M$ not playing fair to OpenOffice

Posted by iveen on May 13, 2009 5:52 AM EDT
LXer; By Iveen Duarte
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I have been involved in a crusade, switching users at my workplace from Windows desktops to Ubuntu desktops, however, there have been a lot of complaints, and, people is requesting to go back to Windows, most of those complaints are regarding their office suite, and they are valid and justifiable complaints.

Linux has matured since I have started using it a few years ago, I remember I have started using Fedora, then, switched to OpenSUSE and finally, thanks to the recommendation of a friend of mine (former co-worker) I have landed on Ubuntu. I found it to be a very robust desktop and then I switched every computer at home to it.

I wanted to replicate the same effort at my workplace, and I started with IT Department, and of course, everything went smooth, then I moved to other departments, having a very moderate success, but, then when I moved to the power users, the complains started to roll in, to the point, that users are asking to be migrated back to Windows.

We did troubleshooting of so many things to make the switch smoother for our users, but, regardless of that, our enemy, was somewhat invincible, and nothing seems to overcome such an obstacle, but don't get me wrong, this enemy is cheating, and this is giving it the edge required to defeat us.

Our sworn enemy is M$ Office Suite which just refuses to read and display the documents created on OpenOffice properly, even though those documents are being saved as M$ native format (XP/2003 format), so this way, charts that display perfectly on OpenOffice are all distorted when opened with M$ Office, axis titles that appear below the chart, are shown above the chart on M$ Office, and this is just a tiny example, of so many other things that apparently "don't work".

This is completely unfair, I think M$ Office Suite should play with the same set of rules, with no advantages or edge positions, and if you the user are to choose between this software and open office should be because of its features, cost, etc., not because the supposed incompatibilities between both, Open Office has done a tremendous effort to read the files created on M$ Office, and M$ Office is not doing the same, even though, those files are like I said before, are saved in a native M$Office format.

This really is a Linux Breaker, and it shouldn't.

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Completely native? tmkinn 23 2,356 May 14, 2009 9:43 AM

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