Microsoft Office on FreeBSD?

It is generally supported well in Wine (the tool in video just looks like one of the *many* little GUI wrappers around the process):

https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=10

The fiddly part is to use a mixed wine and wine-i386 because larger Windows programs tend to be a random mash of 32-bit and 64-bit intel executables.

https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/h...all-32-bit-and-64-bit-wine-on-the-same-system

This section in the handbook is not entirely end of story but instead the limitation can be bypassed by doing some manual extraction of packages.
 
serjsk8 said:
But I recommend you editors/openoffice-4
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OpenOffice is pretty much dead since Oracle sucked it dry and threw its corpse over the fence of the Apache Foundation...
editors/libreoffice is where pretty much all of the former OO developers are now. We've used that for well over 10 years now on all our windows clients and never looked back to any MS variant (especially Office three-fiddy). That being said: even OpenOffice is still better than the Microsoft counterparts.
But yes, wine should work if you absolutely want to run MS Office...
 
serjsk8 said:
Yes, I remember that many years ago I launched MS Office 2003 (I think) via emulators/wine.
And it worked fine.
But I recommend you editors/openoffice-4

Update:
But I recommend you editors/libreoffice
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I find that libreoffice is largely change for change's sake. There really isn't much to innovate in the office suite space that will drastically improve the work flow from even 20 years ago.

That being said, having used OOO, Libreoffice, and MS Office, when your job lives and dies with complex spreadsheets or text documents, MS Word and Excel are significantly superior products. A good documented process to run even a decently recent version (not necessarily the latest) on FreeBSD would be a tremendous boon.
 
I find OpenOffice so much faster these days than LibreOffice. I already maintain private copies of Gimp 2.4, Blender 2.49b and will almost certainly be picking up OpenOffice if it is dropped from ports.

I only use a fraction of features of OpenOffice so don't really care what new gimmicks LibreOffice might have introduced. Its overkill and slow. Did I mention its slow? ;)
 
Did you know that Office is available for free through outlook.com?
Is WPS still the most compatible with the MS suite?
 
CuatroTorres said:
Did you know that Office is available for free through outlook.com?
Is WPS still the most compatible with the MS suite?
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I think some basic features are available via Office365 if you try to use www/firefox to access your Microsoft account... Last time I tried this browser-based stuff, it left me frustrated with how basic and locked-down that experience was. And, to top it off, you do have to be careful to sign out from the Microsoft account when you're done. If you don't properly sign out, MS will actually track you and your computer, even in FreeBSD's www/firefox. Fortunately, MS does allow an easy way to just delete tracked devices from your account...
 
kpedersen said:
I find OpenOffice so much faster these days than LibreOffice. I already maintain private copies of Gimp 2.4, Blender 2.49b and will almost certainly be picking up OpenOffice if it is dropped from ports.

I only use a fraction of features of OpenOffice so don't really care what new gimmicks LibreOffice might have introduced. Its overkill and slow. Did I mention its slow? ;)
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This might deserve it's own thread, but I'm curious about software that's reached it's ideal point of usefulness, and then stays there rather than growing (and often slowing) indefinitely. I wonder if Gimp 2.4 could be forked as a simpler/lighter Gimp? I'm pretty fond of Abiword. Gnumeric is a really nice piece of software, too.

I used to run Firefox (I think version 3) with well under a gig of memory. Maybe 384MB? I had 150 tabs open, and it was responsive.

Total opposite to today. Heavier websites might also play a part.
 
hhartzer said:
I wonder if Gimp 2.4 could be forked as a simpler/lighter Gimp? I'm pretty fond of Abiword. Gnumeric is a really nice piece of software, too.

I used to run Firefox (I think version 3) with well under a gig of memory. Maybe 384MB? I had 150 tabs open, and it was responsive.

Total opposite to today. Heavier websites might also play a part.
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Indeed. I actually maintain a personal port of Blender 2.49 because it was pretty much feature complete and the newer stuff is just unportable crap I was never going to use anyway. Over time I have fixed up a number of poorly engineered sections (the picking and backbuffer was terrible!) and added polish. In some ways it is sad that a lot of great software doesn't get this.

Up until a year or so ago I also maintained a personal Gtk+2 port of Abiword until I realized that Office 4.3 running in DosBox was still more featureful and (ironically) lighter.

I think in many ways the FreeBSD ports collection is missing a trick by only catering to the latest versions of software.
 
PlayOnLinux got you some handholding through using Wine and seemed to sandbox programs which I don't think Wine alone offers on its own. Not sure if there are alternatives for FreeBSD to do the same. Wine is the driving force to run that Windows software on Unix systems otherwise.

If attempting MS Office through Wine, I'd try to avoid 365 and go for a variant with a year in its name; less likely Microsoft may break the client with an update. Older versions have given Wine devs more of a chance to make it work and they receive less updates too. I prefer to get my Microsoft content from Microsoft directly or other sources I know and trust; can't speak for the link he gave. Last I checked, some of the newer content was becoming harder to find in disk/iso form but there were ways to make your own install media. If you avoid the downloader it may simplify possible points of failure.

jardows said:
I find that libreoffice is largely change for change's sake. There really isn't much to innovate in the office suite space that will drastically improve the work flow from even 20 years ago.

That being said, having used OOO, Libreoffice, and MS Office, when your job lives and dies with complex spreadsheets or text documents, MS Word and Excel are significantly superior products. A good documented process to run even a decently recent version (not necessarily the latest) on FreeBSD would be a tremendous boon.
Click to expand...
I've viewed a number of LibreOffice changes as downgrades; they literally broke things to try to be more like Microsoft Office and some changes are pushed through as non-optional because someone liked a cosmetic difference with worse function. There have been improvements too, particularly with compatibility to Micorsoft Office compared to what OpenOffice has. I normally keep both Open&Libre due to their differences has Libre causing bugs with certain complicated documents; I could make ugly+flaky+unreliable hacks to the document formatting but I opted to just use a working editor instead.

For complex text documents I started worrying if reaching 50 pages in Microsoft with basic formatting and maybe a few graphics. At 200 pages it was pretty miserable to use while 800+ page OpenOffice documents seemed fine (when first opened it spends a while changing its mind about how many pages it is; quickly resolved with one of the 'update' commands). I've done some unusual things (probably not "complex") with spreadsheets but barely any in excel to compare them. I've had more problems with Microsoft upgrades messing up document formatting than I have with OpenOffice.

My Microsoft experiences was a little of <=97, a lot of 2000 and 2007, and some of 2016 with OpenOffice starting a little before StarOffice was opensourced into OpenOffice and continued until just a few years ago in varying capacities. Family users of Microsoft did just fine on OpenOffice and friends for their needs whenever they tried it though some still 'wanted' Microsoft Office too (good to have if even only for compatibility checking; make sure to match the exact version as the final destination for that goal).

After all that, it just reminds me I really need to sit down and learn TeX or similar systems better: small file, user editable file contents, high precision for reproducing output the same on different systems, and more easily satisfied with my effort to learn vi type editors for improving efficiency.
 
balanga said:
Can I do this on FreeBSD?
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1724512949844.pngWinetricks does include Microsoft Office 2013 Professional.

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Kai Burghardt said:
I concur with USerID: Why would anyone in their right mind (≈ FreeBSD users) want to use M$ Office? What’s next? “How do I get Microsoft Internet Explorer to run on FreeBSD?”​
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Speak for yourself. When I was writing papers for my Masters course, all the proper formatting required could be done in open/libre office, Abiword, etc. However the manual formatting required on each page would take so much time and effort, when with MS Office It was just a few clicks to set up and apply to the whole document. To write up my papers without MS Word would have taken so much more effort I would never have gotten them done on time.
 
You described a "comfort zone". FreeBSD is more of a "common sense". In the modern world, the percentage of FreeBSD use at home is very low. People need a unified approach: a COMBINE in the corner of your room that works with graphics, text, audio, video, makes coffee, monitors your children and dog in the garden through a camera, etc. But THIS is not enough. Progressive humanity needs the temperature and pressure to be delivered from your beloved dog's doghouse to the owner's smartphone... You can water the lawn through an iPhone, or better yet, hook up your house to a cloud smart program. There, in the cloud, for a monthly subscription fee, they will make you a "report on utilities" - a person needs to make 2-3 clicks, and everything will be resolved. This is where you are going. I resist. And I do not want the ideas of Jobs, Ballmer, Gates.
 
USerID said:
You described a "comfort zone". FreeBSD is more of a "common sense". In the modern world, the percentage of FreeBSD use at home is very low. People need a unified approach: a COMBINE in the corner of your room that works with graphics, text, audio, video, makes coffee, monitors your children and dog in the garden through a camera, etc. But THIS is not enough. Progressive humanity needs the temperature and pressure to be delivered from your beloved dog's doghouse to the owner's smartphone... You can water the lawn through an iPhone, or better yet, hook up your house to a cloud smart program. There, in the cloud, for a monthly subscription fee, they will make you a "report on utilities" - a person needs to make 2-3 clicks, and everything will be resolved. This is where you are going. I resist. And I do not want the ideas of Jobs, Ballmer, Gates.
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With some effort, FreeBSD can do it all, like via GPIO. But putting it all together takes time, effort, and brains. Nobody's gonna do it for free, innit? 😏
 
astyle said:
With some effort, FreeBSD can do it all, like via GPIO. But putting it all together takes time, effort, and brains. Nobody's gonna do it for free, innit? 😏
Click to expand...
The good news is that you only need to write it once with FreeBSD. I have written an i2c and spi driver for it recently (contracting for a small startup to prototype an AirTag clone suitable for tracking down people in hospitals) and I am quite happy knowing that it will keep working for my lifespan. With Linux you have this random mess of pigpio, gpiozero and other vendor specific solutions (and prosumer Python crap).
 
There are times, when the actual Microsoft Word product is needed.

Two examples, the formatting on LibreOffice or Apache OpenOffice varies from the format they want from Microsoft Office. While, they're close enough, they want the exact formatting of Microsoft Word for such as school papers.

Another example, which can be worked around for more advanced users, is for resumes, when they expect specific fonts. For some resumes, if you don't have the correct font, they throw it away, no matter, how good it is, or if it's identical to an otherwise successful resume. If you know how to look for and install the correct fonts, this isn't an issue. For newbies or for those who are busy, this can be a problem. It can also be trial an error for them, causing missed opportunities, until they get that right.

On school papers, your document from LibreOffice or Apache OpenOffice can be just as close to a Microsoft Word document, but it won't be accepted. I don't remember how I got around this, but I did keep using one of those opensource document suites. I might have switched to using Microsoft Office for certain papers on Windows. They might have accepted it, as I had it, and I may have improved the formatting. When I worked in a group, I would just contribute my part made in the opensource writer, then their end would get it right on the Microsoft expected format.

There's an inconvenience, which, I may accidentally save a file as .odt, because that would be the default, then my classmates would be like, wtf is this?


Though, for a commercial product, WordPerfect is said to be great. It is made to match the format that's expect of Microsoft Office, and it's also made for ease of formatting. WordPerfect is a standard in some professions such as for law offices. It's a cheaper and better product that those of Microsoft Office.

When it comes to function, opensource does a great job. When it comes to expected format specifications, it's not open and shut. WordPerfect is made to get by that, as that's part of their business model. Opensource can do it, but their priority is function and being a different alternative than Microsoft Office. There needs to be a setting option for MS formats, which are kept up to date.

That being said, there are cases for WordPerfect over Microsoft for a commercial product, and even over opensource writers. Also, there are cases for Libre/Open-Office for function, when format specifications don't matter, or when all that matters is function.
 
sidetone said:
they want the exact formatting of Microsoft Word for such as school papers.
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They *should* be submitting work as .pdf

Word's .doc, .docx isn't a standard. PDF is.

Formatting issues haven't really been an issue for decades because of this (hint: embed the fonts in the PDF).
 
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