Office 365 Desktop App Ubuntu
Serge Moquin
I am using Ubuntu and I need to do my project work. When I use libre office for the work purpose it stores in odt format and converting from odt to docx format changes the alignment of words and paragraphs in documentation.
Simply put, yes, it's possible to use Microsoft Office on a Linux computer, without needing to use a Windows emulator. Microsoft has created a version of Microsoft Office with Cloud integration called Microsoft Office 365, which can be accessed on any device by using a web browser to connect to the web version of the Microsoft Office package.
Of course, this will require you to create a Microsoft Office account and pay Microsoft for the privilege of using their software. Also, the web version of Microsoft Word is not fully compatible with the standalone Microsoft Word software, having quite a few features such as image captions and title pages missing.
Yes, there is a good alternative. Onlyoffice is free and open source (GitHub), and has excellent Microsoft Office compatibility (including viewing Annotated Powerpoint presentations).
Windows running in VBox still technically requires a license for full performance. Without activating, you won't be able to personalize the desktop background, window title bar, taskbar, and Start color, change the theme, customize Start, taskbar, and lock screen etc. Additionally, you might periodically get messages asking to activate your copy of Windows
My personal experience is that the most seamless Ubuntu/Linux integration with full native Linux compatibility is provided by Softmaker Office.Compared to say, LibreOffice, I've found the compatibility w.r.t. Microsoft formats (especially .docx) far superior.
Generally speaking, there will always be some discrepancies in how your documents are displayed in different applications and versions. Even MS Office 2019 Professional, MS Office 365 and MS Office for Web do not always display documents in the same way.
Another issue to consider is compatibility with your peers: if some of your peers are also using let's say LibreOffice already, you may have less issues when sharing documents with them if you also use LibreOffice.
Just from personal experience, I have found WPS office has the best compatibility with Desktop MS-Word and Excel; I've tried Libre Office, OnlyOffice, Office365 (Google Docs is better I think), an others I've forgotten about, but they all come up a bit short. Also since WPS's ribbon format seems to be an almost like-for-like rip-off of MS-Office, it has the shortest learning curve if you're a long-standing MS-Office user. I have tried to persevere with LibreOffice in the past, it's very comprehensive, but some features are still a bit clunky, and the rendering quite often is just a bit "off" (like Disney characters on the back of ice-cream vans), enough to make it a time-waster
Perhaps I'm gonna state the obvious, but you can (and should!) use Office online. Dropbox (even the free tier) provides access to an online Microsoft Office suite which should be more than enough for us mortals (provided you don't need crazy Excel macros or that stuff), integrated with their storage. IMHO that's the best feature from Dropbox.
Google docs is also a good alternative for microsoft office package. It's bit hard to truly dependent on microsoft office if you are on ubuntu. The best option is to stick permanently to one option. There is a burden to switch between softwares. I prefer google docs.
outside of running Microsoft Office 365 in a browser, depending on what functionality and version compatibility you need, you can use different alternative as already said before, but one important for me is the OLE automation.The only office alternative that has it to my knowledge is openoffice.note that it is not working when libre office is installed!
My university provides Office 365 desktop and web for the students. Which is the least they could do with the amount of tuition we are paying! My class team collaboratively authors office files synced to our online accounts, so I want to use M$ but I also want to use my linux box.
Starting with the Ubuntu 16.04 edition and including the later LTS versions, Canonical will offer expanded security coverage for critical, high, and medium Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) to all of Ubuntu's open-source applications and toolchains for ten years.
Most of these are server programs, such as Ansible, Apache Tomcat, Drupal, Nagios, Redis, and WordPress. But, it also includes such developer essentials as Docker, Node.js, phpMyAdmin, Python 2, and Rust. Altogether, Canonical is supporting more than 23,000 packages. Indeed, it's now offering security for, as Mark Shuttleworth, Canonical's CEO, said, "Security coverage to every single package in the Ubuntu distribution."
Canonical isn't doing this on its own. It's offering free, improved security in partnership with the security management company Tenable. Robert Huber, Tenable's Chief Security Officer, said, "Ubuntu Pro offers security patch assurance for a broad spectrum of open-source software. Together, we give customers a foundation for trustworthy open source."
Beyond ordinary security, Canonical is backporting security fixes from newer application versions. This enables Ubuntu Pro users to use the Ubuntu release of their choice for long-term security without forced upgrades. Happy to keep using Ubuntu 20.04? No problem. You can run it until April 2030. Knock yourself out.
This new take on Ubuntu also includes compliance management tools via the Ubuntu Security Guide (USG) and the Ubuntu Landscape management tool. With this, your business can comply with such hardening and compliance standards as certified CIS benchmark tooling and DISA-STIG profiles. Businesses can also access the FIPS 140-2 certified cryptographic packages they need to comply with FedRAMP, HIPAA, and PCI-DSS-related work.
Why? It's part of Canonical's philosophy of staying committed to its community and making open source easier and safer for everyone. For the most part, Linux desktops today are burdened by a fragmented approach to long-term maintenance. With Ubuntu Pro, you can be sure your desktop will stay stable and safe for a decade while you focus on your business instead of updating your desktop.
He continued, "I'm particularly proud of the partnerships that we have with companies like Dell, Lenovo, and HP. These enable anybody anywhere in the world to go online and configure the very latest laptop or PC hardware to arrive with Ubuntu pre-installed. This meets the needs of everyone from students all the way up to very high-end developer use cases."
Shuttleworth remarked, "Since we first launched Ubuntu LTS, with five years of free security coverage for the main OS, our enterprise customers have asked us to cover more and more of the wider open-source landscape under private commercial agreements. Today, we are excited to offer the benefits of all of that work, free of charge, to anyone in the world, with a free personal Ubuntu Pro subscription." This, Shuttleworth added, "is not a student edition, it's not a developer-only edition, it's for full commercial use for you and for any business you own for up to five machines."
The Ubuntu Pro desktop also supports Advanced Active Directory (AD) Policies. This includes full Group Policy Object support, remote script execution, and privilege management. Or, if you prefer, you can use Landscape to manage for free up to ten Ubuntu desktops.
Users can obtain a free personal Ubuntu Pro subscription at ubuntu.com/pro for up to five machines. This free tier is for personal and small-scale commercial use. Paid plans start at $25 per year per workstation. The standard Ubuntu Pro subscription covers the full set of security updates for all Ubuntu packages.
If you decide to move a large business to Ubuntu, you can combine Ubuntu Pro with up to 247 enterprise-grade support coverage. You can also expand your support plan to cover infrastructure programs such as MAAS, LXD, Kubernetes, OpenStack, Ceph storage, Swift storage, and other open-source applications.
I would like to use OneDrive on Ubuntu, May be working with all or some folders. Since there is no office OneDrive client in Linux, I've searched online and found "rclone" but not sure how secure it is or is there any other alternative out there?
I am the maintainer of the free OneDrive Client for Linux, which supports OneDrive Personal, OneDrive for Business, OneDrive for Office365 and Sharepoint, and fully supports Azure National Cloud Deployments for those that require it. It fully supports shared folders - both OneDrive Personal and OneDrive Business Shared Folders.
With your existing command, no - there is no automatic sync occurring. However, if you switch '--synchronize' for '--monitor' this will continually sync until you exit the application - ie - sync automatically.
It has deb/rpm/AppImage packages and runs on nearly all linux distros. There is a desktop edition as well as a server edition that runs headless. Mounting specific sharepoint sites, remote paths, etc are all supported as well as offline mode and async writes. Also built to withstand reboots, transient networks, etc.
Expandrive has the ability to connect to Onedrive and Sharepoint and create a virtual mounted drive. You do not have to sync files to your computer to use them. It operates like a mapped network drive in Windows (without a drive letter of course) or a mounted drive on a Mac. Expandrive is not free and I have no association with the company. But I do have a license of my own. You can try it for free and even keep using it for free once the trial expires. However, after the trial expires you will only be able to use it for something like 20 minutes and then have to restart it.
Expandrive also connects to may other platforms including SFTP (which allows a Windows client to map a drive letter to a Linux SFTP server). It has Windows, Linux and Mac clients. Even when you have a native client for a specific app (Say OneDrive or Dropbox in Windows), Expandrive can be useful to just create a mapped drive and not have to worry about managing synced folders.
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