Microsoft Office Coming To Linux In 2014

[+virtorio MVC]

Microsoft is a software company, it's in their best interest to have their software available to as many users as possible, and that includes non-Windows users.

[+virtorio MVC]

just look at the Mac version of Office

I do every day. The current version has received loads of updates, and a leaked roadmap has a new version of Office: Mac coming early 2014. How does that classify as "barely gets touched"?

[Karl L.]

I do every day. The current version has received loads of updates, and a leaked roadmap has a new version of Office: Mac coming early 2014. How does that classify as "barely gets touched"?

I think what he means is that Microsoft first develops new versions of Office for Windows, then takes the complete (or near-complete) code and begins to try to make as much as possible work properly on OS X. That's why the OS X version of Office is released months after the equivalent version for Windows. I think Dot Matrix meant that Office: Mac "barely gets touched" in that it is not a high priority for Microsoft - at least not compared to Office for Windows. Unfortunately if Office ever gets released for Linux it will probably get the same treatment. It's not ideal, but it is realistic.

[+Nik Louch Subscriber²]

Well lets see:

• In July 2001^[1] the White House started moving their computers to a Linux platform based on Red Hat Linux and Apache HTTP Server.^[2] The installation was completed in February 2009.^[3][4] In October 2009 the White House servers adopted Drupal, an open source content management system software distribution.^[5][6]
  
• Brazil uses PC Conectado, a program utilizing Linux.
  
• City of Munich chose 2003 to start to migrate its 14,000 desktops to Debian-based LiMux.^[7] Even though more than 80% of workstations used OpenOffice and 100% used Firefox/Thunderbird five years later (November 2008),^[8] an adoption rate of Linux itself of only 20.0% (June 2010) was achieved.^[9][10] The effort was later reorganized, focusing on smaller deployments and winning over staff to the value of the program. By the end of 2011 the program had exceeded its goal and changed over 9000 desktops to Linux.^[11] The city of Munich reported at the end of 2012 that the migration to Linux was highly successful and has already saved the city over ?11 million (US$14 million).^[12]
  
• The United States Department of Defense uses Linux - "the U.S. Army is ?the? single largest install base for Red Hat Linux"^[13] and the US Navy nuclear submarine fleet runs on Linux.^[14]
  
• The city of Vienna has chosen to start migrating its desktop PCs to Debian-based Wienux.^[15] However, the idea was largely abandoned, because the necessary software was incompatible with Linux.^[16]
  
• Spain was noted as the furthest along the road to Linux adoption in 2003.,^[17] for example with Linux distribution LinEx
  
• State owned Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) is installing Linux in all of its 20,000 retail branches as the basis for its web server and a new terminal platform. (2005) ^[18]
  
• In April 2006, the US Federal Aviation Administration announced that it had completed a migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux in one third of the scheduled time and saved 15 million dollars.^{[19][dead link]}
  
• The Government of Pakistan established a Technology Resource Mobilization Unit in 2002 to enable groups of professionals to exchange views and coordinate activities in their sectors and to educate users about free software alternatives. Linux is an option for poor countries which have little revenue for public investment; Pakistan is using open source software in public schools and colleges, and hopes to run all government services on Linux eventually.
  
• The French Parliament has switched to using Ubuntu on desktop PCs.^[20][21]
  
• The Federal Employment Office of Germany (Bundesagentur f?r Arbeit) has migrated 13,000 public workstations from Windows NT to OpenSuse.^[22]
  
• Czech Post migrated 4000 servers and 12,000 clients to Novell Linux in 2005^[23][24]
  
• Cuba - Students from the Cuban University of Information Science launched its own distribution of Linux called Nova to promote the replace of Microsoft Windows on civilian and government computers, a project that is now supported by the Cuban Government. By early 2011 the Universidad de Ciencias Inform?ticas announced that they would migrate more than 8000 PCs to this new operating system.^[25][26][27]
  
• The Canton of Solothurn in Switzerland decided in 2001 to migrate its computers to Linux, but in 2010 the Swiss authority has made a U-turn by deciding to use Windows 7 for desktop clients.^[28]
  
• France's national police force, the National Gendarmerie started moving their 90,000 desktops from Windows XP to Ubuntu in 2007 over concerns about the additional training costs of moving to Windows Vista, and following the success of OpenOffice.org roll-outs. The migration should be completed by 2015. The force has saved about ?50 million on software licensing between 2004 and 2008.^[29][30][31]
  
• France's Ministry of Agriculture uses Mandriva Linux.^[31]
  
• Macedonia's Ministry of Education and Science deployed more than 180,000 Ubuntu based classroom desktops, and has encouraged every student in the Republic of Macedonia to use Ubuntu computer workstations.^[32]
  
• The People's Republic of China exclusively uses Linux as the operating system for its Loongson processor family, with the aim of technology independence.^[33]
  
• The US National Nuclear Security Administration operates the world's tenth fastest supercomputer, the IBM Roadrunner, which uses Red Hat Enterprise Linux along with Fedora as its operating systems.^[34]
  
• The regional Andalusian Autonomous Government of Andaluc?a in Spain developed its own Linux distribution, called Guadalinex in 2004.^[35]
  
• The South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) deployed Multi-station Linux Desktops to address budget and infrastructure constraints in 50 rural sites.^[36]
  
• In 2003, the Turkish government decided to create its own Linux distribution, Pardus, developed by UEKAE (National Research Institute of Electronics and Cryptology). The first version, Pardus 1.0, was officially announced in 27 December 2005.^[37]
  
• In 2010 The Philippines fielded an Ubuntu-powered national voting system.^[38]
  
• In July 2010 Malaysia had switched 703 of the state's 724 agencies to Free and Open Source software with a Linux based operating system used.^[39] The Chief Secretary to the Government cited, "(the) general acceptance of its promise of better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility and lower cost".^[40]
  
• In late 2010 Vladimir Putin signed a plan to move the Russian Federation government towards free software including Linux in the second quarter of 2012.^[41][42]
  
• The city government of Largo, Florida, USA uses Linux and has won international recognition for their implementation, indicating that it provides "extensive savings over more traditional alternatives in city-wide applications."^[43]
  
• Iceland has announced in March 2012 that it wishes to migrate to open source software in public institutions. Schools have already migrated from Windows to Ubuntu Linux.^[44]
  
• In June 2012 the US Navy signed a US$27,883,883 contract with Raytheon to install Linux ground control software for its fleet of vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) Northrup-Grumman MQ8B Fire Scout drones. The contract involves Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland, which has already spent $5,175,075 in preparation for the Linux systems.^[45]
  

Many of those switched back as I recall...

[BajiRav]

Pffft LibreOffice, just as good and free and it's been on Linux for years.

just as good?...only if you hate yourself. :p

Most of that list is biased leaving out half the truth, outdated or plain erroneous. Some of it doesn't even make sense to be in such a list, what does embedded voting units running Linux have to do with such a list.

True that. IIRC City of Munich was the most publicized and they have switched back wasting millions on the Linux side.

[techbeck]

That would be cool...doubt a version for Android will be released. Dont really care either way

[Karl L.]

just as good?...only if you hate yourself. :p

I use LibreOffice on a regular basis and really like it. It may not have all of the features of Microsoft Office, but it has everything that I need. I have yet to run into a feature I wanted to use that Microsoft Office has and LibreOffice does not. The biggest "problem" with LibreOffice is its poor support of Microsoft Office's file formats, which is only relevant because so many people use Microsoft Office exclusively. If the tables were reversed and LibreOffice had much larger marketshare than Microsoft Office, then Microsoft Office would have the same "problem". Its ODF support is horrendous, despite that fact that anyone can get the official specifications. It's not that LibreOffice is drastically worse, it's merely a compatibility problem. However, I acknowledge reality; that's why I use Microsoft Office when necessary for compatibility.

[HawkMan]

But for people who work in offices with office apps day in and day out. while Libre may do the job. MS OFfice allows them to do the job far more effective. more effective means oney saved and more happy employees.

I can get to work on a moped. but it'd take me nearly an hour instead of 15-20 minutes. and I wouldn't be very happy in -30C in winter...

[guru]

I du no, I'm seeing more governments moving back to windows from windows after trying Linux the last couple of years.

this. initially folks confused open source with free. then whey they realized they had to spend a lot of money to get it to work as they wanted it.. they moved back to MS products, mostly because it was easier and cheaper to find devs for development and Ops.

Linux works for web but on the client side nothing beats windows.

[ichi]

True that. IIRC City of Munich was the most publicized and they have switched back wasting millions on the Linux side.

Some people use that as an example of a failed migration to Linux, which is weird because the migration has actually been quite a success. I guess some didn't really read anything beyond the news about the initial difficulties back in 2006.

Not only they didn't switch back but they saved over ?11 million so far.

http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/open-source/3421844/microsoft-refuses-to-release-study-challenging-munich-linux-success/

http://www.zdnet.com/no-microsoft-open-source-software-really-is-cheaper-insists-munich-7000010918/

http://www.itworld.com/operating-systems/321474/switching-linux-saves-munich-over-11-million

[hmmz]

Pffft LibreOffice, just as good and free and it's been on Linux for years.

LOL

And GIMP is just as good as Photoshop, right? :laugh:

[Noir Angel]

Given that this would make it easier for those of us that are unhappy with the direction Windows is taking to switch I'd be surprised if it goes anywhere.

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

LOL

And GIMP is just as good as Photoshop, right? :laugh:

Actually, it is. Just like you had to learn photoshop, you have to learn Gimp. Same for MS Office and Liber/OpenOffice

[HawkMan]

Some people use that as an example of a failed migration to Linux, which is weird because the migration has actually been quite a success. I guess some didn't really read anything beyond the news about the initial difficulties back in 2006.

Not only they didn't switch back but they saved over ?11 million so far.

http://www.computerw...-linux-success/

http://www.zdnet.com...ich-7000010918/

http://www.itworld.c...over-11-million

So I wonder, if all those emplpyees would have been able to work more effectively with MS Office and thus be able to put in one more week of effective work each year per employee, how much money that would have added up to over the same period. of course we'll never know since they never bothered to measure the effectiveness and happiness of their employees on the different systems. The date they switched means they've never even tried 2007 or 2010, much less 2013.

Actually, it is. Just like you had to learn photoshop, you have to learn Gimp. Same for MS Office and Liber/OpenOffice

And that STILL doesn't make The GIMP as good as photoshop. just like Blender isn't as good as... well ANY of the big commercial 3D suites.

Mo

st of the GIMP and Blender defenders are diehard FOSS evangelists who will spend 3 times as long to learn the software, and twice as long to make almost the same result just to prove that "it's just as good". This is why no serious graphics business uses GIMP and Blender except for fan evangelist projects like 3D Blender Foundation and their Big Buck Bunny.

[ichi]

So I wonder, if all those emplpyees would have been able to work more effectively with MS Office and thus be able to put in one more week of effective work each year per employee, how much money that would have added up to over the same period. of course we'll never know since they never bothered to measure the effectiveness and happiness of their employees on the different systems. The date they switched means they've never even tried 2007 or 2010, much less 2013.

According Christian Ude the number of complains to help desk has actually decreased since they switched, so I guess they are doing fine.

The point anyway is that using Munich as an example of a failed Linux deployment (as it's often done) is utterly wrong.

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

And that STILL doesn't make The GIMP as good as photoshop. just like Blender isn't as good as... well ANY of the big commercial 3D suites.

Mo

st of the GIMP and Blender defenders are diehard FOSS evangelists who will spend 3 times as long to learn the software, and twice as long to make almost the same result just to prove that "it's just as good". This is why no serious graphics business uses GIMP and Blender except for fan evangelist projects like 3D Blender Foundation and their Big Buck Bunny.

So, it's not perfect. The whole Linux world isn't perfect. It's not a workaround for large corporations, but it is just fine for a novice person.

[Noir Angel]

For 98% of ordinary people GIMP would fit their needs just as well as Photoshop. Apart from people working in specialised industries, most normal people do not need all of the advanced stuff that Photoshop offers.

[Dot Matrix]

On Windows, GIMP has nothing on Paint.Net

[hmmz]

On Windows, GIMP has nothing on Paint.Net

Now that's as silly as saying Photoshop has nothing on GIMP.

[HawkMan]

So, it's not perfect. The whole Linux world isn't perfect. It's not a workaround for large corporations, but it is just fine for a novice person.

I thought you just argued that the GIMP was just as good as photoshop....

For 98% of ordinary people GIMP would fit their needs just as well as Photoshop. Apart from people working in specialised industries, most normal people do not need all of the advanced stuff that Photoshop offers.

Most normal people who use Photohop use the LE edition, or the full version illegally and they could just as well use the LE edition. the LE edition is far beyond The GIMP in usability, and thus worth the cost for these people.

According Christian Ude the number of complains to help desk has actually decreased since they switched, so I guess they are doing fine.

The point anyway is that using Munich as an example of a failed Linux deployment (as it's often done) is utterly wrong.

Help desk calls doesn't measure usability and efficiency.

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

I thought you just argued that the GIMP was just as good as photoshop....

For "most people", yes, it does exactly what they want Photoshop to do. For the more advanced people, it does not match up to it.

[fusi0n]

This is great news!

[ahhell]

This is great news!

That's the thing. This isn't news.

It's someone going "MS will LOOK at maybe sort of consider working on Office for Linux".

The whole thing is misleading.

[ichi]

And that STILL doesn't make The GIMP as good as photoshop. just like Blender isn't as good as... well ANY of the big commercial 3D suites.

Most of the GIMP and Blender defenders are diehard FOSS evangelists who will spend 3 times as long to learn the software, and twice as long to make almost the same result just to prove that "it's just as good". This is why no serious graphics business uses GIMP and Blender except for fan evangelist projects like 3D Blender Foundation and their Big Buck Bunny.

While Blender is not at the same level as other 3D suites it's actually being used by serious graphic business.

http://vimeo.com/44420219

Obviously no big studios (other than for things like quick 3D "storyboards" as they did with Spiderman).

Help desk calls doesn't measure usability and efficiency.

No, but considering we have no other metric it at least means people aren't having (as many) problems with it.

[HawkMan]

For "most people", yes, it does exactly what they want Photoshop to do. For the more advanced people, it does not match up to it.

the fallacy is that photoshop is not made for "most" people. it's made for advanced people. and all the most people who use it, pretty much pirate it, when they should be using the more user friendly and far more than they need LE edition.

No, but considering we have no other metric it at least means people aren't having (as many) problems with it.

They probably would have had a similar drop in "problems" with any upgrade. they where running pretty old stuff prior to this.