might cost $100 for you educational users, but it costs several hundred for non educational buyers.
We must leverage our core apps to bend linux to its knees...Muhahahahahahahahaha...
...or something to that effect was said at some M$ meeting, I'm sure.
USA-Democracy is 270 million YESes and NOes a day, not one every four years.
and you have an environment friendly to the average user. I am all for it. It is the users choice. I personally use StarOffice and WordPerfect. I've always hated MSOffice.
I bet that someone will flame me for saying KDE. I bet that same person might just say GNOME rulez, you suck.
Now, this could be funny. We could really bring M$ to their knees by mailing them the core file everytime Office dumped one. And you know Office would dump lots of them.
Oh, and one other thing. I will never use software that has a "wizard". Any software that needs a "wizard" to be usable is entirely too complex for its own good. Unix has a history of well organized tools that are terse and can do complex things. It would be a shame to loose all this to Visual Basic and macro viruses.
Bah. Lyx does everything I need. But then, I'm a physicist, not an Office drone. (pun intended)
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.
In the short-term, it will validate the platform
for the suits. In the long-term, it may be bad.
As we all know, each time Microsoft touches
something that they didn't come up with in the
first place, they always turn it into crap. You
could almost wonder if they are not doing it on
purpose?
I would personally prefer having them staying away
altogether.
I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm getting a bit tired of some of the very selective hostility towards Microsoft.
Yes, I think they're monopolistic and anticompetitive, and I hope the DOJ gets them good. I think they've hurt innovation, and that they've sabotaged productivity wherever their "solutions" have been implemented.
But really, if Microsoft represented the worst that multinational capitalism had to offer, multination corporate capitalism would be a utopian fantasy and heaven on earth. Only people who are so completely tunnel-visioned as to only see this one little industry as significant could possibly paint Microsoft as an ubervillian - compare the activities of Nestle, Union Carbide, Monsanto, Exxon, Mitsubishi, General Motors, Coca Cola, Standard Oil, AT&T, ITT, Nike, Reebok, R.J. Reynolds, The Gap, United Fruit, Dole, the coffee companies, and the insurance industry, to see histories of intrigue, negligence, conspiracy, brutality, oppression, incompetance, bullying, murder, and environmental destruction that would make your blood boil. Look at the histories of Latin America, Africa and Asia for the tracks of these practices. Read "Open Veins of Latin America" by Eduardo Galeano for a good introduction to some of this history.
But to listen to the displaced focused hatred aimed at Microsoft, you'd think THEY were responsible for sweatshops, Bhopal, the massacre at El Mozote, and the like.
And to think that Sun, Oracle, Sybase, IBM or even Netscape, HP or Apple are significantly better is at best naivete. (I will grant you that their products are usually better and less buggy, but I'm talking about corporate ethics in general.) Look at the behaviour of McNeally and Ellison someday.
There's a big difference between being pro-Open/Free, and being ABM (Anything-But-Microsoft). I'm definitely the former. My attitude to a Microsoft Office for Linux suite would be the same as any major company producing a non-Free application for Linux: "Yes, that's very nice, but really, who cares?"
Don't you get it?
How many people are frustrated by "the masses" who don't balk at a Microsoft monopoly? "The mindless sheep!" they whine, "they keep buying these inferior products and just give a monopoly to Microsoft!"
But they are doing exactly what you are doing: "picking their battles." Do you think someone whose primary concern is the environment will really give a turd about operating systems, when the OS-warriors don't seem to give a turd about anything else?
And there's just a little too much support for proprietary, closed software here if it just happens not to come from Microsoft. IBM/Lotus, Sun even Corel, aren't really allies as far as I'm concerned. It's not even a case of the enemy-of-my-enemy: last I checked, two of those companies have a substantial windows product line, and none of them operate significantly on the Free software model.
In other words, if the battle is between Open and Closed, count me in. If it's between Microsoft and Everything Else, I really couldn't care less - I suspect The Market will take care of it, and just give us another, and quite probably much worse, tyrant.
Throughout the third world, Nestle would give away about a month's supply of dry infant formula to new mothers, particularly in free or government-run maternity wards, which target the poorest and least educated segment of society. All sounds very altruistic, no?
Of course, after a month without breast feeding, women STOP LACTATING, which means that they HAVE to buy infant formula to feed their children.
Really makes being "trapped" in cycles of upgrades seem a little less chilling, doesn't it?
Anyway, due to intense international pressure, many of the worst of Nestle's practices have stopped, but there continue to be some problems, including very clear health dangers associated with infant formula. See The Baby Milk Action web site for more details.
The question is really this: if you expect people to listen to you about OS', do you listen to them when it comes to other products? Do you boycott McDonalds, Monsanto, Exxon and the like? Are you even a fraction as conscientious about your other consuming habits as you are about your computing ones? If not, how could you possibly expect anyone who isn't monomaniacally absorbed in computing to even listen?
Ok, it's true that linux really need those, easy :)
to use applications, so that for example business world (With this i mean small companies, and people that are quite new to computing, because, that covers quite a bit of users).
BUT, do we need it from MICROSOFT? No, as you all know, microsoft has the reputation of making programs? with shitload of bugs, so personally if I had my first computer with Linux, I would rather use one more day to learn staroffice for example, than to use micro$hit's "click the button, to open the wizards, which will do everything for you, and makes the world better at the background" programs, because staroffice might be little bit weird, BUT IT DOESN'T crash with every mousepress, and it doesn't send my credit card/ other personal information to MS-group (remember SS-thingy from hitler's germany?)!
Basically, Linux world needs big companies, but are we that desperate.. Personally I use microsoft products, as food for our neighbors dog
"No, thank you."
----------------------
There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.
It's nice to see that the typical slashdot posters are representing the linux/opensource community in such a grown-up way.
Where did they make an announcement about 'porting' Office?
...Or did you not read the article (like most slashdot posters)?
There have been ways to port things to unix for quite some time. Only when Microsoft is thinking about it do the linux fanatics come out of the woodwork to whine about it.
http://www.mainsoft.com/
The use of P-code is nothing new. It was the basis of the UCSD Pascal, which I belive was one of the options on the original IBM PC. Though how similar this is to the P-code which MS use, I do not know.
I think you're right...I imagine MS will go with they're own Window Manager but rewriting X would be slightly pointless, no?
> It'll probably be like IE for UNIX - big, slow, CPU-intensive, and prone to crashes.
... how?
This is different than Netscape for UNIX
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
If that happens, Linux has won. Microsoft will have become a Linux VAR. That would mean admitting utter defeat for NT. I just don't see it happening.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Uh.... why is my name showing up as Black Wolf in the comment? It's scrytch.
Got an off-by-one bug in the user database there, Rob?
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Lovely, now it's Anonymous Coward.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
I think this actually makes sense for Microsoft to do. Just think about it, Windows NT costs maybe a hundred bucks or so, you can get it for free with some stuff, and we buy the licenses for $60 a seat here at the University. BUT, Office is MUCH more expensive, anyone looked at what Office 97 and what Office 2000 Pro will retail for? It's absurd. So why should MS care if you run Linux as long as you shell out several hundred bucks to buy Office, they've still got your money.
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. --Robert A. Heinlein
i never had a problem with office. it's a decent suite. 95 and nt on the other hand, well, those stink. why not let everyone choose for themselves. me, i'd choose linux and html.
If it's true at all, and remember MS is a big company and considers lots of projects, it's probably part of a brace and extend potential study. We all know that Windows NT has a shit kernel. Win98/95 are much worse.
Well, what if MS could start a new "standard", without that buggy kernel.. Might they consider something known for stability? They may not be so concerned over the control of the kernel in the future if they can ship a package that provides the GUI, IE5 (or 6 or whatever), and a standard set of programs for email, document writing, etc. Then computers could come with LINUX + MS Office bundled. They could still make a whole wad of money. And they wouldn't have to worry nearly so much about crashing provided they kept out of the kernel.
Then a few years later that could start shipping with another kernel, developed inhouse or purchased from a UNIX vendor.
I agree.. as far as I'm aware there is no open source package that compares to any of the commercial office packages, so making as many available as possible, especially the brand leader (MS Office) for linux will be a good thing.
Eventually I have no doubt that the open-source world, will come up with a better 'Office' like its has come up with a better kernel, a recently a better 'GUI' with KDE or Gnome. It just takes a little longer when you don't cut corners on quality as commercial products do.
Ok, so what's next?
We are not talking about Al Gore here, who claims to have invented the internet, we are talking about Bill Gates who might be bragging for the next 100 years about how Microsoft 'brought Linux out to the general public by creating a revolutionary set of applications'
This isnt happening...
And I used to respect him, too. Feh.
I truly would prefer to use WP8 over SO5, but on my system WP8's font rendering can be illegible at times.
SO501 on the other runs wonderfully. No crashes, no problems. It's fast.
When I ran Caldera + KDE1.0 it was pretty slow and it crashed.
Thank god I moved to the superior distro. I was hesitant to download SO over again because (you know why)...
I'm glad I did. Even the browser is fast enough for me. I don't mind it at all. This prevents me from having to browse with netscape while writing docs (a serious memory saver).
I'm pretty satisfied with so501. I'll hold off on final judgment when wp9 and Corel's Office 2000 comes out on linux. But if they don't make their fonts work right in X, I'll be a SO loyalist...
After living insider the Win32 API for a couple of years, I believe this PSUEDOCODE you speak of is the Win32 API.
...
Sure, just port the Win32 API over to Linux. No problem, its only a couple 100 million lines of completely bug free stable modular code
bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha
How close is WINE to running Office97 ?
Check their site.
I got the windows version just for grins,
removed it right away. Tried to take over my whole desktop, ugh!
Nunc Tutus Exitus Computarus.
I wouldn't say total bullshit. You've heard all of the 'GNUlix' things. Hell, you could layer names. I think if you were to call a simple install of Linux 'Redhat 5.2 GNU/Linux 2.2.2 with GNOME 1.0' (not that Redhat 5.2 had the 2.2.2 kernel or GNOME 1.0) instead of the standard 'Linux' it would confuse the hell out of a person who is just learning about what Linux is. Add in the line 'conforms to POSIX.1' or 'UNIX, similar to SYS V' and you will probably completely lose many people. If you just called it 'Linux', they'd remember the penguin. In fact, this is what MS did. Hypothetically they could call Windows 98 'MS DOS 6.2 with the windows 3.1 upgrade, with the windows 4.0 upgrade, with the windows 4.1 upgrade with internet explorer 4.0'. Hell they could have made up some nasty acronyms too, think of what they would have called Internet Explorer for example. Myself, when I talk about Linux (or GNU/Linux, gnulix or whatever) I just call it 'Linux'. When I talk about windows 98 I just call it windows 98 instead of 'the windows 4.1 upgrade to ms-dos'. But I have a feeling that you flamed the previous poster for exactly the thing you were accusing him/her of.
Suddenly, the hairy finger of a familiar monkey tapped me on the shoulder. It was time.--G. T.
Office has been available on other platforms. It's not really as far-fetched as you think.
And it shipping WOULD lend legitimacy to Linux as a desktop platform, whether we choose to use it or not (I say not, personally).
As for me, I think I'll stick with Applix and Corel.
_Deirdre
... it wouldn't take down the whole system with it ;)
I'd never go near the thing of course.
The current version of the Linux Kernel you are running [2.2.2-ac3] is insuficient for MSLinux Office.
.................................................. ........................................ .................................................. ........................................ .................................................. ........................................ ...... . .......................................... .................................................. ........................................ ..................................................
.................................................. ........................................ .................................................. ........................................ .................................................. ........................................ ...... . .......................................... .................................................. ........................................ ..................................................
You need to upgrade to the Kernel 2000-MS patch that enhances and extends the functionality to be compatible with MSLinux Office.
Download now? [Yes] [No]
Downloading
Installing.....................................
The current version of glibc you are running is insuficient for Kernel 2000-MS. You need to upgrade to MSglibc-2000.
Download now? [Yes] [No]
Downloading
Installing.....................................
The current version of GTK you are running [1.1.16] is insuficient for MSLinux Office. You need to upgrade to MFC-GTK-2000.
.
.
.
This sig is false.
Especially on zdnet. It's bad enough that unfounded rumors are being published on that virtual rag. Do we have to repeat them here?
I hate MS OS's, but Office might be useful. I say cool...
he obviously meant internet exploder
why:
because if they make it for *nix then they can gain hold on yet another market (and all its little fragments)
so people that only use office can be put on cheaper machines (save costs of winblows and maybe even cheaper hardware)
why not:
money (yeah right, like they'd worry about this)
time (screw it, just put 4000 developers on it)
doj may see them trying to take over even another marketplace (does anyone know if that ppc dir on the nt cds actually are ppc mac versions of nt?!?)
because of all the insults from the *nix society (like that'd stop them)
anyone else think of more?
8Complex
supposedly every install checks to make sure it will only upgrade the version of the dll it is replacing before doing so... then it knows only a newer version will be in there...
the real problem lies in the registry where all of microsoft's dirty work comes together... it is the SLOPPIEST POS i have ever seen... i've seen 2 year olds organize their matchbox cars better... (hell for that matter i've seen babies drool more organized)... then there are pieces that are wrong, are overwritten, are duplicated and duplicated and duplicated... the registry on my win98 box is 2.53 meg... given (through educational guess) what i have installed i'd say that it should be about 200k as a text file - and that is taking the original windows files into account too...
8Complex
Some people aren't waiting around...
www.wine.com
Sorry...please direct all complaints to Lagunitas Brewing Company...they are forcing me to drink their ipa this evening...
I have absolutely no doubt that Microsoft has a special task force of psychologists, mad scientists, mathematitions, analysts and prophets, who's sole duty is to draw up conclusions and predictions of the future Microsoft and come up with new business models - basically thinking up diabolical plans to penetrate into sacred areas of the computing industry where it does not belong.
Microsoft can very well see into the future as much as we can. They are obviously planning ahead for the future demise of Windows. They need to get their feet wet with Linux, so that they can further develop a plan and orchaestrate a systematic envasion of the Linux OS - similarly to what they did (or at least tried) to do with Java. Good thing that backfired on them, hopefully that'll keep them cautious.
It'll be interesting to see how it unravels though. The prospect of MSOffice for Linux will bring a new wave of interest, and make it truely viable for many businesses to make their desktop systems all Linux.
Yes this is a good assumption. I'll bet they're developing a whole suite of tools for Linux: Office, IE, Front Page, IIS, MS Access Database, all rolled into a complete MS-Linux distribution shrink wrapped in stores for $300.
This will be Microsoft's answer to Linux... and it will probably work.
MS is trying to cover their ass, just in case this Linux fad actually does destroy the Windows era. They obviously aren't going to sit around and watch their empire decay. MS can always be counted on for a very strong retaliation.
Yup, riiiiiggghhh... They'll just insist that you install it as root, then it'll scatter a few suid'd files around your drive to make security on your box a living nightmare, trash any other program that you try to run, and produce lots of nifty system crashes that look like they're comming from other applications. Then they'll say "See? It's unstable, insecure, unreliable and slow. You should replace it with Windows 2001!" (That's what they'll be calling Win2000 by the time it's really released...)
I dunno, it's kinda crash-prone and annoying. The last real improvement in their software that they made was the jump from MS-DOS 4 to MS-DOS 5. (DOS 4 was EEEEVVVIIILLLL... even for a spawn of MS... I liked DOS 5.) Personally I liked their implementation of MineSweeper though. It ran nice and fast, and you never get blown up on the first move. :)
Random guy in crowd: "Only the Messiah would deny being the Messiah!"
:)
Brian: "Alright then, I am the Messiah!"
Whole Crowd: "He IS the Messiah!"
-- Monty Python's Life of Brian
Be carefull with that whole denial=proof thing. Just because Brian really was the Messiah, dosen't mean it's always true.
There have been ways to port things to unix for quite some time. Only when Microsoft is thinking about it do the linux fanatics come out of the woodwork to whine about it.
We're not whining about there being a way to port things to Unix, we've not only known about them for some time, we've been participating in, benefiting from, and enjoying them. Guess what? We've all heard about Wine, we all know about Corel WP, and all of those other Linux ports of other software packages. The lack of whining was because they were actual ports of said software, from people who haven't stated their goal to 'Embrace and Extend' as a way of crushing open systems. Go read the Halloween doc's at opensource.org, they lay it out nice and plain in Halloween 1. Then there's Microsoft's time-honoured practice of including hidden 'features' to invade your privacy, and degrade the performance of anyone else's products. Bet ya MS-Office for Linux will insist on installing as root only. Then there's the fact that Microsoft was the one who brought us a Word Processor that can have viruses in it's documents. Yeah, we need MS-Word for Linux, there's far too few Viruses available for our platform of choice, and this will give us so much more selection.
Linux is an open system, and like all other Gnu stuff, it's used because that openness creates trust. People who get used to actually trusting their computer and the software on it will always be leary of putting something closed and secretive on it, especially when it's handed to them by someone who has demonstrated time and time again that you can not trust them. (Let's see... Stacker code stolen in DOS 6, Hard drive scan in Win95 sent to MS-Network, MAC address secretly appended to Word/Excel doc's, not releasing actual API for Win95 to developers but using it themselves to make their products faster than others, the list goes on... wonder why we don't trust them, eh?)
Only people who are so completely tunnel-visioned as to only see this one little industry as significant could possibly paint Microsoft as an ubervillian - compare the activities of...
Dude, slow down. Pick your enemies, and go off to war all you want, but cripes, if you open too many fronts at once, you go splat. Sure, we know that other companies do evil things too, but we know better than to over extend ourselves. We picked our fight, and we'll get to the other ones when we're done, ok? Which would you rather do, fight against one set of bank robbers, or one set of bank robbers, Plus Cthulhu, Shub-Nigurath, and a pack of Shoggoths all at once? Personally I'll just avoid the elder menaces and handle the one that won't drain my sanity. Same with Microsoft and all the other elder Corp's. Besides, they at least maintain some illusion of product quality. MS dosen't.
As for who cares - all of those buisness managers who like paying for programs will. You know them, you've probably worked for them. You know they don't always make sense, so you should be expecting it by now. And they'll buy into it, 'cause their techies have been bugging them to try Linux for a long time now, and they'll see something buggy and unstable, and say "Yup, I saw Linux, it was crap." All because they bought it and looked at it through Microsoft's narrowed proprietary view. And then all of that promotional work we've been doing is taken away tenfold.
But they are doing exactly what you are doing: "picking their battles." Do you think someone whose primary concern is the environment will really give a turd about operating systems, when the OS-warriors don't seem to give a turd about anything else?
But does that stop them (the environmentalists) from telling us things like "Hey, it's stupid to dump CFCs into the air!" (just a random example) - just because someone else chose to campain in a different area dosen't mean they aren't affected. It just means that I'm not going to be jumping down people's throats about the dangers of Air polution, it's someone else's job. Similarily, the 'OS-warriors' are having an effect on the non OS-warriors. If we weren't, do you really think there would be any press coverage of Linux at all? Why are people attacking Microsoft more than the others? They're a prominent representative of the closed, proprietary software group, and they're also an easy target. Their faults and untrustworthyness is publicly known with lots of easy to see examples. Can anyone find as many examples of deliberate deception, poor quality and blatant ripoffism off the top of their head about any of those other companies as they can about Microsoft? I doubt it. (If you can, then post the list, it's always good to have more amunition.) Plus we've got the problem of MS having stated that they wanted to find a way to get rid of Open Systems, as they are a 'threat' - that makes them a declared enemy, and this is close to one of the methods they stated they would try for getting rid of OSS. In fact, it's one of the methods they tried on OS/2 as well, back when it was competition. Other companies who practice mainly closed buisness haven't stated anything like that, and some are trying to 'reform' - so we give them a chance. Netscape has Mozilla, which is open sourced, so they're not an enemy. IBM supports Apache, and is working on Linux support as well. Corel is funding Wine, which is a major open source project. So far we've got a lot of big corp's who may do bad things occasionally, but they're also slowly moving over to our side. Now if Microsoft was to announce that they were going to release source code from one of their major app's, even under some weird proprietary, sue-your-ass-off-if-you-use-this licence scheme, we'd probably be happy. (Ok, really, we'd pass out in shock. But when we recovered, if they actually did it we'd be happy.)
I can give you an example of corporate evil that makes Microsoft look like a saint
While this is definitely a disturbing activity, they're not one of the other companies I was talking about, and it's not of much use in the open source debate. What I meant was examples about the other computer industry companies, like IBM, Lotus, ATI, Sun, etc. I realize that makes it look like I only care about computer companies, but I was asking for info that would be usefull in a computer related debate.
Do you boycott McDonalds, Monsanto, Exxon and the like? Are you even a fraction as conscientious about your other consuming habits as you are about your computing ones?
Know when the last time I ate at McDonalds was? 1985. Sad thing is that one of McDonalds' major environmental offenses was caused by the environmentalists themselves complaining about styrofoam packaging - that evil CFC producer. They didn't bother realizing that it can be made without CFC problems, and that it's recyclable. Instead, they now go through tons of paper products a year to replace the evil styrofoam... Exxon (to the best of my knowlege) is mostly involved in oil/gas, and I don't buy any. (Yup, I walk everywhere that I don't take the bus. It's better for me anyhow.) As for Monsanto, I've never heard of them, what are they? Like I said, just because you only champion one cause dosen't mean you're not aware of or affected by any of the others. Even if we don't bow to every public interest group in existance, we still have a right to publicize our cause, and as much a right as any of them to expect people to listen. If you say something, at least someone is bound to hear you and be affected by it. However, if we say nothing about it, then we can guarantee that nobody will be affected.
1) Telnet to shell
:) Of course, if someone told them to do it, then nope, it's not hard at all, as long as they know their IPs/system names. (And I'd give it to them with your step 4 first, then step 3 can be cut out, making the whole thing shorter and much more non-techie friendly. The last person I told those to tried to run the xterm from the shell he was telnetted to, and got upset when it wouldn't work.)
2) set DISPLAY
3) run xterm
4) type xauth +(ip of shell)
5) run program from shell
is that hard?
By accident, definitely. (I can see it now... "My fingers just slipped, and I typed a 200 character command while I wasn't looking."
This may not be as far fetched as some of you may think. Remember that Microsoft recently released a version of thier Internet Explorer web browser for Solaris and HP-UX. In doing so, they did have to port many of the Windows APIs over to these platforms. So, they alrady have code that they can probabily re-use and most of all, they have some experiance of porting thier stuff to UNIX. Personally, I don't think this is a bad thing- MS Office 98 on the Macintosh is an excellent software package.
-Sol
I remember hearing rumors that Microsoft was porting Visual Basic and Office to OS/2. Microsoft supposedly killed the projects when Bill decided to terminate OS/2.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Hmmm, but wouldn't it be cute to have Tux warbling at you as your document is chewed up and spit out?
I've been using Word since Mac v3.0, and am far too lazy to learn a new word processor, as a recent run-in with Lotus Word Pro proved.
(I'm the kinda nerd that believes in documentation, so a good word processor is essential. Although, I'm sure the ubernerds just use emacs or latex or code the whole document in raw postscript.)
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
My understanding is that Office is written is some sorta pseudo code so that it can easily be ported. Of course the psuedo code interpreter is more optimized on Windows than the Mac.
(What I don't understand is how certain command errors in Word report "WordBASIC Error". Is part of the program written in WordBASIC?)
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Well, if they decide to preempt the judge and break themselves in half, the "MS Apps" company would be more likely to port to Linux and more stuff to the Mac.
Corel ports their stuff anywhere it will sell. Lotus used to port to OS/2 and has full Notes support on the Mac.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Office is the profit center for MS. If they had Windows only, /. longhairs would have less complaining to do:
Windows 98 $98 (DOS/Win Market Share 80%??)
Windows NTW $198 (5-10%)
Office $600 (90%, including Macs)
Office 2000 $lots more
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Office 2000 is not going to be the client-side only suite that we know and love. There's going to be an "Office Server" running on top of IIS and Exchange which will attempt to provide Notes-like groupware functionality.
I doubt Microsoft is (or should be) worried enough about the Linux on the desktop*, to use a vaporware Office to stiffle Linux desktops. What they could do, however, is promise a "MS Office Server for Linux" which might hold off NT->Linux server conversions until it is shipped (which would be 18 months after the Windows version.
*If people really didn't want to use Windows, they'd be buying more Macs. Why? Many more of the pieces are there already, when compared to Linux.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
is a better product than anything WordPerfect, Claris, or anyone else has got. Sure it's slower than WinOffice, but it is feature complete and unless you are crunching lots of numbers, who cares if Excel runs a little slow.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
I remember MS Flight Simulator on my friends Fat Mac. Took over the whole screen and put these DOSsy menus on top. Excelent!
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Bill Gates: "Oh NO! The iMac has stolen 5% of our market share. What do we do?"
ms employee: "We could stop distributing Office on floppy disk, because that costs us $3 more per copy."
Bill Gates: "Great Idea. You get a Raise!!!"
other ms employee: "Somebody put a free unix on the Internet. Unix's market share has increased 0.1%!!"
Bill Gates: "Only pot smokers and people who don't buy our stuff anyway use Unix. Take a look at FoxPro for Xenix and see how hard it would be to port to this new Unix. And tell ZDNet."
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
To follow myself up...
Apparently all MS apps are written on this psuedocode engine. This info was from a few years back, but according to some MS guy, it would be no problem to port VisualBasic or Access to the Mac, "if there was sufficent market demand" (read "if we didn't want to keep the Mac a nitch platform").
That indicates that Microsoft applications have very little OS dependancy. Which makes sense, if you notice that the toolbars and file dialogs in Office don't look like the standard Windows/IE ones. (And MacOffice 4.2, which had a look and feel more like Windows than MacOS.)
If this is still true, they probably could do a port without GTK, QT, or Motif. It would just look like the Windows version (which would fit well with KDE.)
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
No longer a day-to-day Mac user, but still use one a few times a month. I use Word 98 on a 8500 and Word 6 on a Quadra 950.
Word 6 is a litte slow, but is still a hellava lot better than WordPerfect 3.0, which is the last WP-Mac version I tried. Claris seems feature deficient for me, although it's probably fine for most people.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
"Customers are asking us about Linux, but we can't make money on it today," says Howard Diamond, chief executive officer of Corporate Software & Technology..."
This is exactly why the whole commercial software industry will eventually fail. Customers want something that the industry is unwilling to provide. All they want to do is stuff their own wallets.
They had a really nice Java based widget set , that was fast and super nice looking (with Java 1.0.2 !). They also an applet that looked like an MS word app, a drawing app, etc. It was beatifull and the performance was probably better than today's Swing.
:(
s tory/8870.html
MS bought them and didn't use their products. One of the articles has Fitzgeralds saying they just bought "Smart people", not the technology.
It's easy to judge people in this situation. But sometimes I wonder what I would do if I was offered a big stash of money for scraping my technology. I think I wouldn't do it, but then again, it's one of those things you have to experience to really tell
Anyways, thanks for nothing MS, I wonder how many other cool technologies they have killed like this.
More info:
http://www.lantimes.com/97/97nov/711b024a.html
http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/java/
- sigs are for wimps.
Then, proclaim that the Linux port is unprofitable, and announce that Office 2002 will not have a Linux port.
All you businesses running Office on the Linux platform? Well, you'll just have purchase a bunch of Win2000 licenses, that's all.
But, this is not going to work for the simple reason that MS-Borg simply won't be trusted.
I don't think that the issue is survival = I think the point is that we need to sell to the suits to give 'market share' to Linux so that numb-brain hardware vendors start to provide proper support for their products in Linux/BSD etc. Todays $$$ corporate toys are tomorrows el-cheapo geek toys. How many individuals would be able to afford CD writers if the manufacturers hadn't paid off their research costs selling to suits ?
*--BigMan--- Time flies like an arrow.. but personally I prefer a nice glass of wine!
I can get by without M$ Office. I use Applixware Office on my SuSE PC and can read any MS Office doc that I get sent. It whinges a bit if it was saved as a 'quick-save' document, but I've never yet received a document I couldn't read, or that required more than cosmetic editing.
MS Office = £400+ UK
Applixware = £40 UK - No contest
The only thing applixware doesn't have is a 'access' equivalent, but then again with a choice of real databases like MySQL, Ingres, Oracle, Informix etc I'm not all that bothered.
*--BigMan--- Time flies like an arrow.. but personally I prefer a nice glass of wine!
A Shining Example of Australian Sarcasm and Irony
"WE (and I say we as in the true Australians who fought and died to make this country what it is, as opposed to the new arrivals who merely complain and criticise) understand that true AUSTRALIAN CULTURE was inherent in our people long before policies of multiculturalism became fashionable, and it will outlive this fashion as it outlived the Turkish in the Dardenelles, the Germans in the Somme, the Japanese in Borneo and Kanchanaburi, and you and your complainants. TRUE Australians will never be downtrodden and disenfranchised by the new psuedo-Australians . . . LONG LIVE PAULINE AND THE TRUE AUSTRALIAN NATION."
Err . . . was that "Australian", or just, uhh . . . "Austrian"?
:)
-j
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
They're already in trouble with web servers. As long as they don't control the protocols and whatnot of the web, they don't have total dominance. To do that they need the server as well as the client, and as long as people are using Linux and Apache they haven't got the server. The Apache people have carried a lot of water for MS by supporting IIS crap, but that's not the whole ballgame.
Office is a relatively minor issue. IE and IIS are what counts.
-j
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
With my brain held in a vicelike grip by enthusiasm for the "New Slashdot With Up to 50% More!! Preferences" recently announced, I set my threshold to -9 and I look down there at the bottom of the page and it still says zero. Bummer.
We need not just a minimum score kinda threshold, but a maximum! Sort of an alternate-universe W.A.S.T.E. Slashdot, where Benny the Bulb runs free . . . all the maniacs and malcontents howling along under the surface, where nobody ever sees them . . .
It would like, rule. I only read Slashdot for the flames anyway.
-j
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
definately
Oh, yes. Very nice. It's the details that count.
Still, you missed a few viewpoints:
"All commercial software will fail."
Nineteen different semi-clever plays on "embrace and extend".
"You need to get laid"
"Red Hat is turning into Microsoft"
"FUD" applied to anything that isn't.
So you see, there is actually a lot more diversity of opinion and originality of thought on Slashdot than you're willing to admit. Obviously you're a Microsoft employee paid to infiltrate Slashdot and sap our will to resist by talking about all the free sodas you get. (By the way, for all of you out there feeling demoralized by those vile saboteurs -- I work for a little startup in Boston and not only do we get free sodas, but we also get free Pepperoni Hot Pockets, popsicles, popcorn, hot pretzels, and real good coffee -- so don't lose heart! Man, there is no way the Borg can compete with Pepperoni Hot Pockets. Hot Pockets, like, rule. They just rule, man, that's all I can say.)
Sadly, I haven't spotted any libertarians in this one. No Slashdot feeding frenzy is complete without a few glassy-eyed free-mouse^H^H^H^Harketeers . . . Especially when MS is involved.
-j
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
Well, what the hell. I just realized that I'm the only human left alive, and all of you are just the products of a disordered AI. I look out the window, and there's nobody out there. I can see a fence and some cars but no people. You're all robots. So hey, what does it matter?
SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE! PEOPLE!
-j
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
You don't want to wake up when you're 80 and realize you tucked in your butt-cheeks all your life. Cut loose, have fun, drink a few beers and don't worry so much.
Aw, hell, what am I saying, you're all robots anyway . . . what do you care about beer? I'm the only human left alive . . .
SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE! PEOPLE!
-j
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
"Spray-paint walls! Trash the halls!"
-- Jon Spencer
Y'know Spencer's dad teaches at UVM or someplace up there? Creepy.
Notwithstanding Mr. Spencer and/or Prof. Spencer (Spencer père), I agree with your post enthusiastically and in detail. We all need to stick together here and keep our eye on the ball.
Who am I trying to kid? None of you exist anyway. Slashdot is just a bunch of nondeterministic gibberish spewed out by a maladjusted AI with a sick sense of humor. I'm the only human left alive. Worse yet, even though I set my threshold to -9 in the Preferences, I still get pages defaulting to a dull, boring zero.
SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE! PEOPLE!
-j
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
you want it? keep it, i don't want it . . .
:)
-j
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
As a relaxing excerise for the reader who is usually frustrated with the death grip MS has on the industry... Think some happy (though unrealistic) thoughts. It calms tensions...
Wouldn't it be nice if:
after MS is broken into pieces, the "apps" side of the corporation decided to repent. I think I would really enjoy using Microsoft Office if it was made open source (even if not GPLed). Besides, I think that they don't have too much to loose by this. People will still use their product (those that already do) and it would help mend deep wounds inflicted on the free software community.
It should be something for little MSs to think about if and whne Ma-MS is broken.
Then you need more practice!
Never refuse a breath mint.
Do you know how M$ in the past killed competitors just by saying they would produce something cooler?
:)
;),
I'm not going to believe they are actually even *thinking* about porting Office to Linux until I have it working at my computer here.
Anyway, I moved to Linux because it is more stable, so I'm not sure if I want to try it anyway
If I were you, I'd be scared if M$ starts to meddle with your stuff (not that you didn't know that already, but....)
Keep your eyes open everyone!
Btw. if you are really interested in the way M$ killed competition in the past (you might happen not to know all about it, for example because you were to young at that time, like me
I suggest you read the book 'Barbarians led by Bill Gates. Microsoft from the inside' by Jennifer Edstrom and Marlin Eller (yes, he worked at M$ for many years). It's really a very interesting read.
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
then dont install any. ms products for linux already exist anyway.
I have a woman and money. Life is good.
And probably stop using windows entirely. That's why I think this is probably total BS, fabricated in a desperate attempt to influence that show trial MS is in the process of losing.
ZD Net has been reporting on Linux as if it were the second coming this last few months. I hate to be cynical, but it is hard to believe Micros~1 isn't behind promotiong stories like these.
-josh
No... Microsoft wouldn't win that case. Staroffice/Corel have been giving their linux stuff away for a long time. Corel WP is free for non-commercial usage. StarOffice has a free demo. I don't recall if the demo expires, but after the demo, you buy the product from them for something like $99.
This is not something Corel/StarDivision started to run competitors off the market, and therefore is not subject to the conditions that microsoft is being subjected to.
Netscape had been around for a considerable ammount of time before microsoft came around and gave away + advertised internet explorer.
--
Two excellent points were made.
1) MS benefits alluding to a possible port but not actually delivering
2) MS isn't good at ports
Anybody who says "I can't wait!" is going to have to. If this ever happens it won't be for a long, long time.
Microsoft is about making money --that's not a bad thing, most businesses are-- and porting Office to Linux isn't going to make them any money. More reasons...
... the result of a half-assed collaboration between spinsters and Linux lovers within Microsoft.
4) The installed base of Linux users aren't itching to buy Office.
5) The people who want to run Office already have it. They're running it on Windows.
So, all this is to say that they won't sell any more copies of Office by porting it to which is why you won't see on.
If anything gets released it'll be non-commercial grade
I call "bullshit". You'll never see an "Office for Linux" box on any store shelf.
>Maybe I'm the only one, but I'm failing to see
>the connection between homosexuality and where
>comments are posted.
<sarcasm>Well, then you must gay too!</sarcasm>
Good grief, when I read the original post all I could say was 'huh?!'
I got the skinny from a friend of mine in Redmond. Well he did say 'Microsoft is a big company, it might be going on somewhere' he also said it was pretty bloodly unlikely.
If there was a serious effort, it would've gotten around to the people working on the Windows version of Office 2000... and it hasn't.
His offered the same theory that's been posted here several times. i.e. Microsoft marketing plans to 'attempt' a port and then announce "Linux is too immature, it won't work."
Because if they make MS Office for Linux it will only happen if the company splits up.
If their Java policy is any indication, we probably will see MS Linux ... it will be the only distribution that MS Office for Linux will run on.
Chris
Excel was originally a Macintosh application. Around 1987 or so it was ported to Windows 2.0.
Cheers,
Joshua.
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
A couple points:
1. Microsoft in 1997 threatened to kill their Mac projects due to not having enough users to justify development. (If 6 million current paying customers isn't enough, what is? But I digress.)
Fanatic platform boosterism aside, I think we all agree that there are at least 3x as many Mac users as Linux desktop users. Just keep that in mind.
2. Office 98 for Mac is light years better than Office 4.2, which was so much like the Windows version that they even changed the menu bar font! Anyone remember Microsoft Arcade for Mac, from the same time frame? I kid you not: It took over 10 minutes to load Asteroids. I could load and play a whole game of Maelstrom in that time!
Virtual PC ran Word 97 emulated as fast as the same machine ran Word 6 native. While Office 98 may be bloated and slow, at least it doesn't load up an entire emulated Windows API each and everytime you try to launch an application! Word 98 actually loads almost as fast as Word 5.1a.
3. Don't kid yourself about Linux. First of all, Windows is totally, 100% locked into the minds of most, I'd guess 75%, users. In other words, if you got everyone for whom there is even the smallest possibility to not use Windows, you're still looking at a solid 75% Windows market share.
The remaining 25% will be split between all other platforms, of which, frankly, Linux is not the easiest to deal with. I should know, I've dealt with Unix systems that are even worse yet. Given the trouble I'm having installing Linux on an ordinary Compaq with one little SCSI card, I could not possibly recommend Linux to any non-expert, and I think most users would agree with me.
Where this is going is, if the Mac (the platform all the Office apps were first developed on, recall) doesn't have enough users to justify MS supporting Office on it, Linux surely never will. For the first person that proves me wrong on this point, lunch is on me.
Sorry, Windows is here to stay and Office on Linux is a pipe dream. Linux becoming anything more than the choice of the lunatic fringe depends on it becoming easier to use AND having better application support than Windows.
(Aside: The Initio install images don't have Ethernet support. I need to do an FTP install. If anyone has RedHat 5.2 Install and Boot disks with drivers for both Initio 9xxxU and 3Com 3C509b, I'd love to hear from you!)
Absoultely... remember MS has done this in the past (Intuit remember). Let something slip and wahoo... everyone runs away.
:-)
Indeed, I think that as long as Star Office and Corel create and maintain filters that accurately read oriface97 files, we don't need no stinkin' MS Office.
PS- Anyone who figures out a lisp function that could read MS Office into XEmacs gets my vote for best hack of the year
Get a life, not a lifestyle. - Hikem Bey
Wether this effort is sincere or not, I bet even the very rumors of it will spur many other application ports to Linux. Imagine software engineers everywhere saying to their bosses "Microsoft has a Linux strategy, why don't we?"
The effect that Microsoft hopes to see and the effect it _will_ see are two very different things.
Note however, that most third-party software out there is _not_ an office suite. Why would that logic apply to such software.
Unfortunately MSIE seems to be hardwired into Win9x. Try uninstalling it.....
I don't think that's what he meant.
You are right. Computers are tools for getting work done.
He is just saying that Microsoft doesn't have to recognize Linux (by porting software to it) for Linux to be considered a viable alternative. I agree with him.
Microsoft is shooting themselves in the foot. I, for one, wouldn't shed a tear to see them go south. Some of the worst headaches that I have had have been caused by Microsoft. I would much rather support Netware or (Li/U)nix than an NT server. I would much rather support WordPerfect than Word.
Microsoft must be looking at the world through some pretty funky glasses, they say that they are giving the customer what (s)he wants. I see customers asking "Where did my last four hours of work go?" (I've seen this happen, it isn't pretty)
Caffeine underflow (brain dumped)
Do not confuse the team doing Office with those poor (too strong word here) morones doing win98/2K
I would say that any high quality package is at anytime welcome on the GNU/Linux platform
Personally I would of course support the Free alternatives. (period)
send + more == money?
You say that the acronym "oss" was used first time in the socalled "halloweeen document".
So what!? It only prooves (suggest?) that the author might have been a bit on the paranoid side, and if I remember correctly his jobb was to phantasize about *possible* scenarioes.
Now let us get back to business:
Anybody got a fix for the (supposed) kernel bug that holds back jdk1.2 on older kernels??
Q:Hasn't ACox looked into this yet ??
A:OfCourse!! Even before anybody had time to
recover from the latest exhibit.
Q: Oh, so redhat employees are not that bad?
A: They are like you and me, good && seriously bad
send + more == money?
All other developers who MIGHT consider developing their own product (which duplicates the features of yours quite closely) get cold feet.
Is this the effect that such a leak or announcement would have? While it might prevent a commercial company from entering the Linux office-software arena, it would only increase the motivation for companies with existing Linux products to make them better, and increase motivation for free software developers to create an alternative to Office, especially considering the cloud of anti-Microsoft sentiment that shrouds the Linux community.
However, I think the announcement of soon-to-be Office4Linux2000 could make users hesitate before paying money for a commercial version of WordPerfect or some other product. Also, users or IT execs who were thinking about switching to Linux might decide to hold off until Office is available. Then, the ship date slips and slides until Microsoft finally says, "We have decided not to ship our Office4Linux product, because the inferiority of the operating system prevented us from attaining the standards of quality we require from our products. We recommend Windows2000."
If Microsoft did eventually release a version of Office for Linux, I would be surprised, but not bewildered. The "Embrace and Extend" argument is most compelling. Microsoft bid on linux.com; what do you think they would want to put there? Perhaps a link to Microsoft, perhaps a "Best viewed with IE 4.0," perhaps "Linux is a Unix-like operating system created by a Finnish graduate student, Bill Gates." Whatever they would have put there, I can only assume they would try to put their own spin on Linux, to influence--if only slightly--the direction of Linux. Office for Linux would also give Microsoft some influence over the direction that Linux takes--as Linux becomes more popular, the majority of users will be non-idealistic types who would happily let Office mangle their libraries or kernel modules, or even choose the only Linux distribution that Office runs on, MSLinux. Although they couldn't destroy Linux directly, they could strategically damage Linux's long-term mainstream acceptance (like they did with Java). This, in the long run, could be devastating to Linux because having lots of users is our only guaranteed path to having access to hardware.
In the meantime, how would Microsoft protect their OS dominance on the desktop? They could make the cost of Linux with Office greater than the cost of Windows2000 with Office, they could make Office for Linux really slow and unstable, and they could make late releases or even omit releases of some versions. All in all, though, I think Microsoft's best bet is with vaporware.
Have you noticed how a lot of americans just don't get sarcasm or irony. I suppose that's why I find so many of their sitcoms obnoxious (I mean, if the jokes are funny why do they need a fake laughter?).
I agree that Pauline Hanson is racist, and doesn't speak for the majority of Australians (I don't know any people under 30 who take anything she says seriously). Proof of this is the fact that her party lost all its federal seats in the last elections, and half the One Nation people who got seats in the Queensland elections have defected or been kicked out (One Nation has a particularly undemocratic structure).
If you want an example of Australian humor, see if you can find MP3's of the songs "Backdoor Man" or "I don't like it" by Pauline Pantsdown.
MS Office for Linux, its still clear that all these companys dont understand the greater movment which Linux is a part of. The greatest thing about Linux is that your not tied down to any one company, the fate of your company does not relly on when busnesses like MS release the bug fixes, how unstable is Office under windows? and windows contains a large portion of hidden api calls just for office and MS apps... are we really going to accept this sort of instablity? is the Linux world really going to give up the freedom from monoplys we have? I have nothing against MS, but unless them, and the others like them, change to fit our world, i for one will not be changing for theres, bloatware has a place, but its not here.
Scott Aaron Bamford (vpp) "We`re giving you the chance to skrew it up in a whole new and exciting way" sab@clara.net
this is the same idea i see ms having... i also see them haivng the winapi in these secreate libs, so that MS Linux and only MS Linux can run windows applications.
btw i know about wine etc, just MS have the api (including the undocumented ones) and could get things "working" as "good" as windows...
it simply has to have some extra reson for even considering office for Linux... abusing its strong hold on the mainstream OS market is how it does everything, esp Office. rember ppl will buy crap of MS and think the bugs are features!
Scott Aaron Bamford (vpp) "We`re giving you the chance to skrew it up in a whole new and exciting way" sab@clara.net
Seriously, what would porting anything to Linux say about MS windows? It would confirm that Linux is a real alternative to Windoze, and this recommendation would come from none other than the makers of Windows!!
I read an article where a Sun executive was bemoaning the fact that his platform was losing out to (at the time) WinNT 5.0. His point was that MS just puts out the hype and vaporware and other companies have to compete with that simply because PHBs will wait eons for a MS product. This is one of the most effective marketing strategies they employ.
"Yeah, we'll have a MS insert vaporware here version of that RSN...
Chris
Chris
So Buddha walks into a pizza parlor and says: "Hey, make me one with everything."
What worries me is the possibility of an MS-Linux++ distribution to follow the Linux version of Office. Then they could "embrace and extend" (iow: "copy and corrupt") the Linux kernel - and wouldn't hundreds of millions of Microsoft Minions support their efforts?
Once they'd "embraced and extended" the kernel enough, they could slap on the Redmond GUI and call it NT-2002 or something. Complaints about the GPL, etc, would be met by an avalanche of lawyers....
Whether this rumor is true or not, it's very possible, and it makes complete sense. As somebody mentioned, 1/3 of the money that Microsoft makes comes from its Office Suite. That's because people normally purchase it in a shrinkwrapped box from a store for $200-$400 (i can't remember exactly). Windows, on the other hand, is bundled free with most new computers (the OEMs usually shell out about $30-$40 to MS for each copy of windows). Of course, there's a ton more copies of Windows than there are copies of Office, but you see, they make a bigger profit off of Office. And if MS makes office for Windows, there's an eeeeenourmous opportunity for them to cash in. How many companies out there haven't switched to Linux simply because their management forced them to standardize on MS Office? How many companies are going to switch to Linux when MS Office becomes available? Now, how much does Red Hat, or Debian make every time someone switches to Linux? Fifty bucks. How much will Microsoft make when someone switches to Linux and MS Office for Linux? Two Hundred Fifty bucks.
Now, since Linux is considered a "work" OS, these newbie corporate Linux users are more likely to buy an Office suite than the average joe on Windows. Despite the anti-Microsoft sentiment in the O.G. Linux crowd, there's that huge pool of new Linux users who are aching for a familiar interface and office suite and don't mind using familiar MS products.
ALL OF THIS = "CHA-CHING!" FOR MICROSOFT
Damn, Microsoft could end up making more money off of Linux than Red Hat!
=P
Wow, was this the biggest story Slashdot's ever had?
I've tried Star Office under KDE 1.0 and it was, interesting. It's got some very bad points like how long it takes to load and terrible font rendering. Star's biggest problem is it won't run under KDE 1.1, it just hangs despite a bug fix suggested by the KDE guys (who say the problem is in Star's court).
Frankly, I don't like using MS-Office when I am occasionally forced to at work on Windoze. I won't buy it even if a Linux version comes out because Microsoft doesn't deserve my money. I wouldn't even pirate it and run it because there are other more palatable alternatives already on Linux.
But what worries me is that while MS-Office on Linux would help give Linux credibility with PHB types and ease transitions for some newbies... and maybe even make cross-platform work easier, which are all good things, at least in the short term. The danger is that Microsoft would use MS-Office as a weapon against the Linux community (or at least the large distribution vendors) the way they do against the Mac.
Once MS-Office was on Linux, chances are too great that it would squeeze out most if not all of the competition and leave a large portion of users dependant on Microsoft. Another danger is that MS could use it as a way to either force people to a new "Microsoft Linux" distribution, or more likely that Microsoft may decide to 'anoint' one particular distribution as the 'standard', which would not only hurt diversity in the Linux world, it could possibly lead to that distribution being controlled by Microsoft in the future.
Personally, I think Microsoft may be starting these vaporware rumors in an attempt to try to derail Lotus from porting SmartSuite or to reduce Corel's resolve in porting the rest of WordPerfect Office. Vaporware is one of the ways that Microsoft crushes their competitors without even delivering a product because companies and venture capitolists are reluctant to fund any development that might come into future competition with Microsoft.
If people install Linux anticipating Office,
What I expect Microsoft is thinking is that it is more likely that people will delay installing Linux anticipating MS-Office.
Then they can drag out their ship schedule indefinitely. Even if they ever ship a product, they can do to it what they did to the Mac versions of Office. Bloat them by making them run huge Windoze compatibility libraries. Make parts of it run in P-code to make it run slower. Always make sure it is released later or is behind versions to the current Windoze version.
Just to add another brief thought to that:
Not only do they make that money on the app, but remember, for the majority of users, they have already sold them a copy of Win 9x with the computer, whether the person uses it anymore or not. For most folks buying a system, they're paying for windows anyways.
Just a thought.
Darmox
If I was that drunk, I would have remembered it -- H. Simpson
We can only hope not......
End Transmission....
We can only hope not...... If they did, i would sue them for slander of the Linux name.....
End Transmission....
Micrso~1 could very easily E&E Linux. MS made early inroads with their compiler technology. MS could make and sell (not give away) a compiler with a Win32 compatability lib as well as port NT services to Linux without ever releasing the sources.
A MS Linux (for ~$100 with a Win32.so and $whatever per user for WinNT.so network services) could be easily put together. MS is a company big enough to be persuing all of these avenues. They could enter an existing market and maintain their pricing.
MS Office for Linux would ride on the Win32.so library and provide nominal Office compatability. How far it lags behind the native MS version will depend on how long that want to string us along.
Don't think that the PHB's won't buy it.
"There go the heebies, but I've still got the jeebies." -- Kate on The Drew Carey Show
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
This will all be fine once the Office division is split forceably from the OS division. Then the only problems will be the bloat in Office. Why is that in there anyway? Is it because of Windows itself or the MS mindset or what?
Yes!! I didn't know what kind of red should I drink with clams!! Perhaps you mean www.winehq.com?
Microsoft like any other serious company is probably having people poking and toying with Linux for any reason. It's easy since Linux is open source.
However, Microsoft would never make such a port available unless NT dies. Then to salvage what is to be salvaged they'd probably do it.
Don't forget Office is a big part of MS revenues.
One word af advice to StarDivision and Applix.
Start sending your products to companies to test them. Don't get squashed by big companies.
Maybe, give a personal edition of StarOffice for Windows 95/98 along with some PC magazines
The kernel needs a Gtk/Gnome-based post-install device configuration tools "a la" make xconfig. (Better sig coming soon
StarOffice has folded underneath me, but I have
never lost data because of it. I am looking forward to the new "filter pack" release that has increased ability to read MS '97 documents. Of course, the '98 versions and '00 versions of Office will do things in new, incompatible ways for no apparent benefit....
As for actual use, the PowerPoint part of StarOffice is REALLY close to the MS software. I also tried to use Word to create a document with several images downloaded from the WWW. Word SUCKED at placing those images in a document. StarOffice "just worked" as one would expect.
Well, apparently, you only have to fool the majority of people for a little while.
I'd be afraid of putting MS Office on my Linux box. Like matter (Linux) and anti-matter (Micros~1, Inc.), I'm afraid there'd be a huge explosion and a terrible mess. Emacs and HTML are quite fine, thanks.
Jason Dufair
"Those who know don't have the words to tell
Jason Dufair
"Those who know don't have the words to tell
and the ones with the words don't know too w
Unified-Linux Office Server Edition:web enhanced with integrated networking
That would be a hilarious name for a M$ Linux Offise product.
Microsoft Office: Linux Distribution
MO:LD
I'm not sure myself if it's a good or bad thing if M$ Office gets ported to Linux. If they're in it to make money, that's fine-its an understandable goal, and easy enough to work with. If they want to undermine Linux with bad software that causes the OS to become unstable and crash, or if they want to control Linux's growth by 'requiring' compatibility to run Office, I'm not so sure I would place any faith in the product.
We'll see if the rumor pans out.
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
While any FUD spread by Microsoft might discourage commercial office suite developers, it will only encourage the developers of Free Software office suites such as KOffice, Siag, GNOME, etc...
This is not necessarily a bad thing. There is no way that Microsoft office could compete on Linux with free software equivalents that have 80% of the functionality and 0% of the cost.
The real question is, will the Free software office suites be in a usable and stable form before Microsoft Office for Linux? I hope so.
I'm not sure if I should cheer or scream about this possible event. Microsoft dominated many mac machines with their office products, and look where apple is now. Another issue about this I'm worried about is that Microsoft products lead you on with how easy they are to use until you actually have to do something complicated with them. They then are much more difficult to use then the products, that were harder to use at first. Example; set up a simple database with Access and mysql. With the templates Access is much easier to use at first. Then try to use Access as a backend for a Web based store. Mysql beats the heck out of Access at this point, unless you love writing databases with basic code.
Bill Gates will probobly try to dominate the Linux side of the industry, and might by discouraging any other people thinking about writing a great office suite.
that flight simulator hidden inside Excel 97?
No wonder Office takes up a couple hundred MB.
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
I dunno how good it will be, but if (and thats a big if) there is an Office release, sure I'll try it. I hate MS just as much as the next person, but I'm not close minded about the fact that it might actually be better then the windows varients (heh, thats more like a story then reality).
But the first thing I will do is setup a couple of rules blocking all traffic to and from any IP block that MS owns, you never know what little bits of info MS will be sending to themselves.
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
IE has NO connection to the Windows OS
Which version of IE? Which version of Windows?
I'm really stretching here to recall what we were told (I was a support tech for a big OEM when IE4 was released), but as I recall, when Internet Explorer 4.x is installed on Windows 95, it replaces explorer.exe, commctrl.dll, and shell.dll. This is a pretty big chunk of the user interface. Windows ties the UI to the OS at every level. You can argue that theoretically, in an abstract sense, that IE4 did not change the Windows 95 OS, but I would have to disagree with you on a practical level. Installing IE4 was an OS upgrade. Trying to uninstall IE4 meant formatting the hard drive.
I for one am not worried about this. I really doubt MicroSoft would do this for several reasons.
1.) Porting it would probably be a real pain. They would need to play by the same rules as everyone else. If they decided to move the Windows API to Linux to accomplish this, it would be another layer of complexity and failure points which they would need to support. Not to mention the speed loss that would happen by going from Office->Win API->Linux.
2.) It could hurt NT. Don't forget Bill's other cash cow. If they support Linux it would reduce the "lack of user applications" argument. That is a large reason Linux isn't killing Windows today.
3.) It could cost them revenue. Think about it. If I want to use an Office application for Linux, am I going to buy Office or download WordPerfect for free? Granted it's only allowed for personal use, but MS does get a large chunk of change from the home users who purchase a new version of Office when it is released.
4.) It could prompt others ISVs to port to Linux. A large portion of the Windows community seems to use Windows as a guage. If MS appears to be running to Linux, others might follow.
5.) The Linux community is a lot more anti-MicroSoft than the Windows community. MicroSoft would have a rather harsh interaction with these people.
If they do anything with Linux it would probably be something like "This piece runs on a Linux server but requires a NT workstation". Most likely they just want to cover their bases and find more potential revenue sources.
This argument is similar to when Corel announced WP for Linux. Corel, in my opinion, has done Linux a favor. Not only did they provide a port to Linux but they provided corporate resources to Wine. I think that really helped calm a lot of fears about their intention. I don't think MS will be so kind and they'll eventually fail.
But then again, what do I know. I still love OS/390.
hmm, thats interesting, since I'm running kde1.1 and its running better than ever. I suspect your problem has something to do with the libc version or something.
It'll probably be like IE for UNIX - big, slow, CPU-intensive, and prone to crashes.
On the plus side, it'll give everyone an excuse to upgrade to Pentium III processors (and/or the K7).
Perry Kettler
-- Perry Ketter, a.k.a. IceStorm
What platforms do you think staroffice 1 and 2 were on? It wasn't linux.
All Microsoft has to do is *announce* they are working on a port, and you can bet your bottom dollar there goes Corel's stock prices.
I was planning on doing some first-time investing with some Corel stocks, too. (Well, at least I have yet *another* reason to despise Micros~1.)
MS Office ported to Linux ?
Yeah, sure.
Just like they ported Internet
Explorer to Solaris and other Unix platforms.
Who cares - people still use Netscape on Solaris.
By the way do you know they even had SoftwareAG
of Germany port COM and DCOM to Unix, even Linux ?
This was a year or so ago, or more.
Who cares, on Unix people use CORBA and/or Java
Beans for component models.
This is just FUD, to scare venture capitalists
into not investing in any Office products on Linux. Too bad - MS might want to try something
a little more achievable - like making NT 4.0
Y2K compliant or even (gasp) shipping Win2000
before the year 3000.
If MS ports Office to Linux - it will
kill NT in the enterprise.
The Linux users will finally toss out the last Win98 and NT box they have been forced to use because of Office.
And the Win98/NT users will finally have a
stable platform so they'll switch to Linux.
AT least MIS directors will so that they don't have to pay massive license fees for the 5000 or
so PC's in their corporation.
The question is does MS want to dominate the Linux app space so bad that they will give up their foundational cash cow - windows98 and NT ?
You be the judge.
The more idiot-proof you make it the smarter the idiots get.
I agree that Office for linux will probably make it a more appealing option for businesses, but then again, they will be pushing out tons of competitors. Just like they managed to kill WordPerfect ... for the Mac. But that was due also in part to deals between MS and Apple. As long as MS doesn't sign any deals with RedHat, or whatever Linux they'll be supporting, it will be fine. But who would buy office? Yeah, I guess businesses, but not me... then again, I'm not very Linuxy myself, I use Word on my Mac. As far as Linux is concerned, all I know how to use is Netscape.
But back to the original question... why doesn't MS release its own Linux distro? Sure, the existing Linux committee would hate it 110%, but those same business guys would love it. Oh right... open source... nevermind.
rooooar
Hmmm... now that would be sweet!
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
Given the info in the past week about Micro$oft and sending those ID numbers to Redmond on registration of Windoze, I can't wait for Office to come to Linux so they can give me a MAC based ID in their database too!
On the other end of things, have you noticed that the price of the Mac version of Office keeps going up? Last I checked, around here it was about US$500 or so. In that vein, if there ever is a Linux port, I predict it'll be US$1000, which will be just US$100 more than the Mac port by that time.
--
"If you can read this you are too close."
I go for roff and HTML (with an audio CSS) myself, though the tactile aesthetics of large stone letters has its own appeal.
--
"If you can read this you are too close."
You're not a real Mac user, are you? We have a Mac fanatic in our office, and she has to have separate extensions folders, with and without MacOffice. With them, her computer is too sluggish for day to day operation, and it crashes quite regularly.
At home she uses WordPerfect, and swears by it.
Okay, I got Linux installed. So where's the free beer everyone keeps talking about??
Actually, some Troll on a ZDNet "talkback" section hinted at that. Might have been BS, but it still made me shudder when he/she (who claimed to work at M$) was mentioning plans to make a M$ Linux and a proprietary GUI interface.
Barf.
Okay, I got Linux installed. So where's the free beer everyone keeps talking about??
>Of course, the '98 versions and '00 versions of
>Office will do things in new, incompatible ways
>for no apparent benefit....
What! Noooo! The '98 & '00 versions are UPGRADES, based on SPECIFIC INPUTS of USERS. They are all very INNOVATIVE, and designed for enhanced EASE OF USE.
And the USERS WANT them to be embedded in the OS! It's the NEXT LOGICAL STEP.
Warning: Satire saturation reached! Loss of straigt face imminent!
How can believe the crap they spew forth?
---
Okay, I got Linux installed. So where's the free beer everyone keeps talking about??
BWAH-HAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAA!!!!
Ooooh, that was rich. I nearly wept. Well done!
--
Okay, I got Linux installed. So where's the free beer everyone keeps talking about??
Ironically, Office was already designed to be cross-platform! Yes, going from Windows to Mac is probably easier than Windows to Linux, but Microsoft has already abstracted the OS within Office. Office may not be as closely tied to Win32 as people imagine. Many Windows features are actually first implemented in Office before moving into the Windows. For example, those funky sliding menus.
I heard a rumor (from Microsoft) that Office was actually pseudocode running on a VM (like Java's JVM). Just port the VM to Mac or Linux.
cpeterso
Linux is a good OS with rapidly growing market share. And it has no office suite "winner"! Perfect opportunity for Microsoft to establish its as Linux office suite monopoly. Once again, Microsoft controls the desktop. Average users don't know the difference between an OS and the desktop. Microsoft controls what they see and hear..
What did Microsoft ever sell software for its "competitor", the Mac? Bill recognized that the Mac had something special that Windows couldn't steal. Maybe they see something special in Linux. I heard that Microsoft makes more money from selling Mac apps than Windows apps! Can they do the same with "penny-pinching" Linux users?
cpeterso
Geez, who shoved a glass rod down *your* urethra today?
-- "Perhaps the truth is less interesting than the facts?" -Amy Weiss, RIAA
How do I access this easter egg? :)
--Corey
Not only will they not deserve liberty or safety, Mr. Franklin, they will be DENIED both!
My guess is that Microsoft is looking at a port. Office is a serious cash cow for them, and ignorning Linux would be far stupider than anything they've done recently.
Besides, if they say they aren't doing something, they probably are.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
This is great for linux, it's almost like Microsoft is starting to crack a little bit, they are losing the OS war which is great for the common User. The reason they released office98 for the mac is because they don't compete for an OS on that specific hardware, this is the beginning of admitting defeat to linux
The terms of the GPL already pretty much prevent MS from ever using any of the code.
It would be great if Rob would post (from the access_log) what percentages of vistors use what browser on what OS. I myself use IE on Windows 98, and can't stand NS. I also hate how Windows crashes and destabilizes all the time. I am NOT against Microsoft... I just dislike lousy programs, and the best GUI programs are on Windows right now.
I use Winamp, TextPad, ICQ, and Outlook*, each of which is the best of its kind - yes, there are equivelents for Linux, but these products have features, capabilities and reliablity that exceed their counterparts. (Note that most "break" from the standard MS Windows interface to achieve ease of use). I use Cygnus's bash for Windows and a handful of other GNU tools to make me more productive in Windows.
I also use Word, because I know where it doesen't follow it's own rules, and how to get around anything that it won't let you do. Because I know all the key combos, and I can whip out any kind of document in only a few minutes. Not because *it* is great... but because the combination of my knowledge about Word and Word itself is great. The bottom line for me is productivity. Each Word processor is equivelent by now - the questions is: "How quickly can I get my job done". This *includes* training time, and I've had years of experience using Word.
* If you don't like Outlook, have you ever constructed a new object type or actually programmed the API for it? It's a crying shame - some team of programmers did a kickazz job, and then MS marketed and documented a wimpy fraction of what it actually does.
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Do you remember the Soviet Union and Vietnam talking about Vicious Uncle Sam because Captialism was so awful and evil and wasteful? The intellectual beauty of communism! Abolish money! All shall be free! All shall work equally!
Do you remember both the Soviet Union and Vietnam paying us the ultimate compliment by adopting capitalism? When they finally realized that they just weren't getting it?
See the parrallels between Windows and Linux?
You guys are gonna pay Bill Gates the ultimate compliment one day when you adopt his techniques... All you want to do is replace him with yourselves....
LOL
--- waiting for it to happen,
I'm,
Saint Stephen
P.S. My day just won't be complete unless you tell me what a loser I am. Please be as vicious as you can possibly be. Use lots of cruel remarks about my mother. Please tell me what an idiot I am!!!!!!!!
It reflects *so* well on your minds!
Later my droogies.
Microsoft is just hedging their bets on Linux. Porting applications to Linux and releasing those same applications are two different things. I expect that Office won't be released for Linux until the Microsoft bean counters say that if would be in MS's best interest.
Well, I have yet to see StarOffice show up on the Mac. I have the Windows and Linux personal editions, but no mac version of this yet. Still waiting.........
-- DuckWing
This P-code (similar to java bytecodes but very Intel specific - required the vb.exe runtime)was what MS products were written in a few years ago becasue, as someone else mentionsed, a lot of MS programs are written in either C or VB (ironically VC++ is the exception - versions 5.X and up are writtin in C++ with that wonderful, lean library called MFC). VB stopped generating P-code exes after VB 4 (hence the reason you don't need the VB Runtime to run alot of programs now - remember the 'vb.exe not found' error we always got). VB now generates native code exes. So, I would expect that it would be quite difficult to "port" (MS is not known for it's good separation of UI and functionality as in the MVC architecture). To do this for many applications they would probably have to port the whole win32/MFC ball of wax to Linux. I suspect if they do anything, they would rewrite the application completely for Linux. I don't know if I'd want win32/MFC ported to Linux (even though that's what I work in every day - I still don't like it much) - that reminds me of a virus invading a healthy cell to take it over and spread itself to other healthy cells.
Screw MS office - write a better one for Linux so no one will want to use it even if it is ported. Like StarOffice maybe....
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
Even if you don't find yourself sympatizing with the Free Software Foundation, please mention the GNU project, http://www.gnu.org/ when you talk about the whole system, not just the Linux kernel, http://www.kernel.org/.
Linus Torvalds licensed the Linux kernel under the GNU General Public License (GPL). http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl, and used free GNU tools, when he wrote it.
The C library (libc) is part of the GNU project.
Microsoft can't destroy our platform, because of the pragmatic idealistic development work, and the GPL license that is the essential effect and part of the GNU Project.
I value freedom, so I call the free system GNU/Linux, because it gives shared credit, to those whom credit is due.
Not interested thank-you. The current product has
too big a foot print and too many "bells and whistles" for a _word processor_. (not to mention performance).
That being said, does this mean they would have to
port the Win32 API to support it ?.....
Hummm, that could make things real interesting.
**** Sworn to Fun, Loyal to None. ****
In fairness, it's hard to tell the difference in this case. Only MS is usually a little bit more subtle about broadcasting their real intentions.
--
Do I look like I speak for my employer?
If they could sell win32 (libraries) for Linux at $100/whack then they are not out any money (since that's about the price of Win98). If I could buy win32 for Linux and use Linux at work instead of NT then I would pay $100 out of my pocket to do so :)
Have you checked out Zoid.com yet? Zoid.com
I could care less. I don't plan on using it. If you beleive in the strengths that Linux has over Windows9X, then you should also beleive in what StarOffice should do to M$Office. It is a hog, crashes, and invades our security with the M$ ID system.
On maybe 1 good point...maybe it will inspire more competetion and stir things up more on the linux platform. That is always a good thing.
Bring it on I say!
We'll just beat your ass Bill!
You can't monopolize this!
Best dollar says Microsoft does port Office to Linux. Microsoft's entire business model is based on two words, EMBRACE & EXTEND.
Microsoft has 4 major categories of revenue, of which one is Office, and the other is it's OS's. Microsoft gets to sell everyone who is already running a copy of office, another copy of office when they switch to Linux. So they get to sell you the same software twice. At the same time, they begin the process of embracing and extending Linux.
With the eventual goal of controlling Linux.
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GPL Authors and other Open Source license authors / code originators. Change your GPL licenses to be available to anyone but market share dominant companies.
This will protect and encourage new ideas, and at the same time, keep Microsoft from grabbing all of the technology you have written.
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Don't underestimate any company that has $20 billion in cash.
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The terms of the GPL already pretty much prevent MS from ever using any of the code.
I'm not sure if "pretty much" will cut it. They should be very strong with regards to preventing MS from creating derivative products from any GPL code.
And specifically, the GUI code to Linux should be very firmly free, as in the case of Gnome.
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THAT! is the future MS will push Linux to.
There needs to be some really strong Linux leadership with regards to (1) a standard installation procedure for Linux and (2) the GUI that people develop apps for.
If these two technology cores remain splintered, MS will have a very real shot at this.
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Microsoft does not care about "making up" for anything.
They case about 2 things only:
Control
Money
That's it. They don't care about building great technology, as is evidenced by the Halloween memos and their idea of developing complex proprietary APIs. And all that horseshit from Muth about, "Well, naturally the normal APIs don't have the technology we need, so we must extend them."
What crap. Microsoft will always choose market control over good design/engineering. That is why their software has so many problems. They would prefer to make software complex/proprietary and tie ISV's forever to their code then to create a really brilliant technology that the world can work on.
MS has some of the sharpest people in the world working there (interestingly enough, they have a place that they pay many of them huge salaries just to keep them from working at other places, that place is called Microsoft Research). It's great to have the power to pay some $300k per year just to keep the competition from having them.
But it is a horrible thing, because really great ideas and technology isn't coming to life. Instead we are left with things
That's why Linux is very exciting to me. It has the potential of being a platform where the best ideas written by the best developer for that idea gets used in a widespread manner. Not proprietary and designed for market control.
Microsoft will always choose market control over good engineering.
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"Yes, that's very nice, but really, who cares?"
The vast majority of us will be productively involved with computers for the next 15-40 years. We are at a really important crossroads at this time.
That crossroads is the choice of living, working, and being controlled by one software company.
Does the strong commentary people offer against Microsoft in any way compare to wars and the many other problems of the world? No, not in the slightest. We are arguing about what we build our global information architecture on. But the value of that pales in comparison to the value of real, human life. But even with this pale comparison it is still a very
The Linux model where people are driven by ingenuity and passion is so much better for the whole world, then a world driven by a company that follows
Too many people charactize others as Microsoft-Bashers. That is not the case for the vast majority labeled in this category.
At the end of the day, we each have 15-40 more years to work on computers. That is a lot of time.
Do you want everything you do w/ regards to technology to be dictacted by Microsoft?
Or would you prefer to have freedom, to see new ideas, and, well, to have fun?
That's the fight here. Good engineering, fun, creativity, and freedom versus dictation by a company that will always choose control over good design.
It's a fight worth fighting.
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I'm not sure if I should cheer or scream about this possible event.
Microsoft doing this is not a good thing for Linux in the long term. Why? Because Microsoft intends to embrace, extend, and eventually control it. This is MS's first step.
It is good in the short term, however as it could potentially increase Linux' market share dramatically and give it the boost it needs to become a desktop OS.
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A port of MFC to Linux would, however, be very interesting. It would allow developers to port apps very quickly to Linux.
So I'll bet Microsoft releases Office for Linux, but does not release any of their development tools for it.
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Do we really want one distribution to have 51%? I think that many distributions is cool.
Development tools/libraries need to be standardized to one body of really good code, however.
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If you consider it this way, if M$ do port Office (I don't think so...more vapourware) they WILL have to conform to one particular standard : The Kernel. I cannot see them requiring a "Microsoft Kernel" in order to have office so, Office maybe as unstable as Windoze but LINUX will still be stable. Remember its the fact that the kernel is OpenSource and under Peer review that makes it stable...
just my 2 Euros...
-- Tom
I think IE needs to be written separately because of it's connection to the OS and performance needs. Also, if you've ever tried to take IE out of Win95, it's harder than taking the jungle out of the tiger. Or, more appropriately, it's harder than getting the Herpes virus out of your spinal column.
And yes. Office, like many Microsquash products, has definite usability issues. Such as Word, which seems to think I need help typing. Emacs, anyone?
Actually, in Wired's 83 reasons Microsquash's reign is over, they pointed out that there are only so many features you can add to an application before they hinder you more than helping you. One example: I was making up a form, and when I typed more than a couple of underscores, and hit return, there was some kind of oversized, bold line. Stupid.
Zagmar
I think you might have mistyped. Netscape had to go because if the _browser_ became a commodity, and people realized that hey, we can use this instead, then it was possible that people would also realize that they could buy a Mac or set up Linux and do the same thing they did on their Wintel.
Zagmar
But that would put them in the same place as Corel and Lotus. At least then there would be some competition. As it is, there is M$.
Zagmar
Do I recall a Mr Muth mouthing off about how Linux was shit because there were no "shrink wrapped applications" available for it. If Microsoft were going to churn out their bug ridden "shrink wrapped" products for Linux, he'd be eating his words with some humbe pie.
Dan.
Dan. -- So what if it's spelt wrong, nobody's perfect
I guess you're damned if you do, and you're damned if you don't.
Whatever software if ported to Linux, it's always "never enough". When will people start encouraging software developers and quit criticizing?????
- Too Bent Outta Shape
I think I remember an artical a while back (think it was on CNN ) there linus said something to the efect of
If Bill gates ever comes to me and wants to make software for linux, that means that we have won.(not an exact quote, but something to that effect.)
I find this very amusing, although I don't see the point, they can't even produce stable software on their own platform.
This is a good thing because the absence of M$ offshit is what keeps a lot of people away from alternative platforms. We all know better than to be caught using that junk, but the majority of the population are already familiar with these apps.
Given the ability to use word or excel on linux, the operating system will become even more trivial than before, so competetion will take place based upon technical merits. As we all know, micro$oft cannot even begin to compete in terms of technical competence, so they will loose their os monopoly.
Once that's gone, then alternative ways of working will be much more accessable to the masses, and people will realize there's more than one way (the microsoft way) to go about things. And once we expose people to the wonders of the world of free software, they will relize that there are really excellent applications out there that are totally free (gimp, lyx, emacs, etc..).
The only downside to this is of course if the availibility of apps that are 'good enough' deters potential developers from working on superior projects. Canonical example of this is netscape, whose browser has been proverbially 'good enough', good enough to restrict the user base of potential projects enough to effectively kill them off.
Although I doubt that Microsoft will be porting office to Linux anytime soon, I know that even if they do, I will never run it. Part of the reason that I left the M$ Windowz platform was because it sucked, the last thing I need to see is M$ products on my Linux box.
So this is Microsoft's opportunity to extend & devour? The Linux version could not have "all the features" of the Windows version, or lag a rev or two behind the Windows version. (As happened with Word and Excel for OS/2.)
I can see the ads now, "To get all the features you have to 'upgrade' to Microsoft Windows"...
Dave Bennett
I have been using Star Office for several months now (since ver 4.0) and love it. I just upgraded to version 5.1.1 and the filters for MS Office are great. It even can read and write power point files and so I can do my presentations on my laptop that runs Linux. This is the kind of software that serious users that want to exchange files and dp serious business really need. You can kid yourself, but M$ Office really is a good prduct from a productivity and user point of view. It must be if people use it even though it crashes all the time. I'm sure there will be flames.....
The possibility of users using the MacOS didn't stop MS from porting to that OS, and at one time I remember the Mac-Windows war being MUCH larger than the Linux-Windows conflict of today.
If MS is broken up as a result of the trial, it could be worse for the MS haters within the Linux community. Can you imagine a MS division (Office products) whose only interest is getting everyone with every viable OS using their product? You'd have Mac versions, Windows versions, Unix versions, etc.... They'd just be a bigger version of Corel. At least now, they have a self-interest in keeping the dominance within the Windows environment.
sheared
Actually, MS Office rarely crashes on my NT machine (StarOffice, although it works, it considerably slower (PPro with 128 megs of memory)).
Corel software, on the other hand, is completely unstable. My wife chose to use Quattro for her PhD work and I'm afraid that sometimes she's going to stick the keyboard through the floppy drive - it crashes constantly. Usually after running 15-20 minutes of macro's on her data (big suckers).
Maybe MS's real strategy is to create a Linux desktop alternative in attempts to unify the community - you know, standard interface, standard apps, standard this, standard that - I would think MS making software for Linux right now would be a BAD thing and would not imply any type of victory. Maybe MS views it as a platform it can help with it's infinite knowledge.
If Linux caught on with the non-tech community, they might be more likely to migrate to a MS Stamped version of Linux. Can you imagine it? A MS Linux distribution? That'd be weird.
I mentioned this in one of the replies, but don't know if it'll get much reader response there. What would the Linux community (or the more anti-MS Linux community) think if MS announce/released a MS Linux distribution?
Do you think the non-technical types would be more willing to go to Linux if it had a MS stamp on it? And if so, would the possibility of it becoming the dominant desktop of Linux, and basically becoming Windows on Linux be bad or good? And if this happened and most commercial software is written to support it, would the Linux community continue to exist in it's anti-MS state (just a lot closer to it since it would only be different by a desktop), or would it move on to some other direction (BeOS or something new).
I think you get the jist of the hypothetical above - just curious if people think this is completely impossible or the Linux communities' worst nightmare?
I don't think it'd put them in the same place. It would put them in the same market, but they would still have 90%+ of the market and still have a portion of the MS giant and drive behind it.
apparently the bright young lads at microsoft write all their software in visual basic and use some kind of internal parser/code conversion utility (could i have said compiler?) that converts the VB code to C++.
but more importantly, who cares. the whole "MS Office tax" thing is bullshit. i say screw word processors and office suites in general. everyone should just switch to LaTeX. it's got a learning curve, but damn it produces some nice documents =)
peece out
Huh? I use SO 5.0 almost daily with KDE 1.1 - so it's news to me that it doesn't work yet ;-)
What no one has told you is that the future MS Office portswill be run on "Microsoft Linux" distributions and whatever other distributions include the extra OS crap the MS throws in thier Microsoft Linux disribution to make the port work.
Can't you see the scheme? MS X-Windows 2000, MS X-Windows NT... maybe even MS X-Windows CE? Hey, Linux is an OS free for anyone to develop on... what will keep MS from jumping on the bandwagon and developing their own flavor? What would they lose? By doing something like that, they could begin to dictate the direction of Linux. Heck, call it the attempt to capture a missing part of the *NIX server market.
Could just be my fear of the Borg... but a reasonable fear me thinks none the less.
My $.02,
GI Jones
"Greatest American Zero"
"Perhaps most amazingly, votaries of 'diversity' insist on absolute conformity." -- Tony Snow
What no one has told you is that the future MS Office portsw ill be run on a "Microsoft Linux" distribution and whatever other distributions include the extra OS crap the MS throws in thier Microsoft Linux disribution to make the port work.
Can't you see the scheme? MS X-Windows 2000, MS X-Windows NT... maybe even MS X-Windows CE? Hey, Linux is an OS free for anyone to develop on... what will keep MS from jumping on the bandwagon and developing their own flavor? What would they lose? By doing something like that, they could begin to dictate the direction of Linux as a desktop environment. Heck, call it the attempt to capture a missing part of the *NIX server market.
Could just be my fear of the Borg... but a reasonable fear me thinks none the less.
My $.02,
GI Jones
"Greatest American Zero"
"Perhaps most amazingly, votaries of 'diversity' insist on absolute conformity." -- Tony Snow
With the increased press coverage, a lot of people are thinking about Linux. How many of them will now say, "I'll wait until MS Office is ported, then I'll give Linux a try."? Personally, I think MS will port Office to OS/2 before they port it to Linux, and it'll be a cold day in hell in either case.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
...Microsoft four years to make the Mac version of Office comparable to the Windows version, we can all expect Office for Red Hat to be out in, say, 3 years.
Ah, OLE.
how do you mean "let him do it"? is MS ported Office, and released it, how could we stop them? We could not buy it, but there are many who would just because they need to open Office docs or need it to exist in an MS-shop office.
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> Well. . . If Intuit would ever port Quicken!!!!
Try out GnuCash sometime. Not bad functionality and imports QIF files.
It's very believable, in a certain sense. As long as Microsoft believes that it could compete at the OS level, it will. If it ceases to believe that, it will compete at a different level. In this case, that might be the productivity software market.
Either way, Microsoft builds consensus where it can win. It's not the sort of company that stubbornly sticks to markets it can't win (the way Apple has repeatedly done, despite myriad opportunities in other markets). The OS + productivity software combo is obviously preferable, but if it can't win that way, I doubt it will wait for the handwriting on the wall.
MJP
Don't try that "protecting the children" shit you people use to keep the tits and bad words off my TV. --Seanbaby
My friend got excel to open up and he could move the window around for a while. But problems arose when he clicked on a cell...
MS is always looking after the little guy. Before MS Office i had to publish my beer bottle collecting newsletter using thousands of dollars of proprietary software. Now with the new MS model of doing business and the shift towards commodity software, I know hold the power at my fingertips. Now I consider myself a intermediate/expert programmer (VBA macro guru) and would have been DENIED these opporunities if we were still sitting on time-share terminals. What about MS Flight Simulator. Could little joe average afford to fly a plane? For 50 dollars I get my dose of this "virtual cyber escapade". And what if there was no MS? Have you all heard of this Y2K problem. All these Y2K ready MS softwares replaced those softwares of past.
Just something to think about my fellow hackers.
M$ office is buggy as hell when you try to edit text or just line up text it will not work or even make the problem worse.
why do you want microsoft office any way
most people using unix/linux they are tring to get away from the buggy lame M$ crap.
Let's be real. Most of us turned out backs on Microsoft/Windows because the code is bloated, slow, and unstable. Microsoft's code (like we don't already know it) is so overly bloated, it competes for space a stable operating system could be using.
And do we really want to let Microsoft invade our precious *NIX world? If we wanted slow, bloated, buggy, unstable code, we'd use Windows.
Me? I'll stick with KOffice, StarOffice, or Word Perfect.
"It compiles, SHIP IT!" -Overheard at Microsoft's development lab
I KNOW that's happening. And I know it's happened in the past. I just do not look forward to the day that Microsoft invades this community. Honestly, if Microsoft can produce a RELIABLE, STABLE, EFFICIENT product for Linux, I'd use it. Corporate users, for the most part, aren't using linux because of the difficulty of supporting such a system. But let's be real... How often does linux crash? How often does a program just stop working for no apparent reason? How often doe linux just stop loading properly, having a corrupt rc.config or something else like that (MS registry) and the user is forced to reinstall the OS and all of the software? MS introducing Office into the linux community would (as past experience tells us) start this chain of events. And do we really want a linux-user.dat and linux-system.dat floating around on our system? MS DID a lot of good for the computer industry, but they're not being productive anymore. Linux might not be the newest concept in the world... a quick, stable OS.... but MS doesn't comprehend.
"It compiles, SHIP IT!" -Overheard at Microsoft's development lab
You're probably right.
:(
"It compiles, SHIP IT!" -Overheard at Microsoft's development lab
Now that would be disgusting.
Who decided that all of us want the corporate world to adopt Linux? I could care less.
Since Linux started getting attention from the mainstream press, this meme that "Linux must gain corporate acceptance to survive" has been propigating through the Linux community. Nothing could be more false.
Linux does not exist for the same reason that other OSs do. Linux exists because programmers decided to hack it and make it do stuff for them. As long as programmers have new needs for Linux, it will continue to thrive and grow, whether it recieves corporate interest or not.
Many of us, including myself, would prefer to deal with Linux machines at work, rather than NT or other less flexible versions of UNIX. This may happen, simply because Linux is the Right Thing to use, in many situations. This does not mean that Linux has to be picked up by the suits to survive. It will survive for as long as freelance programmers have interest in it.
If companies want to use it for servers or workstations, that's cool. If big hardware vendors decide to ship machines with Linux, that's cool too, particularly if it means we can get drivers more quickly. None of this will determine whether Linux survives or not.
The best Microsoft can hope for is that the Linux community turns this thing into a Linux vs Microsoft thing, because then we will be fighting on their turf. The trick is not to fight at all. The trick is to focus on making Linux the best operating system it can be (not in comparision to other OSs). Linux exists for itself, it has nothing to do with Microsoft.
If the corporate world chooses Linux, then good for them. If they don't choose Linux, that's ok, because we don't need them. Linux should not be changed to cater to the corporate world. Linux should just be itself.
lunaslide
"I'm not really interested in product. I just want to know what's going on." -Misha Mahowald
MS will never port an app like Office to a platform where they don't have control of the API, or control of the company that does (Apple BEGGED for Office for the Mac).
Why not? Because their apps depend on undocumented API calls. If it wasn't for that advantage they'd have to compete on size/speed/stability/options and they know that they can't.
They use the OS (which doesn't make them much money directly) to give them a base to write aps for (which do make lots of money). They dump to OS on the market to get market share because then you're locked into buying other MS products. If WordPerfect gets too good, they just change some specific API call that it depends on a lot so that it will crash all the time, and make sure that none of their aps use that call. And nobody would believe it's NOT WordPerfect to blame.
They'll NEVER leave their comfy little OS in a big way. They might port a few things where it helps them. If they invent a new media format, they'll port a player, to help make the format take over, but they'll never do it without the intent of killing a competitor or whole market. Never.
I'm not honestly dissatisfied with Office. I do not use it because I use Linux, but I think that it's great and it would be great on any OS. And you would not be obliged to use it, right?
But -and it's a big butt- I'm used in exchanging docs using the RTF format, or even text when possible, to allow anybody use them without pain, and I hate those that send me DOC version 11, 12, 13, 3000, etc. just because it's the latest format.
That's my fear: will the Linux platform become Word/Excel-slave in the very moment it's becoming an acceptable documentation platform?
Will Office users force the others to accept the new formats, like it's always been, after that it's been a peaceful oasis for the really universal formats?
No, I don't think that I want this.
Well
1) IBM, HP and Corel Systems have all accepted Linux.
2) MS gets the most profit on their apps, not on their operatingsystems (DOS/WinNT).
3) A new market.
They haven't been able to control the OSS market. Since OSS is spreading like a hell they have to be there.
Live long and prosper...
Well I don't know!
Word (one of the few apps MS have created from scratch) is original a MAC application. Later ported to Windows and OS/2 (the latter died shortly after).
The kernel of WinNT was original made for the MIPS-processor, and later "half-ported" to the Intel-platform. One of the reasons for it to be slow in x86 processors. But Win2000 is the first WinNT that is specifically written for x86 processors. (Wonder how much the Alpha-port really sucks)
That taken in mind there might still be some of that old MAC-optimized (M68K) code.
But personally I couldn't care less if Office was ported to Linux. StarOffice covers it all.
Live long and prosper...
I stand corrected!
:->
But Word still sucks like hell
Live long and prosper...
Good point. The article was a write-up of information from an "anonymous" source spouting conjecture about what MS developers "might" be up to.
Not to mention that I find it a bit hard to believe that many MS developers can run Linux at work and get much application development done; maybe they have a super-double-secret version of Wine that'll run Visual Studio...
It won't be "powerful and reliable" once they're finished with it. Wasn't VMS nicer before they turned it into NT?
My greatest issue against Microsoft programs is not
that they are crappy & unstable, nor that they are
not "open source", but mostly that they use propertary
formats for storing data that could be recorded in a
more effective, compact and open way... I just would
like to be able to read a word document with more
(actually I sometimes do that: first I filter it with
strings and then pipe it to more...). When the EC
or national governmets start asking you to submit your reports in a M$ format -instead of pdf, ascii or Tex- I feel like something very wrong is going on. From this point of view even a "free M$-Office" for Linux is
quite a dangerous threat and I really hope that people will realize the risk of having all their documents not only written with proprietary tools but even stored in proprietary format... Does not the recent issue on the serial number inserted in all the outgoing documents produced by a Win98 box suggest you something? I usually like to know what MY computer is doing, and what is written exactly in a file, rather than stare at a thousand of different incompatilbe formats (word 1.x/2.x/word for MAC... etc.), all, for practical purposes, equivalent! Moreover I have not seen any version of Office with support for Hyerogliphics -that I like to have and TeX has- and I think this is a huge misfeature (at least for me!).
I agree on the fact that the GNU project has not created any hi-quality WordProcessor yet, and I belive that the point is that .doc format, not even the .rtf one!!) versus the creation of a new ``open standard'', and this, to tell the truth I don't like. Maybe it is paranoia, maybe they are, as somebody has written "childish political issues", but I am much more afraid of ``proprietary undocumented document formats'' than
with free efforts people want to write applications they are interested in and they use, rather than applications the corporate market would
enjoy (thus we have very good scientific and programming tools; fairly good image processing systems, but not-so good spreadsheets... well... I don't use
spreadsheets, but I use maxima for integration and symbolic calculus). Corporate committement is, of course, welcome: Wp8 and StarOffice (as well as a port of M$ Office) should be welcome because they are broadening the area of use
and of interest concerning linux. My issue is that these products do address an `immediate need' but are dangerous on the long term:
M$ has been trying to enforce its standards in quite a sneaky way: by just making its products the most widely used and then by slowly changing the format the data
are stored in a non-backwards compatilbe way. Office for linux would just be a way for keeping people
using a proprietary format (the
of `closed' software... and I don't like very much closed software as well (even if I occasionally use it and for my work I look just as the tools
that suit better a given job... still I prefer the GPL if the functionalities are the same)
>>(does anyone know if that ppc dir on the nt cds actually are ppc mac versions of nt?!?
Yesiree Bob! That's exactly what they are. You have to get a conversion utility from Motorola to convert the HFP drives in the Mac to FAT, then you create a small partition to dump a tiny version of NT into, then the install takes over.
[My info is mostly correct. Fnord.]
It's goofy, to say the least; a Mac with FAT drives. But NT runs faster than Mac OS on the PPC. It's an odd-bird setup that you won't find any support for in NT 5/Win 2000.
It may sound intriguing, but unless you have an extra Mac just hanging around, I would not do it. Get Virtual PC and install it that way if you absolutely must do this. I have a friend who's done it this way, and is very happy with it.
Or hell, just stick with OS 8.5 or X or your favorite flavor of *nux.
The party's over
Why port a product to Linux when they can't get it running right on their OWN operating system?! Sheesh!
Why would Microsoft port Office to Linux in the first place? Why spend all the time, money, and effort on an operating system that you know they can't stand see get popular? I smell a rat...
Don't get me wrong, it's an intriguing idea. Maybe Microsoft is getting out of the OS business, and will only be doing applications soon?
We know Micro$oft for a long time to know they are up to something. My bet is tha they are putting an Office Suite with two intentions:
:)) and blaming Linux for it.
1 - Striking all little companys out of business, and some open source ones also;
2 - Making some money on (they call it) Linux hype.
An opcional strategy they may be using is making a damn slow port (even slower than the normal
Anyway, we allways have the choice of not buying it, WordPerfect is FAR better than M$ CrapOffice.
[If you don't know where you want to go, all paths are wrong!]
If this is true, I am sure Linus Torvald can declare he has won the OS war.
Anyway, I won't be using Microsoft Office 2000 for Linux. As for me, Star Office would definitely satisfy me enough in word processing stuff, if not Corel Wordperfect would, why do I need MS Office for Linux?
considering that office depends on win32 API, et cetera, *what if* microsoft creates a shell (like win 3.*) to run on top of linux, which includes stuff like the win32 API, OLE, et cetera...
so, to run anything from the microsoft family, you need this shell, which would, of course, cost $99.99 or whatever the current version of windows costs...what do you think?
the reason MacOS and Windows became popular is that they were *NOT* unix children, or maybe they were, but they weren't unix kids "phenotypically."
windows makes things easier for people who don't want or need to tinker with and understand an OS (read: everyone but you reading this)...hell, most linux users don't *really* play with the kernel, memory manager, file system, etc -- they pick a window manager and choose a background, in effect, mimicking the functionality of "evil" windows...
office won't be popular if ported to linux -- linux will be popular if ported to microsoft.
[start ranting tangent:] the whole linux "movement" comes off as a communist rebellion, where the poor communist supporters don't need food, water, or medical care, just a reason to whine and to be cool...you know it's true.
It seems to me that the Office architecture consists of a few COM objects that provide basic functionally and afterwards they sorta glued it together with thousands of inaccessible VBA macros