Netbook performance: OpenOffice or MS Office under WINE?

esuhl · 13 November 2010 at 8:48PM

After tiring of the frequent anti-virus/malware updates XP requires (and the amount of time that takes!), I installed Arch Linux on my netbook. I'm now trying to decide which word processing and spreadsheet applications to install.

Generally, I much prefer MS Office to OpenOffice (due to compatibility issues), but the only version of Office for which I have a spare licence is 2007 with the horrendous ribbon interface!

That aside, does anyone know how the performance of MS Office 2007 running on a netbook under WINE would compare to a native (well, Java) installation of OpenOffice?

Hammyman · 13 November 2010 at 9:11PM

Until you try it you're not going to know but I expect it to be a bit poor.

I'd rather have Ubuntu netbook remix than Arch though.

ehlo · 13 November 2010 at 9:14PM

Even if the performance of Office on WINE is good you'll probably run into compatibility issues here and there. Openoffice or one of the alternatives (e.g Abiword for word processing) would probably be best. You can disable Java in the openoffice preferences which will speed it up quite a bit. Java is used for very little, and nothing that you're likely to be using on a daily basis.

I'd rather have Ubuntu netbook remix than Arch though.

I run Arch on two laptops and my main PC but used to use ubuntu. While Arch takes longer to setup (especially on portable hardware) IMO it runs faster and longer

patman99 · 13 November 2010 at 11:29PM

A different word processor & spreadsheet altogether

What will run best is 'LibreOffice', this is the new openoffice. It has been created by the same group of programmers who built Ooo. They all left Oracle and took the code for Ooo 3.3 beta with them.

As for Ubuntu, as a Linux user of over 15 years exp. I have know idea why so many people are supporting it.
Personally I use PCLinuxOS. Why? because it is the only distro to contain proprietory drivers for all the WiFi chipsets and also for ATi & nVidia.

kabayiri · 13 November 2010 at 11:37PM

I used to run Office XP developer suite a lot under CrossOver office (basically Wine) on a debian box.

Weirdly, running Access queries on fairly large datasets (100,000s of records and larger) was faster than the same Access database running under XP on the same PC !

I can only put it down to the file system, but the results were consistent.

On a netbook I prefer a lighter window manager, so I steer towards CrunchBang Linux. By comparison Windows 7 starter is like wading through treacle. I was hoping for more.

Under Crunchbang, Open Office is fairly responsive on an Atom PC.

esuhl · 14 November 2010 at 2:09AM

Hammyman wrote: »

I'd rather have Ubuntu netbook remix than Arch though.

Fair enough - Ubuntu does seem to be incredibly popular! I tried it once a long time ago and vaguely remember it seeming pretty bloated and hard to tweak to my liking, although it was so easy to install and worked pretty well without having to configure anything. Being a bit of a control freak and minimalist I much prefer Arch, though.

ehlo wrote: »

You can disable Java in the openoffice preferences which will speed it up quite a bit. Java is used for very little, and nothing that you're likely to be using on a daily basis.

That's good to know - for some reason I'd got it into my head that it was actually written in Java. In that case, it should (maybe!) run faster than MS Office...

patman99 wrote: »

What will run best is 'LibreOffice', this is the new openoffice.

I hadn't heard of that, but according to the writer of this article, "I doubt seriously whether the original “OpenOffice.org” project... will live much past this fork."

Oh hang on... I've just remembered how many of my Excel spreadsheets use VBA... I think I'm going to have to try MS Office first and hope it performs okay. I tested it under WINE on my desktop PC and it ran without any compatibility issues, so fingers crossed!

jbreckmckye · 14 November 2010 at 4:01AM

I've doubts, though, about VBA macros under Wine. I also wonder if Win apps on Wine will be power-efficient - I can't say for sure whether Wine will properly guess which instructions are null / smartly shift processor power states. Do tell us how you get on, though.

esuhl · 16 November 2010 at 4:07PM

Welllll... I had previously tried MS Office 2007 (just Word & Excel) under Arch64 on my desktop, and it worked flawlessly. I don't think I had to pre-configure anything - it just worked.

On the netbook, however, the installation kept failing. The WINE application database indicates that the Office installer should work without any overrides, but after getting nowhere I installed winetricks and a few important-sounding addons (if that's the right word). Unfortunately I got nowhere - the installer failed either straight away or half-way through the final "copying/installing files" process.

At the moment, I have overridden rpcrt4.dll and msxml3.dll and have these "winetricks" addons installed: msxml3, dotnet20, gdiplus, riched30, vcrun2005sp1, allfonts, fontfix, msi2, vb3run, vb4run, vb5run, vb6run, vcrun2008.

I'm not sure whether to persist or admit defeat and go with LibreOffice. The thing is... it worked so seamlessly on my desktop PC... there must be a way to get it installed!

I'll update this thread if I ever manage it!

hubert_cumberdale · 16 November 2010 at 4:21PM

i wasnt keen on the new office ribbon interface its a bit queer but i have removed it and now my 2007 office looks like it office 97 or 98 what ever the good one was

esuhl · 16 November 2010 at 4:37PM

hubert_cumberdale wrote: »

i wasnt keen on the new office ribbon interface its a bit queer but i have removed it and now my 2007 office looks like it office 97 or 98 what ever the good one was

Office 97 was fantastic. Still got a copy somewhere, but there's just too many newer features missing.

How did you remove the ribbon UI? When testing my desktop installation, I spent 10 minutes trying to find the "word count" option before giving up and using OpenOffice!

hubert_cumberdale · 16 November 2010 at 4:39PM

someone has written a bit of software to strip it out much to the dismay of microsoft. They did threaten court action against him for altering there code but it turns out it didnt alter it

i will have to find it again i like the old school my vista now looks like windows 98 i never could stand the new style windows

Netbook performance: OpenOffice or MS Office under WINE?

Which performs better (on a netbook)? 3 votes

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