Thread

Dutch governments builds alternative for Microsoft based on NixOS

1021 points · 583 comments · fjfaase

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. madjam002 · 1790343775 · focus · HN ↗
    What version of Excel does your Nix Flake package out of interest? Is it current?
    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://github.com/Tombert/office365_flake" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/Tombert/office365_flake
    pavo-etc · 1790556729 · focus · HN ↗
    This is extremely cool. Nix just continues to impress me more and more.

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