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Comment by perlgeek | Hacker News Reader

It's a smart move to first introduce cross-platform applications. Then after switching to a different operating system, the users will be familiar with the applications, so "only" the desktop changes, not the whole experience. If you are used to firefox, thunderbird and libreoffice, to many users it doesn't matter much if it's windows or linux underneath.

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That was exactly how I converted for my own personal use. I gradually replaced all my Windows applications with cross-platform FOSS applications and finally switched from Windows to Ubuntu.

Definitely. I'd say that improving the Libreoffice experience on Windows is probably one of the most effective things we can do at present to increase adoption of desktop Linux.

The Libreoffice experience in Linux leaves something to be desired - particularly some parts like the pitifully slow spreadsheet app (Calc) and its charting facilities, or the desktop database app (Base) and its bizarre interface.

So even if you achieve parity across platforms, Office users are going to find a lot to complain about... with reason. Not because Office is great, but just because Libreoffice is lacking in polish, still, in so many ways.

I've evangelized Libreoffice to users for years, but some parts of the suite are just terrible no matter how you look at it, and meanwhile alternatives like Google Docs and Gnumeric have established themselves... Even if you improve Libreoffice across the board, this isn't really going to drive adoption so much as lubricate it slightly for people who want to replace Office. Things like Steam encouraging game development for Linux are going to have a much larger impact.

This was also true a decade ago. The fact is OpenOffice and Libreoffice in 2013 still suck compared to Excel. By most standards they even suck compared to Excel 2003. I'm not even sure they are closing the gap at all. And the outlook isn't very good because Google pays top people top dollar and Docs/Sheets/Drive has the exact same problem.

I've always been curious, what makes Excel better?

Accountants use it as an IDE.

As do engineers, for that matter.

The VB stuff matters of course but as a regular excel user what kills me when I use LibreOffice is:

(1) The responsiveness which I guess is from hardware acceleration. It's like comparing a $60 cheapo tablet and an ipad or Al Bundy's old Dodge to a 2014 Camry.

(2) The need to flout basic Excel conventions as if that's somehow lauditory. LibreOffice has made some strides here (hey you can use commas in formulas again) but it still feels like someone from Samsung should be put in charge of the whole thing.

1) I think the responsiveness of Microsoft Office is largely from using appropriate APIs. LibreOffice is ultimately based on StarOffice, and StarOffice was the worst office program I've ever tried. It dragged its own OS platform on top of whatever OS it was installed on, and it was slow and buggy. LibreOffice is heaps better now, and it's improving fast, but it still suffers from the legacy.

2) I don't see the need to slavishly follow Excel conventions, but I don't know of any evidence that Samsung would be a good lead developer of any software. Be that as it may, Samsung is free as anybody else to contribute to the LibreOffice project.

>2) I don't see the need to slavishly follow Excel conventions, but I don't know of any evidence that Samsung would be a good lead developer of any software. Be that as it may, Samsung is free as anybody else to contribute to the LibreOffice project.

I think 2) was a joke about Samsung copying Apple.

What basic Excel conventions do you have in mind? I'd like to avoid making the mistake of flouting them.

Someone with the goal "make Calc a better Excel than Excel" needs to take a serious interest involving lots of developers.

Basically, LO needs to be able to import the sort of monster power user spreadsheet that takes 16 hours to run in Excel, and run it fidelitously in 12. These guys sign the cheques.

What would that take?

1. Get a pile of example spreadsheets. (Code to real-world examples, like Wine does, rather than abstract specs that are often inaccurate.) This will be the hard part.

2. Every OOXML tag in the documents needs to be correctly imported and understood.

3. The VBA in the documents needs to run perfectly.

4. Optimise the hell out of it.

That gets LO good enough to seriously compete. Then you make the IDE as good for those users as Excel's is.

Runs faster on large spreadsheets that do a lot of recalculating, also some functions e.g. pivot tables have become widely used in some business areas.

LibreOffice people are working on speed of execution in Calc

I misread 'outlook' as 'Outlook' and was very confused, since it's never been good.

LibreOffice is much better than OpenOffice, but both still pale in comparison to Excel on Windows. However, Microsoft Excel for Mac sucks, and that hasn't slowed Mac adoption. It's now relatively standard practice for anyone doing serious Excel work on a Mac to install a Windows VM and a Windows copy of Excel.

It really does suck on Mac, as does Word. I'm guessing this is just Microsoft sticking it to Apple, but it's disappointing for their users who work on multiple platforms. Just make it the same everywhere MS!

Not that they were excluded, but explicitly consider browser based applications as part of those cross-platform applications. I own a copy of MS Office, but rarely use it since Google Docs solves every problem I usually have.

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