raro going Linux - WINE or CrossoverOffice?

[Richard-BKK]

Libre office is preinstalled but rather crappy. Open office is far better, but I didn't manage to install it yet.

Will check out kingsoft office and report back.

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MS Office works fine with Wine release 1.7.5, the downside is that the cheapest version of MS Office cost nearly 7,000 THB (MS Office Home). What options does MS Office Home offer over LibreOffice 4.1.2 maybe a few things which I surely never missed and probably not much people use often...

Actually LibreOffice has some advantage over MS Office, LibreOffice offers on Linux a 5^th generation of 64-bits Office suite. MS Office is currently only at the second generation of its 64-bits version of MS Office. For instance if you put MS Office (MS Excel) to the test that it will need to use more than 6GB memory it will be slower than doing the same thing on a Linux computer running the latest version of 64-bits LibreOffice.

Of course using more than 6GB of memory in a spreadsheet program is not what many people well do, it is actually a bit difficult to use more than 6GB with any spreadsheet program. You can import a SQL database...

For people who think that LibreOffice or OpenOffice is just a cheap copy of MS Office you should not believe what the Microsoft propaganda is saying. For instance MS Excel is a copy of Lotus 1.2.3., Lotus Software, integrated the 1.2.3. spreadsheet technology into a Office suite called Symphony, Lotus Software was bought by IBM and IBM made donated the source of Symphony to Apache OpenOffice (with that indirect to LibreOffice). So to say it simple good amounts of MS Office are based on open-source originals... Even the latest MS Office version with its online options is just a copy of IBM LotusLive Symphony launched years before Microsoft came with its online version....

[raro]

I find Libre office quite difficult to operate. The menus are very limited and I cannot get my head around things that are easy to do in open office and Ms office.

Example : I want to have a page in landscape format in the text processor. In word a mouse click, in Libre office I couldn't find the settings for page setup whatsoever.

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[Richard-BKK]

For people who need more support, you can always buy Star Office, which is the commercial version of OpenOffice. It comes with support and a bit more bells and shiny stuff...

I think that the latest version cost about 465 THB and yearly support will cost you a bit less than 310 THB.

[Richard-BKK]

I find Libre office quite difficult to operate. The menus are very limited and I cannot get my head around things that are easy to do in open office and Ms office.

Example : I want to have a page in landscape format in the text processor. In word a mouse click, in Libre office I couldn't find the settings for page setup whatsoever.

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At the bottom of your document in LibreOffice you will see a option called "Default Style" double click on that and you get your page style/setup.... It's all in the manual... even in the quick guide...

https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/images/3/35/WG40-WriterGuideLO.pdf

[JSixpack]

I like LibreOffice and use it when possible. I wish it used VBA as a macro language ('cause I have some gawd-awful VBA scripts I don't want to translate). I also wish it did envelopes conveniently. SO easy in M'soft office yet painful in LibreOffice. Life is short.

[thaimite]

I like LibreOffice and use it when possible. I wish it used VBA as a macro language ('cause I have some gawd-awful VBA scripts I don't want to translate). I also wish it did envelopes conveniently. SO easy in M'soft office yet painful in LibreOffice. Life is short.

Agreed

I have a few VBA scripts I would like to use in Libre / Open Office and converting them is a real pain.

[raro]

What is a VBA?

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[thaimite]

VBA stands for Visual Basic for Applications. It is a macro programming language built in to the M$ office products to allow automated scripts to manipulate your data / documents.

Open Office (and derivatives) have their own Open Office Basic which operates in a similar manner butt he code needs a lot of changes to work. There are sites and tools to assist in this change but they are far from perfect. Newer versions of Open Office (3.0 and up) have better VBA compatibility but generally only support the simpler functions.

Update

Thank you for the question, as it made me check my facts and I see that a lot of work has been done on the Open Office VBA support over the past year. (Open Office 3.0 and up) As it is at least that long since I last tried importing Excel sheets with VBA macros, maybe I will give it another go.

[Richard-BKK]

For the people with VBA macros, you can try to use http://www.business-spreadsheets.com/vba2oo.asp (it converts MS VBA to OpenOffice/LibreOffice)

[raro]

ah...that is probably too clever for me anyways so no issue.

[JSixpack]

• apt-get updates take for-e-ver Ok 3 minutes may not sound of much, but it is when you sit and watch all the packages it checks. This is not so much vs. Windows updates but against yum (rpm) update which typically takes a few seconds.

Speed up:

http://xmodulo.com/2013/10/speed-slow-apt-get-install-debian-ubuntu.html

[Phil Conners]

• apt-get updates take for-e-ver Ok 3 minutes may not sound of much, but it is when you sit and watch all the packages it checks. This is not so much vs. Windows updates but against yum (rpm) update which typically takes a few seconds.

Speed up:

http://xmodulo.com/2013/10/speed-slow-apt-get-install-debian-ubuntu.html

From the page:

Note that apt-fast does not make “apt-get update” faster. Parallel download gets triggered only for “install”, “upgrade”, “dist-upgrade” and “build-dep” operations. For other operations, apt-fast simply falls back to the default package manager (apt-get or aptitude).

In my case apt-get downloads from the Thai mirror which should presumably be the fastest available for anyone located in Thailand. The problem however, isn't "apt-get install" but "apt-get update", so this wouldn't solve anything in my case.

I find it interesting that according to https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SwitchingToUbuntu/FromLinux/RedHatEnterpriseLinuxAndFedora in apt-get you must run apt-get update to trigger an update, and it takes, as I mentioned, forever to run, whereas with yum things are automatically updated every time you run it - and I've never noticed any delay caused by yum needing to update anything. I am simply left to assume that apt-get is just vastly inferior to yum. Discuss.

[thaimite]

• apt-get updates take for-e-ver Ok 3 minutes may not sound of much, but it is when you sit and watch all the packages it checks. This is not so much vs. Windows updates but against yum (rpm) update which typically takes a few seconds.

Speed up:

http://xmodulo.com/2013/10/speed-slow-apt-get-install-debian-ubuntu.html

From the page:

Note that apt-fast does not make “apt-get update” faster. Parallel download gets triggered only for “install”, “upgrade”, “dist-upgrade” and “build-dep” operations. For other operations, apt-fast simply falls back to the default package manager (apt-get or aptitude).

In my case apt-get downloads from the Thai mirror which should presumably be the fastest available for anyone located in Thailand. The problem however, isn't "apt-get install" but "apt-get update", so this wouldn't solve anything in my case.

I find it interesting that according to https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SwitchingToUbuntu/FromLinux/RedHatEnterpriseLinuxAndFedora in apt-get you must run apt-get update to trigger an update, and it takes, as I mentioned, forever to run, whereas with yum things are automatically updated every time you run it - and I've never noticed any delay caused by yum needing to update anything. I am simply left to assume that apt-get is just vastly inferior to yum. Discuss.

O think I may have mentioned this before, try Y-PPA-Manager. from the Wbuda8 site

update single repositories using a command line tool (by the way, when you add a PPA using Y PPA Manager, it's updated without updating all the software sources) called "update-ppa" - usage example: "sudo update-ppa ppa:webupd8team/java";

Hope this helps

[Phil Conners]

I've installed it; at first sight it looks cool,will see how it is to work with!