open office vs. microsoft office

[superigue]

is open office better than microsoft office for ubuntu?????

[halovivek]

Openoffice is fast in Ubuntu. I use both. I use microsoft office using wine.

[albandy]

Well it's simply different.

[cb951303]

for ubuntu probably open office is better since its native.
but my personal exp. with openoffice is awful. slow, ugly and buggy. that being said there are no real alternatives for word processing. in abiword for instance most of the time a small error that you make tends to break the page layout. that's what I like about openoffice, insert objects, create tables, delete paragraphs, redo, undo etc. at the end your page always can be turned back to what it was looking like.

[bapoumba]

Use what fits you better. OpenOffice fits all my needs. i'm teaching, no need to say I use it on a daily basis.

[kelvin spratt]

Open Office is a great program for Linux works well in windows/mac as well million of people us it on a daily basis.

[cfree220]

I think that would depend on which version of M$ office you're using. I personally do not like Office 2007 for several reasons. Among these are that the GUI for 2007 is not as intuitive (despite being designed to be more so) and that word crashes and restarts every time I try and close it (which is irritating to say the least). My computer dual boots Vista Ultimate and Intrepid Ibex. Recently I've started using OOo on both OS's

[Therion]

Writer (or AbiWord, my actual preference), Calc and Scribus are fine for about 90% of what I do (office manager for a large liberal arts college Fine Arts department).

Only on the rarest of occasions do I actually require something from MS Office. If I need a pivot table or need to chart/graph data, for instance, I'll go to Excel. It's one of the few things that you can't do in Calc. Scribus is a great application, but Publisher still rules in my opinion. It's about the only MS product I still keep around because I haven't yet found a FOSS alternative that I find acceptable.

+1 to not liking MS Office 2007. I'd vote twice if I could.

[bubwitmaingay]

OpenOffice.Org 3 is already coping up with MSOffice with regards to environment. The best thing about OpenOffice is that it can open documents created in MSOffice 2007 (*.docx, *.pptx, *.xlsx) - you know, those pesky xml default file extensions of this newest MSOffice version.

It suites me well because it can support many platforms. Ninety percent of PCs in my country run on Microsoft OS (thus MSOffice) and I can still move from one PC to another with OpenOffice (and I'm not dual-booting nor use Wine for my office applications). 8)

[linuxuser21]

I personally use OOo on my computers (including my computer that has Vista). I use it because it has all the features I need and more. It also supports more documents made by other word processors and stuff like that.

[mackra]

IMHO, OpenOffice is much better. I was writing a report and was having a lot of trouble getting Word and the equation editor to work correctly with sub-script greek characters.

OpenOffice's equation editor was much easier, but may take a little getting use to since it's not just drag and drop or point and click like MS equation editor. Although it does have an icon palette, I use the command line to generate my equations. Much more straight forward for me to use and understand.

Used OO to write my master's thesis, would do it again and would recommend using OO.

Rich

[Mark Phelps]

is open office better than microsoft office for ubuntu?????

To answer your original question -- YES.

Why?

Note that your question said "for ubuntu". It's better for two reasons.

First, it installs natively in Linux. With MS Office, you have to first install something like Wine or Crossover -- which presents its own problems. Then, you may not be able to get all the MS Office apps working --I've read conflicting reports on Office 2007 apps.

Second, you can also install OpenOffice in MS Windows. This means you can use the same office suite for both OSs, which then means you can freely transfer your office files back and forth between both OSs without difficulty.

Third, if it doesn't give you all the features you need, you haven't spent hundreds of dollars finding that out! You can still pursue the MS Office/Wine/Crossover option.

[mackra]

To answer your original question -- YES.

Second, you can also install OpenOffice in MS Windows. This means you can use the same office suite for both OSs, which then means you can freely transfer your office files back and forth between both OSs without difficulty.


I've run into formatting problems due to cross platform and OO build/version difference. For general usage this isn't a big deal. However once I started inserting a lot of figures, tables etc. I had to do all my work on my Linux boxes (Debian, Ubuntu, and OpenSUSE) and ensure that the builds were the same. Otherwise my formatting would get goofed up.

Rich