IBM Wants to Port Office to Linux

shfted! writes "OSNews reports: As part of its initiative to put Linux on the desktop, IBM Corp. wants to migrate Microsoft Corp.'s Office suite to Linux. Microsoft said it's not involved and suggests that IBM might do it by emulation."

by emulation??/

[stonebeat.org]

we already have that. WINE [winehq.com]!!!

Re:by emulation??/

[stonebeat.org]

or crossover office [codeweavers.com]

Blue Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, this is great news and it only proves that IBM's in it for real. IBM is also creating a _desktop_ version of Linux - Blue Linux. It's not out yet, but PC Magazine's John Dvorak has already seen it.

HERE's [pcmag.com] the PC magazine article about it.

Crossover Office just works

[bender647]

Crossover Office has been great for me on my laptop. I work at a plant with 1000 Microsoft users and they can't write a five-word meeting notice without putting it in a Word document. For the sub-$60 license fee, it has been worth every penny. I keep Star Office going on my Sun and Ooffice on my desktop linux system, but more often than not, they can't properly open MS documents. Yes, it would be great if I could convince a billion dollar company to convert all its employees to Ooffice, and convince all our vendors and customers to convert, and convince all the technical organizations to use Ooffice presentation software at the conferences. But instead, I just paid the $60 and got back to work.

Probably WINE

[mark0]

IBM already offers Lotus Notes to its employees using Linux via WINE -- available for download by employees as part of its C4EB (Client for e-Business). They call it NUL (Notes Under Linux).

I have no special knowledge to substantiate this, but I expect they would take the same approach to accomplish this; it would certainly fit the pattern. In the end, we could see a substantially improved WINE as a result.

Re:Why ?

[jhoude]

From the article :
IBM might consider Sun Microsystems Inc.'s StarOffice as an alternative, since StarOffice already runs under Linux. However, this is not on the horizon now.
"It suits us fine the Microsoft and Sun fight about office application suites. We stay away from that. The reason we don't collaborate with Sun is that they're too small," said Pettersson.

The left hand doesn't know what the right....

[SmileeTiger]

I can't believe no one has pointed this out yet:

From the article:
"Microsoft said it's not involved and suggests that IBM might do it by emulation."

IBM:"..But we're working together with Microsoft, who have provided us with part of their code. We've worked together like that previously."

So Microsoft isn't working with IBM but IBM is working with Microsoft because MS has provided them with part of their code. Hmm does MS have split personalities or something?

PHB

[gumpish]

btw, what is a PHB?

http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=phb [everything2.com]

Re:Why ?

[betelgeuse-4]

IBM should be doing everything they can to discourage the use of MS Access. It's absolutly useless beyond simple, single-user databases.

Crossover Office

[chrysalis]

Have a look at Codeweavers Crossover Office.

It's a commercial Wine derivative that allows running a lot of Windows apps, including the full Microsoft Office suite.

And Office works extremely well. In fact... even better than Openoffice. Startup time is shorter than Openoffice. Rendering is good and fast. Compatibility is of course perfect.

Re:Crossover Office just works

[zeeboy]

Hi,

Have you tried OpenOffice 1.1? I find it hard to believe ( note: I'm not calling you a liar :> ) that less than half of the word documents won't open correctly. I work in an organisation where everybody uses Office. They mostly create overly formatted Word documents or formula spreadsheets and I have yet to have a single problem opening any of them.

Re:Why ?

[beforewisdom]

Because Open Office is S--L--O--W. Average everyday users also want something that is just like M$ Office..everything they know can be found in the same place.

Re:Why ?

[shfted!]

I just found this more insightful article. Sorry I missed it from the story post!

http://www.linuxinsider.com/perl/story/32871.html [linuxinsider.com]

Re:PHB

[gad_zuki!]

Pointy haired boss, a reference to Dilbert. Its an acronym that really isn't catching on.

Re:Why ?

[Mod Me God]

That is correct, it does contain a scripting language. But even this means rewriting the bazillion macros we have in our office, something I'd rather not do, nor would any of us, and it would be extremely cost ineffective to switch to OO because it is free but pay a consultant $2k for a couple of weeks work - it's not like we're going to upgrade MS Office in the next few years either.

Now if there were some kind of 'code convertor' which could switch code (the MS and OO scripting languages don't seem too different from an end-functionality or structural perspective) from one language to another, I'd think differently.

The end of Linux?

[drowstar]

Maybe some of you guys still remember this article on Microsoft's presence at LinuxWorld Expo [linuxworld.com]. It suggests that if Microsoft would have announced a Linux port of Office it would have meant the end of Linux.

Re:Why could IBM do better than OpenOffice.org

[hpavc]

I agree, they could produce a nice Visio or Project like tool into OpenOffice. I think the value for the whole suite would increase significantly.

Re:Oh, I see

[lostchicken]

Well, to be more correct, Mainframe refers to the architecture. You can run Linux on a Mainframe, and Linux isn't a mainframe OS (yeah, I know you usually run Linux/390 under VM, but whatever). The Mainframe is really quite unlike any microcomputer architecture in the way it deals with IO (devices can actually talk to each other directly, I believe) and that is what makes a mainframe a mainframe, not its operating system.

Re:Why ?

[quantum bit]

BTW.... There are entirely FREE Readers for ALL M$ Office Products at the their downloads section

Okay, then change the above post to "read/modify/submit" official documents, or otherwise interact with your government.

Re:Why ?

[segvio]

They use Carbon which isn't portable really to *nix. Had they used Cocoa GNUStep [gnustep.org] would have been an option.

Re:what makes office good is VB..

[black mariah]

I've never had any stability issues with Office, and OOo's glacial speed puts me completely off of it.

If you want an open source VB-alike, check out Gambas [sourceforge.net]. I've been using it for only a couple of days and have managed to put together a stupid game with a GUI, which is more than I can say for my time with VB.

Re:Why ?

[hanssprudel]

Is this why IBM have never had anything to do with Java?

Nothing what [ibm.com] so [eclipse.org] ever [ibm.com].

Re:Why ?

[cybermace5]

On virtually any other point about Microsoft I would likely agree with you, but on this one, you're wrong.

At this location [microsoft.com] on Microsoft's web site you can download the Word 97/2000 Viewer. It runs on 95, NT, 2000, and XP. You can also search "viewer" on Microsoft's web site and come up with viewers for their other applications, including a version of Word Viewer that works on Windows 3.1. I've tested the viewer and it works fine. Many government sites actually offer a download or link to get the Word Viewer.

There's nothing wrong with bashing Microsoft over their bloated software, or Machiavellian anti-competition tactics, but this time you just threw this assertion out that was entirely false.

Re:Start from Office for Mac?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't it be a lot easier to start from the version written for OSX?

No. There really isn't anything in the OS X version of Office that has been adapted to unix. Just as most other programs (Adobe, Macromedia, etc) it relies completely on the "Carbon" API, which essentially is an simple API to get old-style OS9 applications to run natively on OS X. These programs never ever use any low-level stuff - you would have to reimplement Carbon completely in Linux, which would be a tremendously difficult task.

Re:PHB

[Anonymous Coward]

But it's not an "acronym". An acronym is an abbreviation in which the letters are said together as a whole -- NATO and AIDS, for example.

PHB, IBM and CPU are not acronyms. They're simply abbreviations (or "initialisms" if you fancy).

Re:Why ?

[Maestro4k]

• On virtually any other point about Microsoft I would likely agree with you, but on this one, you're wrong.

  At this location on Microsoft's web site you can download the Word 97/2000 Viewer. It runs on 95, NT, 2000, and XP. You can also search "viewer" on Microsoft's web site and come up with viewers for their other applications, including a version of Word Viewer that works on Windows 3.1. I've tested the viewer and it works fine. Many government sites actually offer a download or link to get the Word Viewer.

There's at least one popular OS not listed there -- Linux. You also have to wonder exactly how well it'll work on documents that the user's decided to turn on a bunch of useless bells and whistles. It lists the publishing date as 1999. It does say version 2000, so perhaps they updated it a year later.

In any case, just having a document viewer doesn't solve the problem with Government picking an office suite that's propritary and not free. How about the occasion (which is definitely not rare, I've run across it nearly everytime I needed something from a government agency) where you download the document and have to fill it in with your information, then save and send it back? In that case if you only have the viewer, you're SOL. Well maybe not totally SOL, but best case you have to print out the blank document, fill in the information by hand, then mail it and wait for several days for it to arrive and get processed.

And then you still have that annoying little problem of no viewer available for Linux, Solaris, BeOS (ok, yeah I'm nitpicking with that one), etc.

Re:Why could IBM do better than OpenOffice.org

[ajagci]

What will never happen, but would be awesome, would be for IBM or somebody to pump a load of money into increasing the performace/memory footprint of wxPython. Bring it up to the level of C#.

Sorry, but that can't be done: Python is a nice language, but it is not designed to be compiled as efficiently as C#. If you want C#-like (or C++-like) performance, you need C#/C++-like language features, and Python just doesn't have them.

It's Free and doesn't have all that Java baggage.

So is C#.

The next step to Utopia would of course be a wxQt port...

Why in the world would anybody want to bother? Just use wxX11.

Re:Will Microsoft Sabotage?

[mijok]

IANAL and IANAUS (US citizen) but a well-informed EU citizen and at least where EU legislation applies that make that completely impossible (and feel free to tell me what the case is in the US). Most of this comes from an EU consumer rights brochure I obtained from the consumer rights authorities (in Finland, similar exist in other EU countries) - strangely I haven't found it online:
The brochure points out that EULA:s especially are completely invalid due to two reasons: 1. All terms entered once a purchase has been made are invalid (and you've already paid for the product when you see the EULA). 2. All click-through agreements, which require you to click "Yes" in order to access some service (such as a website and so on) are illegal if they prevent you from accessing when you click "No" (I have yet to see this enforced, though, but obviously such "agreements" are invalid even though you might click "Yes". As far as enforcement is concerned I've heard about a few cases where it might soon be enforced - sites which require you to accept advertising to your cellphone, if you wish to use the service). So as far as software is concerned, only normal copyright applies (i.e. do not make illegal copies). So even though an EULA might forbid reverse-engineering you can reverse-engineer software day in and day out until you get sick of it.
In addition to that it is illegal to make consumers to buy product A if they buy product B. So consequently requiring that consumers buy Windows if they want to use Office is illegal (so as long as they can run Office using wine there's no problem).
An additional note regarding this (even though you didn't bring it up): Claiming that something is "free" if it requires you to buy something else is illegal - so if a store advertises "buy X get Y for free" you're legally entitled to get Y without buying X (and thus a store being stupid enough to advertise that way is soon screwed). This and EULA:s (requiring that you own Windows) being invalid actually makes MS "free" Internet Explorer download useful for me. I no longer have Windows anywhere but IE runs well enough under wine to test websites and thus it is not only cost-saving (since in this case it actually is _free_ since I pay nothing for it) but also very convenient - running tomcat on linux and testing the localhost site with IE is very nice :)

Re:Why ?

[Malc]

People overlook Excel too much. I've seen somebody tring to do cross-tab reports in a single step in SQL (I think it was based on a query in Joe Celko's SQL for Smarties book). It worked fine with a few hundred to a couple of thousand rows of data (less than 5 secs), but by the time it had grown to only 10,000 rows, the query would take more than an hour. This is the same machine that runs some other simpler queries against a 250 million row table in under 15 secs. The point being that a simpler version of the query would run in a few seconds, and then Excel could do the cross-tabulation with copy-and-pasted data for total of 5 minutes extra effort. Optimsing the SQL or DB schema (e.g. indexes) for one off ad-hoc cross-tab reports isn't worth it, but using Excel leads to a much more satisfactory solution.

I am an IBMer using Blue Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry for the AC post, but I'm an IBMer and we're not allowed to make public comments.

"Blue Linux" does not exist. What we have is Linux Client for E-Bussiness (C4EB), a Linux RH9 desktop that includes IBM apps such as a Lotus Sametime (an excellent Instant Messaging program) client, a Lotus Notes client (Windows version) running under WINE, and a few other things useful in the IBM Intranet.

There are about 20,000 users or so at the moment, and the IBM Linux desktop community is very active. The IBM CIO is extremely supportive: whenever we see a boneheaded internal site requiring MS IE only or other such atrocities, we report it and the Office of the CIO puts pressure on the site's maintainers to toe the line and support Mozilla.

Bottom line: "Blue Linux" = customized RedHat 9. It's hardly our own distro. But IBM is not just promoting Linux and recommending it to customers. We're also eating our own dog food.

We are studying a migration to a Fedora-based C4EB.

Redistribute? Not Necessarily

[darkmeridian]

IBM wants to make a version of Microsoft Office that runs on Linux. This does not necessarily mean that IBM is going to redistribute a modified version of Microsoft Office. IBM probably will create an emulation layer for Office. IBM's access to the MS Office codebase will just make the job easier. Virtual PC, for example, does just this and the copy of Windows 98 has to be sold separately and intactly.

Re:Why ?

[Anonymous Coward]

You said that people had to buy software to read documents in Microsoft formats,

And you said that Microsoft provide a viewer that runs on 95, NT, 2000 XP... getting the picture yet, tard-boy?

...it loads really fast

[steveha]

The only good thing of M$ is, that it loads really fast.

After you install MS Office, Windows loads big portions of it during Windows boot. So your initial boot takes longer, but then your Office apps launch quickly. This tradeoff makes sense for desktop systems with large amounts of RAM, which is all of them these days. But it kind of sucks for laptops, which are booted more often than desktops, and not always to run Office.

I have the Open Office Quickstart Applet running in my GNOME desktop, and this does the same trick for OO.o; large portions of OO.o are preloaded for me. On my laptop, I don't run that. I like having the choice.

steveha

Re:Crossover Office just works

[Anonymous Coward]

I have also run into the problem where documents look slightly different in OpenOffice than in Microsoft Word. I used to do the newsletter for a small club. Then another member of our club started doing the newsletter. She uses Office XP and then emails it to me so that I can print about 50 copies of it. The newsletter is in multi-column format with clipart and photos.

I used OpenOffice 1.0 to open it and everything was there but was not laid out quite correctly. When I opened it with Word 97 it looked it looked OK. I have also tried opening the monthly newsletters with Abiword, Textmaker and every other wordprocessor that I have installed under Red Hat 9 Linux. All the information is there but with all of those wordprocessors it looks different than it does in Word.

Fortunately, I do have Word 97 working well under Red Hat 9 linux. I runs under linux with the help of the wine enhancements that Codeweaver's CrossoverOffice product provides. I Word 97 to print all the copies we need of the newsletter that she sends me. I should try upgrading to OpenOffice 1.1 sometime to see if it is more compatible.

There is one other thing about Word that has been a problem for several of us in the club. We send her several scanned in photos that are under 100K in size. She imports the 2 or 3 small photos into Word XP which then converts it into a huge Word document that is over 2 MB in size. The problem comes when she tries to email the newsletter to several of us. The phone lines in many parts of town here are only good for 26.4K. Several officers in the club have Internet providers that reject all documents of that size, so it can't be sent by email. The newsletter will not fit on a floppy disk either. She then burns a CD and we then drive around exchanging the CDs with each other. If the newsletter gets revised with corrections we then exchange CDs again before printing the final version.

Access is shit, use Kexi for Win32

[Anonymous Coward]

I work at a bank, we do not allow the use of Access for multi-user systems because Access has a tendancy to self-destruct when more then 1 person is using it ...

You are MUCH better off to get a copy of MySQL and use Kexi (http://www.kexi-project.org/) as you Access like GUI design tool....

Kexi 1.0Beta2 for Win32
http://www.gtlib.cc.gatech.edu/pub/kde/unst able/ap ps/KDE3.x/office/kexi-1.0beta2-update1-win32.exe

Re:Opportunity & Dangers for MS

[Anonymous Coward]

Office is not ported to Mac OS X, it is written for it. There is an active development unit for that office application. So the question is not whether it can be ported or not, certainly it can be ported, remember the Turing machine and the equivalence of them? The question is who can do that, does it worth it, is it profitable for MS? Before that application, why don't you guys focus on more subtle and achievable goals, like porting VB, improving wine, etc.... This is all talk.

Re:Why ?

[Badanov]

Why in the world would IBM even want to throw money at a competing database? They want to sell DB2, not a GUI for PostgreSQL

Re:Why ?

[darilon]

I charge big bucks to go fix Access applications. There are so many Access developers that sort of know what they are doing and can usually whip up an app that does most of what it's supposed to do. However, when they get stuck, I charge the big $ to get it working the way it's supposed to. Nothing like having Holiday pay being calculated incorrectly and everyone freaking out to convince someone to pay up. That said, you can get a kid out of high school to set up mysql with OO and get the simple features you'd generally use in a small office from Access without hiring a developer. You get the added bonus of much better multiuser capabilities. If you've ever seen an Access multiuser system in action with 8 or more simultaneous users, you know what I mean.

Re:Why not start with the Office X version

[tepples]

The carbon APIs sit on top of UNIX apis.

The Carbon APIs sit on top of the Quartz APIs, which have no direct equivalent on the Windows side. Major parts of Carbon are also patented; no cloning allowed.

Re:Why ?

[cbreaker]

But, you can't just "install SQL" somewhere and have a nice user interface to go along with it. Sure, the data *might* get organized better since you usually need to know a little bit more about databases to just use a SQL server, but then you need to design and impliment a seperate user interface..

Of course, you could use Access for that.. heh

M$ Office at IBM??

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been working for IBM for almost a year now, and have yet to see a copy of MS Office anywhere in the facility. Granted it is easier to get a brand new computer than a copy of software, I find this interesting that IBM plans to "port" MS Office to Linux. They have been pushing Lotus products at our location, and rightly so. Of course Lotus does not seem to be in comparison with OpenOffice in terms of Excel, Word, and Powerpoint. So the only Lotus product I use is Notes. OpenOffice works so much better for me, and it is easier to get than a Corporate copy of Office in these settings. Why not improve on an already stellar office suite? Or at least endorse Lotus products for Linux!

fuck people are retarded

[Ender Ryan]

Not one of your ignoramouses has mentioned the #1 reason people need MS Access, which is simply quick/easy data entry form building and reporting.

I'm no DBA, but I know enough to design a proper database and write applications that use said database, but what I simply don't have time for is creating data-entry forms, generating reports, etc. Someone else does that. Someone else using MS Access. He's just barely "computer literate," but using Access he creates very nice reports and data-entry forms.

There's a whole book on creating data-entry apps for MySQL, using C/C++ and GTK. Yeah, I have time for that shit. I have 30 other projects that need to be done yesterday; I think I'll continue to let the windows-weenie handle everything but actually designing the databases.

Re:Will Microsoft Sabotage?

[WhiteWolf666]

Lots, suprisingly.

It has changed gradually. People just keep writing more and more comprehensive DLLs.

In your .conf file, you can specify that Wine try to emulate NT, 2k, or XP.

98 mode, however, works much better than any of the NT modes, but the NT modes are coming along nicely.

The NT modes do not integrate well with native DLLs, which is a problem---most of that stuff needs to be written from scratch.

But it is coming.

IBM should just stick to Open Office

[digitalgimpus]

If I were IBM, I would stick to Open Office.

It's already so similar, stable, and well done, it's worthwhile to invest. Here's what I see it needing:

- Good Mac OS X port (get Apple on it's side)
- Some UI polish, needs graphics, UI cleanup, streamlining
- Slight improvements to compatibility with MS Office, especially Power Point.

It's already a pretty solid product. It's got some great bonuses (free PDF output for example). What it needs is some cleanup.

IBM could easily provide this. Then have an MS free product that could help bring Linux to the desktop.

Apple would be wise to invest in this as well I might add. Get rid of more MS dependancy.

Apple's UI experience would be good as well.

What REAL computers use for I/O

[sirwired]

Mainframes do I/O using a "Channel Program". This is a sequence of commands assembled by your system software to perform an I/O task. The task may be made up of hundreds of I/O commands. (which use the Single-Byte-Command-Set architecture.) After the I/O program is built, a single CPU instruction (start subchannel) begins I/O program execution. The processor is not interrupted until the execution of the program is completed. A "channel processor" (these days ususally a PowerPC chip) handles all the actual work.

SCSI is loosely based on the architecture, but does not have the concept of a channel program, so it has none of the CPU conservation benefits.

The advantage of this whole setup is that the box can be doing fantastic amounts of I/O streams simultaneously, since the CPUs do not have to coordinate all of it. We all know that Disk is WAAAYYY slower than memory, so this way you can be doing useful things with a large number of I/O paths until you finally exhuast your quite substantial processor resources. UNIX-style architectures bog down at far slower I/O loads.

The disadvantage is that it blows for charachter-by-character interactive (i.e. Telnet) use, due to the overhead involved in creating the channel program. Transactions actually do okay, as the overhead isn't that terrible, compared with the work usually required to process the transaction itself.

The other disadvantage is you need an expensive box to just get an admin console, since the ONLY way to get I/O in and out is this huge channel system, a RS-232 just doesn't work. (These days, it is an xSeries Pizza Box w/ an ESCON card. It used to be this behemoth about the size of a dorm-room refrigerator.)

SirWired