Thread

1. fbn79 · 1790334206 · focus · HN ↗

   The highest problem is the office suite. If you think Libreoffice/Collabora can replace Microsoft 365 without friction the project could be a success. Honestly I do not think so as of today.

   1. tombert · 1790341198 · focus · HN ↗

      Yeah, especially Excel.

      LibreOffice Sheets doesn’t compete with Excel 2024, it competes more with Excel 2003. Granted, this is fine for a lot of (most?) people but it’s still not a “replacement” in my mind.

      I ended up just building a Nix Flake to properly run Excel. At least then the operating system itself isn’t MS.

      1. qubex · 1790343582 · focus · HN ↗

         I kicked Excel to the kerb in 2005 or something like that and have been a happy Apple Numbers and Wolfram Mathematica (and SPSS, PSPP, and R, and Python) user ever since.

         1. tombert · 1790348736 · focus · HN ↗

            Both Apple Numbers and Mathematica still depend on a proprietary software package from a for-profit company though.

            I think the only way we can actually solve the problem is to get a FOSS product up to snuff with Excel. I use Julia if I need really elaborate number crunching, but I don’t view it as a substitute for Excel; the interactivity of spreadsheets is really useful, especially when you’re actively developing stuff.

            1. qubex · 1790372008 · focus · HN ↗

               For what it’s worth I’ve started building a Mathematica-to-Python transpiler.
      2. madjam002 · 1790343775 · focus · HN ↗

         What version of Excel does your Nix Flake package out of interest? Is it current?

         1. tombert · 1790348330 · focus · HN ↗

            Yep! It actually made the front page of HN a few days ago :)

            It supports Office 365 and Office 2024 Home works as of about two days ago.

            I think it would require very little if any effort to get Home and Business working but the license for that was too expensive (though pull requests are welcome!)

            Currently limited to stuff that can be activated on Microsoft’s website. I tried very hard and was ultimately unsuccessful at getting Office 2024 Pro Plus working from a gray-market key I bought on Groupon, because the MAK activation stuff appears to depend on a lot of stuff that Wine/Proton doesn’t implement. Again, pull requests are welcome if someone here figures out how to do it.

            <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;Tombert&#x2F;office365_flake" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;Tombert&#x2F;office365_flake

            1. pavo-etc · 1790556729 · focus · HN ↗

               This is extremely cool. Nix just continues to impress me more and more.
      3. cirelli94 · 1790346278 · focus · HN ↗

         We really need investments from large public institutions in LibreOffice Sheets.

         1. tombert · 1790348804 · focus · HN ↗

            Agreed.

            Valve is making desktop computers now; maybe the next thing they could improve is LibreOffice to try and appeal to businesses.

      4. bormaj · 1790353960 · focus · HN ↗

         Where would you say the gaps are? As someone who has been in an environment of excel power users for several years, the quality of that program has declined YoY due to all the excess bloat that MS stuffs into that thing. The plugin&#x2F;macro ecosystem is one aspect that comes to my mind.

         1. tombert · 1790360982 · focus · HN ↗

            Yeah, there’s no VBA support anywhere. LibreOffice has their own scripting thing, and it works ok but it’s not compatible with the VBA and VBA stuff broadly doesn’t work there.

            Even without the VBA though, it’s missing basically any feature added in 2019 like Lambda and filter and dynamic arrays.

            I wouldn’t consider myself a power user, I would say I am a “high level basic user”, and even I have noticed the shortcomings. And this is also coming from a dude who very much wants a FOSS thing to succeed over Microsoft.

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