Tom's Definitive Linux Software Roundup: Office Applications

[Guest]

First of all, Symphony is actually a customized version of OpenOffice. Thus, both are a single executable binary that will bring up different "applications" based upon a command line option. With OpenOffice's Spreadsheet, for example, you can either execute it from it's shell script, "scalc", or type "soffice -calc".

 

[JohnnyLucky]

I'm going to take a look at some of the open source applications. Maybe I'll find some applications that match what I actually do.

 

[alcalde]

[citation][nom]bloody llama[/nom]Open Office and the other open source software are great for what they are, but try replacing Access 2007 or 2010 with something open source, and you'll be tearing your hair out.[/citation]

Not me. Firebird for the database backend,
http://www.slideshare.net/mindthebird/why-firebird-fact-for-decision-makers

and Freepascal/Lazarus for the front end, but that's because I have Delphi development experience - many other languages would suffice.

 

[alcalde]

[citation][nom]Tjik[/nom]Maybe it's not your own decision, but is it really wise to make use of such Godzilla big Excel sheets? To me it more sounds like the wrong application or approach was chosen for the task. [/citation]

I just checked and OpenOffice does support 1,048,576 rows. And you are right: it is very, very common for businesses to be using Excel when they should be using a database. Then you toss in the fact that unlike their databases, there is essentially no control over who can access/change those spreadsheet-cum-databases, and it's a real mess out there.

 

[randomizer]

[citation][nom]alcalde[/nom]I just checked and OpenOffice does support 1,048,576 rows.[/citation]
Where did you see this? I can only find references to 65536.

 

[alcalde]

[citation][nom]randomizer[/nom]Where did you see this? I can only find references to 65536.[/citation]

Right now I have the Go-oo variant of OpenOffice (contains some patches Sun didn't approve) version 3.1.1 on a Windows PC. I started it, created a new spreadsheet, used control-down arrow to get to the bottom of the sheet, and it was row 1,048,576.

Ok, I just checked and the million-row improvement *is* one of the differences between go-oo's openoffice and the standard version. Some distributions of Linux also use go-oo's variant. There's a lot of nice improvements, including VBA compatibility, support for old Microsoft Works formats, etc. You can check out the features here:

http://go-oo.org/discover/

 

[mitch074]

@alcalde: Oracle's OOo has the code to handle more than 65k rows, however some formulas can't deal yet with coordinates bigger than 16-bit: so it's not active.

 

[spoofedpacket]

[citation][nom]Miharu[/nom]But my point is just on "most valuable MS Office Product" (Word, Excel and Access). You can use alternative like OpenOffice for others products.[/citation]

Don't forget Publisher. When you can have a receptionist with absolutely no skills pumping out invitations, ads, and other documents that look just like every other business-- it becomes worth the cost of a Office Pro license within a week.

 

[boogalooelectric]

Adam,

I know this thread article is old but I just wanted to compliment you and thank for these informative linux articles.

Because of them I was able to install first Karmic and now am learning to use Lucid. I am now a linux disciple (although still only doing dual boot systems right now but may switch full time soon thanks to the Steam news) and am trying to get everyone I know to switch with me.

On a side note I learned some hardware nuances with linux the hard way. The first is in regards to the Radeon 5830 series of video cards, for some reason karmic did not like the video drivers for this card and would not install the driver. But once I switched to lucid the driver installed no problems.

On another system where I installed a 5770 on my fathers new system, the 5770 liked karmic but once I installed lucid the stock generic vid drivers in lucid would not work correctly. I had to go into low resolution mode than I was able to install the driver and everything was fine after that.

just fyi

 

[Guest]

@BigBlueDart "@olBob - Sounds like you just need to write a code to do what you're doing, or consider using something like Matlab."

Have you compared the learning curve for using Matlab (and the additional expense when so many institutions provide Excel licenses but not Matlab licenses) to learning to manipulate data in a spreadsheet? It takes days to teach someone to use Matlab effectively, and hours to get them doing occasional tasks with a spreadsheet program (admittedly slower than they could after learning to manipulate data in Matlab). The point is that FOSS needs to be consumer friendly to compete with MS and other commercial software, not programmer friendly.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for putting out articles like these. I'm thinking about switching to Linux when I have a need for a new computer. Unfortunately, seeing how some of these apps currently run under OS X makes switching a lot harder.

Other things keeping me to the Mac platform is I haven't found a contact book app that handles foreign names correctly. I have a lot of Japanese contacts which I put their kanji based names in the first/last name fields, then use a phonetic spelling field to put the romanized version. Even Google contacts can't handle this.

Another reason is iTunes and mass amount of files that I have separated by what they are. If there is a Linux version that does all this and will sync to my iPhone that will push me further into switching.

 

[Sonic4Spuds]

If you can still update the article you should add LibreOffice the recent spinoff of Oo.o. The work currently is to fold new features from other projects and clean the OpenOffice code. It is currently in beta but I find it quite usable, especially the windows version through wine (to avoid a problem with installing on Debian based systems that is present).

 

[Guest]

I know it's an old article, but had to address someone's claim that .odt being an open format makes it good for archiving. It's zip-compressed XML, so it can't be recovered through any means if the file or disk(s) develop a problem. (Even if you have multiple physical archive disks, things can go wrong!) Being an open format isn't all that helpful if a tiny issue can render the file unreadable by all programs.

OOo not having backups on by default makes it an issue for current work as well... I still use OOo for writing fiction, but if there was another program or file format that had the ability to do things like track changes, I'd switch. (LibreOffice still has the flaws, and on top of it, LO opens/runs much more slowly even with its Quickstarter on & OOo's off.)