FreeCad is getting better. That MS-office problem is now almost NULL since you can get it cloud based and there are several like WPS office that actually claim MS compatibility.

That is not the MS-Office problem I spoke of.

Which is not helping at all. Probably makes it even worse.

[****** RANT WARNING ********]
The problem is free access to documents, even ones own. It is not good enough that devs should have to reverse engineer a proprietary format, sometimes having to break laws in order to do so, so that other systems can maintain compatibility. It is not good enough that in 15yrs, or so, time someone should have to pay an engineer to crack an old standard so that they can read their archived documents. The world needs a standardised, publically published document format that anyone can use. This is why an open standard was created.

There is NO excuse for going along with a corporate bully who, feeling that their monopoly is threatened, doesn't mind pushing us back to the dark ages of computing. I remember when, back around the late eighties, it was reported that 90% of data being entered into computers had been printed out from one computer and retyped into the new computer because of incompatibilities. The use of open standards was what got us out of that ridiculous situation but Microsoft, in order to protect their monopoly, wants to keep us there. Either Microsoft must (a) publish, and relinquish control, of the MS-Office standard, (b) adopt ods as the default format, or (c) be broken. They have been forced, wriggling all the way through the courts, to implement ods support in MS-Office. But they hide this option, and make their own proprietary standard the default.

A document should be an entity in its own right, independant of any particular tool. If someone sends you a letter (snail mail) would you happily accept it being some companys special envelope type designed to need that companys special envelope opening tool to open it. I wouldn't bother, I'd just throw the letter in the bin unopened. Yet, in the computer world, we accept this imposition. Why??? We certainly should NOT be pandering to it.

So, we should NOT be bumbling along trying to get compatible with MS standard documents. Instead, we should be making MS users use the open document formats.
[**** END OF RANT ****] \\Sorry, but I think it was needed.

4 members found this post helpful.

I totally agree but that is still one of the first things most Linux Newbies point out as a flaw in Linux not realizing a flaw in MS. Personally I've never used MS-office, so of course compatibility means nothing to me.

That is a good question. Literally billions of people accept that "they need Windows" in order to have access to tis or tat. It is not that long ago that many websites (notably banks) required IE or FF running on Windows, and Windows only. I am not even talking about the millions of companies who rely on Windows-only proprietary programs like Quickbooks or AutoCAD. The value of that data surpasses any imagination. Big fuss about data security, backups, recovery, but never anything about what happens if Windows doesn't work anymore.

That doesn't happen? Well, what happens if Windows activation on servers would not work anymore? After 30 days your server starts shutting down every hour. Impossible to hack and wreck this system?

Fortunately the total dependency on Windows has been decreased the past decade because of the rise of Google, Apple and Android smartphones. No sane developer would develop something which does not run in Chrome or on Android. Indeed, Google is much more open than MS. Only they collect and keep whatever data is yours.

Yes, people are stupid like that. Especially decision makers, CEO's and politicians. Technicians do not usually have that much influence to make the difference.

jlinkels

4 members found this post helpful.

and worse, companies and institutions.

my last educational institution shared and requested documents in RTF format, maybe in the mistaken assumption that it was free... the alternative was PDF. luckily, libreoffice can generate both formats.
but nowadays even microsoft acknowledges the existence of the open document standard, so maybe in another few years it will be possible to submit your essays in .odt.

that same school also tried to shoehorn its students into using MS's email platform, whose name i forget.
luckily one wasn't forced to use it.

1 members found this post helpful.

I've found that BricsCAD is pretty much a 1:1 clone of AutoCAD (it even now has the ribbon interface as an option). And it has a native Linux version.

It even runs AutoLisp addons - usually more compatible with old ACad than the new ACads having difficulty with old addons. It's when you need ARX addons where the Linux version has issues, though it does work with the BCad alternative SDS / SDA addons. Does most of the nifty stuff in newer ACads like dynamic blocks with parameters.

Not free, though it's less than AutoCAD Lite.

There's even a BIM alternative working similar to AutoCAD Architectural Desktop.

So can MS-Office (see below).

You can now, and should have been able to for several years. Googling tells me that MS-Office has had full ODF capability since 2007. However, it won't readily admit to it. And when pushed it will tell you in various ways that it would be better if you used MS-format.
I have been sending nothing but ODF documents for several years, occasionally someone comments "What's this?" but I tell them not to worry & just use their word processor/spreadsheet to open it. Noone has ever come back to me on this.

Not only acknowledges, but implements. They have been forced to by various court judgements & government directives over the years, and kicked & screamed like hell in the process.

Having said all this, I must admit that it is all theoretical - I have little personal experience with the issue, only the result of research but with fairly reliable sources. I know I should, & would love to, check it myself. But, for some reason, I cannot get a copy of MS-Office that will run on my PC<chuckles>.

1 members found this post helpful.

I would like to see rufus ported to linux. I'm aware of the alternatives and dd, however rufus allows me to write iso to usb with a lot of nice options such as uefi, dd or cdrom mode with simple mouse clicks

WeaveDesign or anything from this list.

There is a certain demand. For the time, WeaveDesign appears to be running with wine on Debian 9.x.

second that^

For those that are talking about graphics editors, and alternatives to PhotoShop, I personally think that Pinta is the best basic photo editor. The most complete (capable, powerful and with a nice interface) is Krita (in my opinion). The learning curve is much less steep than with GIMP. Karbon is also a very good Vector graphics editor. Unfortunately, both Krita and Karbon are often overlooked because they bring in so many KDE dependencies; I can't say that I have ever noticed any performance issues with installing KDE dependencies, and the hard drive space is trivial.

1 members found this post helpful.

Kimdino, I agree!!

I've recently experienced problems with documents (mainly spreadsheets) generated with LibreOffice. Even if saved in Micro$oft format, they do not display correctly. It is not possible to use anything saved as the output of LibreOffice Impress without checking the formatting using PowerPoint - and don't start me on the havoc wrought when PowerPoint has its way with text in Oriental Languages.....

@malwodyn:-

If you want a Linux office suite that's FULLY compatible with MyCrudSoft's Office, take a look at SoftMaker GmbH's 'FreeOffice':-

http://www.freeoffice.com/en/download

It even looks fairly like Office, although a somewhat older design (doesn't have all that 'ribbon' stuff, for starters). But it's fully compatible with the newest .docx proprietary M$ format, and will display things properly.

You will need to register first, but that's only because they send you the 'activation key' by email, to the address you've just registered with. Give it a try; I use it myself for some things, and for all-round MS-compatibility, it's just that little bit more 'on-the-ball' than Libre Office.

Where I don't need to worry about being 'compatible', I use the latter most of the time.


Mike

Alex, if you want a decent vector graphics editor, and can't stand Inkscape (like me), then take a look at Vectr.

You can download the desktop app, and use it on your machine as with any app.....but it basically connects online to perform your work. It's pretty good.


Mike.

I would like to see a G.U.I. type command line translator that can translate from Yankee English to the command line.