Linux & MS Office 2007

Burnsy2023 · 2 Apr 2009 at 14:47

Right, I want to get Windows off the laptop and install Linux (or atleast dual boot). However, I can't live without Office 2007, so is there anyway to run all the apps in linux?

VMs could be a way, but it needs to be light weight as the Lappy is only a Dell D600 with 512MB RAM.

Any suggestions?

pingwing · 2 Apr 2009 at 15:50

Urm wine can do windows emulation (it could do office 03 fairly well last time i played a few years ago, probably best to google wine and office 07).

What in ms office 07 do you critically need? Open office 3 can replicate pretty much everything out of office 07 now (i think, it had .docx support to start with) and runs nativly in linux

Burnsy2023 · 2 Apr 2009 at 16:07

pingwing said:
Urm wine can do windows emulation (it could do office 03 fairly well last time i played a few years ago, probably best to google wine and office 07).

Last time I looked I couldn't find anything, but there seems to be a few guides. Has anyone tried it? What's the performance like? Will it be ok on the D600?

What in ms office 07 do you critically need? Open office 3 can replicate pretty much everything out of office 07 now (i think, it had .docx support to start with) and runs nativly in linux

It's not so much file format support, more that Open Office is crap compared to MS office. I love the UI and need applications like Groove. So that's a no show.

tntcoder · 2 Apr 2009 at 16:09

Maybe give Crossover Office a look, I heard it works very well with office 2007.

I agree with you about open office, its good but sadly its not in the same league as MS Office.

Burnsy2023 · 2 Apr 2009 at 16:15

Apparently there could be an issue with Outlook on Wine and issues with Groove on Wine and CrossOver Office

After looking at it, looks like virtualisation will be the only way.

BigglesPiP · 3 Apr 2009 at 23:58

There will be issues with both methods.

Not everything will work properly under wine, and things in VMs are very seperated from your other apps, so need clipboard merging, you have performance issues etc...

I'd suggest you just try wine, get a recent release, and attempt to fix the issues as you find them. Failing that, use the VM.

Rwac · 4 Apr 2009 at 06:49

BigglesPiP said:
There will be issues with both methods.

Not everything will work properly under wine, and things in VMs are very seperated from your other apps, so need clipboard merging, you have performance issues etc...

I'd suggest you just try wine, get a recent release, and attempt to fix the issues as you find them. Failing that, use the VM.

Windows XP + Office 2007 under Virtual Box?

Rhys · 4 Apr 2009 at 10:05

Or maybe Citrix with Desktop apps?

Bob Wya Jnr · 4 Apr 2009 at 10:59

+1 for Wine. It is not an emulator ("Wine is Not a Windows Emulator") it is a "compatibility layer" - there is a big difference (especially in performance terms)!!

Wine HQ

It should be in the repositories for Ubuntu and other major distros. You should however go to Wine HQ and add follow the instructions for adding their file server into your repositories. That way your GNU/Linux package manager can download the latest version. It has massive stream of bug fixes going into each revision (but just beware 'cause this fixes can break other things - so called "regressions").

Wine is very easy to use. You can use it on the GNU/Linux GUI desktop by associating ".exe" files to Wine. Then you should be able to just double click on the MS Office 2007 "setup.exe" file. On the BASH command line you just type "Wine <windows command>".
Wine creates a virtual "C" drive in "~/.winerc/C_drive" I think. You can navigate this by typing "Wine explorer.exe" - BASH shell (or make a shortcut on the programs launcher - if it isn't already there).

It does great at running a lot of games (if you have an Nvidia GPU anyway) however things like MS office are a much bigger challenge for Wine as MS Office is obviously much more tightly coupled to the Windows OS APIs.

Bob

Burnsy2023 · 4 Apr 2009 at 11:11

Rhys said:
Or maybe Citrix with Desktop apps?

You could be a genius, would it work virtualising the app with softgrid or something and then using over the network?

riddlermarc · 4 Apr 2009 at 13:23

Well, I didn't install Groove but I managed to successfully install Office 2007 Pro via Wine on my Fedora 10 install.
Word and Excel running:

Wine adds shortcuts to the Application menu for you, so it's easy enough to use.

JC · 4 Apr 2009 at 19:11

Any help?

http://www.programmerfish.com/roffice-2007-in-linux

or

http://samanathon.com/how-to-install-microsoft-office-2007-in-ubuntu-804/

BigglesPiP · 4 Apr 2009 at 19:19

Rwac said:
Windows XP + Office 2007 under Virtual Box?

Yes, that would be the "VM" option I mentioned. :confused:

Rwac · 4 Apr 2009 at 20:42

BigglesPiP said:
Yes, that would be the "VM" option I mentioned.

I was point him the direction of the better desktop Virtual Machine manager and the best windows OS to run

Burnsy2023 · 5 Apr 2009 at 00:54

I know Word, Excel and PowerPOint 2007 all seem to work fine under WINE. Outlook also seems possible but Groove is another story and I need that app.

So, I think it comes down to virtualisation in some form. I'm still investigating application virtualisation via softgrid, this seems a possibility and would be great as I don't have so much of a performance overhead.

Rhys · 5 Apr 2009 at 17:21

Burnsy2023 said:
You could be a genius, would it work virtualising the app with softgrid or something and then using over the network?

Not tried it but Im sure you could get it to work. Citrix has some built in web app capability. It works.

installed ICAClient and then loaded Outlook as published app