this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2023
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I need MS Office and Open/Libre/OnlyOffice won’t cut it. If ones lives in a bubble and doesn't have to collaborate with others, then native Linux apps might work and you might even get a decent workflow but once you’ve to collaborate with others who use Windows/Mac it’s game over. The “alternatives” aren’t just up to it.
Anyone who want a simple Virtual Machine and have to go thought cumbersome installation procedures like this one just to reach the end and have error messages saying virtualization isn’t enable when, in fact, it is… or trying to use GNOME Boxes and have a sub-par virtualization experience.
Even finding a decent and working FTP/SFTP/FTPS desktop client (similar WinSCP or Cyberduck) is an impossible task as there a few, but they all fail even at basic stuff like dragging and dropping a file.
Linux desktop is great, I love it but I don’t sugar coat. Windows licenses are cheap and you get things working out of the box. Software runs fine, all vendors support whatever you’re trying to do and you’ll be productive from day zero. There are annoyances from time to time, sure, but they’re way fewer and simpler to deal with than the hoops you’ve to go through to get a minimal and viable/productive Linux desktop experience.
It all comes down to a question of how much time (days? months?) you want spend fixing things on Linux that simply work out of the box under Windows for a minimal fee. Buy a Windows license and spend the time you would’ve spent dealing with Linux issues doing your actual job and you’ll, most likely, get a better ROI.
But that's why I said we should improve upon these alternatives tho, they are certainly not perfect and I never said they could replace Windows software currently
Today's reality is that most people (aka everyone) depends on these proprietary piece of software that are not avaiable on Linux, Adobe's and Microsoft's being the main ones.
But I believe that by focusing on improving and showing people that these alternatives exists and can be useable would help them slowly migrate to our open platforms, maybe even making proprietary software be ported to Linux.
When it comes to production software, THATS what we need, native Linux apps, and WINE does not solve that issue, so seeing it as a possible solution for running your production software (like Office 2021) will unsurprisingly cause days of fixing your stuff, while native Linux apps on the other hand, GIMP, Libreoffice, Inkscape, all work out of the box
to add to your explanation, Steam can do that because games isn't a piece that change to much after launch, yes, mechanics is added, new maps, but not the SDK for example(it's more lucrative to launch a new game, like CS2, "same" game, but better engine) and steam games run on a "sandbox"(kind of) and Valve is a multimillionary company that is selling linux hardware and games, they have the money and resource, and they gonna gain money with that, if they make wine work in office they aren't going to receive anything, every penny is going to microsoft, that's why there isn't incentive to make it work
Of course you'll have trouble finding a dedicated desktop client... that functionality is literally built into most Linux file managers.
"a dedicated desktop client" that isn't as reliable and practical as WinSCP is.
you can collaborate with others using collabora(i think they use libreoffice) idk how good it's, how to do it etc
and how FTP don't have drag and drop??, i just setup it on the file manager(i use dolphin that is the KDE file manager) and i just drag like every other file, i'm don't understand that part
File manager / Nautilus isn't a practical solution to access remote stuff. It lags way more than WinSCP isn't as quickly customizable nor does it support SFTP, FTP, SCP, WebDAV and S3. And don't let me even start with Cyberduck because that one supports A LOT of stuff. Both WinSCP and Cyberduck are very good apps, you install them and get a TON of flexibility with a few clicks and things work as expected. With Nautilus is plugin hell "create shortcuts to mount your remote storage" and "now the session if somehow hanging because the network glitched and the thing can't deal with it without a remount".
MS Office I get, it's not replacable for power users. Virtualization though? That's one of Linux's strengths. Your issue lies with trying to use VirtualBox, by far one of the worst virtualization solutions (both on Windows and Linux). Linux has QEMU and LXC, two of the most mature virtualization/containerization technologies, use them. If you need a UI for it you can use virt-manager (or "Virtual Machine Manager"), it uses QEMU as backend.
As for GNOME Boxes, everything in the GNOME ecosystem is made to be trivially easy. As such it lacks essential features for power users. In general, if you need avanced features, KDE might be better for you.
As @[email protected] mentioned, both Dolphin and Nautilus have integrated SFTP/FTP support, you literally just type
sftp://host.example.orginto your title bar and you are there. It will even use your existing SSH keys out of the box.If you need a dedicated UI, you can also use FileZilla. It's included in most repos and I haven't really found anything it can't do that WinSCP can. However, I would really recommend looking into how to do this via Dolphin/Nautilus. There's no level of integration any application can achieve that works as well as being integrated directly into the file browser. If Nautilus is too simple for you (it was for me), Dolphin works on GNOME as well.
I think a lot of your issues stem from being used to do something on Windows and trying to reproduce the same workflow on Linux. That will sometimes work but some workflows have simply developed differently on Linux and if you don't try to accomodate them you will just bang your head against the wall for nothing. If you find there's a lack of development for tools on Linux, the most likely reason is simply because nobody is doing it like that.
Linux desktop is not perfect but it's in a very good state nowadays and quickly improving with every update. It's in a state that makes it better for my use cases than Windows, which is going backwards with every version.
ssh can be your best friend. Apart from the fact it can give you secure admin access to the device and its files from virtually anything, your phone, another computer..
It also offers you the added one liner tools like sshfs for adding remote drives which act as they are mounted locally... then you get the best expeirence in my opinion better than winscp, because it feels native.
It isn't better than WinSCP, is it way worse as Nautilus is way less flexible and has less features. And it isn't as practical, at all. And not everything is SSH either.
Not in my experience. I dont use nautilus.. You should maybe look at improving your shitty network than complaining about the tools you dont know how to use.
Why do you need MS office?
Because I have to work with other people who use MS Office.
And ...?
And... I can't afford to have documents screwed up because Libre/Open/OnlyOffice aren't the real deal... and I need to use MS Teams, Excel, Project and have data flowing between each other and Dynamics Nav. All those things Linux native Office solutions can't do, nor Office Online and certainly not Wine.
Ahh tracking. I've never seen a work flow that used data flowing well between MS products. I've never had an incompatibility issue yet either, but I believe it, certainly on excel, that program can be a beast.
Here is how Office 2019 (not even the latest) performs on Wine out of the box:
Very helpful. What's that fucked up char anyways? :D
Once I managed to get 2019 running however it was slow and glitchy. There was some flickering on the UI and moving objects on Word was mostly impossible.
Oh no I meant just using libreoffice. I don't even want to MS Office on windows, trying to get to work on wine seems like a nightmare.
As you already know, I can't. I've used Libre and OnlyOffice for personal stuff and they're able to get the job done. Few details that are different but for what's worth I'll even say that for some tasks both of them even have easier workflows than MS Office. They kinda remind of the Office 2003 days when MS Office had the UI actualize optimized for speed and productivity not to flash around. Unfortunately for work I can't just do it.