FOSS Microsoft Office for Linux

My Password Is 1234@lemmy.world to Open Source@lemmy.ml – 69 points –

Looking for an alternative to Microsoft Office for the Linux.

I've already tried:

  • LibreOffice (It doesn't have the same experience as Microsoft's apps.)
  • OnlyOffice Desktop Editors (I like it)

What else would you recommend?

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Once you get used to libreoffice ms office will feel like a gimmicky toy

You can easily change LibreOffice to have a tabbed layout like MSOffice (view > user interface). The only thing to note is that LibreOffice has great documentation, but it can be a bit difficult to follow with a different layout.

Nothing has exactly the same experience as MS. I don't think there is a clone project for it.

The two you listed are your best options.

Does LibreOffice have any issues that prevent you using it? If not, it's probably that your expectations are set by your comfort and familiarity with Office and that is the problem you need to solve.

Microsoft has a history of being sue happy against people that have tried to ape MS's cash cows in the past, so you won't find a clone project

You could always do in-browser Office if nothing else works. Or g-suite

I can't speak for the whole suite, but Excel sucks in the browser. The browser version do not have all the same features as desktop. I only use Office if I'm forced to and use LibreOffice or Latex otherwise

I am currently forced to use Excel online for work. Such a frustrating experience. And I can't even edit it offline, because the conversion between two languages and two versions doesn't work properly.

Libreoffice has it's problems too, but it feels much more 'friendly' somehow.

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@mypasswordis1234
OnlyOffice is good. Very similar to MS office

I found onlyoffice to have the best compatibility with documents imported from/exported to MS Office. For most people, their coworkers/teachers/professors or whatever will be using MS office, and if the formatting is borked everytime you move the file between libreoffice and ms office users, it gets old fast. That was my experience with libre office and why I ended up on onlyoffice. Of all the suites i've tried it has the best compatibility between itself and ms office for formatting.

I think you'll be pretty disappointed with anything else that's available. Of those two I'd say stick with OnlyOffice.

honestly, I've only clicked on this post because of your username

"Foss Microsoft Office for Linux actually it isn't in Opensource"

Is there a reason a few are being developed rather than focussing on one? Are there key differences/use cases for each of them?

LibreOffice vs. OpenOffice vs. OnlyOffice

I remember once reading that one of them (or some other FOSS alternative) was bad for privacy/FOSS, but I can't find that anymore

Forkers gonna fork. OnlyOffice seemed like it was going after Google Docs, but with a MSOffice look and feel. The live sharing and editing worked well when I tested it.

Ah I see. So LibreOffice for local stuff, then OnlyOffice for the google docs type of work

Not quite. OnlyOffice has an offline/local suite too. When most people talk about OnlyOffice, they are usually referring to the local suite.

OnlyOffice has better compatibility with MS Office file formats (and a similar UI), so some people prefer it over LO.

The downside is that because the UI is written in HTML5, it's slow and sometimes clunky compared to LO, which is (mostly) a native app. This is especially visible with large spreadsheets - OO takes a long time to render them, whereas in LO they open in a reasonable time.

My experience has been that LibreOffice will not correctly render my .csv files when they are above a certain size. Not talking about big data here either like a few thousand rows. For this reason I use OnlyOffice instead.

Strange, I used to deal with very large CSVs and never had an issue with LO. In fact, OO would take ages to load those CSVs and sometimes freeze, if not for that OO would normally be my main office suite.

That makes sense, thank you!

Why did Linus start developing Linux when he could have just contributed to FreeBSD which already existed?

I remember once reading that one of them (or some other FOSS alternative) was bad for privacy/FOSS, but I can't find that anymore

Not sure if you're thinking of WPS Office (formerly known as Kingsoft Office). It's development is funded by the Chinese government, but although Kingsoft claim that the Linux version is developed by the community, they haven't really published the source code anywhere, so it's considered a high-risk software.

Open Office has been dead for a while now. Libre Office is the only active one. And Only Office for the MS clone with fewer features.

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I don't use these kinds of tools in private unless I have to, and when I do, I found that OnlyOffice has better compatability with .docx-files. I recently had to make some changes and format a .docx-file, and after struggling to make it look correct in LibreOffice*, it did not show up correctly in Word. Output was more or less the same in OnlyOffice as in Word, and after redoing it in OnlyOffice, it looked almost completely correct in Word.

  • This is, however, always a problem with these kinds of programs in my opinion.

Libre office was alright but tabbed layout was buggy, entering stuff in excel was delayed by 0.5s everytime, the math formula program required some esoteric knowledge, and libredraw messed up pdfs which foxit otherwise opened with precision. I stick to Microsoft office 2007 which does exactly what I expect.

Between the two I recommend OnlyOffice because it has better export compatibility,, a PDF editor, seamless interchange between their desktop, mobile, and web versions, and a nicer UI. You'd only need LibreOffice if you're doing very advanced document formatting or very niche scientific or financial formulas. LibreOffice has been around for a lot longer than OnlyOffice so its got more edge use cases figured out. Onlyoffice is more modern and IMO feels like a smoother experience with the UI.

There is WPS office (from Kingsoft based in China).

Yeah, the experience is nice but OP asks for a FOSS alternative and that isn't.

IMO the closest to MS Office in both UX and UI is OnlyOffice. Also you'll have nice compatibility with MS Office documents.

OpenOffice

Isn't OpenOffice deprecated or mostly abandoned? I'm sure it will works, though.

I don't think anyone should use it, no. It is technically an option, though

Yeah it's mostly abandoned. There was a thread about it recently. I will edit in a link.

Edit: I got lazy and stopped looking and also forgot to edit.