Pirating Microsoft Office 2019 on Linux?

_comfortablyAverage_@lemmy.ml to Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ@lemmy.dbzer0.com – 35 points –

for some background, I'm on latest stable Kubuntu. able to use Microsoft Office via a KVM+Winapps setup currently. it mostly works but there are a few kinks like the display frame getting fucked up when going full screen or windowed, drag and drop being hit or miss and whatnot...

i did read up on Office 2019 being installable using Wine, but wasn't able to find any methods to activate it. MAS isn't really a thing on wine since we don't have Powershell I believe. any ideas?

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This might be a stupid question but now that you're on Linux, why not use something like LibreOffice or Collabora?

Onlyoffice is also a good option.

Onlyoffice comes short in terms of features but it supports MSOffice formats bit better than Libreoffice.

SoftMaker OnlyOffice is a good option. I use it, and it works with everything I've thrown at it, including paid templates from designers. I would say the compatibility is 100% in my own experience. There is a trial available if you want to take a test drive before you set sail ;)

Appimages available here

Never heard of this before, so I just downloaded an image to check out later when I remember

Or OnlyOffice which is a near clone of Microsoft Office that can handle docx files without screwing then up.

Libreoffice is the most atrociously structured piece of software I ever encountered. not only is the UI absolutely dated and god awful trash, it can fuck up microsoft office formatted documents. i possess a special hate for it since it decided to crap out on me when I REALLY positively needed it.

don't know about collabora, will look into it

it can fuck up microsoft office formatted documents

everything can.
That is because Microsoft doesn't follow the 1000 page docx standards they wrote themselves.

And I will defend the decent UI against modern words ribbon-trash to my death.
libreoffice ui can certainly be improved a lot, but microsoft office is definitely worse.

100% can confirm. It always takes me ages to find what i need in the ribbon interface. Especially the things that aren't visible all the time. First time I was asked to print something, I really struggled with that. And it used to be File->Print. And I have no interest in finding out if they made it easier or worse to do things like conditional formatting or alternating row colors in tables.

Regarding the issues with formatting: It's Microsoft's fault. They're doing this deliberately to get rid of competition. And they'll ensure it stays that way in the future.

There is one exception, however: You need to install the correct fonts. If you don't have the specified font available, a document will look differently and things might get misplaced, because your characters might now be wider or narrower.

it can fuck up microsoft office formatted documents.

The problem there is not with LibreOffice, but with Microsoft Office. They do not implement the format standard correctly.

Not that it eliminated your problem, but it's important to understand who the real culprit is and why.

They do not implement the format standard correctly.

I think it's also important to mention, that they wrote the standard themselves (after being forced to)

If you dislike the UI, you can turn on an MS Office-like ribbon design in the settings

If you want a piece of software that keeps closer to microsoft’s shitty file types I’d take a look at onlyoffice