CrossOver 17.0 Released, Lets You Run Microsoft Office 2016 On Linux

[phoronix]

Phoronix: CrossOver 17.0 Released, Lets You Run Microsoft Office 2016 On Linux

CodeWeavers has announced the release of their Wine-based CrossOver 17.0 software for macOS and Linux...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=CrossOver-17.0-Released

[molecule-eye]

It's sort of comical that, in this age, people are still tethered to MS Office. It's even worse that Apple's Pages, which is a relative new-comer, introduced its own proprietary format instead of just adopting open document formats. Llikely they should just all be dumped in favor of something better.

[dcrdev]

It's sort of comical that, in this age, people are still tethered to MS Office. It's even worse that Apple's Pages, which is a relative new-comer, introduced its own proprietary format instead of just adopting open document formats. Llikely they should just all be dumped in favor of something better.

Well it's not comical really at all...

Don't get me wrong I'm no Microsoft fanboy - all my home machines and file server run Linux and I really wish LibreOffice was on top here.

But... at the end of the day:

1. MS Office has become industry standard for whatever reason and therefore MS Office formats are the expected medium in which to distribute documents in most businesses. Additionally LibreOffice support for MS Office formatting is poor - if you open a document that has been created with MS Office and modify it with LibreOffice, that document will very likely get messed up and subsequently annoy other people.
2. More importantly and I really hate to say this, LibreOffice Calc is a vastly inferior product compared to MS Excel. As someone who does a lot of Business Intelligence work for a living, I can say quite definitively that it lacks many features that Excel has and yes there are workarounds that are more involved, but in a business productivity is key. Additionally calc is a hell of a lot slower than Excel, especially when computing calculations of many hundreds of thousands of rows; calc doesn't properly implement multi-threading yet, which is likely the cause of this.

[Wilfred]

Well it's not comical really at all...

Don't get me wrong I'm no Microsoft fanboy - all my home machines and file server run Linux and I really wish LibreOffice was on top here.

But... at the end of the day:
MS Office has become industry standard for whatever reason and therefore MS Office formats are the expected medium in which to distribute documents in most businesses. Additionally LibreOffice support for MS Office formatting is poor - if you open a document that has been created with MS Office and modify it with LibreOffice, that document will very likely get messed up and subsequently annoy other people.

Yeah this sucks. I know. It's small, but noticeable and people complain.

More importantly and I really hate to say this, LibreOffice Calc is a vastly inferior product compared to MS Excel. As someone who does a lot of Business Intelligence work for a living, I can say quite definitively that it lacks many features that Excel has and yes there are workarounds that are more involved, but in a business productivity is key. Additionally calc is a hell of a lot slower than Excel, especially when computing calculations of many hundreds of thousands of rows; calc doesn't properly implement multi-threading yet, which is likely the cause of this.

Supposedly this is now fixed in 6.0.

[fuzz]

It's fine to use LibreOffice on PC box, but on mobile, not so good.

MS office can handle open document formats at least.

[fuzz]

More importantly and I really hate to say this, LibreOffice Calc is a vastly inferior product compared to MS Excel. As someone who does a lot of Business Intelligence work for a living, I can say quite definitively that it lacks many features that Excel has and yes there are workarounds that are more involved, but in a business productivity is key. Additionally calc is a hell of a lot slower than Excel, especially when computing calculations of many hundreds of thousands of rows; calc doesn't properly implement multi-threading yet, which is likely the cause of this.[/LIST]

People *really* need to stop doing BI in spreadsheets. There are far better tools for the job that don't require obscure workarounds and in-spreadsheet VBA scripts. My company routinely gets contracts to convert these insane spreadsheets to other products/web applications and it's always a nightmare.

[wizard69]

It's sort of comical that, in this age, people are still tethered to MS Office. It's even worse that Apple's Pages, which is a relative new-comer, introduced its own proprietary format instead of just adopting open document formats. Llikely they should just all be dumped in favor of something better.

It is the standard in industry, Excel is pretty hard to beat performance and feature wise. I seldom use the rest of Office so have little to say about it.

On the Mac, Apples office solutions are a joke even within the Apple community. They are great for people with trivial needs but beyond that they suck. Numbers for instance cant even import trivial spread sheets.

As for standatd file formats that is great for business but sucks for innovation. Of course nobody is innovating with respect to "office" apps anymore but stil file compatibility as a check box item isnt a valid concern. The only thing that really counts is that there is a fool proof way to move formats forward with a new app release.

[wizard69]

People *really* need to stop doing BI in spreadsheets. There are far better tools for the job that don't require obscure workarounds and in-spreadsheet VBA scripts. My company routinely gets contracts to convert these insane spreadsheets to other products/web applications and it's always a nightmare.

The problem is these things are often started by managers with no programming background. Excel makes it easy for them to explore their business interests up until the spread shete become unmanagable.

As a side note spread sheets, and the pathetic programming of those sheetshas lead to many significant management error over the years. It is amazing that more companies don't fail from Excel programming errors.

[oiaohm]

MS Office has become industry standard for whatever reason and therefore MS Office formats are the expected medium in which to distribute documents in most businesses. Additionally LibreOffice support for MS Office formatting is poor - if you open a document that has been created with MS Office and modify it with LibreOffice, that document will very likely get messed up and subsequently annoy other people.

Sounds good. Until you wake up that MS Office is not version to version compatible. Libreoffice to MS office has the same problems as MS Office 2010 to MS Office 2016. In fact having Libreoffice can be handy to handle documents that MS Office refuse to open Libreoffice will take a down right good attempt at getting them open.

Reality is Microsoft has not been constant on what formatting information means in MS office formats.

More importantly and I really hate to say this, LibreOffice Calc is a vastly inferior product compared to MS Excel. As someone who does a lot of Business Intelligence work for a living, I can say quite definitively that it lacks many features that Excel has and yes there are workarounds that are more involved, but in a business productivity is key. Additionally calc is a hell of a lot slower than Excel, especially when computing calculations of many hundreds of thousands of rows; calc doesn't properly implement multi-threading yet, which is likely the cause of this.

https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/...crosoft_Office
On features this is really hard. Libreoffice has many features Microsoft does not have even in Calc. So people use to Libreoffice workflows have a lot issues when they are forced back into Microsoft Office as well.

The performance one is a real issue and this is another that is double sided. MS Office Excel has better CPU multithread support Libreoffice Calc GPU and accelerator offloading by opencl. So depending on setup hundreds of thousands of rows Calc can in fact finish first by a large margin.

https://streamhpc.com/blog/2016-09-1...-excel-opencl/

Another option is to use much faster LibreOffice, but companies prefer ribbons over new software.

Its not just me with the idea that Libreoffice Calc in opencl mode is fast. Now if Libreoffice Calc fixes it CPU multi-threading problem it could be leaving MS Office Excel in the dust all the time. Now having to make a custom dll to get performance under MS Office that really suxs right.

The reality when someone says Calc is slower than Excel is normally clueless to the real state of affairs and never tested the opencl mode to find that Calc can be insanely fast. This is the problem Excel does not beat Calc in all usage cases and some of the usage cases Calc really leaves Excel in the dust.

[deant]

What I have found in LibreOffice (and OpenOffice.Org before that) is that it is backward and forward compatible with its formats. I can seldom see that in a software. This thing can be really handy when you deal with multiple versions across multiple OSes.