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?
Get used to LibreOffice. It’s the most actively maintained, well-made opensource office software.
An underrated feature of LibreOffice is the ability to insert the original document inside a PDF when exporting. If you reopen that PDF in LibreOffice, it will grab the embedded copy for editing instead of trying to guess how to convert the PDF into its original.
That’s monstrous. When I send a PDF I don’t want it to be editable, if I wanted an editable format I’d use an editable format. Exporting to PDF is supposed to be a digital equivalent to printing.
It sounds opt-in.
I saved many many documents as pdf via libre office and never encountered this feature, so I’d say so too.
It is.
Exporting to PDF is supposed to be a digital equivalent to printing.
It really isn’t. Even without this feature (that I’d never heard of before) it is a format that is very easy to edit.
If you need PDFs to be tamperproof, you can however digitally sign them. (And then the recipient needs your public key to verify).
Which is why it’s optional I suppose.
Once you get used to libreoffice ms office will feel like a gimmicky toy
You haven’t used LibreOffice’s pivot tables have you?
Nope I use python for that 😹
Exactly. Point proven
Sorry I don’t have a good recommendation
Edit your comments, don’t reply to yourself
I don’t either.
Neither do I.
Stick with LibreOffice , you’ll get used and it is most likely the best alternative.
This.
That?
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
Over my dead body…
For me anything “in browser” acting as a desktop app is never an option
If ms rly wanted to be cross platform they would have done it properly not through a web app missing a ton of the original app features
Similar story with Photoshop on the web
Honestly, if your willing to learn to use LibreOffice, it’s way more powerful than OnlyOffice. It took me a minute to get used to it too, but once you do, it’s pretty awesome. And if your worried about UI, you can change some of those things in the settings, like you can make it have a MS-style ribbon at the top. If I were you, I’d spend two weeks trying LO, I think you’ll get used to it pretty quick
LibreOffice, it’s way more powerful than OnlyOffice
How so? More features? If so, some people just use a small handful in MSOffice, and just want those for their office clone. Maybe OOP is willibg to sacrifice feature-completeness for a similar UI.
In fact, based on their negative assessment of LibreOffice for not being enough like Microsoft, I’m willing to be that’s the case.
much prefer the ribbons for the UI. it’s much more convenient imo and I was lost otherwise. glad libreoffice had that as customisation options!
@mypasswordis1234
OnlyOffice is good. Very similar to MS officeI think you’ll be pretty disappointed with anything else that’s available. Of those two I’d say stick with OnlyOffice.
If you pay to crossover, they will help you to install Microsoft Office on Linux. https://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/crossover/microsoft-office-365
And I think you need to pay for the support because Microsoft is always doing changes to break the compatibility, and they need to do many patches to make it work. Microsoft is not going to make it easy.
At that point, just use their browser based products.
They have extensive “telemetry” either way.
You can block telemetry requests.
That would also help fund further development of wine and proton.
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
Basically the only commits to OpenOffice now are things a full project lint would catch. There are some security updates here and there. Last I looked it’s basically one dev fixing spacing.
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.
That makes sense, thank you!
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.
Why should all the developers suddenly decide to give up their own project and collaborate?
Their goal isn’t to take over the entire market, since the software is free and there really isn’t a “market” in that sense.Why did Linus start developing Linux when he could have just contributed to FreeBSD which already existed?
No, it didn’t. FreeBSD didn’t exist until 1993. 386BSD wasn’t until 1992. Linus has said that if a free, unencumbered BSD for PCs existed in 1991, he indeed would not have made Linux.
Well I’m an idiot then.
Lol, https://gondwanaland.com/meta/history/interview.html if you want to read more.
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.
It’s bloatware and adware imo.
I see, that might be it!
honestly, I’ve only clicked on this post because of your username
“Foss Microsoft Office for Linux actually isn’t in Opensource”
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.
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.
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.
